NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:Easter weekend spent in a gourmet paradise

No cars driving by, no airplanes overhead, no barking dogs. The only sounds we heard were bird songs. We were in paradise, spending a long Easter weekend with friends and family at Bailey House on the slopes of Mt. Palomar.

Bailey House (www.baileys palomarresort.com) is a seven-bedroom farmhouse with a large kitchen and everything needed to cook gourmet meals. And that’s what we were doing there, cooking gourmet meals.

Before leaving, we stocked up on goodies from Trader Joe’s, Plowboy and the Beef Palace in town, plus Bristol Farms in Newport Beach, and picked up some of our favorite South African and Australian wines from the Southern Hemisphere Wine Center.

Paul and Sue Hertzog and their delightful 12-year-old daughter, Katie, arrived Thursday afternoon shortly before we did. We began our repast with a nice French Vouvray white wine and a cheese and salami platter.

I cooked a lentil, sausage and kale soup for dinner, accompanied by a brown-rice-based Mediterranean salad with feta cheese, ripe olives, cucumbers and tomatoes. We had a South African pinotage and an Australian red wine with dinner.

Friday morning on the veranda was a soothing serenade of bird songs. Vic counted 23 species before breakfast. Woodpeckers tapped on huge oaks, wild turkeys gobbled in the valley and quail called in the distance. Western bluebirds flitted among exuberantly blooming apple trees, and Steller’s jays gathered nest material. The constant activity of courting birds was an unexpected delight.

We lazily sipped coffee and admired the view of the valley while Katie labored in the kitchen over egg baskets, which is an egg dropped into a toasted slice of bread from which a circle has been removed. While the egg baskets were baking in the oven, she cooked link sausages. Sue made a fruit salad with zest of orange and lemon to add flavor.

After breakfast, we took a short walk down to the pond. Daffodils bloomed under the apple trees, and red-shouldered hawks cried overhead. We found tracks of deer, raccoons and wild turkeys in the dust on the road and some scat that could have been from either a bobcat or coyote pup. A mountain lion had been spotted in the valley recently, so we made sure to stay together.

Katie and I made dough for sugar cookies while everyone else took an afternoon nap. Katie hadn’t made cookies from scratch before, and I wasn’t used to the hand mixer at Bailey House. The result was splattered flour, egg whites and cookie dough all over the place. Vic was kind enough to clean the ceiling for us.

Vic had planned an aggressive itinerary of field trips to the Mt. Palomar Observatory, Lake Henshaw and other local attractions, but reading, photography, needlepoint and sinking into a blissful vegetative state won out.

The sun kissed the treetops goodnight and sank into the forest as robins sang an evening serenade. Paul grilled a butterflied and garlic-stuffed leg of lamb on the barbecue, and served it with a Caesar salad and pita bread. Vic sparked a fire in the big-rock fireplace in the living room. Our son, Scott, his wife, Nicole, and the twin grandbabies arrived just in time for dinner, which was accompanied by a couple of terrific French red wines. We had sugar cookies for dessert along with brownies and fruit salad.

California tree frogs sang a nighttime mating chorus down by the pond. Vic and I stayed up reading by the crackling fire until midnight.

For Saturday’s brunch, I cooked homemade elk loin and pork butt sausage patties that I had made at home using chopped sage, rosemary, oregano and marjoram from my herb garden.

Vic and I had assembled crème brûleé French toast with Grand Marnier the night before. While it baked, Vic prepared a platter of grapes and fresh pineapple served in pineapple boats.

After brunch, the babies went down for a nap. The adults dispersed for various activities — fishing for Katie, Paul and Vic, needlepoint on the lawn for Sue, and reading on the veranda for the rest of us. Scott and I discussed a San Diego trout that has nearly gone extinct, with only one male left alive. Scott noted how sad it is when a species is lost from earth forever, with not even a ceremony to mark its passing.

But this weekend was centered on food, not ecology. For dinner, Paul roasted a ham and barbecued pineapple spears along with some new red potatoes. A lovely platter of steamed organic cauliflower, carrots and zucchini completed the meal, which was accompanied by more fine French wines. After having Sue’s homemade apple strudel for dessert, Vic started a fire and Paul played piano in the parlor.

Easter brunch fell to Scott and Nicole to prepare, and they outdid themselves. They baked an egg dish that was layered with bacon and cheese, with sliced avocados encircling the top. Warm, frosted cinnamon buns filled the kitchen with a mouth-watering aroma. A fruit salad of fresh strawberries, blueberries and raspberries was accompanied by applesauce with pureed blueberries. Oven-browned potatoes with butter and rosemary completed the meal.

The crowning touch was champagne and orange juice mimosas with Grand Marnier floated on top, served in champagne flutes whose rims had been dipped first in Grand Marnier and then sugar, with an orange slice balanced on the rim. The meal looked and tasted as good as it sounds.

We ate and drank like royalty, but there was still leftover food and wine to be packed back into cars. First the Hertzogs bid farewell. The babies woke up from their naps, had lunch, and then Scott and Nicole drove off.

A soft, dense fog slipped over the mountains, playing peek-a-boo with the sun. Vic worked on a lecture on chaparral for his natural history class. I took my laptop onto the veranda to work on this postcard from paradise.

Peace had settled back onto the mountain. The fog lifted, and once again the only sounds were woodpeckers, jays, ravens and chick-a-dee-dee-dee calls from the woods.

Our gourmet getaway is over, and now we’re back to more eco-friendly vegetarian eating for most of our meals. We’ll look for organic foods grown close to home, and savor our memories of that fabulous weekend at Bailey House.