Home from tour...

John got home from tour a week and a half before Thanksgiving. It was unseasonably cold. Perhaps 55. Boo. But we braved the cold and went down to River Street to check out the tall ship, the "Peacemaker", that was newly docked there. (For those of you who don't know this, I love tall ships. Not obsessively enough to know lots of information about them, just enough to think they're really interesting to see and to make not too out of the way trips to see them.)This particular tall ship was owned by "the Twelve Tribes" a sort of Christiany/Jewish teeny tiny religious sect. Try this Wikipedia page for more somewhat biased sounding info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Tribes_(New_religious_movement)

My favorite little blurb about them involves the founding of the religion. Because the church in Chattanooga that the founder attended did not have services one Sunday due to the Superbowl, he decided to start his own.
Anyway, we went to see the boat and were pleasantly surprised that we were allowed to have a look around. I think it went along with general respectability and the hope we would either join their church or buy something from their quasi-Amish store.

Obviously, this is the wheelhouse. In addition to the wheel, the cabin was stuffed with high tech gadgetry as well.

This is River Street as seen through the rear cabin window.This is the bow as seen from the front cabin/sitting/dining room.I also like funky old hardware, such as the window hardware above and the hinge below.
This lantern below was in the stairwell from main deck level to the upper deck.

We took some of their literature and listened/discussed with one of the ladies on board the religion and the boat owning. She was the public relations person that day. And we were the public.

In the quick browse of the literature I did not discover the meaning of life or really anything else elucidating.

Recumbent Bikers for Jesus

Saw this on my way to Jacksonville to load in the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.Comfort and religion all rolled into one. Or should I say "pedalled" into one.

What's happened lately....

So I had a lovely vacation last week. I went up to the DC area to hang out with a friend of mine. Her husband was out of town too and so we enjoyed way too much cheese and carbohydrates. Mmm. Delicious.
While I was there I attended a Halloween wedding of a college friend. Guests were charged to attend in costume. It was definitely the most unique wedding I've ever attended. Below is a picture of the cake.

The only person there, other than the bride, that I knew was another friend from college. She and I had a great time getting reacquainted and laughing at the rest of the wedding guests in costume. We were at the Grim Reaper table with a bunch of the bride's opera friends.

And what did I end of wearing, you ask. I went as a drunken Marilyn Monroe. What part of the costume implied "drunken"? My unsteady gait in some serious heels. How do people wear those in all seriousness?

I also made it up to NYC for a couple days. Stayed on a friend's couch and got to see an amazing production at the Met. Anthony Mingella's version of Puccini's "Madama Butterfly". It was amazing and inspiring (and free!). I love knowing people.

When I got back to DC from NYC, my friend's husband was back in town and it was time for Halloween. Some other friends came over for dinner and trick-or-treaters. We had a great evening that involved way too many roasted pumpkin seeds and some "Rock Band". (For those of you who don't know.... "Rock Band" is much like "Guitar Hero" except it involves 2 guitars or bass, a drum kit, and a microphone.)

I stopped into my lovely in-laws again on the way back home to GA and I had a great time hanging out. My niece was eager to tell me all about Halloween and play a mystery identification game that she'd played at her cousin's.

Now back home, I'm doing "Disney on Ice" for the week. I'm hoping I don't catch cold going from 70 degree outside weather to on the ice rink inside. Hooray for snow boots and several layers of clothing.

Oh yeah, and THE WORLD CHANGED. Hooray for Hope! Yes we did!

Halloween Hilarity

From the woman who brought you Savannah Christmas Decorating (http://formerlyitinerantroadie.blogspot.com/2007/12/christmas-tradition.html) comes the next installment of holiday cheer. Hilarious Halloween Decorating!

I snapped most of the these pics while bike riding through the expensive part of the neighborhood.

You can't read the gravestone but its says "together after all these years."

Ah morbidity. It never gets old.

Inflatables: not just for Christmas anymore!

This is the favorite house for budding arachnophobes.

When just one ghost won't do...

Creepy red dude peeking around the tree.

