Grilling outdoors in late October! And southern women who love football.

People ask, "What do you like best about living in the south?" My glib answer has been "I'll never have to put chains on my car tires again."
I will have to change my answer. Being able to grill out on the patio at 7:00 PM in late October is a pleasure I hadn't anticipated.

My lady Chatelaine prepared the hamburgers with Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire sauce (is there any other kind?) and McCormick's Broiled Steak Seasoning Salt, and sliced a purple onion, while I got the brickets glowing in the chimney. Thanks to TWC, http://www.winecommonsewer.com/the_wine_commonsewer/2007/01/best_grill_brus.html
I gave up using lighter fluid last year. Last week, when TWC came to see Chatelaine and me tie the knot, I grilled steaks to a rare-med. rare perfection. (Don't believe me? Just ask him.) Back in Washington state, the grills were put away a month ago and the studded tires are being put on the cars.

Once the brickets were ready, I grilled the burgers to a still juicy medium and softened and carmelized the onion slices. I also lightly toasted the buns, which are in fact kaiser rolls. While I was outside, my lady Chatelaine was roasting cut up red potatoes with olive oil and herbs.
Add slices of cheese and ripe tomato, with a couple of romaine lettuce leaves, and we were eatin good in our neighborhood.

I'll share a secret with all men from the north: Find yourself a woman who loves football more than you do. If I had known that southern women were football fanatics, I'd have moved south years ago. I'll never have to explain why I "NEED" to watch a game and she already has the NFL package on her satellite TV.

Life is good.

This Week I Have....

- Driven to Nashville and back in the same day to pick up the Captain at the airport. (Southwest Air doesn't fly into Memphis.)

- Taken my Mom to the doctor for her injection and blood tests.

- Had a pre-marriage counseling session with the church pastor, in which the Captain told the pastor he figured sexual relations was near the top of my marriage importance list. I nearly socked him right there.

- Assisted the Captain with rescuing a one-eyed momma cat and her four near death kittens from the crawlspace attic of my grandmother's house.

- Took the kitties and my nephew's pit bull to the shelter. Said nephew is in rehab, and his wife is in jail. Don't ask. My Mom and Dad are very hurt and disappointed.

- Hosted my sister and sister-in-law for dinner last night to go over wedding reception food and plans.

- Made a blueberry cake.

- Made lemon cheesecake snacks.

- Made chicken salad.

- Had a crown put on a 12 year molar tooth where the filling had cracked.

- Done seemingly endless dishes and laundry.

Good news is today is the official start of the college football season. Go Rebels! Hotty Toddy!

It's Over!

August is over! Today is September 1st!

I start getting in Fall mode as soon as August is done and gone. Even though it's still in the 80s around here, I'm just like a squirrel, gathering my Fall things, decorations, recipes, blankets, and all that homey stuff.

And I've got a Fall wedding this year too, you know, so that's kicking into full gear now. The invitations were mailed yesterday. It's official. I'm really and truly getting married. We can't back out now. My parents would kill me if they had to tell all their friends it was just a false alarm.

I ain't sceert, though. I ain't running.

Do you have any idea how many pumpkins I'll be purchasing this year? I'm going to need about 25 or 30 just for the wedding reception. Gonna line the walkway with them.

And isn't this cool?

New Yankee Candle Scent - Moonlight Harvest

I bet that smells so yummy.

I think looking at my new Fall magazines and recipe books has gotten me a bit excited. Of course, the end of August always makes me happy.

My sisters are coming over one night this week to go over reception plans and food recipes. And the Captain is coming home tonight! I think I'll make him a blueberry cake.

Oh, and college football starts this weekend. Hotty Toddy!

Bliss

The Captain woke up before me and went to the kitchen to put the coffee on. I love that. I woke up, took a shower, and came down to him making me an omelet with some avacado like the one on The Wine Commonsewer's blog the other day.

There's jazz playing in the kitchen, and I'm in my chair with my coffee and a stack of mail order catalogs that piled up in the mail while I was gone. I love my mail order catalogs. I'd rather shop that way than go to a mall. I hate malls and shopping in stores.

It's a good morning.

Updated: 9:am - Ohmygod, this omelet is so Yummy!

Son of a..... !

