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I’m not a big baker but I do make fruit bread now and then. Banana bread, apple bread… I’ve even made blueberry bread. But up until now I’d never made strawberry bread.
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And while I can’t say it’s my favorite…
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It wasn’t half bad either.
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I used the vanilla extract but next time I think I’d try almond for a touch more flavor.
I also had to add a bit of water to the glaze, it was too pasty their way.
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😊
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Every day we’re bombarded with terrible news.
School shootings, plane crashes, natural disasters, war…. but this article I read the other day might be the one to push me over the proverbial edge.
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And it’s more serious than having an uncanny resemblance to our funky window insulation.
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Read on for some truly horrible news.
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Say it isn’t so!
I love Camembert, Brie and Blue….
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This isn’t bad news, it’s catastrophic.
My world will not be the same without the soft ripened loveliness of a creamy Brie or the pungent marbled goodness of blue.
😩
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Because I’m helpful that way.
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Considering the decided lack of, I can’t say this surprises me.
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Heck, we do it for our dogs, why not ourselves?
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Oh sure, pay big bucks and end up with a week in beautiful downtown Cartagena. Don’t forget to pack your bulletproof vest.
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I’d be 103, so probably not.
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That’s the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a while, and I do these posts every week.
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Good question.
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Seems like the father of our country was the original thigh master.
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I don’t know about you but alcohol affects my workout this way…
Choices :
1. Go to the gym
2. Go to happy hour and drink $5 margaritas.
The choice is clear.
🍹
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After an interesting but not nearly long enough tour of Fort Sumter, we disembarked the ferry and spotted a resort with a highly recommended restaurant called the Fish House.
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Arriving at 4:00pm since we’d skipped lunch…
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We had the place to ourselves for a short while and moseyed up to the bar.
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One Harborview with Cathead Honeysuckle Vodka, Lemon Simple Syrup, Prosecco, and fresh basil in… things were looking good.
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The view on one side was the USS Yorktown… which I wanted to tour but with only an hour before it closed and $100 for two tickets the husband said no. He’s lived on those ships and had no desire to pay to see another.
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Low country shrimp appetizer? Yummy.
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A Siren’s Mule with Mount Gay Rum, Ginger Beer, Lemon Simple Syrup, Mint Leaf, Lime and Blue Curacao?
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Even better.
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We had to laugh at the menu typo and passed on the She Carb soup.
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Husband had the lobster ravioli which he said was wonderful and silly me… who thought since I was down south I should try local seafood… ordered the tilefish.
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Word of advice – do not order the tilefish.
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The sauce? Flavorful. The risotto? Creamy. The charred lemon broccoli? Perfect.
The tilefish?
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I think this fish made out of actual tile in the rest room would have tasted better.
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This one as well.
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Yup. Those too.
Lesson learned? If you don’t know what it is, don’t order it.
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Bad fish aside, it was a nice place.
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It must have been because we stayed until after dark and the beast of a Lincoln was lighting our way when we left.
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At least we had good timing for some beautiful Charleston skies on the way back.
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😊
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Because I’m helpful that way.
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This is a bridge too far. Seats have gotten smaller, food disappeared, we’re charged for baggage and extra leg room and there are more added fees than my phone bill. Now they want to weigh me? Screw you Finnair. If I want to visit Finland I’ll fly to Sweden first and drive. They invented the smorgasbord and don’t care how much I weigh.
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I’m sorry, but this is not news in my house.
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I would expect no less from New Jersey. It is home to the Sopranos after all.
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*Groan*
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This type of thing drives me nuts. I understand language is a living breathing entity that grows and must change with the times. When new technology is added to our world? Sure.. include it. But these entries?
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No.
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Want an absolutely fool proof easy chicken dinner?
Here it is.
Two large bone in, skin on breasts. Admittedly, these were huge.
