Dinner in Morocco

We drove downtown tonight to have dinner and exchange Christmas gifts with our friends K and B, who will be leaving for Egypt next week. It's their annual "adventure tour," which they take every year in December. They counted up the countries they've been to over the years--- 23. Still a lot more places to go, and they're getting nervous that they will run out of stamina before they run out of countries.

But...... dinner. We went to a Moroccan restaurant near the Montrose section of downtown. I believe the name of it was Saffron.... the exterior of the restaurant was so pretty and unusual that I paid very little attention to to the name over the front door. And the inside was a dream...... I was waiting for Humphrey Bogart to come out from behind the bar.

K and B had been there before, and this was our first time, so they suggested that we get a family style dinner which gives four food selections for each of the five courses. Yes. Five courses. Let's see... I've been walking nearly three miles every day... I guess I should increase that to five miles from now on.

I told the waitress that I preferred not to eat meat, so one of each of the main courses was always a fish selection. We split each of the dishes four ways, so we all got to taste everything that was put on the table (Except that I passed up tasting the meat dishes.) I don't remember the names of the dishes, but they all looked lovely and smelled heavenly--- sweet rolls filled with shrimp and cheese; light pastry triangles stuffed with spinach and goat cheese; salmon topped with thin slices of tomatoes and roasted potatoes; baked chicken mixed with honey and walnuts and wrapped in pastry; roasted chicken sitting on top of couscous and chick peas and surrounded with sweet potatoes and carrots and acorn squash; beef roasted with stewed prunes; baked lamb topped with sweet apricots and caramelized onions; goat cheese sitting on top of warm raisins and caramelized onions, then sprinkled with chopped pimento. (Hot raisins and onions-- that taste alone was worth the drive there.) Before the main courses, we were served two kinds of soup--- one with vegetables, one with beef; then there were four kinds of salads, each with a different dressing, each with different vegetables.

And just before we thought they couldn't bring anything more delicious to the table, out came dessert: four sweet little cakes (one chocolate, one with custard, one filled with quince, one layered with pineapple).... then a sweet tea boiled with fresh mint leaves and served in glasses after the waitress poured the tea from a beautiful silver teapot held at least twelve inches above the serving tray. The sweet mint tea was worth the drive there.

It was a meal to remember...... it was more like a banquet, more like a feast than a mere dinner. I don't know when we've had a more enjoyable, delicious, feast-for-the-eyes meal in a restaurant. Everything was delicious before we even tasted anything just because it all was served so beautifully and presented with such kindness and dignity and humility. This sounds like over-the-top descriptions for "just a dinner out," but it truly was an over-the-top dinner.

We usually don't eat dinner so late in the evening. And we certainly don't have five-course meals. I was able to get through that meal because I just took one tiny taste of the bread, just one small forkful of the couscous, and I didn't taste any of the roasted white potatoes. I ate just half of the vegetable soup-- even though it was delicious, hot soup fills you up too fast, and I knew there was more food to come. Had I not just concentrated on the fish, salads, and the vegetables, I don't think I would have been able to taste the desserts. And those desserts.... so light, so pleasing-to-the-eye... those alone would have been worth the drive.

We left the restaurant and were walking to the car, and the four of us were already planning our next trip there for another five-course dinner. My birthday is at the end of January, so we'll all meet there around that time. Between now and then, you will find me walking... and walking... and walking.

The little things....

I've been neglecting this blog-page lately. No reason... none that I care to print, anyway. No excuses... none that would make any sense to anyone but myself.

I have been on the phone more these past few months than ever before, unless you count my teenaged years, when a telephone seemed permanently attached to one side of my head at any given time. So, just maybe, the phone calls have "released" everything that I used to type out onto this page.

I spoke to my friend F today....... she has been missing my daily typing in here. Even though this is all mundane, everyday stuff... just little things.... the fact that it's being missed is enough to get me back to typing.

So here we go..... back to the little things that take up so much time during all of our days. Maybe that's the secret to a long and happy life--- don't worry too much about all the big things, just concentrate on the little things that make you smile.