I finally make it up here on this boating trip, all excited about nice breezy days on Puget Sound and getting away from the oppressive Mississippi heat, and wouldn't you know it?

Seattle and the Pacific Northwest having their hottest temperatures EVER.

I swear I am cursed or something.

Yesterday was miserably hot in Oak Harbor, and very few places here have air conditioning, but today we are finally sailing out, so it should be cooler out on the water. The "bilge pump" broke on the boat Tuesday, and the Captain had to spend all day fixing it yesterday. We can't sail without it.

But the Captain made up for it. The best part of the day was dinner at Tobys in Coupeville, which is also on Whidbey Island. It's a really old seaside tavern that's been there since the 1880s, very local, very authentic. We had a big bowl of steamed Penn Cove mussels, garlic bread, blue cheese salads, and wine. It's the same little town where they filmed the movie Practical Magic, if you've seen it, and it's one of my favorite movies. That made up for the boat being broken for a day or so. And we did get to have a nice sunset dinner on the boat deck the night before, so all has not been lost. Just being with my Captain is good in itself.

My second favorite part of the day was when we stopped in the nice and ultra air conditioned Albertson's for some groceries to stock the boat with. I almost wanted to just hang out there all day.

Back home, on the other hand, they're having temps in the 70s and lots of nice summer showers. I guess I took the weather with me.

Watermelon Days of Summer

When the Captain was here a couple weeks ago, we got a watermelon and put it in the fridge to get really cold, then for several days I had watermelon and cottage cheese for breakfast or lunch. And I bought one myself this past weekend. It's chilling in the fridge.

Mostly, though, when I think of watermelon, I remember eating it as a kid. I guess everyone does, probably. But to me it was always a big deal in the summer when Dad would get a few watermelons from a customer or something and bring them home. We'd sit outside in the backyard where we had a couple of wooden picnic tables, and we'd eat watermelon after Dad served up some hamburgers from the grill. I remember when I was really young that we had one of those old fashion brick barbecue pits. Captain got us a nice charcoal grill back in March, but I think I'd like to have one of those classic brick ones in the back yard again.


Build Your Own Pit

Uh....Captain?...Honey-do?...Maybe for next summer or something???

And this is what I want us to cook!

Grilled Striped Bass with Watermelon and Corn Relish

Doesn't that sound good? I'd probably try it with catfish, though, just cause I do loooove me some catfish.

Pancakes, Goobers, and Retards

This morning the Captain made pecan pancakes and maple sausage for our breakfast! Soooo yummy!

We had a "date" last night. The Captain took me to see Terminator: Salvation. I thought it was great. It has a different feel from the other Terminator movies, a little edgier and rougher. It has that cool edge that low budget movies have, but it's definitely not low budget, considering the good special effects. I even had my favorite movie snack from childhood. Goobers!

I'm sure this is somewhat politically incorrect to mention, but it was our local movie theater that we went to, and we happened to go on the same night that a local school and residence for developmentally disabled adults goes to the movies. One of my nieces is an activities counselor there. She takes them to the movies on Monday nights. When we walked in, I saw her at the snack counter helping them get their snacks, and she waved at me and said, "I thought I warned you that Monday nights were my group's night at the movies." But they were totally fine, no disturbances or anything. They behaved better than most teenagers do at the movies. My niece is also a basketball and volleyball coach in the Special Olympics. I never would have thought it about her, but she's really good in working with them. They love her. I think she just really treats them like normal people, and they feel very comfortable with her.

I had a weird dream last night. Nothing scary, but kind of funny, in a rolling your eyes, frustrating kind of way. I dreamed that I was at my Mom and Dad's house, and all of a sudden several barely-speaking-English kind of people came in the house and started hosing down all the shelves, kitchen cabinets, and everything inside the house! I started yelling at them about not even knocking on the door and what the hell were they doing, and they'd better stop right now, or I'd get the shotgun out. They said that Mom had ordered their service when a telemarketer had called soliciting. I looked at the labels on their shirts, and they were from Jani-King, which I'm sure showed up in my dream because I read recently that Jani-King (along with several other cleaning services) is among the top ten franchises in the U.S. It turned out that my Mom, who is very hard of hearing to the point of not being very good on the phone, had simply said "yes" over and over to the telemarketer, thinking that it wouldn't matter, and she didn't realize she had scheduled an appointment with them for "the works".

