I’ve been gone so long, I don’t know what to say. Perhaps an explanation?? OK…
…all of a sudden I was planning my daughter’s wedding. She gave us nine weeks from announcement day to wedding day. Not a whole lot of time for a do-it-yourself wedding. Not a whole lot of time to do anything other than make invitations, programs, wine and water bottle labels, menus, bake cookies and dips and pastas, shop for dresses and all the other clothing bits plus shoes, food, plates…, and ask for HELP!
Handmade invitations.
Fooling around while dress shopping. NO, I am NOT the one supposed to be getting married.
How many dozen cookies did we make for the Cookie Shoppe thank you gifts? I think we got up to 20 or 30 dozen.
Then my Aunt-from-England arrived to celebrate Easter with us and to attend the wedding and–stay with me for five weeks. She turned out to be pretty high maintenance, and firmly attached to my hip. With being a good and attentive hostess to a much loved aunt, and doing all sorts of wedding stuff, spending any significant time cooking, photographing, and blogging was out of the question.
My son gave me a fuzzy pink toilet seat cover for Easter. When I asked him why, he said it was egg shaped and the right color!!! Didn’t I think it was brilliant, too?! My next question he couldn’t answer, “What was a 20 year old boy, sorry, man, doing in the toilet seat aisle in Target?”
Then, just ten days before the planned “I do”s, the wedding was suddenly CANCELLED =:O.
The Ring Bearer shirt arrived too, too large. Not an issue now though….
The shower for the wedding that never happened.
We didn’t quite make it to the church on time…
Then my Aunt-from-Scotland arrived to attend the now not happening wedding. Then my Mom arrived from San Diego to attend the not happening wedding. We were all in shock and totally incapable of anything other than watching the Royal Wedding. Twice. No, three times. We stayed up all night to watch it, then we watched all the repeats the next day, and then again the next day. The day after that my Dad started having tizzy fits so my Mom and Aunt-from Scotland had to fly down to San Diego ahead of schedule to tend to him.
Enjoying the Royal Wedding from San Jose!
Then my daughter left on her honeymoon, which was now not a honeymoon, but I still got to watch my two and half year old grandson while she was gone. For a week. He’s a handful. Wonderful, but a handful. Not much time to do much of anything other than count his break dancing head turns, play cars, feed, bathe, change and try to get him to go to bed-which turned out to be a nightmare.
My grandson in his usual motion. He LOVES to run…and break dance…on his head.
Two days after my daughter returned to pick up her son, my Aunt-from-England and I went on a 10 day cruise to Alaska. Now that was fun. In the down time, of which there was a lot, I read 6 novels (only one I would recommend, “Room” by Emma Donoghue, and one Alaskan cookbook (wonderful, can’t wait to try out some Asian influenced Alaskan seafood dishes), but Internet access on board was seventy-five cents a minute, and s-l-o-w. Plus, although I was eating three or four course meals four times a day (breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner), I was not cooking a thing. I did receive instruction on how to make Gravlax though. I can’t wait to try my hand at that and hopefully post some very successful results.
Two tourists in Alaska. (Never trust a skinny cook!)
Five desserts on one plate! Am I in heaven? BTW, the Pavlova was the best.
Gravlax! The Head Chef of the cruise ship shared his recipe and method. I took lots of notes.
After the cruise we were home for about forty eight hours, attended Cookbook Club (fondue!) and a Dining for Women meeting (our second year anniversary!), repacked our suitcases, and then headed down to San Diego for five days. San Diego was heaven, but again, limited Internet access, and I was so busy going out for expensive lunches I had no time to cook or blog anyway! Then home for two days, my Aunt-from-England had a meltdown, and I put her back on the plane to England with a very heavy heart.
Butterscotch Fondue
Some of the wonderful women from my Dining For Women chapter. We are doing what we can to assist impoverished women and children around the world out of poverty and into self sustainability, and we are doing it one grassroots project at a time, one dinner at a time.
One of the decadent open air lunches in San Diego, this one with my mother at the Hotel Del Coronado.
Now I have been home, alone, more-or-less, as my two college age children have returned home for the Summer, and it’s been bliss, but the only thing I have cooked is a s’more at my elder daughter’s home after a Memorial Day BBQ! Tonight, another house guest arrives. I’ve never met him. My daughter invited him to stay with us, for the Summer, because he had nowhere else to go. Um…what???? OUR house? Are we a half-way house now? I barely have enough bedrooms for my two returning students and ME! We are adding one more now? WHERE??? But I digress, this is tomorrow’s story, not yesterdays!
So today I am moving furniture around to accommodate one more summer resident and I am flipping through the cookbooks and magazines I have bought over the last few weeks, in hopes and anticipation of the day and time I will get back into the kitchen…which seems to be SOON! Maybe this afternoon! I have an cheese enchilada dish I want to remake, and lollipop steaks, and anything at all from my newly purchased David Lebovitz cookbook “Ready for Dessert”, and the previously mentioned Alaskan seafood cookbook, “Fishes and Dishes”. I’ve made butterscotch fondue and Grand Marnier marshmallows, and Microwave Marmalade that I want to remake and photograph, along with my Blackberry Ribs, and recent sorbets that my Aunt-from-England enjoyed every afternoon. And there’s the Blueberry Hot Chocolate I tasted in Alaska that I want to create for my non-coffee drinking daughter, and the Strawberry-Mango Meringue Pie my daughter and I want to perfect. So much fun stuff to do…and hopefully I will have all Summer to do it.
Blackberry Ribs.
Pie with promise, Strawberry-Mango Meringue.
It’s good to be back! Hope you missed me. Now let’s start where we left off! Where to begin, where to begin?