On the Veranda...Bayside

Rainy Day, Great for Planning Projects

Oy Vey! I have overdone it again and must lie low today, but it is raining steadily and I have several projects going in my mind.

I picked up this lovely (but too big for me) skirt for next to nothing at the thrift store.  I love the lively French print and I'm going to make another apron out of it.  This time I want to copy a cute little ruffled one I found at an antique store in Selma, NC years ago.

It seems like every day, I use all of my available energy to cook, do laundry and iron, leaving no juice left for playing. Why do I do that to myself? Today I will take it easy and watch Downton Abbey. Randi has loaned me the first season DVDs and I love it! Also found a great book called Lessons from a Sewing Cafe/Sweatshop Paris. It's a little out there, but I got some good ideas and lots of internet addresses to very cool sounding French shops.

Time for me to lie down for a while, have a great weekend!

Coming to Life

It may be a false spring, but fabulous just the same!  Last weekend we took a break from the winter routine, took advantage of the weather, and went for a loooong bike ride.  We went to the Thoroughgood House to get a nice shot of The Legs for Auntie:

 
 
This is actually in the yard of the folks that live across the street from the T House.  These are barefoot in the summer and they put shoes on her in the winter.  Love it.....and thought you would too!

 
 

Then we cut through to the next neighborhood, after a stop at the Church Point bluff and a look at the water, took a path we've never been on around the golf course looking for a shortcut to Shore Drive.  Couldn't find one, but what a pretty ride. Rode down to the public marina, walked on the beach,

 

and biked back down Shore Drive to one of our fav spots, the Leaping Lizard:

 

I had the Apple Sandwich.  O.....M.....G.....it is lightly toasted rosemary bread, STUFFED with sliced, tart apples, caramelized onions, lean bacon, and gorgonzola cheese.  Of course, I couldn't eat much of it, but I gave it a go, and I think my eyes rolled back in my head and I left this plane of existence for a few moments!

We have also been reading Anthony Bourdain (love him), I got the NookColor and am reading Falconer this weekend.  I picked up some DVDs from the library, a great French film, Paris.  It was wonderful.  I love French films and movies based on French screenplays.  Richard Gere has done a few (and he isn't bad either!).  Steve is cooking away making stuff for the weekend.  Lasagna, potato salad, ham biscuits...................why, I feel like Scarlett (except for the lasagna)!

And I actually have accomplished something.  I have been in the Field of Dreams planting evergreen clematis on the trellis, which promptly leapt through the trellis on my side and wrapped its little tendrils around the neighbor's chain link fence, c'est normale!  Also transplanted from other spots, ivy, vinca, acuba, camellia, and more.  Raked up all the leaves and gave it lots of love.

 
 

I spied this lovely while traipsing back and forth to the utility shed:

 

So that's what we've been up to.  Don't even say the W word................just pray for better times:)

Housebound Hobbies

Oh, my, it has been a long week.  We have both been down with upper respiratory funk.  Feeling better now.  The down time did allow for lots more reading and finishing projects.  Steve is catching up on Hemingway and fixing the old dining room chairs, and here  is the scarf I finally finished for him.  Mom, do you remember the afgan you started for me when I first got married?  It was blue with cabled panels?  I can't remember if you ever finished it, because I don't have it, but I tried to recall the pattern and duplicate it here.
As you can see, I forgot to do the border on the ends and I left the mistakes in it.  The stockinette stitch was the border, then the seed stitch for the background, then the cables.  I told Steve it represents the waves (cables) and the sand (seed stitch), and the holes (dropped stitches) are the crab holes!

Alex got me The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman for Christmas, and what a great book it was.  It is a true story about Warsaw during the years of Nazi occupation, and because the main characters are the city's zookeepers, artists, and intellectuals, it deals with so much more than the war itself.  There are a few pictures, which are always interesting, but it is so well written you can visualize everything as if you were there.  Like any good book, it was a springboard for dicussing other topics as diverse as cave painting, political history, family history (Steve is Polish), and geography.  I love a book that lingers!

Another book I really enjoyed, that stayed with me for years is My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki.  It deals with Japanese and American culture, primarily as it relates to women's roles and manipulation by the media.  The parallel topic is meat.  I'll have to write about that separately, and speaking of meat......
 
 
 
 
 
 

a few more pictures of Steve making sausage before we got sick.  He makes his own Italian and breakfast sausages, and bratwurst.  And beef jerky.  I won't even touch raw meat, but when its finished, I'll help him eat it!

 

So much to write about, so little time!

This was New Year's Day dinner....  notice the black eyed peas.....Steve  has been having trouble frying his fish and seafood because he's been using a propane tank outside and he can't control the heat very well.  Frying indoors is out of the question because I can't stand the smell of grease, and our ceramic cooktop is so unpredictable, we try not to do much except boil things on it.

So....one of his Christmas presents was a deep fat fryer with temperature controls and a BIG basket.  Do you like it, Honey?

 
He says, "Yes!" And he made shrimp, calamari, flounder, oysters, and fried lemons, which I had never heard of.  That came out of a book he also got for Christmas, The Young Man & the Sea, an Italian seafood cookbook.  It was all delicious and the lemons were really good, they actually tasted like candy.

 

 

 

 

And we have been doing more than eating!  We have been reading and reading and Steve has been fixing all sorts of things around the house and I have been knitting.  Tomorrow I will post pictures of the scarf I just finished for him. 

The Veranda Perspective

I will admit that we are obsessed with the lifestyle of Italy and France. After visiting Italy, we spent months poring over Italian cookbooks, French cookbooks, reading and rereading Frances Mayes and Peter Mayle.  We talked for hours on end about how we admired the Italian way of life, their cooking, their attitude toward work, family,  government.

We read Heat. We discussed the French infuence on Italian cooking versus the Italian influence on French cooking. We longed for a life in the south of France or somewhere in Italy, but alas, our jobs require us to physically be right here in America.  We squirreled away our money and planned to go back, visiting Italy and France in the same trip this time. Then the house took over, as old houses will do.

We looked around and thought, "Would a European come here and immerse themselves in this culture?  Would they settle into this little neighborhood, enjoy the diverse and lovable people who live here, experience the trials and tribulations of restoring an old house, deal with crazy workmen, go down the street to fish in the bay, eat in the funky little restaurants, bike to the state park, visit the wineries, the farmers markets, well, you get the picture....What we do here at home is just as rich and stimulating as what expats do in France and Italy. 

Granted, we don't have the history.  Our neighbor told a little story at an oyster roast a few weeks ago.  One of her friends was taking her children to see the Adam Thoroughgood House for the second time because it was "a 400 year old house".  My neighbor said, "I didn't understand why that was such a big deal, where I come from, the pyramids are over 5,000 years old." 

But we do have a region overflowing with natural resources that we love to explore, and talented, intelligent people that we love and enjoy. So here is our life....the way we have lived it so far....the way we will continue to live it......until we return to Italy.