Like most of the rest of you, we've spent the last little while prepping for the holidays. In the Adventures in Cooking department, we practiced making our own lasagne noodles and the resulting lasagne was both beautiful and delicious--hope the holiday company likes pasta! Our biggest Adventure was our first trip out of town, leaving Squeak in the capable hands of Karen and Phil next door while we drove across the low country on the way to the casinos in Biloxi.
A favorite part of that drive is the stately Pascagoula River, which is ecologically significant as the only virtually "unaffected," that is un-dammed, river emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Could that be why it is so breath-taking?
The Beau Rivage, our home base in Biloxi, was ridiculously decorated, as these photos demonstrate. (What you can't see is the incessant xmas music, which fortunately did not extend to the casino floor.) On the advice of Susan and Charlie (serious gamblers), we visited a different casino, the Imperial Palace, which lacked the glitz of the Beau, but made up for it in the looseness of its slot machines and its down-hominess. And the food was certainly no worse. Asked by another patron at a blackjack table, one of the dealers opined that the clientele on Christmas Day fell into two camps: early in the day the casinos are populated with folks who have no family; late in the day, crowds of people who are sick of their families appear.
Most of our time away, this part of the coast was completely socked-in with dense fog, and there had recently been snow in New Orleans. This last phenomenon was explained by our bell-hop as a consequence of the first Vietnamese congressional representative having been elected in the state of Louisiana.
Where the carts go at night.
Squeak appeared none the worse for wear when we returned home (to the beach for the first time!), but we did learn from Karen that the one time she tried to pet our dear kitten, she hissed.
Most of what happened this week happened in the immediate neighborhood. Two pots of yellow mums, which Marina displayed on her steps for the month of October, until she returned to Switzerland, and which then moved to Daryn & John's house for the month of November, have, now that D&J are back in Tennessee, moved to Karen & Phil's, next door. We've not seen the flik about the traveling pants, so luckily we have this.
Finally. FINALLY our new door was delivered. Naturally, because measurements were only taken 37 times, it was too small by several inches. Nothing that Ronald & Leidy couldn't handle, but worthy of a half-hour of crepe-hanging on their part nonetheless. E very much hopes that this is the END of remodeling for a while, and S agrees that it's great to have it done for the holiday guests. This door is swanky, closes with authority, is designed to survive the battering it will inevitably take from the extreme conditions on the third floor. And best of all, there's absolutely NO WAY anybody can lock themselves out. In fact, figuring out how to lock it from the inside proved quite a challenge for S. For the first time, Squeaky got to see what was on the other side, and shouldered her way through the pickets in the railing to take a good look.
Because we were invited to Billye's for dinner (we thought) Thursday evening, and charged with bringing rolls, S spent a couple of days practicing to make some from scratch. E was a valiant crash-test dummy, for S is way out of practice in the dough department, and her good luck with pizza dough of late hasn't transferred to the more delicate sorts. The remains ultimately became a very tasty banana-rum-raisin bread pudding. S is at a crossroads, wondering if she's got the heart to teach herself how to make bread once again: the aroma is so amazing, it might just be worth it. Stay tuned.
Billye's dinner party turned out to be a mob scene, not the intimate little affair we thought we were in for. We met her three cats: Josh, Jake and Toby, whose Christmas stockings were already hung, in anticipation of KittySanta. The house is themed Sailboat. Turns out it's not Billye's taste at all, but a gesture toward the summer rental biz, and was all designed and executed by B's sister-in-law. Holiday decorations were abundant and lovely--and belonged to Susan (excluding the cats' stockings), who set them all up and planned to come back the next day and take them home again. B's actual personal taste is allegedly Asian/Modern/Minimalist. Twelve or so couples each brought a dish to accompany Billye's brisket and salad: the food put us in mind of our bunco party days. E was in a conversation about botox and we might be one step closer to getting together a local poker game--so a good night when all's said and done.
We spent part of a very blustery (and cold!) afternoon on the beach and our faithful Squeaky now ventures even further out onto the sand. Brave brave girl. S slayed the second of the giant squash and made a curry that received mixed reviews. We reorganized a closet and a set of dressers while watching the SEC championship game. Alas, our Tide was defeated, despite how loudly we yelled Stop Him, Stop Him, STOP HIM! One evening, while listening to TV in the office, waiting for Letterman to start, we caught the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, and heard music that we loved, by The Ting Tings. Alas, the group's own vivid video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UX0p7uAW2s) can't be embedded, but you can look at the cute PINK short shorts on the runway and hear the song below:
Out in the larger world, we tested another quick lunch option, at PJ's Coffee, where we got most unremarkable muffaletta/panini sandwiches. If you ask S, there ought to be a ban on the use of ciabatta anywhere but Italy for at least a year. On the tasty dough front, we made an excursion to Panama City on a day when the Bagel Maker was open, and voila! yes! they DO make good bagels, including salt bagels (S's fave), one of which E & S ate sitting on tall stools in the store before they went off to play romp'em-stomp'em bingo at Bingo Paradise.
