Category: Food

Checked out the Parade of Sail up in Gloucester this morning. Like I mentioned before I hadn’t seen it since 2018. This year didn’t seem to have as many boats as that year but still a good time to view some scenic boats float by. LD came with this time and liked watching the dogs play in the water down below the boulevard, fetching balls and pieces of wood from the water thrown by their masters. Good thing we had the foresight to bring our beach chairs, which we set down right along the boulevard and watched the action. Toward the end I ventured over to more mountainous area and discovered what I like to call the hidden grotto. Pretty cool location. There was talk of maybe hitting the beach but the weather didn’t look that promising, plus we went yesterday, and there’s always tomorrow as a possibility.

Finished off the early evening with a fire pit for a while. Did that for a few until the skies decided to start to drizzle again but thankfully I had been done with the fire by that point. After that we finally finished our leftovers while watching some 48 Hours reruns we had recorded from the night before and a movie on HBO, which was a recommendation from some friends of ours. I didn’t watch much of the movie as I had fallen asleep on my heating pad. Yes, it’s getting close to being that time of year again where I lay on this thing and end up napping for an hour or two.

“Here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo-doo, here comes the sun. And I say it’s all right.”

The Beatles, Here Comes The Sun

It’s going to be a fantastic day, might as well start it out with a spectacular sunrise shot.

I did an experiment and fried up some hot dogs in the air fryer today and I’ve got to say, it’s pretty good. 6 minutes at 400 and it’s done! Probably going to be my go-to now in making them, unless I’m doing some grilling outside

Off to the beach this am, more later….

4.5 hours later today: Back from the beach, it was awesome! We played in the waves and got some sun, stayed there longer than ever so far. Just for the record we like going to Duxbury Beach Park which might actually technically be in Marshfield but it suits us. Definitely going in the early morning, which was new for us, is advantageous in many ways. Plus the weather today was just perfect, why can’t everyday be like today? Probably would have stayed even longer but we had to get back to home base because LD needed to attend a continuing conference online. We made it back just in the nick of time – cut it close with 5 minutes to spare!

On the streaming front we’ve just about finished season 2 of Mindhunter. Great show. As I mentioned before there’s a few more things I’d like to see within the next few weeks including Val, Sharp Objects, WW 1984, The Lighthouse, some 3 day special on A&E about serial killers, The Girl in the Fog, and Mare of Eastown to name a few.

Ended up the early evening by grilling up some steak tips and lighted up the fire pit and ate outside and relaxed. Now we’re salty and smoky! Perfect day!

The only negative part is LD got some sunburn on her arm!

Does anybody really care what I write here? You can leave a comment if you really do, I’d appreciate it.

Above is a picture from a few days ago that I took looking up from the ground, with the trees and the daffodils in bloom. On a separate note, I don’t know if anybody watches the news channel NECN but lately they’ve been showcasing some of my photos on television, the latest being the rocks and sea scene from Salisbury where I got my first Covid shot. It’s always nice to see that folks think some of pics are worthy of that honor.

Friday was a day of basically just running some errands and cleaning up the house a bit, doing some runs to CVS and the ATM and getting ready for today’s (Saturday) festivities. Today looked to be a somewhat packed day.

It all started with making a strawberry salad with our own homemade strawberry dressing, which came out very tasty. I sautéed up some spinach, zucchini, mushrooms, and pecans as well for various side dishes. This was all in preparation for an outdoor gathering we were having with a friend and her new boyfriend, first time meeting. Then it was off to Wegman’s for a grocery pickup for some more items for the outing. Put together our own turkey burgers from scratch imbued with some spinach and feta to also cook on the grill. It was a good little get together and I think we all enjoyed ourselves. We finished off the afternoon with some s’mores using the fire pit and the spits that we got as a gift a little while back.

In the interim we had the gas company come out because there’d been a gas smell up and down the street for a couple of weeks now. Eventually it lead to some underground pipe that the smell was coming through a catch basin across the street. They deemed it a Level 2 decision – meaning they may have a crew come out in the summer to deal with it. Not a high priority but put on a list to be looked at at some point, no danger.

After our guests left (they wanted to see the tulips in the Boston Garden and maybe catch a sunset there) LD put the finishing painting touches on her table project. It’s almost done! My Butterfly House parts also came delivered today, we might try to put that together tomorrow, along with planting that free tree sapling I got a few days ago.

Now we’re pretty wiped so I think we’ll relax with some leftovers and some television and reading.

Stupid embeds on Instagram don’t work anymore because they changed the API (thanks again Facebook for screwing more things up) so you’ll just need to click this link and watch to see some of my work that made the local news:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CH3gQggHHs5/

Did a little yard work this morning – finishing cleaning up the last of the fallen oak leaves from the yard and by the gutter spouts and other areas such as the patio where they clump up that had been bugging me over the last couple of days. Thankfully this should be the last of it as most of trees back here look pretty bare now. Also did some generous watering of the baby sourwood and pine trees. Really want those to do well. Maybe it’s me but I think the pine is actually growing already, it definitely has little pine cones starting to grow out of it in various places. You need to give them 10-15 gallons of water daily ideally which is a lot but I’m doing what I can. I also planted a garlic clove in a pot in the house just for fun and it’s already got two green sprouts shooting up from the dirt. This one is more of just a fun experiment for myself just to see it grow.

