The Darjeeling Limited trailer. Wes Anderson’s new film.

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Suzanne and Jason are in China right now and sent me this awesome sign.

Aurora and I had a matcha tasting aboard the Wild Turkey. I’ve been working on sourcing green tea powders outside of Japan, to see what’s out there and see if any of it is good. We compared two premium grades, one from Japan and one from Korea. I was telling Aurora that whisking matcha should sound like gently, quickly sweeping a floor, and then you’ve got to drink it right away while the tea is momentarily suspended in the water. She laughed and said the nuances of preparing matcha were similar to sailing a boat.

The taste of the two teas? Japanese matcha, with centuries of cultivation, has a much more refined taste, that’s very creamy and balanced. Korea has only been making green tea powder for 50 years, so the tea is very much like a young buck, with lots of punch and wildness.

Judd Cove Oysters

I was ten when I ate my first raw oyster. I’ve always liked them, although as a kid it was more about the dare. Now, it’s about taste and the feeling of being close, intimate with the ocean.

Two weeks ago, I schucked my first ones, with Aurora, on the dock of West Sound, Orcas Island. With a screw driver and hammer, we did our best, perfecting our technique each night. Let me tell you, these oysters are worth any distance travelled. Sweet, buttery, creamy, impossible to describe how pure, oh, just so delicious.

The Judd Cove Oyster Bed. I’d never seen one before, it surprised me how they worked. It’s a lot of sticks with ropes tied around them, giving the oysters a nice place to attach. It was low tide when this picture was taken, out of the car window, as we were heading into town.

This is Aurora eating the crab we caught. She is my hero. If I had any stress in my NYC body, she instantly saw it and took it away with laughter, seriously delicious cocktails and activities. Maybe she’ll write a book someday sharing her life secrets, if we are lucky.