I know, it's been a while since I posted....I've been busy partying lately!!

We had our pre-charter wine tasting event Saturday night. Buddy and Sharon came up from Greenville - and Dick & Lindy and Pat & Diane came over.


But first - I'll show you the wonderful Painkiller Cake that I made. Here's the link - http://www.bvipirate.com/IslandRecipes/PainkillerCake.html -
It's a really, really moist pineapple/coconut cake named after the signature beverage of Jost-van-dyke in BVI. Yummy.


Here's the ridiculous sweet glaze for the cake -rum, orange liquor, juice, etc.


The finished cake...

I set up the wine tasting bottles - these are all available from the wine shop in BVI. You order your food and beverages ahead of time there. I just wanted to taste them before hand so that we would have an idea of how to provision the boat.


We tasted each of the wines separately and "scored" them on a grid. I think it was a tie between two Australian reds- Penfolds brand. Of course, the girls all liked the white zinfandel wine, so we'll probably wimp out and order that very generic wine also!

Our wine-pouring expert, Pat:


Everyone is happy:
Yep, very happy:

And very relaxed- watching the Duke/Carolina game:

Just sending some more spring to the north!

It's a warm rain here now - I just noticed my weather pixie - she's got a pretty rain drop background with an umbrella. (Of course, that may be gone when you see it.) Cool how she changes....

We spent the good part of the day "dragging brush". The area between the house and the runway had alot of underbrush and extra little trees. Duane cut out the large ones with the chainsaw and the small sprigs/grapevines/briers with "nippers". Now it looks all nice and "manicured". Where you see brown here is newly cleared...



Most of my "regular" daffodils are in full bloom now - didn't get hurt by the recent cold spell. The "regular" ones are from Mom's "border" next to the driveway (I don't think the border is still there like it was when I was growing up...) I took some to New Hill - then dug some of them up when we built this house.

This is a patch of daffodils that I planted from store-bought bulbs. They are much thicker stemmed and bloom several weeks after my others. They are pretty and interesting though- they've got more that one set of petals. They're not quite open yet....


The "thrift" is blooming - this stuff blooms all summer long - and seems to be fine in a drought. Good stuff!

Teresa had this on her blog - cute

You Are a Frappacino

At your best, you are: fun loving, sweet, and modern At your worst, you are: childish and over indulgent You drink coffee when: you're craving something sweet Your caffeine addiction level: low

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

It's turned COLD again! How dare it! I thought I'd bring a little of spring inside:



We're supposed to get a quick freeze tonight - so the daffies left outside may not be as lovely!

This is a pretty cool post!

I got up this morning and drove thru 2 hours of heavy fog, westbound....
and found Eddie (fairly) healthy and happy -(really, he's not that happy - I made him laugh for this photo!)


He was still hooked up to lots of tubes and hospital "paraphernalia", but hopefully most of that will be gone in a few days. I saw his incision - ouch - 1/2 way around the middle of his back. I guess I didn't realize that they would be going in thru his back....I snapped a photo of it so he could see it - I won't share it here...yuk! Otherwise, the news from pathology is good and they are quite certain they got it all and it had not spread. Great news, of course!@



You won't believe who I ran into in the parking deck! First, Keith walked up just as I was parking. That's not so strange as he knew I was on my way there....but as I was walking from my car, I looked up and saw Judy, Teresa's mother-in-law! We had a nice, quick chat. Imagine that - it's been 15 years since I've been to Pardee hospital - quite a coincidence to see someone there I know.





Mom, Trudi and I went out for a quick lunch in Hendersonville - nice photo of Trudi and Mom:


And Mom and Karen!

Out of order, but I had stopped for a short visit with Grandma on my way thru. I was driving down I-40, so I hated to go within a mile of her house and not visit! She looked well (other than the broken-neck-in-the-brace thing!) and she seemed to be getting around very well. But the visit was short because I needed to be on my way.


After the hospital, I surprised Granny and Cordy with another quick visit (that was my M.O. for the day - Quick Visit Karen) Really, I did need to be on my way so I didn't get caught in any bad 5 o'clock traffic.

Here are the puppies - very healthy and happy -


They were loading up old scrap metal to haul off - always something to do!
Another pretty lady! Pat and Cordy both seem to be enjoying their retirement (is that what they're doing?)

On my way back - I noticed these contrails and had to snap a photo - pretty sky....

Nothing much going on - cold and rainy...

I don't know if I should post this on the diet blog, or here....but, again, Teresa would be happy with this one. Had this for dinner:

A bunch of carrots,



Add lentils, water and a bunch of spices, put on the stove on low temp, go walk on the treadmill and it's done!


Dinner (with a couple of chicken tenders added).

Teresa will approve of this one! I was just craving a big veggie dish - so, I coarsely chopped a green pepper and onion - browned that a bit.



Then added a bag of frozen snap peas



Then added some broccoli and a chopped tomato


Last, I had marinated some firm tofu in soy sauce - stirred that in with a spoonful of sugar - for a nice tasty veggie stirfry!