And this is my favorite house. It has a vampire AND a mummy on the front porch, numerous gravestones and pirate skeletons in the yard (thank you "Pirates of the Caribbean", a weird dead clown thing on the tree, and a giant scary thing hanging over the window. If I could have taken more pictures without looking like a stalker, I would have shown you the yellow and red thing blowing in the wind. It practically covered the window when the wind blew! I love other people's holiday excess.

Pumpkin Cookies - so tasty, so easy

Pumpkin Cookies

Prep Time: 20 Minutes

Cook Time: 17 Minutes

Yields: 48 servings

Ingredients
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
¼ cup wheat germ
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¾ teaspoon ground cloves
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ cup butter, softened
1 ¼ cups white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
15 oz. can of pumpkin puree
(it’s the standard size can)
2 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, and salt; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
4. Add pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla to butter mixture, and beat until creamy.
5. Mix in dry ingredients.
6. Drop on cookie sheet by tablespoonfuls. (You can go larger if you like pumpkin as much as I do, but since the outcome looks a bit “healthy” strangers are uncomfortable taking a bigger cookie.)
7. Bake for 17 minutes in the preheated oven
8. Remove from cookie sheet and cool on a rack
9. You can ice them, if desired, but they’re really quite tasty without.

SUPER TASTY!

Sorry there's no picture, trust me they look healthy, not at all like a tasty cookie. But they are both healthy-ish and tasty.

Late September Fun

I was able to visit Michigan in late September, just in time for my birthday! John had just left on tour for 2 months and the prospect of the first week of empty house was depressing so I took a road trip.

I took 75 up instead of 77 which is apparently 40 miles longer but 10 minutes quicker. All I can say for it is that it involves less mountainous terrain. As any of you who have ridden with me in the mountains know after a few hours it takes a few days for me to convince my shoulders down from my ears. It stresses me out, alot. Not too sure why.
Anyway, I had a nice drive up. Great weather and books on CD are a good way to go. In Kentucky I saw the following:

Imagine the $4/mile that that was costing!

I had a great time catching up with my family and some old friends.
My sister Karen and I took her 3 kids and went to visit my youngest sister Becca. Becca and her husband Alex were in the process of buying a house that they were already living in. It is a very funky cool old house. It is over a hundred years old and had some oddities but plenty of charm. I’m looking forward to seeing pictures of the various renovation projects that they will do! On the way home, Karen and I plotted a garage sale to help the ongoing “cleaning out the old house project”.
I had a lovely birthday dinner with my folks and youngest brother Pete at the family’s perennial favorite Real Seafood Company. Any excuse for seafood! I get the opportunity all the time now due to my proximity to the ocean, but I never turn down good fish!
Quite a bit of hauling things out of the basement, some bedrooms, and closets went on throughout the week. Karen and I had quite a successful garage sale on Saturday morning. We made about $300 on the stuff, but better than that, we got to get rid of many space hogging and never used items. Tim showed up with the kids and Karen’s whole clan had a picnic in the yard and the kids played around. They sure do love a garage sale!

After the sale was over Karen dropped some things at the PTO Thrift shop and put up an E-cycle Notice for the free pile that we left in the yard. Pete and I took some unsold sporting equipment to Play it Again Sports. They took more than half of it, adding another $35 to our total. The only casualty being Dad’s golf shoes that Play it Again took, but that he didn’t realize were on the way out. Bummer, but then again when’s the last time he went golfing? A further stop at the ReUse center netted Pete a turntable and me an emptier car.
Over the weekend some work happened at the new house in the basement. Mom got started on the front door staining and Dad and I chalked out the walls for the unbuilt rooms in the basement. We put up some shelves and shrank the pile of STUFF in the basement.
There were also varied attempts to find some old fashioned cinnamon donuts like you get at the apple orchards or pumpkin patches. Unsuccessful, I might add. So we had to settle for Fragels. For those of you uninitiated, a fragel is a cinnamon raisin bagel that is fried like a donut and then rolled in cinnamon sugar. Tasty!
The folks and I had dinner with Karen, Tim and the kids the night before I headed home. They were hilarious, as usual.
On the way home I got a picture of the most entertaining thing along 75. In between Cincinnati and Dayton there is a church that has really gone the extra mile. This picture isn't very good, but it really is an enormous concrete Jesus rising out of a lake! Home again home again, I have been busy with the markets and a union call this past Sunday. Disney Live is the heaviest kids’ show I’ve ever put together and taken apart. I’m a little sore today, but the payout will be worth it. The lowest rate all day was time and a half, and at times it got up to triple time! Sweet!

