Bethany's Sunday 5/18

My liver isn't speaking to me.

It tried to warn me sometime on Saturday night. It tapped me from the inside and said, "Look. This Nantucket Wine Festival stuff is great, but I'm old, and don't wanna work this hard. Tomorrow (Sunday), you need to give me water. No more wine. "

I didn't listen. Not because I didn't want to. But because this weekend of all weekends, we eat the best food, by the best chefs, which is matched to the best wines, by the best sommeliers around. I wanted to say no...

No, I didn't.

Sunday started out swimmingly. It was sunny and 58°, a spectacular day for Nantucket in May. We enjoyed it with a breakfast sandwich (ham, egg & cheese on the fluffiest english muffin) and orange juice (Nantucket Nectar, of course!). I helped hubby open wine for his table, then went to a cooking demonstration, where I learned:

• sous vide is not fancy or douchey, it's just another way to cook things
• mustard ice cream sounds gross, but tastes great on sous vide pork
• the char of a grill on your meat is worse for you than liquid nitrogen

I saw many former colleagues at many wine tables, and tried the yummy things they said I had to try. And I spit. I swear. Because that's what wine people do, and what my liver wanted me to do.

But then, (after a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of eating the best food and drinking the best wine) at 5:00, after the big tasting event ended, the guys from Island Creek Oysters decided they didn't want to waste all the bushels of oysters they had leftover. So they set up shop on the patio of the Boarding House, and shucked and shucked, while everyone ate and ate. Yes, and drank. I had a sparkling pinot noir from Slovenia (right?). It was exactly what oysters like. We had dinner plans looming, so I decided not to research the answer to the question "How many oysters does it take for a Bethany to get wicked ill?" But I can tell you it's not 12.

I was still on speaking terms with my liver at this point. It was tentative, but still speaking to me.

Then... 7 of us went to a friend, and amazing chef's restaurant, with 6 bottles of wine in tow. Our sommelier friend, who is not one to be outdone, gleefully matched our 6, and raised us 3. And invited us to stay for a "night cap" after the restaurant closed. Because he had a $1000 bottle of wine he thought we might like to try.

Then my liver stopped talking to me.

It is talking, just not to me. I am almost positive that while we were standing on line waiting for our ferry back home, through a fog that was not coming from Nantucket, I heard my liver speaking to the ocean gods, beseeching them to toss our boat around like a 90 lb. cheerleader.

Apparently the ocean gods do listen to my liver.