Happy Thanksgiving.

I was musing this morning while prepping our dinner, and it was such a good muse that I thought -- must write this down. I was chopping cabbage for our cabbage salad -- it's a dish from Jim's family -- some call it "Aunt Rita's Cabbage Salad" referring to Jim's Mom; some say "Gram's Cabbage Salad" as in his Grandmother, but I always think of it as "Pap's." 

The Hovey family cabbage salad is extremely simple -- chopped cabbage, finely shredded carrot (for color), mayonnaise (Hellmann's), pepper and maybe some paprika sprinkled on top. The absolute most important detail in this recipe is the word "chopped." Not box-grated, not sliced, not pulsed in a food processor. It must be hand-chopped as small as possible with a very sharp knife on a cutting board. 

In the 70's we used to eat many Thanksgiving dinners at Gram and Pap Hovey's. We lived around the corner from them and I would pop over early in the morning for coffee [a treat in itself for coffee-lovers -- Pap would make the coffee the night before in one of those old metal percolator pots and just heat it up in the morning--STRONG and so good]. Anyway, Pap would be at the kitchen table hand-chopping the cabbage, methodically and slowly. Gram would sidle over to the table once in a while and push around some pieces on the board and smile and say "oh yes, that looks good." It's a tough job and takes about an hour to chop a good-sized head of cabbage, but I am totally convinced that it's the chop-chop-chop that makes it Pap's Cabbage Salad. 

Oh, I could go on for days about French Canadian cooking -- Gram's pork, potato and sage stuffing, tourtiere, boiled dinner, potato soup (no cream or milk), apple dumplin' (whipped cream always). Yum, tres nostalgique right now. Also faim. --cds

Again With The Randomness

I glanced at the February 15 date of my last post and thought, huh... not all that long ago, but then realized it was a freaking year ago.  It's funny how even in a retirement community Sunday mornings are more quiet than other mornings.  And when it happens to be a gorgeously sunny 74 degree morning, cloudless sky, slight breeze fluttering the palm branches, mockingbirds all atwitter, I don't want to be anywhere except my front porch.  Felt like writing this morning, so here I am.

Like many others, I'm done watching network news.  I keep a local news app on my phone along with our county sheriff's emergency notifications, but other than Skyping and keeping in close touch with kids, we're isolating like nobody's businesss.  Personally, I am a very patient person and have no trouble with waiting, but when we don't really understand what we're waiting for?  To become sick? To hear that, God forbid, loved ones are ill? Seems perverted somehow. I don't like it.

So that's that.  I'm gonna take a break to grab some hand stitching to bring out here on the porch.  Did I mention how gorgeous it is outside?  Oh, here's an awkward and probably fuzzy photo of my front porch.  It's small, but I had James build us a bench for added seating and/or napping.  Mostly napping.  The oilcloth striped skirt is temporarily duct-taped until I decide how I want to make it permanent, but you get the idea. --cds

Still Here!

Today's haul from the Farmers Market is brought to you by the Vitamin C.  Perhaps a strawberry-orange cocktail concoction will be prepared for this lovely Friday afternoon.  --cds

Randomness

My,  what a fine blue and green day it is.  That phrase just popped into my head today -- I've read it before somewhere -- and it perfectly describes our weather.  After yesterday's line of windy, rainy thunderstorms blew through, knocking out our power for a bit, we woke up to a breezy, cool, sunny and bright as all get-out morning.  Shiny grass-green palm fronds waving against a bluebonnet sky are making me happy today.  'Course I believe I was thinking pretty much the same thoughts last evening, sitting here on the porch and watching charcoal-colored clouds race west to east and thinking how silvery and ominous palm branches look bending flat in the blow of a storm.  I do love weather.  And palm trees.

Speaking of trees, last week I watched as one of our neighbors out back had the beautiful magnolia in his yard hacked down by tree murderers.  And it was in bloom!  I couldn't bear to watch. 