Long Time No Post

Busy and unmotivated, in equal combination, have led to no blog posts in a while... Sorry about that.

John and I attended GreenFest on Saturday. It was a full day market with restaurants, breweries, bands, non-profits, artisans and farmers all celebrating their "green-ness". The whole event was solar powered which was a lovely idea, but the 90+ degree weather and the 2 old warehouses that it took place in were a murderous combination. We got there shortly before 8 to set up and were ready to go by 9 for the opening. It was a disappointing morning in the sales department, but we had a great time people watching and talking to people stopping by. John left around 1 to head to his afternoon local call at the Trade Center.

During the day there was a yoga studio leading classes in one corner and the Adopt-a-Pet people were walking around with a selection of cute but panting rescued animals. I'm not much of an animal fan in the first place, but the last thing I'd want when dripping sweat, would be a similarly sweaty dog hanging around. Those people were saints! There was a moment around 2:30 when I thought to myself "is this what heat stroke feels like?"

The sales picked up in the afternoon with the arrival of more people (not that it was scarcely attended in the morning, but Savannah is a city that likes to sleep in on the weekends) and we ended up meeting our goal. Some new items at this market were laptop sleeves and all purpose wrist purses. Also, I sold a few things that had been hanging around the shop for quite a while. Bonus!

John got back about 6, just in time to load up and get back to our blessedly air conditioned house. We celebrated with turkey burgers and ice cold Red Stripe. Ahhhh.

The Storm Door (and a Patio Tour)

Not in time for the hurricane, but not too late either, the storm door was successfully installed today! And our only hurricane damage was a weird hole in our siding that exposed the Tyvek underneath. We found a small chunk of brick that was the likely culprit. Back to the storm door..... About a month ago we had a sideways rain. The rain was particularly insidious due to it's ability to go up the slight hill of our patio threshold and then into the kitchen. So we decided we'd like a storm door. If you haven't seen it personally...our patio has fake french doors on it. As in, only one side opens, the other is just a window. The butt came with the patio.
We discovered, at Lowes, that standard storm doors don't fit fake french doors very well. We determined that we needed to build out the mullion strip between the door and the not-door so that it was the same profile as the outer edge of the fake french doors.John checking the measurements. again. and again.

So we ordered the door we wanted and set about the not too urgent process of padding out the mullion strip. By the time our door came in we went out of town and then we got a hurricane. Good timing, right? But after the hurricane we had a not too rainy day and were able to put the thing up. This picture isn't a closeup because this was our first mullion strip modification and it was not perfect. Not bad, but not perfect. Highly functional though.
We installed the door and are pretty happy with it.
The coolest part of this door is that there is a roll screen in the top window that you can pull down when you want some air. John is clearly enjoying the breeze.
After the installation, we enjoyed some celebratory bratwurst; the traditional food of victorious home-improvers.

While we're out here on the patio, I'll give you a tour of John's green thumb summer projects.

That is basil in the brown/green pot and dill in the tan pot. The dill has a jalapeno pirate in it. Their roots are so enmeshed now that they can't be separated.
More jalapenos in the round tan pot, chives in the brown planter, and a gardenia from John's dad in the green planter. The giant green container behind the plants is the garbage pot.

This is the corner plant. Once upon a time we knew what it was, but that knowledge has been lost to antiquity and tours.

There is a dogwood tree also from John's dad in the round tan pot. Dan and Betsy bequeathed to us their thyme in the round brown pot. The square black pot is full of rosemary and the little white pot may be just dirt. And that is the last of John's "patio for orphaned and wayward plants".

Heather's First Hurricane

That's right, having been a resident of the South for 3 years now. I finally got a hurricane. (Well, almost. Technically, it's a tropical storm and I guess technically it's not mine.) However, all technicalities aside I am considering it mine, because it is wreaking boredom and annoyance in my backyard.

Unfortunately, John and I were unable to get our storm door up in time for numerous reasons (chief among them the fact that no standard storm door will fit our patio and retrofitting was necessary) and are now the disgruntled, cabin-fevered recipients of "under-the-patio-door-puddles". Grrr. 4 more days of rain and we'll be able to put that door up.

