November 20, 2008
Peoria, AZ
Well, I told you that we'd be getting back to our winter - and somewhat less interesting - routine. We're there! With Merlin's health scare over (as I type, he's barking at the front door because the UPS guy drove by), things have settled down very quickly.
Monday, it was time to give the pups a bath, which is always an interesting exercise when you do it in the kitchen sink. They emerged none the worse for wear, and Geri soon dried out. For dinner, we tried a new recipe, Mediterranean Chicken with Curried Rice Pilaf. This was a nice match with a young California Zin.
It was Geri's turn on Tuesday, with a planned trip to the hair salon taking up the morning and weekly grocery shopping in the afternoon. We took advantage of the fresh fish at one of the local markets to try another new recipe, this time Parmesean-crusted Cod (OK, the recipe called for Halibut but they didn't have any in the store) in "Crazy Water", which was excellent with (or because of?) a fine 1997 Brunello from the Wine Box. What the heck is "Crazy Water"? Acqua pazzo in Italian, it refers to a broth of vegetables and herbs, in our case zucchini, roasted red peppers, halved grape tomatoes, and kalamata olives. With some onion and garlic, and a dose of orzo, it made a nice resting place for the fish, which was roasted with a panko crust over a layer of pesto as a binder. Woo-hoo!
Yesterday and today involved a bunch of puttering around. I got out the tap and die set for the first time in a while to help out one of the neighbors who needed to fabricate parts for a new sink. Geri made a big batch of cookies, most of which are destined to be "thank you" gifts for the staff at the vet and emergency clinic who took care of Merlin early in the month. And, in one of those "why am I doing this again?" moments, I've been working on a "holiday letter" to include in with our cards this year. While it's difficult to boil down a year's worth of travel and experience in one page (at least without using the very small fonts), it's even harder to select a few pictures from the albums to include. Work on this continues, and eventually I'll wrap it up.
Dinner tonight was another winner: bowtie pasta with mozzarella-stuffed chicken sausage meatballs. The "everyday chianti" we had was slightly corked but drinkable, otherwise it was all good...
1 comment:
George, I too finished annual Christmas letter today trying to decide which pics to show even if they were in our blog. But many on our list don't use a computer so like a hard copy.
Have enjoyed the warmth and not looking forward to the cooling trend but guess it will be better than s----.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
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