I don't have photos, but my Chinese dinner was pork & shrimp shao mai, hot & sour soup, honey walnut prawns, red cooked beef, and boring old white rice because I lacked energy to fry it.

The recipe for the prawns: boil walnuts in sugar water 20 min, coat with honey, deep fry. Coat prawns with egg whites and corn starch, deep fry, fold into sauce of sweetened condensed milk, lemon juice, mayo. Toss together and serve on bed of shredded cabbage.

The recipe for the lobster tails: drop tails in boiling water for 1 min, cut bottom surface from tail shell, carefully remove tail flesh with a spoon, mix finely chopped tarragon and basil into softened butter, place flesh in bag with butter and sous vide 130F 30 min, place back in shell to serve.

The previous week my friend Mark took me out on his boat - this relates to my still-forming plan to someday get a boat of my own.

His is a 32' Grand Banks trawler with a wooden hull, single cabin in the bow, and a single engine. It is slow, seaworthy, and fuel-efficient - about 2.5 mpg at 7 knots. He single-hands it from Portland as far north as Vancouver Island and southern Alaska. I'd ideally like something one "size" up, for the additional cabin. His wife (the self-styled "boat widow") doesn't tend to go with him, but SWMBO has made it clear that she doesn't intend to be left at home.

Here we are drifting in the Columbia River. Mark has just turned off the engine - not strictly recommended - and we are preparing to mix some drinks and Discuss Life.

Gorgeous view! & yummy looking food as well - thanks for sharing 🙂

Recipe for the red cooked beef: cut a fatty piece of beef into 2" chunks, brown in hot pan, place in water with plenty of soy sauce, rice wine, brown sugar, garlic, star anise, ginger, green onions, red pepper flakes, simmer for a couple hours. Remove beef, reduce liquid to sauce consistency, adding a little cornstarch to thicken and gloss, reheat beef in sauce, plate and sprinkle with sesame seeds for pretty.

Recipe for chicken marbella: the usual Silver Palate process, but add a lot of sliced figs.

Recipe for hot and sour soup: heat chicken stock, add rice vinegar, soy sauce, white pepper, a little sesame oil and sugar to taste, then add dried brown and shiitake mushrooms, simmer until mushrooms are reconstituted. Remove mushrooms and slice into matchsticks, add back to pot. Add pork loin, sliced into matchsticks (unless noted, everything is sliced into matchsticks, so I'll stop specifying that), firm tofu, baked tofu, bamboo shoots, scallions (not matchsticked, but sliced in long thin diagonals), simmer briefly. Make a cornstarch slurry and stir into soup, just to get a little thickening - not the icky gloopy texture often encountered in restaurants. Then heat soup to just boiling, stir in circles while drizzling in a couple of beaten eggs. Adjust taste - add heat with a touch more vinegar, etc - and serve.

Recipe for shao mai: place pork trimmings, a few prawns or shrimp, garlic, a little ginger, green onion, some other green veg, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper, and a couple encelopes of Knox unflavored gelatin (or a dollop of lard), and a touch of oil and water for moistness, into food processor and zap into filling. Or hand mince which is better but slower. Mix flour and water into a simple dough, roll into logs, refrigerate a bit, then cut disks and roll out to round wraps, 1/8" thick at most. Or buy pre made wonton wrappers and, if they are square, use a glass or something to cut them round. Place a thimble sized dollop of filling in centre of wrap, then pleat edge of wrap to get something that looks like a open topped can with pleated edges - imagine the wrapper of a Reeses cup, but only about as wide as tall. Encircle the sides of this "can" with forefinger and thumb of one hand, support bottom with fingers of other hand and use that thumb to lightly compress the filling while lightly squeezing the sides. You want a bit of an hourglass shape with some open space above the filling. This sounds tedious and the first couple will be discards, but then it'll only take 30 sec per piece (less if you're a Chinese grandma). Fine dice something colorful - yellow and red peppers is easy - and sprinkle into that open space for pretty. Steam 20 minutes and add a drop of soy sauce to each before serving (or supply a dipping sauce).

Sounds like good food and good times. I’ve been meaning to try to make honey walnut shrimp for a long time now. Wife loves it. Somehow never happened but just maybe you’ll have inspired me.

Beautiful boat your friend has. I trust you’re looking for fiberglass? Maybe “trust” is the wrong word, knowing how you like projects. “Hope”?

Pre 1971 (roughly) Grand Banks are wood, post are fiberglass. My friend says the wood hulls below waterline don't give problems, the wood issues he's had have been above, particularly the superstructure, and those are wood on the fiberglass boats too. That's what I've heard from others as well. So I think I'm indifferent as to the hull material. But I'm so early in this idea and have zero actual experience with boats, so who knows.

I've been fascinated with boats my whole life but never had time, money, friends, or circumstances to mess with them. I'm quite paranoid about water, that's from sea kayaking where you're always aware of how little you are, and how quickly things can go wrong. SWMBO has done some sailing and prefers sailboats, but I feel comfortable with mechanical systems and really don't want to spend all day heeled over.

Definitely make the honey walnut prawns, it's dead easy. The exact proportions of ingredients isn't critical, except on the prawn sauce, start with the sweetened condensed milk (like 1 c) and add the mayo to taste (start with 1 tbsp) and use lemon juice sparingly (start with 1 tbsp), don't be afraid to add sugar, it is a sweet milk sauce with just a touch of lemony tinge. Even for a lot of prawns, you only need 1.5 c of sauce to coat them.

Here are our kayaks, mine is the blue one. We've had these since '96, we originally planned a very adventuresome world trip with lots of four-wheeling and kayaking, then DD was accidentally conceived and we switched to a year of campers, tents, gites, hostels, inns and when we could afford it, hotels. So these boats are only used a week a year, and will probably last our lifetimes. We have some plastic ones too.

