So...whats for dinner?

Susan - everyone I know who has either offered space or used an airbnb location has had a totally separate space. This included a separate entrance, at least a minimal kitchen, usually a big new fancy bathroom, etc. Seems like some of the locations in CA are illegally converted garages. Others are converted "pool houses" or mother-in-law conversions. With separate outside entrances, they are not in the B&B category & renters don't mingle with the owners, or even necessairly come face to face. I've never tried it myself but will be interested in the responses & your findings.

Sunday lunch was a marvelous Prime Rib French Dip at a local Italian place. Melt in your mouth. It came with fresh asparagus and a ton of thin fries dusted w/onions. My SIL had chicken piccata. My BIL was on a diet so he just had guacamole and ceviche. The ceviche looked like maybe it had baby shrimp. Of course by the time he had all the chips, I'm not sure it was diet food.

Then we went downtown hear the Christian McBride Trio do a performance with the Houston Chamber Choir. The trio was amazing. I would think it's hard for a jazz trio to really 'get down' in a large theater/auditorium (this is where the opera is performed), but you could hear every note & feel every syncopation. We were on the 3rd row so we could see their facial expressions. They were fully involved making music whether we were there or not.

Somewhere - maybe this thread - there was discussion of the King & I revival. One of the songs McBride played on the base w/a bow was I Have Dreamed. It was so beautiful it pulled at your heart & I wasn't the only one with leaky eyes. His fingers just flew on Tangerine and Baubles, Bangles & Beads. Lovely afternoon.

Dinner tonight was hamburgers with blues cheese crumbles mixed into the meat, and caramelized onions as a topping. I had a few half used bulbs of garlic, so I roasted them and made garlic and saffron mashed potatoes.

Paxton, The best way to reheat mashed potatoes is to use a double boiler. Fill the bottom pot about 1/3 with water, and put the potatoes in the top pot. Heat on medium low, stirring semi frequently as the potatoes start to cook. If you don't have a double boiler, you can use two different sized pots that fit easily into each other. But be careful that the pots don't become attached once they are heated.

Carole, thanks for the cream cheese idea. I'm always looking for different ways to spruce up mashed potatoes.

Bedo, if you have access to clams, please share!

Your pasta clam dish sounds delightful.

Special - adding more wishes for an unremarkable post-op tomorrow.

Grrrr...lost a post...closed the web browser by mistake, so it was my fault.

I kept 25 year old dishwasher going until the parts were no longer available. The new one is very, very quiet, cleans OK and takes forever to complete a wash cycle.

Duck eggs...I've never tried cooking/baking with duck eggs. I did some quick reading and it looks like albumen is what makes things "fluffy" and duck eggs have way more albumen than chicken eggs...interesting... :-) They also say that duck eggs have about three times the cholesterol of chicken eggs.

French Dip is one of my favorite sandwiches.

Good luck today SpecialK, I will be thinking of you!

We had broiled pork loin with garden salad and my pineapple, mango, red onion and avocado salsa. Very refreshing :-)

The duck eggs sounds like something I'd try. The high cholesterol kinda makes me baulk at the idea tho as I'm on meds for high cholesterol

Hoping you receive good news today, Special!

Minus (a backyard pool!), I'm impressed with all of your community effort to sustain swim recreation for the neighborhood. Your neighbors are very fortunate! I hope they appreciate all of your work. As far as trash, would it not be easier to ask all families to remove their own trash? At our lake beach, everyone brings their trash home with them when they leave....no trash cans needed! It works well, and we rarely see any errant pieces of trash left anywhere. Tho for your group I guess it would represent a bit of a cultural and mind set change since they have been used to having the "service". But.....change happens!

And change is here..... As I write this, the property across the street is noisily being denuded....of an entire corner "hedge" of huge 50 year old hemlocks, and two beautiful 100 year old oak trees. Yikes!! Hard for me to appreciate this "destruction" as "progress". And I seriously need to get earplugs if I ever want to "sleep in" during the next year while the new house is being constructed.

We attended a beautiful wedding on Saturday...the younger daughter of the friends with whom we usually have Christmas dinner married the younger brother of one of DS2's best friends, whose parents we also know. It was quite unusual here to attend a wedding with so many attendees having been "kids" and parents from my sons' elementary school. Such fun!! I re-connected with some folks we have not seen for over twenty years. So lots of great catching up in addition to a beautiful and very personalized ceremony over Boston Harbor, a lavish cocktail event and reception with delectable food and a great full band. I particularly enjoyed having a few young adult guests (who now live out of state) come over to "catch up" with us about our family. So sweet to see them in their "thirtysomething" selves. I was reminded of how fortunate we have all been to raise our children in this community of caring, hard-working families.

Yesterday, we dragged ourselves out of bed to chart out a furniture store hunt to buy a new easy chair for DH. We desperately need to dispose of his old one!! We trudged through one huge, then one smaller store with no luck finding a "stressless" style in a color to fit with our existing family room decor. By the end of the afternoon, we found ourselves roaming around Ikea looking for a planter I need to replace. The food aromas there convinced us to eat dinner on site, which we have never done. We skipped the Swedish meatballs, and I had a spinach salad with chicken, pecans, blue cheese and strawberries (sadly with a thick ranch dressing, all that was available....light balsamic would have been nice). DH had chicken florentine with mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables. We both enjoyed their corn bread, and shared a piece of apple pie which was good. While in the cafeteria line, I was horrified by the woman and man ahead of us who took at least seven desserts and kept exchanging them for ones they thought they would prefer. I hope they had clean hands since they left their fingerprints on all those dessert plates! Yuk!

Sorry for yet another very long post. Will post wedding food and pix later....