Peasant Dishes

Smoked Backbones (Pig)

This edition is dedicated to rib enthusiasts. Smoked pig backbones taste very similar to smoked ribs. The dining experience is a lot like that of eating St. Louis ribs. There is of course more bone and gristle with the backbones since they are in fact the spine of the swine. But I can tell you that the reward of getting every morsel of meat off the bone is so much sweeter.

According to Wikipedia, the pig was domesticated circa 5000 B.C. by the Chinese. Having been to China, I can vouch for their never-ending cuisine of pork. Throughout history, butchers, farmers and cooks have been using every part of the pig, yes, even the oinker in some regions of the world. The backbones are from the loin cut of the pig just above the spare ribs. Like I said, it’s the spine of our beloved farm animal. Now in keeping with our theme of peasant dishes, backbones are absolutely considered the throw away parts. The local butcher knows that the cut of meat will not fetch a high price. In fact, in your neighborhood grocery store, you’ll find them grouped in with ham hocks, turkey necks, and hog jowls. When you are looking for it in the meat section, look all the way at the end of the freezer. It is typically labeled smoked backbone. It is usually smoked for flavor these days. However, smoking and salting were used as a form of preservation before refrigeration.

The ingredients of this dish make pure comfort food. It’s hard to imagine that our peasant ancestors would have had time to enjoy it this way. They were just looking to stay alive during the winter. When I pulled the backbones out of their squeaky Styrofoam package, I knew that they were going to be good. The backbones were boiled for an hour until the meat was a Christmas ham red. You could just see that the meat was going to be tender. Flavorful and delicious can’t even begin to describe the taste. Just think of the best rack of smoked ribs you have ever had. Forget the barbecue sauce. You don’t need it. The potatoes were cubed and tossed into the backbone stew for the last 20 minutes of cooking. Potatoes love the water and they love to soak up any flavors that are near by. I like to think of potatoes as brown nosers. They will do anything to please you. Potatoes have no problem even changing shapes just to suit your palate. This time the potatoes had taken on the juices of the stew and had this ham-flavored, buttery goodness. I will take these potatoes over baked or mashed any day. Last, but certainly not least, the rice was cooked in the broth that was made from cooking the backbones and some baby lima beans finished it off. All in all, it was a sweet look back at the pig backbones

Backbones, the way I remembered them, were not as tasty as the ones that I cooked today. The backbones that I remember were greasy, brown, and not ham flavored at all. I think it’s possible that I was served beef backbone first, and that ruined my outlook on the backbone delicacy. Beef backbone needs a great deal more help to be savory like pig backbone. Maybe we can tackle that later. There is a famous picture of my dad eating what I believe is pig backbone at our family dinner table. The most striking thing about the photograph is that he is clearly, and appropriately, alone. And, here’s why.

When I cooked the ham hocks, I wasn’t true to tradition when it came to eating them. I didn’t get out the knife and carve every piece of meat and cartilage from the bone. True hock lovers are amazing to watch when it gets to this point. There wasn’t the slightest hesitation with the backbones. This time is got messy and personal. And it was private. I realized after the meal that it was a good thing that Heather had gone out to run some errands. There was carnage every where. I was wearing a gleaming grin with an overwhelming look of completion on my face. Nirvana had been reached.

The Recipe
Smoked Backbone (Pig)


1 to 2 lbs Smoked backbone
6 cups Cubed new red potatoes
1 cup Long grain rice
2 cups Baby lima beans
1 Tsp Salt
3 strips Bacon

Preparation: Fry bacon for 3 minutes in the pot that you plan to use for the baby lima beans. Let pot cool for 2 minutes. After cooling, boil the baby lima beans in the same pot in 6 cups of water with salt on high for 30 minutes then simmer on medium heat for another 30 minutes. Boil backbones on high in 12 cups of water for 40 minutes. Drain 2 cups of broth from backbones. Pour broth into rice cooker, or pot, and cook rice for 20 minutes. Add cubed red new potatoes to backbones. Add 4 additional cups of water to the backbones at this point and continue to boil on high until rice is done. Then make sure you have a small plate for the bones and a few napkins, cause es gone get messy.