{"id":3263,"date":"2017-05-14T23:09:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T04:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/updates.xephalon.net\/?p=3263"},"modified":"2017-05-14T23:09:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T04:09:46","slug":"a-decade-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/2017\/05\/14\/a-decade-together\/","title":{"rendered":"A Decade Together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>We marked our decade-long marriage together this past Friday with some sparkle. My planning for the occasion began as early as February, when I sought to replace the engagement ring that Melody had lost a few years back. After many covert trips to Roseville and downtown Sacramento to browse diamonds from various vendors – Shane Co.<\/a>, Bianca’s<\/a>, Santillan<\/a>, and Sharif’s<\/a>, I ultimately chose a Blue Nile<\/a> stone that nearly matched the original diamond’s specs, and worked with their custom department to recreate my design. Having failed to score a French Laundry<\/a> reservation from our concierge service due to their change to a new ticket<\/a> system, we instead booked Date Night at 3-Michelin-starred Benu<\/a> in San Francisco, asking our in-laws to cover baby duty at home. Corey Lee’s<\/a> Asian-style tasting menu provided a unique take on very familiar flavors as we smiled at each other over Melody’s new ring. We started with delicacies of 1000-year old quail egg, tuna marrow, oyster and pork belly foam, squid on a blood sausage, barbecued abalone with abalone liver, and “shark fin” crab egg custard before finally getting to the bread course featuring the Best Bread Ever. Then the real journey began: foie gras xiao long bao, seasonal caviar and uni, geoduck clam, fried eel with lip-numbing pepper leaf and szechuan peppercorns; a fat juicy barbecued quail with a steamed truffled bao, a lobster-stuffed sea cucumber, and a beef course featuring steak, a galbi-jim-styled riblet, and banchan. We cleared our palates with an omija sorbet before the chocolate acorn dessert and a pricey vintage pu-erh tea. But things weren’t over yet – a final anniversary cake was presented within a music box playing Love Me Tender, which we enjoyed with a sweet rice water drink. After another marble-hunting trek with some Korean food<\/a> in Rancho Cordova on Saturday, we celebrated Mother’s Day over hot pot<\/a> and another cheese trip<\/a> for Melody. Recounting our journey over past 10 years, and with Westley now finally walking, we look forward to many more adventures ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We marked our decade-long marriage together this past Friday with some sparkle. My planning for the occasion began as early as February, when I sought to replace the engagement ring that Melody had lost a few years back. After many … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}