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Place in a large roasting pan with two inches of chicken broth. Bouillon cube based broth will work. Add 5 sections of celery, the upper half of the stalks with leaves. Season with paprika and parsley, Pat with butter.
Bake skin side up for 1/2 hour at 350, turn chicken over and bake for an hour and a half, basting a few times. If you like crispy skin, flip chicken over one more time and bake an additional 5 minutes.
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Remove celery and thicken gravy.
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Seen here served with garlic mashed red potatoes and honey glazed carrots.
Husband likes to eat the soggy celery, I don’t.
A simple satisfying meal.
😉
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After our walking tour of Charleston we realized we’d skipped lunch and were starving. As it was too early for dinner, I did a little phone research and found a seafood place highly recommended by Southern Living magazine. They said the food was superb and to ignore the fact that the restaurant itself was a “dive”.
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Clearly their idea of “dive” and mine differ greatly because while admittedly this place wasn’t the Ritz Carlton, I’ve been in a helluva lot worse.
😉
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Naturally my husband wanted to sit at the bar.
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I’ve never had a strawberry daiquiri served in a mason jar before, but maybe that’s part of their dive-y charm.
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The hushpuppies? Meh.
Not great, not awful.
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My she crab soup?
Mama mia! It may not have photographed well but it was thickest, richest, creamiest crab filled thing I’ve ever had.
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To be honest I was pretty full after just that, but I was on vacation in the low country and couldn’t pass up an opportunity for shrimp and grits.
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I couldn’t…. but I should have, because it was awful. Yes, the shrimp were large and flavorful but the rest was simply a big bowl of slop. Too much pasty gravy, too soupy a consistency… blech.
I ate the shrimp and left the rest.
The husband? He had some type of inferior fish which was dry as a bone.
So much for taking Southern Living’s advice.
Aside from the soup the only thing that made me smile at this place was the poster in the rest room.
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😉
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After showering off the sand from our beach walk and spraying my second hairdo of the day in place, I planned on spending the day at the resort since no one in their right mind goes out during a bad storm.
No one but my husband who refuses to waste a vacation day that is.
Here’s a little glimpse of the neighborhood right beyond our door. In the rain…
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As we headed over the bridge from Edisto, the sky did not look promising.
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But my husband was determined in his quest.
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Antiquing for my man is like the U.S. postal service…. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night will keep him from shopping for crap.
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I told him he could only buy what would fit in his suitcase. Thankfully this did not.
As usual I saw some ridiculous things…
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Fur trimmed sleigh?
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Ah, the vomit clock.
A time honored treasure.
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Its little demon hand beckoned…
But I ran for my life.
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The husband has a weird obsession with vintage wooden advertising yard sticks and was bound and determined to come home with these… even though I assured him they wouldn’t fit in his bag.
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Southern self help book.
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7 sticks of butter? This makes a wonderful last meal before your arteries snap shut and your heart gives out.
We wandered around the store until the storm got bad enough that the owner wanted to close. Husband bought his yardsticks and a few other small items including this….
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No, he doesn’t cook. But it definitely qualified as quirky.
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In particular this recipe – which was so wrong, it was right.
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My only purchase requires a bit of explanation.
Last Christmas our state lottery ran a commercial about the joys of regifting. (Don’t roll your eyes, we’ve all done it.) The ad was a huge hit… funny and heartwarming and everyone loved it.
Take a look.
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So when I turned the final corner of the store and saw this sitting on a shelf?
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I knew it was $8 well spent and couldn’t wait to see my girlfriend’s face when she opened her gift.
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Store closing around us and bad weather moving in, my husband wanted to go out to lunch. Not surprisingly everything was closed because, ya know… mini hurricane.
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Lunch was at Hardees. And I use the word lunch loosely because whatever that sandwich was it didn’t resemble food as I know it. 🤢
When I finally dragged the other half back to the resort, the pelicans were turned to the wind ready to ride out the storm.
