You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
After the amazing wedding and week at the beach last month I had the pleasure of continuing my travels with a visit to my future son-in-law’s parent’s home on Long Beach Island (aka LBI), New Jersey. Long Beach Island is a strip of land on the Jersey Shore, just 18 miles long and half a mile wide at it’s widest point. It is a quintessential beach resort destination, where the population swells from 20,000 year-round residents to around 100,000 residents during the busy summer months. Did you know that the original Ron Jon surf shop was founded in 1959 in the town of Ship Bottom on LBI??
We started our journey on the Cape May/Lewes Ferry….a drive-on ferry that crosses the Delaware Bay, connecting Delaware to quaint Cape May, New Jersey. It’s actually not a faster route than driving, but so much more fun, with a different change of scenery.
We stopped in Cape May for lobster rolls and to get a pic of the Cape May lighthouse to add to my collection….
before continuing on to LBI and the charming, cozy Collery home. There was also the added fun of attending a going away party/shower for the future Mr. & Mrs. Collery at his sister’s beautiful home in Pennsylvania. (I can’t believe I didn’t get a pic with the Collery family, but got some great shots of the view from their LBI home.) Here’s a pictorial visit to LBI, including another lighthouse….Barnegat Lighthouse…
a short walk to the Atlantic a block away
the gorgeous view of the inner coastal waterway from their rooftop deck
standing in the same spot but turning North towards the little boat harbor
…it looks like a piece of Ireland..so green!
Sunset views over the inner coastal waterway…and morning walk on the Atlantic beach
Barnegat Lighthouse on the Northern tip of LBI….love the cloud formations
yummy dinner at Blue Water Cafe
Cake & party for the future Mr. & Mrs. Collery with the cutest baby ever…niece Cecelia.
the car is loaded up for the road trip…across the U.S…..
….made it to Aspen, Colorado…they’ll get to California today!!
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
I went and saw the movie Spy, starring Melissa McCarthy, this past weekend and it was fun…and funny! I love laughing out loud in a darkened theater…and I did it a lot during this movie. Melissa is so f-ing funny, although I could do without some of the visual barfing scenes. What happened to just hearing the sounds of someone about to hurl their lunch and using my imagination…why do I have to actually see that grossness now?
Anyway, good movie, but I have to share what I thought was such a weird, funny thing that happened in the movie theater. I get there and there are only two other people in the theater. The endless trailers for upcoming movies start and a couple of cute twenty-something girls comes into the theater and sit down in the row in front of me just to my right…giggling. So, they sit down, take out some snacks from their ginormous purses and then all of a sudden I look and they’re taking a little dog out of the purse. At first I thought, “Reeeaally…a dog in the movie theater…WTF!!”
But it was a cute, fluffy ball of what looked like a shih tzu or lhasa apso…adorable. They throw a little blanket over it as it sits in one of their laps. Then one girl hands the little pup to the other and takes out some knee high socks and proceeds to put them on. I was just chuckling to myself that these girls were making this their personal living room. The dog didn’t make a peep the whole movie and they stuffed him back in at the end and walked out. I loved their moxie and just the thought that it was okay to bring snacks, socks, a blanket and a dog into a movie theater. Next thing you know we’ll be hearing an announcement before every movie saying “please silence you cell phones and your dogs!”
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
I was looking down at this beautiful bracelet that my friend, Courtney, made for me and as we reach the half-way mark of 2015, thinking of my theme for this year…HOPE. I suddenly remembered a great song that I love on the topic.
When my daughter was in high school, I gave her a little book with the lyrics to this song…..and as they travel across the US on their adventure/journey back to California I hope she and her fiance are inspired, again, by the words & message…(..and from all the dancing last weekend at the wedding, I think they get it!) I never tire of listening to it and it makes me cry every time!
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
“We need hours of aimless wandering or spates of time sitting on park benches, observing the mysterious world of ants and the canopy of treetops.”…Maya Angelou
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
I am still reliving and recovering from an amazing week in Dewey Beach, DE to witness and celebrate the wedding of my son, Austin, to his beautiful new wife, Kate. I’m sure I’ll do a couple of posts in the coming weeks on the subject, and annoy some of you, but just had to share a few pics and this awesome video by one of the bridesmaids, Christine of c’est christine. She really captured the joy of the event!
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
My friend, Courtney, and I went to a great cooking class last week. We’ve been to quite a few together…San Francisco, Laguna…but this one was different. The others we’ve been to, and maybe you’ve been to too, usually do a quick presentation on a variety of recipes and then each group or team gets assigned one of the dishes to make. It’s still very fun, but in this class we were given a quick presentation of three recipes and then the two of us were able to make all three recipes. It’s just great to get to do the step-by-step hands on kind of cooking to really get the feel of how long a recipe takes and how it can be adapted to your home cooking.
The facility at Eat Street is great! It’s in the up and coming area of Anaheim in the historic district near the hip new Anaheim Packing District/Packing House…I still have to make it over to that place. Highly acclaimed and accomplished Chef, Katie Averill has round tables set up, welcoming you to just sit and chat and enjoy some iced tea, water or a glass of wine as you wait for others to arrive. When everyone is assembled we moved over to the cooking/demonstration area. Chef Katie did a very quick overview of the recipes, the facilities, what was where and then let us have at it! She has multiple stations, workspaces, pans, bowls, etc.. lined up so you’re not all sharing the same oven or waiting endlessly for utensils to use. She specifically instructed us in the art of “mise en place“, French for “putting in place” but as she explained, basically means assembling all of your ingredients first so you’re not running back and forth from cutting board to fridge to pantry. I had learned this technique/philosophy at the cooking class I took on the Seine on a trip to Paris and it just makes cooking so much more enjoyable and organized. With bowls & pans at the ready and ingredients assembled we were ready to tackle the recipes. Here you go….