Two things about which we marvel: 1) there seems to be a rupture in the time/space continuum here at B-A-R. When E comes to bed upstairs and turns on the TV, programming runs a half hour behind the TV in the office she's just left downstairs. So she hears Dave interview the same guests, crack the same jokes, etc. 2) when we wake up every morning, we're happy.
Daryn & John's house is perfectly situated just across from the dune walkover, so they catch a great view of the water. At their party last night (where we think we sussed the identity of one of the one-in-ten creeps), we held onto the railing in what one of the other guests claimed was a 30-knot wind, to see the gulf roil. This morning, it's much tamer (and really cold), but still dramatic.
Getting to and getting through Thanksgiving took over most of our week. As of this writing, all that remains of the feast is one piece of pumpkin pie and a turkey carcass in the freezer. The Martone/Pappas clan arrived with several bottles of the Nouveau Beaujolais, a lovely salad, and some scrummy pumpkin rolls. S & E whomped up a turkey, dressing, smashed potatoes and, of course, 1 orange + 1 cup of sugar + 1 bag of cranberries relish. We had fun celebrating Obama's victory, getting caught up on doings in Tuscaloosa, and eating eating eating.
Our company (Sam's eyes open, barely, Theresa's not).
Our company (Sam's eyes shut, Theresa's open). Will S EVER learn to work her camera?
In other news, S won one and a half bingos and met her new cardiologist, who said, "you're 55 and already had a heart attack: fantastic." We added three new herbs to our little kitchen garden: thyme, sage and mint join the rosemary. We know the rosemary will go great guns in this location, for we had some nearby a few years ago (before a renovation project did it in), but not sure how the rest will fare. Stay tuned.
We attempted to attend two holiday festivals, one of which turned out to be nothing but a bunch of empty chairs in a wet yard, and another, in Seaside, which was slowly coming to life just as we were ready to head back home. E did purchase three Satsuma oranges, or, that is, she wanted three but had to buy four because the purveyor didn't have any change....
We finally located FlipFlops, which is supposed to serve up an excellent hamburger (and beignets for breakfast!), but haven't tried it yet. We also each had a cup of Amavida coffee, roasted locally, all Fair Trade, etc., and liked it a lot. So much, in fact, that we're going to see if we can wean ourselves from Peets! S tried the "pick up a quick lunch" thing, bringing home Cuban sandwiches from El Mercadito. Not the right thing to order there, probably, but live and learn.
Squeak continues to amaze us with her brazen wandering into all the neighbors' yards, and to amuse us with her strategies for getting back into the house.
The stare in the screen and squawk method.
The too too cute shadow-play method.
This morning, after breakfast at Don Pedro's (an old standard) and our Sunday romp thru Publix, we had the pleasure of a phone call with Francesca and Martin, congratulating them on their marriage yesterday. Sounds as if the whole thing came off beautifully (with just one boring speech). And both seem in excellent spirits: huzzah!
This early evening we're invited for wine and cheese at Daryn & John's on the corner. We're taking a nice apple-smoked cheddar of which we've become very fond. Looking forward to seeing the interior of D & J's place, because Daryn is the boldest and wittiest seasonal decorator in Sunrise Beach.
This week was so boring that we had to go for a Sunday Adventure Drive just to have something to blog about. Up until today, the following items were newsworthy: E finally reconnected with her brother and sister-in-law, who sneaked off to Hawaii for two weeks; we learned that the Martone/Pappas clan will join us for Thanksgiving dinner (looking forward!); we had our first phone conference with our money-guy Lyle (who seems a bit down in the dumps, go figure); we FINALLY found Executive Car Wash AND a nice Express Oil Change place and did right by our vehicle; and while we didn't go to a new resto, we ate new food at a newish fave (Jambone's hamburgers and hot dogs are as good as their pulled pork and BBQ wings); S got herself a pair of MBTs in hopes that they will correct all of her skeletal/muscular issues; and last but not in any way least, Squeaky went all the way to the beach with us, right down on the sand! Hmm. By our old retired lady standards, not such a boring week after all.