Our Thanksgiving holiday was fabulous..... lots of good company, way too much food, but isn't that what Thanksgiving is all about? Friends, family, food. As always, I had my pre-dinner-party meltdown when I complained about not having enough room in the fridge, and wishing I had three ovens instead of two. The day after Thanksgiving, my husband went out with young Miss C and picked out a ten-foot tree for our living room. We spent the weekend decorating that, with help from C. I don't think she realized just how long it takes to string up vintage Christmas lights and attach blown-glass ornaments to all of those branches. I think we just plain wore her out for those two days.

The tree is up, the rest of the house is all decorated (and had been even before the turkey went into the oven)..... and now we're counting down the days till our Christmas Open House party next weekend. We still have to order the food (spinach pies and cheese pies from our favorite Greek restaurant)...... and I still have to decide whether I want to make at least 100 of the little meatballs I made for our last party-- or just order more Greek food...... and then we have to think about dessert--- do I want to start baking, or should I just order some things from a very delicious bakery that opened up near us--- everything is baked from scratch, by the two women who run the shop. And, of course, even though we told our friends they didn't have to bring anything to this party, I know that some of them will be walking through the door with trays of food and goodies. Once again--- lots of good company, lots of good food.

This weekend is "Dickens on The Strand" in Galveston...... depending on the weather, we may or may not drive out there for that. We're having a run of warm and sunny days now, in stark contrast to the 55-degree rainy weather that we had on the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now we're back up near 80, where we belong. I don't think I could ever get used to really cold winters ever again.

I've been reading and reading and reading and reading lately, which has also taken away from my typing time. Right now, I'm reading the new Oprah book-- "The Pillars of The Earth," by Ken Follett. Amazing story..... I was skeptical at first, but I quickly got absorbed in the Middle Ages. When I need a break from the monks and the knights and the men-at-arms, I page through one of my Christmas books. I'm inspired with all the Christmas cookie recipes, but I haven't tried any of them yet. I know for a fact that if I start baking cookies, I will also start eating cookies. And heaven knows that every cookie crumb will end up on my hips.

Speaking of hips..... I was in Marshall's yesterday and bought a fabulous black satin skirt for our Christmas party........ then I went to SteinMart this morning and found the perfect top for it--- actually, I found two: one in black and one in bright red. I couldn't make up my mind, so I bought them both. I will probably wear one for our party, and one for Christmas day. Everyone is coming here for Christmas dinner.... the same group, minus K and B, who will be in Egypt for most of the month of December. Another one of their adventure tours, taken during December because of the marked-down tour prices.

Back to that black skirt..... every time I find a pretty skirt, it always seems to be black. Somehow, black always seems to work, and depending on the fabric, it can be totally casual or supremely elegant. This black satin is wonderfully soft, and the top that I found to match it looks as if it had been made for the skirt. My Aunt Dolly always says that you can never go wrong with a great black skirt and a pretty top. Which always worked for her (and still does) and now seems to have worked for me as well over the years. I always have a lot of black skirts in my closet, but I usually find "just one more" whenever I go shopping. Speaking of shopping, yesterday was my first shopping for me day since the end of August. I've been trying to really wear (really wear) everything that's in my closet..... and if I take something out that I don't like anymore, I've been putting it right into a shopping bag that will be donated to one of the local shelters. One of the things I recently put into the donation bag was a powder-blue suede skirt with fringe along the hem. I'm sure I bought that with the intention of making a cowgirl costume with it for one of our Halloween parties. At least, I hope that's why I bought it--- I would hate to think that I had bought it to wear out on the street.

Amazing how many little things I can type out here, with a minimum of thought. Just open up the laptop, wait for the screen to wake up, then type, type, type. And for all these minutes of typing about mundane little things, my mind hasn't been thinking about all the big important things that have been going on for the past couple of months. Which, in itself, is a blessing.

So here we go. This one is for you, F...... so you have something to read when you don't want to think about anything else.

