Long weekend with the family. Nice weekend. Casual with flexible planning. And it didn’t rain the entire weekend. Saturday was beautiful.
I left work on a crazy Friday afternoon at 3:00 and got to Terri’s for a martini around 6:00. We then moved to mom and dad’s for a great dinner of jambalaya and salad on the deck with Terri and Yvonne, mom, dad and me. Saturday I got up and got out the door for a 32-mile ride to Lancaster and back. Down on 37, via 668 and back on 22. A terrific ride, but far more hilly down this way than up north, so a good workout and truly iconic farm scenes. Mile after mile of cornfields, soybeans, beautiful farm houses and barns, all against a backdrop of scattered hardwood forest plots. Up and down the hills; moving up and down through the gears. I stopped a couple of times for pictures, but could have taken dozens.
Saturday afternoon we went to Zachary and Jamie’s for a cookout. Drank too much beer and took a terrific beat-down in corn hole. These corncobs play day and night so it’s no easy thing taking a game from them. But we had fun and food was terrific. Met a couple of nice dogs I had not met before including a nice Frenchy named Capone and a big old shepherd mix named Rocco. Both sweethearts.
I committed to making creme brûlée for dessert for our Sunday dinner at Larry and Melissa’s. Cooking in someone else’s kitchen is always challenging. Mom and Dad left to meet their friends from Memphis in Gatlingburg for a week so I dug around until I found what I needed.
Mom is frugal, one might say. As are many people who were raised in serious poverty. She washes and re-uses everything. She saves every scrap of food. I was looking through the refrigerator for this or that and there are a few dozen plastic containers. Of course the name on the container has no relation to what might be inside. I still don’t know if she had any sour cream or not, even though I opened 3 sour cream containers. One had corn, one what appeared to be chicken salad, and the third was simply unidentifiable.
Mom has a second freezer in the garage along with a second refrigerator/freezer. All 3 units, including the one in the house, are always full. It would not surprise me if there is some scraps in the freezer from when I was a kid.
Shannon came to visit while I was making the custard and I made a couple of mistakes, but the final result was good, so no worries. No one really noticed.
For dinner we had amazing tomakawk ribeyes that Larry and I found at Kroger in Heath. We made au gratin potatoes in the Dutch oven and Asian slaw. A superb meal, enjoyed outside on the back porch with rain coming down. There is something about rain on a metal roof on a summer evening. An all around beautiful evening. Dinner was Larry, Melissa, Shannon, Terri, Yvonne, our cousin Dee and me.
The Martini Tales 