Visitors

A couple weeks ago, Michael Greenspan was in town.  Dorie, Michael's wife, was on a book tour for her new cookbook, Around My French Table.  Those who attended Tom Yang's first east coast party, held at the Greenspan's place in Connecticut, will remember some wonderful desserts made by Dorie. 

It turns out that one day that Michael was free just happened to be the day that I was meeting John Bennett for lunch.  John is Jon Shirley's maintenance mechanic and has the awful job of driving each of the cars for a couple of hours each month.  After lunch, we all went back over to Jon's warehouse and got a hour tour of the collection.  John spent a lot more time than I expected.  I though that it would be a quick walk around but he was opening hoods and doors and talking all about each of the cars.  Here's one of Jon's cars, a 375 MM at a local Seattle concours.

Michael came back a couple of days later for some meetings with Microsoft and came out to dinner.  Among other things, we discussed the movie Julie and Julia, about the famous chef, Julia Child.  Dorie basically lived at Julia's place for several weeks while she as writing Baking with Julia.  One of Dorie's fans had visited the Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian, which is Julia's kitchen from her home.  They noticed that the first speed dial on the phone was labeled DorieG!

Michael had also stopped by a couple of years ago when Dorie was promoting another book, Baking: From My Home to Yours.  Dorie needs to write books faster so Michael comes to visit more often.

Then last night, Tom Yang and Larry Hernandez came out to dinner.  Tom and Larry were in town working on a car deal.  Hopefully they will have an announcement shortly and Tom will have another project like his 330 America to write about.

We spent about an hour out in the shop talking about cars with Tom poring over the PF coupe since he has recently been working on David E.'s coupe.  However, since it has been unseasonably cold in Seattle, a lot of time was spent huddled around the wood stove, with Larry's California blood needing the prime spot.