As the bird defrosts.....

The turkey is in the fridge, waiting to come out of its plastic wrapping and be set into the oven tomorrow morning. Yuck. It's the worst part of my Thanksgiving-- having to cook that silly bird. There was a great commercial on TV the other night-- so funny that I laughed out loud.

This woman is her kitchen, rinsing out the turkey in her sink..... beautiful kitchen, window over the sink, pretty view out into the backyard. The turkey is rinsed, and she's trying to get the huge, cold, slippery bird out of the sink and into the pan. The turkey keeps slipping back into the sink, then it slips onto the floor. She finally gets it up off the floor and into her arms. Instead of putting it back into the sink to rinse it off again, she throws it right through that beautiful kitchen window...... the bird crashes through the glass and hits her husband right in the back of his head as he's calmly watering the lawn. WHAM! And down he goes, turkey and all.

I laughed so hard that I didn't get to see who made the commercial, but I've since found out that it was an advertisement for Boston Market-- instead of cooking the turkey yourself, just order everything from Boston Market, according to the commercial. Well, yuck to that as well. My apologies to Boston Market, but I'd rather just fuss with that silly bird myself. If Boston Market puts any more salt and sugar and grease into their foods, we can probably use it to preserve fossils.

My husband is in the kitchen now, boiling potatoes for his famous mashed potatoes. He'll make them today, and then I'll re-heat them in the oven tomorrow. Same with the stuffing--- he's going to make oyster dressing tonight, and I will bake that tomorrow. We never put the dressing into the turkey..... that is just a gross idea, in my humble opinion. Bad enough that I have to wash out that bird.... I don't want to have to shove dressing into it before it goes into the oven, then spoon dressing out of it after it's cooked.

Young Miss C is coming over this afternoon to help me bake the pumpkin pie. Actually, we'll do what we did last year..... I let her do all the mixing and preparing-- I just stood there and gave her instructions, so she could honestly say that she made the pumpkin pie herself. We're not doing an apple pie this time, because our friends K & B are bringing their homemade pecan pie, plus my husband bought a mincemeat pie from a downtown bakery. Three desserts are quite enough for eight people. Our other friends are bringing all the "side dishes"-- homemade cranberry-apple compote, stuffed acorn squash, sweet potato casserole, tossed green vegetable salad.

Turkey day. Here again so quickly. I am definitely not ready for this holiday to be here, but you can't tell that by the looks of my dining room. The table is already set and it looks beautiful, if I do say so myself. As always, my favorite part of a dinner party is dressing up the table. Honestly.... how could I even think of putting Boston Market food onto a table that looks as pretty as mine?

So tomorrow morning, I will be at my kitchen sink, rinsing out that silly bird. There's a window right over my kitchen sink, which overlooks the backyard. I shall have to tell my husband not to go out there and start watering the lawn tomorrow morning. I wouldn't want to have to repeat that television commercial, no matter how hard it makes me laugh.

Sunday before Thanksgiving

How did we get to Thanksgiving week already? As always, once Halloween comes around, the rest of the year just flies on by.

Our house is all decorated for Christmas.... the only thing missing is the big (real) tree for the living room. My husband will get that the day after Thanksgiving, and this year, our young Miss C wants to go with him to pick it out. That should be interesting-- she's already telling him to pick out the biggest tree that they have.

We're having our Open House Christmas party in a couple of weeks, so invitations have already gone out and most of our friends have RSPV'd. As always, we've got some surprises planned for that party, so we're looking forward to that night. And, as always, I've already had my little pre-party meltdown. That's when I look at my party to-do list and ask myself "What were you thinking when you sent out invitations to so many people?" The meltdown doesn't last too long.... just long enough to me to get back to completing my to-do list instead of just reading it.

Speaking of reading, I've been doing a lot of that lately........ book after book after book. My pile of books-to-be-read never seems to disappear because I keep adding new titles to it. My one wish for my life is to live long enough to read everything that I'd like to read. "Love In The Time of Cholera" (an Oprah book club selection) was truly wonderful. There were passages in that book that were beautifully written.... so much so that I wanted to mark the pages so I could get back to them easily. But I just can't do that... unless it's a cookbook, I don't want to be writing in my books.