Sadly, I can totally see my Mom doing something like this in real life, and I guess my worries for her are coming out in my dreams. I suppose I need to have a talk with her about not saying "yes" over the phone just to get a telemarketer to hang up.

Today, the Captain is going to re-paint a wicker chair on the front porch, and I'm going to make an RC Cola Cake.

I Feel Lucky

Today is National Donut Day.

The Captain and I have toyed with the idea of opening a nice donut and coffee shop in our little town. Believe it or not, there isn't one here at all. The closest one is 25 miles away. We came up with the idea when trying to think of a business service or product that people wouldn't prefer to order through the internet or drive into the city for. Donuts are what we came up with. However, neither one of us is interested in getting up at 3am to make the donuts for the rest of our lives. We're more interested in three day weekends on the boat.

Tonight is the night the Captain and I are going to dinner with the gang for my friend's 60th birthday. We decided we'd go ahead and get a room at the casino hotel like our friends are doing, so we can drink and gamble and not worry about driving home across the delta in the dark.

Besides, after last night, I feel lucky.

Take Your Vitamin D!

    Excellent article here about the effects of vitamin D, how it boosts the immune system for colds and flu, and how we now get much less of it through natural ways since we're not in the sun as much as we used to be.

Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D

I take a lot of vitamins, about 12 different supplements a day. I always take them with food, though, to get the best absorption.

- Regular multi vitamin
- Calcum
- Iron
- Super B-complex
- extra C
- extra D
- Zinc
- Potassium
- Omega 3 fish oil
- Evening primrose oil
- Glucosamine with chondroitin
- Melatonin when I have trouble sleeping

Two books that changed (and are still changing) my approach to health and wellness, and my views on the medical business:

The Sexy Years - by Suzanne Somers

Breakthrough - by Suzanne Somers

I've read every book she's ever published. I always figured she was nothing more than a fluff piece, but when one of my best friends was diagnosed with breast cancer, she became very interested in natural health and recommended that I read The Sexy Years when I ended up having a couple of biopsies myself in 2006. Turns out that Ms. Somers knows her stuff about hormones, aging, eating healthy, and how the government, FDA, lobbyists, and pharmaceutical companies are totally steering us toward what makes them the most money as opposed to what really keeps us healthy.

Hey, Wine Commonsewer - What kind of vitamins are in red wine? I'm betting you already know and have proof that it's healthy ;-)

Omg, last night was so good!

The Captain got us a grill yesterday, put it together, and made the bestest hamburgers and grilled vegetables last night. I never get to have grilled outside food at home because I'm too scared of fire and haven't had a grill because it's just been me here alone, but the Captain is an excellent griller. The vegetables were kabobs, and they had red potatoes, purple onions, mushrooms, and zucchinis on them. And the hamburgers had some kind of Montreal seasoning that he used.

Fantastic, I'm telling you! We had a Cabernet to go with it and homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

Oh, and TWC...the Captain told me to tell you that he took your advice on the cylinder thing to start the fire with. Worked very well and he's sold on it.

As for boating, we are definitely planning on either bringing the boat down south or selling it in Washington and buying one down here if the transport is too expensive. The Captain really liked the marinas we looked at the other day. I told him he has to promise me that we'll sail down the Tenn-Tom all the way to the coast at least once a year. Should be about a 5-7 day trip each way. But we've got friends on a lake over in Alabama that we can sail to, and friends in Memphis that are boaters, so we'll be having some booze cruise weekends for sure. Did you know that you can sail anywhere in the world from Pickwick Lake? And there's a sailing/cruising route that goes around the whole eastern United States called the Great Loop that boat people sort of congregate around and pass each other along the way.

Today we're planting marigolds and splitting an English Ivy I have on the veranda. We're going to put it in two big urns on either side of the veranda doors. I can't do it by myself, though. Too heavy and too many crawly things in that ivy for me. But the Captain's not scared.

He's sleeping in this morning. I had some very disturbing nightmares last night about killing my former boss and her becoming a zombie. I woke up screaming and kept him awake a while. So I left him to sleep when I woke up again at 7am.