The Road to 40 Day 211/365: All Talk and No Booze

Met up with family on this day for a day of catching up and a lot of fun for everyone.

We met up with my cousin, Richard, together with his wife, Tin, and the kids a few weeks back for the opening of Tin’s art studio and we agreed we should get together before the holidays. We proposed a sleepover for the kids, so we were getting ready for dinner and maybe breakfast the next day.

However, a couple of days before we met, Tin said the kids were a bit shy doing a sleepover, so they’d just come by around lunch so that we can do overnight things, but with the sun out.

Che prepared lasagna, while I did salpicao. I prepared salpicao to experiment, but thought it might be too much for us three, so I decided to do it for this day.

My beef salpicao is a bit expensive, as I found that the best flavor uses tenderloin. As I thought that I would want to offer it as something to sell later on, I needed to find a cheaper alternative without compromising flavor.

With a sous vide machine handy, I got a flank steak and marinated it in a vacuum seal. It’s a tough cut of meat, but it’s lean and cheap, so if I could make it work here, it could be something I could use later on.

It came out well after cooking it in sous vide at 55 degrees celsius for two hours. Then, I cooked it in butter for flavor and topped it with toasted garlic. Che wanted it a bit more cooked, so I left a few pieces to cook even more. The meat was tender enough after sous vide, so I was worried it might get tough if I cooked it more.

It’s not melt-in-your-mouth tender, but it was good enough to be enjoyed by everyone. Lasagna was great, as always, which is bad for my diet. I can never get enough of Che’s lasagna.

Richard and his family brought buttered garlic shrimp, which he got as fresh stock from their neighborhood supermarket.

Needless to say, lunch went well for everyone. Che got a bit sleepy, so she excused herself for a bit as Chard and I caught up about life.

Historically, everyone knows that meeting Chard meant I’d be at some level of drunkenness. We rarely see each other, so we binge on alcohol in the few times that we meet.

However, Chard revealed that he recently gave up alcohol to focus his energy and health in other things. Right now, things are going relatively well in their family’s life, so he doesn’t want to change anything. As a such, he doesn’t want to be tempted by alcohol, even for a sip, no matter what the occassion.

It’s partly for health, as he’s getting up there in age, but it wasn’t dictated by doctors – rather, it was a personal choice. He currently drinks this exotic tea called yerba mate, which he brings with him when he drinks out with people. Unfortunately, he left his special filter of a straw, so he couldn’t drink it this day.

Luckily, we had ginger ale, which he was fine with. As a show of support, I opted to drink green tea.

I enjoy drinking, but I never drink for the alcohol. When I drink, it’s always about the company. If my friends drink beer, I’d drink beer. If they go hard liquor, I’d drink with them. If they prefer cocktails or wine, I’m always down. It doesn’t matter what kind of alcohol, as long as everyone is comfortable and enjoys themselves.

While we had wine, I let Tin drink it. Chard insisted that I should drink if I wanted to, but I said green tea was fine.

We had a ton of stories, and Tin also needed a bit of sleep after drinking the strong red wine that we had. It was a new experience in that we didn’t have alcohol, but it was the same as always as we discussed what’s going on with life in general.

When the ladies woke up, we had oysters that they brought over.

Che and I bought some green tabasco in Australia because we enjoy it with oysters, but we never really plan on having oysters – it just happens. So while we’ve had some oysters over these past few months, we haven’t really been able to eat it with our green tabasco.

Now that the oysters came to us, we were able to enjoy the combination well.

Throughout this whole encounter, the kids were playing. Hennessy was a real big sister to both the kids now. She was once at an age where she didn’t care much for her sister and Vino, but these past couple of years, she’s been really finding ways for all of them to enjoy each other’s company.

They walked to the playgrounds a couple of times and they played a lot of games at home.

I joined in on their Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza game and lost miserably. Later, they got Chard to join, so there was one more person even slower than me to react.

We had dinner while watching Avatar: Way of Water until they had to go home. It was only after they left that I remembered we never took a photo of all of us together.

It’s always been a problem of mine to fail documenting things when I’m having a bit too much fun. Still, can’t be mad about spending time together than smiling for photos.