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It’s hard to tell, but the wind was really howling. Watch the palm tree in between the buildings on the upper left.
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The afternoon and evening of Vacation Day 4 was spent playing gin rummy (with a deck that had all 4 jacks)…
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And eating a box of this…
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Which I’d never seen before… but heartily enjoyed. Beer + cheese + pasta = happiness.
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Winds were 65 mph.
It was a long noisy night….
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After our horse drawn carriage tour of Beaufort…(did you say Byoo-fert like I taught you?)
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We strolled along the harbor for a spell.
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Then headed over the bridge to explore the Sea Islands.
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Since the husband was hungry we stopped for a late lunch. Not much was open this time of year but we found a spot on the marsh called Johnson Creek Tavern.
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It was an unassuming little place, and while I don’t know exactly what I was expecting…
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It definitely wasn’t this.
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Every square inch of the place was covered in money.
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Yes, as in real U.S. currency. Ones, fives and tens. Most had names or funny sayings written on the face.
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One bad margarita….
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Some run of the mill hushpuppies with, oh the horror, margarine …
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And a terrible bowl of gumbo later, we decided we wouldn’t be eating lunch here… but we did marvel at the decor and inquire about its origins.
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It started at the bar decades ago as these things do. The first dollar spent, a big tip, a foreign bill brought back from faraway lands. But then it grew…
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And grew and grew.
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Now… they harvest the bounty every so often and donate it all to charity. Last year a veterans group was the happy recipient of over $11,000.
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And that’s money well spent.
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The flamingo agrees.
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As we headed down the road for our tour of Beaufort ( say it with me now… Byoo-fert. Byoo as in beautiful, fert as in fertile. Byoo-fert. ) SC, the husband wanted a second breakfast and chose this quaint little place in Port Royal.
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Cozy, and small …
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The Old Schoolhouse didn’t take themselves too seriously.
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I’m not a big breakfast person, but since it looked like this might be lunch as well, I looked forward to some true southern biscuits and gravy. Finding that dish in Maine is a rare occurrence so I was fully prepared to splurge.
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To say I was disappointed with this (yellow… WTH?) measly batch of gravy with very little sausage (not to mention flavor) is an understatement. I was in the south…
Y’all are supposed to do this right!
Unsatisfying breakfast/lunch over, we made it to Beaufort. (Did you say Byoo-fert in your head? Good. Let’s continue. )
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Where we had tickets for a horse drawn carriage tour around the city. That white horse was in training…
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So we had Angus.
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My husband rolled his eyes when I said I wanted to do this, but after a few minutes into the historic tour? He was hooked.
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Our tour centered on The Point. The old section of Beaufort filled with beautiful Civil War era homes.
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And some quirky art.
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At the beginning of the war the savvy residents of Beaufort took part in what is now known as the Great Skedaddle.
In the panic of The Great Skedaddle of 1861—the hasty escape of white residents from Beaufort, South Carolina, six months after the start of the Civil War—anything that could not be buried or carried was abandoned. Enslaved people were left behind along with all the wealth accumulated from nearby cotton plantations: expensive furniture, horses, and clothing. When the Union Army arrived, there was only one white man left in town and he was dead drunk, or so the legend goes.
As history would have it, what drove white Beaufortonians from their homes was ultimately what saved the town they left behind. Unlike burned and battle-scarred Charleston, 50 miles to the north, the Union Army claimed Beaufort without a fight. Setting up operations in the town’s stately mansions rescued them from destruction. To this day, Beaufort has more surviving antebellum architecture than almost anywhere else in the South.
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It’s a lovely area, literally lost in time and lovingly preserved.
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That stone out front? A step for women to board carriages without displaying their ankles. Only shameless hussies flashed those.
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This wall is called pigeon hole brick and is completely original.
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The grand old homes…
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The live oaks, the moss…
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The clomp of Angus’s hooves.
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It was like being transported back 160 years.
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River's world..... 