Great news, SpecialK!

carole - thanks! DH made dinner tonight - this is a rarity, but he did great! Sautéed some chicken andouille sausage, and then added some leftover heavy cream that needed to be used up, and some Cajun spice, then added some parm and cooked penne. It was delish! Not slimming, but yummy

That's great MOmmy! I planted zucchini and dill and watered the rest of the garden.

That's good news Special.

I will have mussels and fresh bread and butter for dinner. Mussels $1.99 per pound. It's almost like catfish in Georgia, "Buying that is silly, they are so easy to get, why buy?"

I know, but I'm lazy

Yay for good biopsy news, always welcome.

hsant, thank you for the potato info; I can see why a double boiler makes sense. Ina Garten says she "holds" her mashed potatoes by the homemade double boiler, i.e., a bowl over a pan of hot water.

Paxton, that Ina is one lovely cook! And manages to show the rest of us how to make good food in the most painless way!

Special, mostly yay! Do I recall this allergy issue being an issue after another surgery you underwent? Hope it resolves without too much of a problem, and you can be on your way to comfort!

My day was partially pre-occupied with the noise and view of the lot that was being denuded across the street. Oh my! It went from this...

To this...

I realized as the huge trees were felled that we will be investing in room darkening shades quickly, since those trees filtered the morning sun to our bedroom.

By the way, Susan, yes, you will love how quiet the new high end dishwashers are. Even our GE model in NH is wonderful in our open spaces there. Enjoy it!

Oh, I promised wedding food porn:

Some of the stationery apps during cocktail hour...a corned beef favorite of some sort for groom's Irish family, lobster sliders, and the obvious shrimp cocktail. Some passed foods were stuffed mushrooms, other seafood items, goat cheese stuffed dates, and etc., etc.

Main courses were filet mignon and Chilean sea bass, with wonderful vegetables and a corn flan, preceeded by the most wonderful hotel signature salad...super fresh lettuces over sliced red and yellow tomatoes, with avocado and crabmeat and a horseradish dressing that I only knew after I read it last night! I did not detect horseradish. The dessert tables were obscene. Here are just a few pix:

Delicious chocolate or vanilla cake with cream filled insides

So much variety of mini pastries

My "first" dessert plate...creme brulee, mini key lime tart, several chocolate items. Afterwards I had some cake...delicious!

Okay, there was also a sundae making station and warm oatmeal and peanut butter cookies...probably a throwback to the "kids" childhood favorites. I could not partake of either.

So after all that, DH and I, after dancing for a while, noticed the waiters bringing out more passed food items....hamburger sliders, and cones of french fries. We are shameless! We shared one of each...purely because they were offered by such nice servers. Such wedding meals are dangerous for me. I doubt that we will be attending many more affairs like this one. But as a foodie who also really enjoyed the community reconnect, I really loved his one!

To try to make up for these oral indiscretions, we spent a lot of time at the gym. I still cannot feel a love for Zumba, but do get the biggest kick out of our instructor who so enjoys doing it. At the end of class, she thanked us all for "coming to her party". Attitude counts for a lot with instructors!

Tomorrow off to the derm doc for my annual check up. So many changes to my face, I always expect the worst...fingers crossed. I escaped the mammo last week with purely the note about density but otherwise no findings, so hopefully tomorrow will turn outmokay too

That is good news Special. Clear biopsies.... (happy dance).

Minus, I have no desire for a pool at home. I'll pay the $1 for using the city pool. Pool work was one of the things I did to pay for school and I had my fill of pools! :-) As for the 1/2 french dip and bundlet being equal to two pounds...it's another example of life not being fair! :-)

Lacey it sounds like you almost had to sit in the middle for that wedding! Interacting with 20/30 somethings that one knew when they were kids is always a special thing. When I meet my "test daughters" and their families, it makes me smile....especially when I think that I'll be doing that someday with DD. The deserts...wow...I don't know how "good" I'd be under those circumstances! :-)

Hi Mommyof2. I don't mind hedge trimming..it's the cleanup afterwards that I hate...but I still do it.

I think I did the beef version of Wench's pork dinner. I've been doing so much pork lately that when I found a top round roast in the freezer, I pulled it out and thawed it. That, some potatoes, a salad and some store bought rolls, made up the rest of the dinner.

Special--yay for the results, boo for the allergies! Lori, there is no connection between dietary and serum cholesterol, as the latter is made in the liver but the former is digested and either assimilated or excreted. Duck eggs are so delicious and hard to find, so go for it.

Good news--Bob's lung CT scan came back "stable--no followup required.”

Last night’s dinner was at American Honor Ale House in Hickory, NC, after the benefit concert I gave for Vital Touch (quite successful--a full house and lots of money raised). It was so wonderful meeting and hanging out with Mary (HappyHammer), Cathy (mustlovepoodles) and her DH, and Mary’s sister Meg, who runs the place. It was my Southern Last Hurrah before going home to resume my dead-animals-and-leaves diet. At SERFA I had tried some biscuits & gravy and a sliver of coconut cake--as Southern as pecan pie. So for dinner I had a nice local NC Riesling, and spicy fried chicken (even the breast was juicy) with a side of tasso mac & cheeese. (Ate the leftovers for breakfast). Long day traveling, with a baggage snafu at Midway, so I was too tired to walk to B’way Cellars and feeling too cheap to order out for dinner. So I defrosted a Snake River Farms American Wagyu Ribeye filet and nuked some frozen grilled eggplant from Trader Joe’s. Seasoned the steak with espresso-infused sea salt & fresh pepper, grilled it and ate it with the eggplant sprinkled with truffle salt. Had some 2010 Signorello Estate Howell Mountain Vineyard (Napa) Cabernet Sauvignon, which I’d first tapped with the Coravin way back in Jan,--still tastes new

I forgot to add we are having leftover pork ribs with a vegetable medley casserole tonight.