Deep-Fried Green Olives Stuffed with Sausage
sorry…we ate the finished product so fast that we forgot to take pics
Stuffing…
1/2 tsp. olive oil
1 garlic close, minced
1/8 onion, finely chopped (she showed us a technique that makes this so easy)
1/8 # sausage without casings (we had 2 breakfast size sausages)
1/2 tsp chopped Italian parsley
1/8 tsp fresh oregano, chopped
1/8 c panko bread crumbs
6 brine cured large green olives, pitted and sliced open (we just used our thumbs to open them up a bit)
1/3 c. all-purpose flour
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 c. panko bread crumbs
oil for frying
Place saute pan over medium hat and when it is hot add your olive oil. Add onion and sausage & cook until the sausage has almost browned, then add garlic (so garlic doesn’t cook too fast and become bitter.) Off the heat add the parsley, oregano and bread crumbs. Stuff the olives with the mixture, keeping them kind of tight.
Prepare 3 bowls with flour, egg and bread crumbs. Roll olives in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs. Deep fry the olives until the breading is lightly browned…1-2 minutes.
note: The olive taste over powered the sausage a bit, so we’d need to either stuff them more or come up with an alternative (small colorful peppers??) vessel for stuffing to really enjoy the sausage. But..they were really good@
Tahini-Marinated Chicken Skewers with Honey, Yogurt and Ginger Sauce
Marinade:
2 scallions chopped
1/2 TBS peeled, minced ginger
1 garlic clove
1 TBS Sesame tahini
1/4 c. plain yogurt
1/4 c. water
8 chicken tenders
1 TBS olive oil
s&p to taste
Dipping Sauce:
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 TBS peeled minced ginger
1/8 c. chopped scallions
1/6 c. honey
1/4 c. plain yogurt
To make the marinade blend all ingredients in a food processor or blender. Pour marinade over chicken and refrigerate for about 20 minutes or so while you make the sauce.
Heat olive oil, add ginger, scallions, and honey and cook 1 minute. Let cool slightly and add the yogurt. Set aside.
Pull the chicken out of the marinade and season with s&p a bit. Cook chicken for about 4 minutes per side until golden on both sides. Enjoy!
We also made a Pizzette Bianco…and I may share that recipe at a later date, but I’m a lazy pizza maker and just buy my dough for Pizza Mondays! They sure were good with the arugula salad on top.
I would really recommend Chef Katie’s Eat Street. It was fun & organized and we met some nice people who had already been to two of her classes. I’m going to go to the “Date Night in Paris” when I get that date someday!! …or, in the meantime, one of the “singles” classes!
(Recipes re-printed & shared with permission from Chef Katie)
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
Last summer I had the unique, fun, opportunity to be part of the crew on a sail boat in the Thursday night “Beer Can Races” in Newport Harbor. My neighbor at the time, Suzanne, has been sailing for years and is the captain, I guess you’d call her, of a beautiful large sailboat…I’m not sure the exact size (…and Suzanne would not be happy that I don’t have the specs) but it’s under 40 feet with a little galley and place to sleep. It’s gorgeous, with it’s unique magenta hull and magenta lips printed on it’s main sail.
When Suzanne asked me if I wanted to go I was so excited! We ventured out a bit after 5 pm to get to the start around the 6 pm starting time (they start the really big boats first and go down in size/class from there.) It was so much fun just meandering over to the start, past the Harborside Pavilion and the Balboa Island Ferry. Then as we passed the check in/start boat it was time to jockey for position at the start….WOW!!!
Let me back up a little and give you a little history and explanation of the name “Beer Can Races.” They are historically very informal weekday races, as opposed to the very competitive ones that take place on the weekends out in the ocean. Legend has it that the name came from the inexperience of the racers who didn’t know about markers and just followed the trail of beer cans thrown over board by their competitors out front. I have no idea if that’s the real reason?…but I have no other reasonable explanation. Basically, just fun races on a Thursday night from mid- Balboa Island down the channel past Lido Island and back.
Well, as we jockeyed into position for the start we did some heavy tacking (or zig-zagging) back and forth across the harbor, missing other boats by inches. It was crazy and it was exceptionally windy this particular Thursday night! There were 4 or 5 experience people on the boat and I really thought I might just sit in the back and go from side to side as we tacked and just watched my head as the boom went by. That was not the case!! Suzanne instructed me to sit on the side of the boat with my legs dangling and one of the guys sitting next to me would let me know when to get up and go over to the other side of the boat, repeating my leg dangling and keeping my body on deck, my arms behind the wire “railing” (I’m sure there’s a more technical term for that.) As we tacked back and forth the guy next to me says “follow me” and “get ready to go” to which we both crouched down in preparation for going over to the other side of the boat. At this point the boat is deeply pitched toward starboard and as he says “GO!” I had to run up and hold onto the mast in order to keep from literally falling over the starboard side of the boat…and he had to hold on to me to keep me from falling. It was a literally frightening, but as we sat back over on the port side it was such an adrenaline rush…and I knew, with this wind, there was more to come. Yikes, it was hairy getting down that channel, but so much fun! The sail back up the channel was a bit more relaxed and I just had to stand with my body against the boom just helping to keep the sail forward as the wind died down a bit. What an amazing ride! When we were done with the race, we leisurely sailed back to our dock as the sun was setting and then sat eating hors d’oeuvres and enjoying some wine.
I’m hoping I get invited back some day this summer! It was an amazing experience….with some bruises to show for it!
You cannot direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails!