We had a couple of Blackhawk helicopters into Asheboro today. The crew was relocating from sunny Florida back to their original homebase of Maryland...they stopped halfway there for fuel and lunch. They packed all 8 guys into 2 cars and went to the local grill for lunch. Unfortunately, they know that they are flying in to MUCH cooler weather!




Here is Bobbi getting ready to fuel....

My Valentine's Day gift was a trip to the boat - Duane took off Friday and we flew down early in the morning. Had a nice quiet but cool sail/bottle of wine in the afternoon.



Here is the marina as we're coming back....the wind had died out completely....very calm... notice the large power boats to the right....these belong to a local fisher-family. The lady of the house was at the back of one of the boats as we motored past. I called to her to ask if they had shrimp today - and she said "yeah, come on over"....so I did just that!

These are the lovely shrimpy's that I got. YUM - I fixed a little scampy sauce for myself and just barely cooked them. They were almost like lobster they were so fresh and sweet! Unfortunately, they didn't have any fresh fish, so I had to make Duane a burger steak instead.
Some wine, a salad and some veggies made a good meal.
Dishes washed, I was ready for a little laziness!

Back at home, Duane scraped the driveway - it had gotten a little rutted lately from our drag-strip driving boy.....
Oh, and the Daffy's are blooming now!! Eat your heart out, N.D!

Another spring is close!! Just ask the daffodils! It's been hit-or-miss on the spring weather here. Many very warm days, then a few chilly ones to remind you that it's still winter!!




When I got down close to the ground to take the daffodil photo, Princess came over and wanted to act like a kitty-cat - snuggled up close and begged for a belly run (which she got, of course!)

Indiana Farm-Fresh-Corn Spoon Bread Recipe

I know Teresa can't really use this one, but others can....Lindy brought it to our super-bowl party and it was light and delicious - like a cross between Nanny's Mexican cornbread and Carolyn's corn casserole.



Indiana Farm-Fresh-Corn Spoon Bread

1/2 c. yellow cornmeal
1 cup boiling water
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/4 c. chopped onion
1/4 c. chopped green and red peppers
2 garlic cloves minced
1 jalapeno seeded and minced (optional)
2 cups fresh corn kernels, cut from the cobs
1 small tomato, peeled and chopped
3 eggs, separated
1/2 c buttermilk
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp. sugar
1/3 c grated Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 375 deg. Grease shallow 2 qt baking dish. Place cornmeal in a large bowl. Pour the boiling water over the cornmeal and allow it to cool slightly.

2. Sautee the onions and peppers in 1 Tbsp. butter until tender. Remove from heat and stir in corn and tomatoes.

3. Add the remaining 1 Tbsp. butter to cornmeal mixture. Whisk in the egg yolks, buttermilk, baking powder, soda, salt and sugar.

4. In a small bowl, beat the egg whites at high speed until peaks form. With a rubber spatula, fold in the beaten egg whites into the cornmeal mixture, half at a time. Fold in 1/4 c. of the Parmesan cheese. Spoon the mixture into the greased dish and sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan.

5. Bake 30-35 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

Makes ten servings. 132 calories each.

I didn't have anything planned for my "day off" on Friday, so I decided that I really needed to do some spring house-cleaning. I've gotten rather lazy lately, letting things pile up....

Here's our "office" - Robert's old room....piled high with paperwork/mail/junk. I filed and sorted for an hour or so...



Now we can actually use the desk!


Next up was the horrible "utility room" in the basement....this has been "growing" over the past couple of years, really. It had gotten to the point that you couldn't even walk in there comfortably.

Rather embarrassing, I suppose!


But here it is 4 hours later - and a pick-up truck full of garbage and goodwill items!


I was pretty pooped!

Again, not much happening! I don't know if it's the weather or just pure laziness, but I've not lifted a finger lately to do anything interesting! Oh yeah, except taxes......

I snapped this photo this morning as the sun was rising thru the basement window - our lovely amaryllis is still in bloom! It is on it's last leg, but still quite pretty. It's an amazing flower....(note the Christmas cactus is still confused!)




I'll do a post when I get around to roasting our coffee beans. Here is the sum-total of our recent harvest:



You may remember, we have a nice sized coffee tree/bush at the Asheboro airport. It started as a little 2" plant that was included in a vendor shipment several years ago. My right-hand girl, Bobbi, takes care of it. It's now about 4 FEET tall and very pretty. About a year ago, we noticed it had a few red berries. A couple of weeks ago, we harvested this little handful. I put them out on the windowsill to dry. Now I'll have to read up on how to roast them.

Pat invited the usual crowd over to his newly finished "Pat Cave" in his basement. He has a neat projector and just installed DirectTV with HD...so the picture was really big and good (much better in person than this photo indicates.)

We all ate too much - but had a really nice time. Robert and his buddy Ray came over from State to join us. I won $25 from the 100 square "pool". I had the winning score at halftime...and would have won the entire $100 if no-one scored anymore!! Oh well, better luck next time. (By the way, I bought 30 squares, so I'm still 5 to the negative - that's gambling for you!)

Still not much happening of note! Robert came by this evening to change the oil in his car....that's about it!