We began the drive by locating S's cardiologist's office (in advance of her appointment on Monday), and while casing the buildings outlying Sacred Heart Hospital, we discovered vast stands of rosemary in one medical facility's planting beds: E wondered if perhaps the doctors know something about this herb that we don't. Since our own new planting of rosemary isn't really big enough to cut yet, we took a page out of Gramma Huss's book and pinched several sprigs with which to stuff our Thanksgiving bird.
From there we drove north up Mack Bayou Road, which runs roughly parallel to the long arm of Mack Bayou, and saw more developments that failed to develop, including the spectacularly overwrought Driftwood Point ("7 Well-Stocked Lakes"--i.e., 7 drying-up ponds), "patrolled by Driftwood Point Security" (stealth security, invisible to the naked eye).
Parts of the surrounding area are built up with ticky-tacky garden homes, parts with cool 70's beachy-modern bungalows in groves of live oak, parts with big ol' piles of stucco landscaped with Iconic Florida Flora.
Tonight we're trying our second pasta-making experiment ever: linguine. We might, as E says, be "getting the hank of it." Happy T-day to all!
This was a week of oddities. S + S are fighting over ownership of the gold pillow. They used to fight over the polka-dot pillow until S gave it over to S entirely. But now, perversely, S doesn't want it anymore.
The confederate jasmine has taken over the south side of the porches, downstairs and up--which we wanted it to do. Clearly, however, it will take over far more than that unless we are assiduous about hacking it back. We are on top of things for the moment, but stay tuned.
S vowed that we would wash the car weekly now that we live in a salt mist 24/7, but it was only on Tuesday, several months after our move, that we went in search of The Executive Car Wash, reputed to be the best in the area. Google Maps sez that it's on Old/Scenic Hwy 98, so we tootled its length and discovered instead a beach that seems to E almost lost in time, with deco-ish condos, quaint motels, ancient-seeming restaurants (including a crab joint perched above a wooden public access shelter) and a proximity of the water to the road that makes it hard to focus on one's driving. Pictures would be nice, we know, be we were on a mission. Another time. Never found the car wash: turns out it's on the new Hwy 98 and we've driven past it a million times and never seen it. Next week!
On Friday, Harold came by to deliver some packages he'd kindly retrieved from the front porch of our old house, and we belatedly celebrated his birthday. He's in the area with old friends who yearly have an autumn reunion here in SoWal. Tonight we're joining them for supper at their big house near Eastern Lake--looking forward! And on his way home, Harold will stop by again to stash his kayak in our side yard. We're hoping to figure out a way in which the twists and curves of the scrub oaks can be turned into a reasonable facsimile of a kayak-rack.
Last night we sampled the wonders of a new resto: Enzo's just up 393 a half mile, which is supposed to have the second-best pizza on the beach. Totally AWFUL, a complete and utter Don't Do Again! Only the antipasto was good (tho more a decorated salad than a true antipasto), but the waiter forgot to bring us any bread until our salad was long gone. The pepperoni on E's pizza tasted too "piggy" and the pie had been dusted with a thin layer of super-fine dried parmesan. S's lasagana was drenched in a too-red and grossly congealed sauce; the whole entree tasted a bit like dog food. And the decor: Mama Mia! What hideous murals, funereal drapery, fake flowers, drippy fountains. The music: Tuscany-Rustico. Pathetico!
We finally got organized to invite a few of our full-time (and fullish-time) neighbors over for drinks. Susan & Charlie and Karen & Phil joined us at the kitchen table and regaled us with stories of how they came to live in Sunrise Beach. All very Back-In-The-Day. Susan has a theory that of the 40 SB owners, one in ten is a creep. She knows for sure of three creeps, which means there's a creep still in hiding. She never expressly named anybody, so we're left wondering.
In the Very Small Adventure department, we put in 45 minutes at a Kitchenique knife-skills demo last Saturday so that we could each get one of our knives sharpened. According to Vicki of Kitchenique and one of the local chefs who was hanging about, there's nobody you can trust with a knife anywhere around. Oh for the Nut Shop in Tuscaloosa! S bought a steel and will see if she can transfer a strong image she has of her grandfather Rideout honing his knives into her own forearm.
For the first time in our greater neighborhood explorations we drove East instead of North or West--to Panama City and Bingo Paradise. If huge and fast is your idea of heaven, BP is IT! The joint seats 300 people (at least) and the callers can't be bothered to utter a letter, it's all 17-69-3-45-72-44-27-19-18-53-go-go-go. We kinda liked it, just for the challenge, and last Sunday S won a bingo, while this Sunday, E won two! It's a long way to go to play, so won't be a regular feature of our lives, but there's also the lure of the allegedly best bagels in the panhandle (stayed tuned, for they're closed on Sunday), so we will return. While in search of The Bagel Maker, we floundered around a bit in old PC neighborhoods, resplendent in huge live oaks draped in some serious Spanish Moss. Purty.
