Hangin’ with Grownups

Tonight we had a lovely dinner at the home of Charlie (one of Guitarman’s coworkers) and his wife Telise. They’re from San Diego (well, Telise’s actually from Norway originally, but their last home before here was in San Diego). Telise is a painter, so we were surrounded by loads of her beautiful paintings. She doesn’t paint in just one style, so you couldn’t look around a room and guess which paintings were hers and which weren’t. I’m sure many painters do that over time, but I found it very interesting because these were all recent works.

We had sort of a cooperative Mexican dinner: tacos, guacamole, black & pinto beans. Great food, great company. And for dessert, we had ice cream topped with a special treat from Telise: cloudberries direct from Norway. She’d spent about 6 weeks driving through Norway to take photos (for inspiration) and had picked some cloudberries on her family’s land while she was there. They’re apparently a very rare treat, usually only had by Norwegians themselves or people who are willing to pay handsomely at fancy restaurants. I felt very honored to have them. They’re an interesting berry… they look like orangeish, fat raspberries (but with fewer of the lumpy things). They taste like no berry I’ve ever had and although they didn’t taste like marshmallows, that’s the flavor that came to mind when I ate them. The only thing I didn’t like was that they have seeds like raspberries, but much larger. You can bet those got stuck in my teeth.





Wee Laddie adores both Telise (as you can see from the photo) and Charlie (when he see him at the mess hall, Wee Laddie usually says, “Charlie! There’s my Charlie!”), so he enjoyed entertaining them and running around on their back lawn. And speaking of lawns, we borrowed their lawn mower again, so we should soon have a backyard that looks more yard than jungle. All good things.