Something much more pleasant -- updates on grandchildren!  First day of school photos from September 2017:  Isabella is a freshman, age 15;

Evie is in the 5th grade, age 10;

Ruthanne is in 2nd grade, age 7, and Marcus is in Pre-K this year; he just turned 5.

Both Utah and Vermont gathered here in Florida with us in December for our first Christmas together ever!  It was lovely, so much fun.

Morning golf cart ride in Christmas jammies.

Since January, Jim has been to quite a few Classic Car shows with his old truck.  I like to go if it involves travel to shows in more rural Florida -- we avoid I-4 and I-75 and stick to back roads through south-central Florida -- it is countryside worlds (ha!) away from tourist-Florida, just pasture, farms, beautiful old trees and swampy rivers. Lots of cows and horses, hawks, osprey, herons and egrets.  I am on a quest to spot a Florida panther.

I notice I need to do a little housekeeping on my blog.  Some of those "favorites" on the sidebar no longer exist.    --cds

Lucky

I just took a few pictures of our community post-Irma.  No one's home was badly damaged, thank goodness.  Mom's roof lost some shingles, so she's one of the very few around here with a blue-tarped roof.  We'll get it fixed in the next few weeks.  So many people along the coast are still in bad shape, flood and power-wise.

Slowly getting my home back in order -- I had emptied the china cabinet and put all breakable treasures in the dishwasher; cherished books (ha! aren't they all??) and photo albums went into plastic bags-into suitcases-into plastic bags; frames and mirrors were taken down from walls; and since I've been trucking them around with me for nearly 60 years.....

Barbie, Barbie and Ken rode out Irma packed safely away in a suitcase.  Lest you think your Family Curator has not been taking her job seriously of late, rest assured that the dollhouse and other ancestry notes, ephemera and photos were safely packed and bubbled wrapped inside our shower stall surrounded by quilts and pillows.

So I'll be back at the unpacking job later today.  But first, a swim, then a smoothie.  Hooray for normalcy.  --cds

Power!

Just popping in briefly -- after five sweltering days and nights, our power is back on.  Many many thanks to every lineman working out there in this awful heat and humidity on our behalf.  All else is all good here in our little sphere.  No real structural damage, no hurt neighbors, we have food and good water.  And now, coolness.  Think I'll google the inventor of air conditioning and set up a little shrine or something.

Back soon, I pinky-promise, because I have Vermont pictures to share.  --cds

Gimme Shelter

Oh, of course this song has been running through my head the past few days.  So here is our updated, final, not-changing-our-minds, let's do this, hurricane plan.  For the past six days we have had various ideas on how to survive this nasty-looking storm, including hotel reservations just north of Atlanta (the closest I could find along the routes North, no lie).  That was Tuesday.  After a long week of careful consideration (panic, yelling, endless supply gathering, drama -- literal drama, too: Evie desperately wanted us to drive to Utah and after gently explaining that could not happen, she composed an interpretative dance for us via Skype that involved much shouting of "Death"  "Destruction" and falling gracefully to the floor), we agreed to stay in town, but head to the public shelter, our local high school around the corner.  But......, I kept visualizing ourselves spending two days in a high school gym with a thousand other people, waiting in a bathroom line for God knows what sort of facility.  Big ugh.  I have real trouble as it is just walking around our very odoriferous local flea market.

Therefore, in true Claudi-style, yesterday I tried making a last ditch reservation at a Disney resort and managed to snag two nights at one of their value hotels -- around a hundred bucks a night and so totally worth it to me!  Just one visit to a clean bathroom of one's own is something I would definitely pay for.

I realize I sound very shallow and persnickety, but I figure I'm quite willing to pay and get out and leave my space in a shelter for someone who really needs it.  And so, this morning we will head up I-4 through the already visible bands of showers and breeze and be safe and sound in a block building that hopefully will not blow down.

I'll be back tomorrow with an update on our encounter with Irma.  --cds