On the way home from our first visit we stopped at the parking lot of The Museum Of Man In the Sea, with In being the operative word. Lordy.
On the way home from our second visit there were bats aloft for long stretches of Hwy 98, as if we were near the site of an emergence. So far we can't find anything definitive about the who or where of bats in the panhandle: so much more to learn!
We took advantage of a beautiful day and climbed aboard the Southern Star for a dolphin/sunset cruise: the excursion delivered on both counts, with several pods of dolphins coursing and leaping and doing back flips (the back-flipping juvenile was E's fave)--and a big orange sun setting on liquid blue. It was particularly interesting to see Destin from the water, and to get a tour/history of the harbor. The Destin Fishing Rodeo was in session, and we got to see a guy hold up a tuna bigger than himself! A large sailing vessel (three masts) was also taking in all these shows: an elegant bit of engineering, it became part of our show as well. Turns out it was Military Appreciation Day in Destin, so we were also treated to a precision flying demo just as the sun was about sunk. Alas, you'll have to take our word for most of this, bc S left home without fresh batteries in her bag and the camera pooped out before we left the harbor!
We ate E's delayed BD supper at the Thai Elephant and feel as if we've finally found a Do Again! Everything was absolutely dee-lish, and to top it off, our wait person recommended the buffet lunch at Orchid House in Fort Walton Beach (home to the Bingo Castle). We stopped by on our way to bingo and were dazzled, not just by the great and abundantly-varied food, but by the abundant and varied clientele, including 3 monks in saffron robes.
Sleuths that we are, we had to try to find the True location of Santa Rosa Beach. So we now know where the original town stood (apparently a long while ago, for there's not much there but a grove of old busted up scrub oaks) as well as where the locals actually can be found, that is, in the Emerald Coast Plaza, site of JamBone & the US Post Office. There too is our Mexican Grocery and Cantina, our Computer Guy, our Cig Store (Smoker Friendly) and the Laundromat where we wash unwieldy things like comforters. There's a Dance Studio too, but we're unlikely to set foot therein.
Our neighborhood explorations continue to take us northward toward Musset Bayou: this week we tooled up East and West Hewitt roads, both of which deadend right in the water. We want to know, whose bright idea is this? Does noone ever get a bit disoriented and drown their cars and/or themselves in the soggy boggy bottom? Sure, sure, you want to be able to launch your boat (we guess), but maybe a chain could be slung between a couple of posts? We confess that it's not just the deadends that make us squeamish; sometimes these roads are mere causeways through extremely marshy land and our guts roll as our brains fight the sensation that the ooze is reaching out to draw us in.
This has been a week of administrative details: we got Florida Drivers' Licenses to go with our FL tag. This set us up for two things: 1) voting. So today, after Tai Chi class, armed with our sample ballots and new drivers' licenses, we went to the Court House Annex (which should be located in the Emerald Coast Plaza, if you ask us), to cast our historic Early Votes for Barack Obama. Man, did that feel good! 2) homestead declaration. Again with DLs in tow, we went to another wing of the Court House Annex, the Property Assessors Office, where we filed for our homestead exemption, which will take effect in 2009. More good feelings, tho not quite as momentous. (On a side note, we notified Beach Rentals of South Walton that we are no longer on the rental program: yippeeeeee!)
After twenty years in one CSA or another in Alabama, we are now in search of decent fruits and vegetables here in Florida. Our trip today to A Girl Named Toni yielded a couple of apples, which didn't taste any better than you might buy in a grocery store, and were nowhere near as pretty as the Mcouns featured on Jess's blog. Toni also had hydroponic lettuce, from not too much more than a hundred miles away, but S hasn't quite given up her distrust of anything grown without Dirt, so we passed. For now. A recent trip to Fresh Market, where E got her BD orchid (pix when the shy thing blooms), netted a pair of artichokes from Castroville. Better than a kick in the teeth, but c'mon. We may just have to spend the winter eating a steady diet of giant butternut squash if we want to eat local produce. Stay tuned.
Squeak + Elizabeth + Sandy have moved to the beach and are learning their new neighborhood. Squeak prefers to explore when it's dark; Sandy & Elizabeth perambulate at all hours.
Tonight we're trying our second pasta-making experiment ever: linguine. We might, as E says, be "getting the hank of it." Happy T-day to all!