The place and the food are wonderful.

Amazing food!

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I had wanted a boat, or build a Kevlar boat myself. But I couldn't figure out what would I do with a boat since I am not into fishing. I can understand a boat for business entertainment expense write-off.

Fiberglass repairs are much easier than wood.

Gasoline can be very expensive for a big boat. a 100 mile out can be $300 $400 or more.

How much to dock?

How much for insurance?

How much for internet/phone service?

Maintenance?

dcarch

Gorgeous views, wonderful food, and good friends. There's nothing better.

John that sounds so delish. I laugh at what you describe as "less elaborate" meals! Laughing through jealousy! So happy you could get away during these tough times. Hubs and I have considered it, we certainly live in a state with many socially isolated recreation opportunities (why we love it) but we are so tied down with a "to do" list at home, just haven't been able to get away. We might regret it later, but there are always winter sports if we do get actual snow. I used to take cross country ski vacations but the times with good conditions are getting fewer and farther between.

I grew up living the boating life. It's expensive, but no more so really than camping . . . you have dock fees and have to take the boat in and out of the water and trailer it if you are taking it from place to place that you can't motor to . . . plus all the sleeping and cooking gear and provisioning. But if you had a camper a boat isn't that much different, there are campground fees and other expenses there too, camper maintenance, etc. My dad shared ownership of our big sailboat with two other guys, worked out well. Prior to that and after he had a pontoon boat. That's a great way to go if you want to spend the day on the water. He docked it for a while at a friend's place, and then in the end got a place of his own on the water with a dock in front. He had the boat for day trips away from the condo . . . the lake they were on emptied into Lake Michigan, which was where we sailed for years. I've both camped and boated, very similar. Boating is damper . . . .

Beautiful photos and food. I agree with !pinkmtn -- your idea of "less elaborate" is different than mine, considering you likely made your dumpling dough yourself. I've never made honey walnut prawns and had no idea they were thrice cooked. You were fortunate to not have much smoke as down the hill -- most of NorCal was pretty smoky-- at times last week I saw puffs of smoke drift across the yard.

I've always wanted a seaside or lakeside getaway. When I started looking seriously into it, I found:

- Needs to be within 2-3 hours drive "radius" of home, to be used often enough

- Oceanside (beachfront) houses in that radius of Portland are very expensive and you really only have a view of water (rough and often dangerous surf, not where I'd want to swim or kayak). If on a bay, the water is more accessible but those properties are rare, also expensive, and I think I'd get bored paddling around the same bay and visiting the same tiny town (there's only two suitable bays in that radius, neither particularly interesting). There are rather few lakeside cabins here (Oregon doesn't actually have a lot of lakes).

- Boat prices (the sort of older boat I'd like) are a fraction (1/5 to 1/10) of waterfront cabin prices. Boat operating costs (moorage, maintenance, repairs, upgrades, insurance, fuel, etc) are significant but not greater than equivalent cabin ownership costs (property tax, maintenance, repair, insurance, etc). Granted, a boat isn't an investment or income stream in the way that a seaside cabin can be. But when the Cascadia earthquake comes (we're overdue), Oregon coastal communities will be devastated and with it, any investment.

- Mooring options include the Columbia or Willamette rivers (10-20 min drive from my house) or even Olympia (2 hr drive, but puts you in Puget Sound, the most beautiful paddling/boating area in the US - my opinion - with hundreds of miles of sheltered waters, bays, islands, channels, going all the way up to Canada and Southern Alaska).

- In a couple years, Starlink (Space-X) will make fast-enough internet service available anywhere, at a reasonable price. Combined with the shift to WFH, that will create more location flexibility for certain occupations.

- I like mechanical systems and fixing things. I know nothing much about boating but am willing to diligently learn.

So, there is a germ of an idea . . .

dcarch, from talking with my friends with boats (30-45', marina-moored), their all-in boat ownership and operating cost (not purchase cost) seems to be around $20-30K/yr ($10-15K of routine costs, but with major expenditures every few years). These are guys with older boats, who are handy enough to not have to call marine mechanics for everything. The property tax alone on a beach house in my area of Oregon will be $7-10K annually.)

Nice looking boat. I so agree the desires and draw needs to be passionate in both. We both grew up on the water. DH in Corvallis, WestCoast, and I spent my youth on the Chesapeake and the Atlantic Ocean, EasterShore. Wind surfing, then kayaking. Grandfather had beach house and deep sea fishing boats. Mored right out the back door.

Vacation rentals for 10 years, renting houses so we could enjoy the markets and cook, in our late 30's, early 40's, all over, mostly Mexico. Road trips with the Airstream visiting family.

Best to keep renting and flip some coin. Choose the passion together. Land or sea.

We picked the sea. Kayaks and a wooden boat I had built by a local master boat builder for DH's birthday 18-ish years ago. Next boat is already decided on by another master builder.

Do decide by 55-60 years old before retirement. 😂. Shocking how the old bones stiffen. We have not looked back on our decision. If it is not working out, bad decisions can be sold. (many friends in NYC have done just that). And don't let friends sway your decision. Find friends that support your desire. They will help rather than impede.

We have had so many friends, family, co-workers, visit us on/in our remote island small village fishing home...fantastic family reunions both sides of our families. I traveled the world in my 20's 30's. Fine to not do so much of that now. A travel van at 30 is not a comfort trip at 50 years old. A p-1800 is cool at 30 but a mini-s is best for now. DH drove his 55 two door chevy from NewOrleans to Providence, RI in our love youth and lost a wheel on the way. Hipster old cars are cool but not in my future, ever, any more.

No boat slip cost or even property tax where we are. No town council.