I'm waiting now for the newest Oprah selection--- "The Pillars of The Earth," by Ken Follett. When I heard the subject matter of the book (the Middle Ages) I was going to pass on this one, but so far, Oprah hasn't been wrong with her book choices, so I went ahead and ordered the book from Amazon (less than half the retail price). With the holidays coming, I probably won't be able to zip through this 900+ page book too quickly. Oprah said she was up till all hours of the morning reading that book. Easy enough for her to do....... she isn't expecting 45 people at her home for a Christmas party. And even if she were, she's got a staff to take care of all the little details.

Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday..... it will be an easy one... just eight of us around the table and everyone is bringing part of the meal. We're doing the turkey, plus the dressing and mashed potatoes. Then comes the Christmas party for 45, then my husband's birthday, then Christmas Dinner, then New Year's Eve. As I said, as soon as Halloween comes, everything else just marches up right behind it. Jingle bells.

The Lake

We were up at the lake house this past weekend.... the weather was picture-postcard perfect for all the days we were there. Nice and sunny and warm all day long (low 80s) and just a little cool at night (high 60s).

The cats are so used to the lake house now..... it's just the drive that gets them a little upset--- ShadowBaby starts with the meows as soon as we leave the driveway. No matter how many times I tell him We're almost there.... -- he just doesn't believe me. By the time we get half-way there, however, he usually meows himself out. AngelBoy just curls up in his crate and sleeps-- he does, however, give a few half-hearted meows at the very beginning of the ride. And little Mickey Kitty (who is still as small as a female cat) just sleeps all the way, with not even a teeny meow coming from him. That may be because his little crate is on my lap for the entire ride. I wonder how quiet he'd be if he were in the back seat with the others.

The week before we got to the lake, there had been a storm which came in from the northwest (never a good thing). The waves came up over the bulkhead and washed out some of the dirt and grass (for the third time) on part of our property. We found a man who would do the job right away, and he came with a truck-load of dirt that he spread around with a pay-loader (I think that's what the machine is called)....... and then he came back with a truck-bed filled with sod. In less time than it would have taken my husband and I to shovel in a quarter of that dirt, this guy had both the dirt and the sod in place so it looked like nothing had happened. (Worth every blessed penny that he charged.) The only way to prevent the northwest winds from washing out the dirt on that side is to have that part of the bulkhead fitted with a concrete sidewalk. That's what our next-door neighbor has, and the only thing he gets from the northwest wind is a bunch of seaweed washed up on his concrete walkway, which he just puts in his burn-pile with the fallen branches.

Lake living. Always something to do. Just like here... always something. When you own a house, it usually works out that the house owns you.

Speaking of "always something...." -- we're already planning to have our Christmas party. We didn't have one last year, being that I had been sick with the flu (or walking pneumonia, swears a doctor-friend of ours). So this year, we're back on track with great plans for a big Open House holiday party. I've already written out the invitations, so they'll go out in the mail next week. This one will be fantastic..... but we say that about all our Christmas parties.

Thanksgiving is all set.... our usual group of close friends will be coming here, each of them bringing part of the meal. We haven't yet decided who will be bringing what, but that will be easy to work out in the next couple of weeks. The same group will be here for Christmas-- except for K and B, who will be in Egypt. They always take advantage of the lower prices for their overseas holiday-time travel, and they're marking the globe with their exotic trips. Last year, India... this year, Egypt. I don't know what they have planned for next year, but I'm sure they've already signed up with the tour group for their next adventure. They've asked us to join them, but I have to admit that their travel adventures are just a little too adventurous for me.

Speaking of adventurous.... I watched the first episode of "The Amazing Race" last night. I would have been out of the race already-- one look at that bicycle/high-wire contraption going over the ocean, and I would have been running in the opposite direction.