We hit Rexhame Beach in the early afternoon for some exercise, sun and nature time, especially since today is the last nice warmish day especially this late into November. It’s also the best beach for it’s selection of colorful and special looking rocks, at least in my opinion. It’s where I found my heart rock – a one in a billion find if you ask me and I feel very lucky to have found it. It currently sits on the windowsill next to a table where I do my web work.

We collected a bunch more rocks for our collections – a colorful selection of geology to adorn the windowsills.

Finally it was off to cook a turkey – we had defrosted it a little too early and today was the last day it would keep until cooking and so in it went. I basted it every 45 minutes until the bird was done. I think we did a pretty good job, not everyday we cook a whole bird. Needless to say we’ll be eating turkey all week and making various meals out of it. So we’re a little early, NBD!

The story behind the photo: There’s this cemetery just along the Somerville/Arlington line that has these amazing groves of trees that turn red in the fall and I love to photograph there when that happens and so I did and so here’s the result. Also I posted yesterday’s photo of leaves strewn about the Somerville bike path to the Davis Square group on FB and it’s getting a lot of love over there so that makes me feel pretty good. (available).

Things on the the to-do list today:

Went to Home Depot and got some different knobs for the kitchen cabinets. Got singles of three different kinds just to see how they look. I also picked up some kindling and some firewood for the pit even though we have a bunch, just to have on-hand.

Went to CVS to get my mom a birthday card and some Zyrtec for LD. It took me a while to find it as this particular CVS is in the process of rearranging all the aisles in the store (AGAIN!) and so everything is all in different places.

Set up LD’s printer scanner to finally be able to scan documents and wirelessly transmit the output to a shared Windows drive on the laptop.

Take out the goat yoga mats from Wednesday and clean them up (started the process, need to finish that up tomorrow).

Spent a little time at the sanctuary to see if I could get any foliage shots and see the animals. Didn’t have much goat time but did see a lot of chickens and our friend Devon was there too to chat with. She volunteers there all the time and is pretty knowledgeable about all the animals that live there. For some reason the turkey was pretty feisty today and kept following and squabbling at LD the whole time.

I didn’t have a chance yet to set up the Amazon Echo Dot that LD picked up on Prime Day. It remains to be seen if we end up actually using it or giving it to a relative. Not really into Alexa listening to everything but what can you do? I also still need to hang some new curtain rods that have been laying around for about a week now. Try to get to that tomorrow as well.

I had the weirdest dream last night. I was sitting on a couch with a few other people that I believe were all elementary and high school friends from the neighborhood. Alex and Eddie Van Halen were also on the couch with us and it was like we all grew up with them as they were our school buddies as well. I was on one end of the couch and Eddie was on the other end with two of our friends between us and Alex in the middle. It also seemed like we known them all our lives and that they actually lived with my family in my house as we were growing up. At some point in the dream I was next to Alex and he was telling some story but he was spraying it as he was talking I could feel the droplets fall all over my face and then I was trying to hold my breath and fearing I would get COVID and then I woke up. Told you it was a weird dream.

For dinner I cooked up some Bruschetta Zucchini boats with couscous and Melted Italian Cheeses. You cut the zucs in half and gut the insides so it’s like a boat, roast them, them stuff them with the completed couscous, bruschetta and cheese and then broil it so the cheese melts all over it, Have to say, it was pretty delicious and simple to prepare.

Went to the Sanctuary today. Goats hung out with us which was fun. Sadly, the cat we had thoughts of adopting from there was adopted by someone else a few days ago. Maybe it’s for the best at this time though.

Afterwards hit up visit to Trader Joe’s in Foxborough (by where the Pats play) to get some groceries for the week. We’ve already cooked up some mushroom pizzas, ricotta bake, and some mustard glazed chicken.

What else? Watched the end of the Celtics game, flipping between that and Law & Order reruns on We TV. A typical low-key Sunday.

The above picture is one I took along Commonwealth Avenue in Boston a little while back. I always found the look of these two buildings rather cool. Come to find out, the “sisters” have an interesting back story! I still learn something new everyday!

This shot of the lighthouse at Castle Hill in Newport, RI was from a getaway we had a few years ago. I’m putting it up now because I’ve planned another getaway coming up! It’s my usual appreciation getaway that I plan every year although this year it had to be postponed a couple of months due to other factors. This new one will be in a new location that I’ve never been so I’m looking forward to see how it all pans out.

Late this afternoon we went and saw Motherless Brooklyn, a movie starring and directed by Edward Norton – it was pretty good, and featured some big name actors like William DeFoe, Alec Baldwin, and Bruce Willis among others. I’d recommend it if you’re in the mood for a detective story and like some 1950s New York film noir. I had seen the previews and it looked interesting so I said let’s give it a go.

Earlier in the day we had created three dishes as part of lunch/dinner for tonight and also food-prep for the week (the usual routine):

• Turkey Chili with Butternut Squash
• Baked Scallops with a Parmesan crust; and
• Turkey Spaghetti Squash Bake in peppers

The last one was to recreate with a different middle than the mac&cheese we went with last year around this time:

This morning I went to Home Depot to buy some more leaf bags and later raked up some more leaves. Good day to do some work around the house actually. Also been measuring the downstairs windows because we’re going with the same kinds of blinds that we have upstairs now – the Cordless Cellular Shades that are all the rage now. The windows down here are a lot larger so it’s more expensive but it’ll be worth it.

It’s not all fun and games though. Turning back the clock has made this day seem much longer which is great – but getting dark early is a bummer. I worry about LD, my mom, and a bunch of other things too as well these days.