Faith, Family, Food and Dogs

As my days in this quaint little hamlet of maybe 5,000 people winds down I take a look back at things I will definitely NOT miss about the area and some that I will long for after I am back in Florida. What I will not miss is,,Snow, And more snow, And yes, even more damn snow. Three snow falls in a 10 day period in February. This last one was the worst. I actually had to get out and shovel the front walk and driveway. Thankfully a neighbor came to help with the driveway. There is a mason jar candle in there some where. This last snowfall was lovely, as long as I was inside. My poor girls had to go out in this. Looking out the front door you can see why I had to shovel the front walk. But, thankfully, I do not live in Siberia and winter does eventually come to an end. The days get longer and warmer, and the weeds take off with a massive growth spurt. But the Daffodils come up. Micheal had planted lots of them around the house. I wlll miss being able to go out and cut bouquet...

WARNING: This post has lots of granddaughter photos in it. For Savannah's second birthday I sent the girls to visit their "Aunt" Trudy for a couple of nights and headed to spend the weekend with my daughter, son in-law and most wonderful, beautiful granddaughter. By the end of the first night we had her saying "Hi Oma" and waving at me. Love the little munchkin to pieces. She is constantly on the move. Loves her sunglasses and her purse. She's heading out to the screened in lanai. Very intently watching, Ruby, their dog. The morning of her birthday Patricia wanted to make something really yummy for Savannah. I talked her into us making a run to Cinotti's Bakery and picking up a dozen doughnuts. Cinotti's has been around since the 1930s and is still family owned and operated. They are the very best bakery in the Jacksonville area. Now that we are all on a sugar rush we pile into the car and head off to a park. I don't remember the name o...

A few weeks ago, one chilly winter night, while having a glass with my neighbor, I was complaining about not being able to get Hawaiian style food here. Sherrie told me about a place, The Super G International Food Market, and said I needed to check it out. I went this past Sunday after church and oh my, was I a happy camper. I bought shrimp chips, shrimp snacks, fried fish cakes, cassava root (ate this a lot in the Bahamas), roast pork filled dumplings (a lot like Manapua from Hawaii) and pickled yellow radish. They also had guava juice, rice noodles, nori maki arare (rice crackers wrapped with seaweed) and fresh guavas. I picked up some huge chicken drumsticks and then snagged a package of frozen ox tails. Then this caught my eye. I have never eaten tripe before but I know my mother use to eat it. They had large bunches of collards for only $1.49 a bunch! Once I got home I ate a late lunch of shrimp chips, fried fish cakes and some pickled radish while looking for tripe r...

On Monday the 17th, this was the view out the bedroom windows. Cold, snow and ice on the ground, windy and did I mention its cold. For lunch I had a nice bowl of Julia Child's French Onion Soup Gratinee. I actually ate this for lunch for several days because I had leftovers which needed to be consumed. It tastes better than it looks. I had this little gem waiting in the refrigerator. 8.86 pounds of Boston Butt. My mind was on much warmer places so I decided to make an oven roasted Kalua Pork. There is no Kahlua in the recipe, its named after the cooking style. I rubbed the entire roast with liquid smoke then applied a liberal amount of Kosher salt. Just what my blood pressure needs, more salt. After being seasoned, I sealed the foil up very tightly and popped this baby in the oven. It cooked for 7 hours at 350 degrees. Once on the cutting board the bone fell out and I then shredded it. I ate it with Bahamas style peas & rice and some fried plantains. It was very go...

When I was down in Florida for my granddaughter's second birthday I spied something special in the Publix grocery store. I had not seen guava paste in years so I snagged a 4-ounce block. So what does guava paste have to do with dark rum? For the record they work well with this, and these lovely, meaty chicken thighs. I found a recipe for Guava Barbecue sauce which called for the dark rum, some tomato paste, ginger, soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. I am not going to post the recipe yet as it needs some work. Following the recipe the sauce had a strong tomato taste which almost over powered the guava paste and the rum. I need to play with it and when I like the result I will post the sauce recipe. For a side dish I fried up some green beans the way Micheal had taught me. The finished product was still pretty good, even if the sauce was not was I had hoped. But stay tuned.

When I crawl into bed at night I don't go right to sleep. I sip a glass of wine and watch a movie or two while working on my granddaughter's Christmas stocking. For some reason I decided to watch both of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies. The turtles love pizza and that got me thinking about pizza. I already had some cheese in the fridge from my last trip to Costco for dog food. Hmmm, what sort of toppings should get. I went to my local grocery store and picked up some fresh spinach which I sautéed. Then I sautéed up some sliced portabella mushrooms. My cheese just happened to be a 10.5 ounce log of goat cheese. Add a few cloves of chopped garlic and two onions that I sliced then caramelized Make a homemade crust and put it all together. The finished product. I loved the toppings but the crust needs work. I wanted a thin crispy crust and while this was fairly thin it was not crispy. There will be further research on that matter. I still have anothe...