Sweet and Savory Cafe

On our long date to Wilmington yesterday, Adam and I ate dinner out. We planned carefully to eat at one place, but arrived at 3:30 to discover they were closing at 4:00. It was raining steadily outside, and we needed a restaurant where we could sit, warm and dry, until the real event of the date (which I'll share in the next post). We ended up eating at The Sweet and Savory Cafe, and we're so glad we did!

Adam said to  give them a very good review and take a picture of their kitchen -- that real "foodies" would care.

This eatery started as a bakery. Unlike most restaurants, which get their meals off the Sysco truck, a bakery prides itself in making food from scratch. They still sell delicious sweets:

When they expanded to a full restaurant, they maintained that made-from-scratch approach, and we could tell Adam could tell from their food. (I don't have a very elegant palate.) They stock a lot of wine and had $2 draft beer, which is an excellent deal. 

I had hot tea because it was cold and wet outside, and we were destined to become much colder and wetter before the night was finished! (I'll leave you guessing what our date would be.)
Adam ordered the Don't Mess With Texas plate, spicy smoked brisket and homemade potato chips, plus those crunchy onion rings, all made in house.

I don't like sandwiches with big hunks of bread, so I ordered the meatloaf plate. Their meatloaf is made with veal, beef, and pork, topped with a sweet tomato jam, greens, and homemade mashed potatoes. It was delicious and not over-filling.

Adam was so enthusiastic about his meal. Often after eating out, he leaves the restaurant saying he could've made it better at home for a fraction of the price, and he is right. Not this time! Plus, it was not expensive. His meal was $9.99, and mine was $8.99. We split the chocolate cake too. If we return to Wilmington, we'll definitely eat there again.

Saigon Asian Market

 Adam and I regularly need items from a South Asian market -- Pakistani/Indian foods. They sell the tea items for my chai and the spices Adam prefers to cook with. Today we drove to Wilmington, NC for various "to-dos," and visited the Saigon Market. It's the best Asian grocery we've ever found.

 First, I was hunting a good tea base for my chai. I've used this (above) for the past couple of years, and the bag was getting low. I found two more bags. This will last me at least five years.

Adam found both course and fine semolina flour, a Middle Eastern flour he's never found before, and has needed for several breads he wants to make. He was thrilled!

Also below you see whole star anise, which I was nearly out of, a ginger powder drink, and (in the tin) lots of whole nutmeg and part of a bag of mace he bought. Mace is the husk of a nutmeg. It has a lovely scent, a little milder than nutmeg.

They also carried the first tea base I ever bought for my chai, an Assam, so I bought a small bag of it also, and below you can see the mace again. It's so interesting looking!

Adam found some soy sauce (we were out) too. I was tempted by so many items, but restrained myself. Wilmington is only two hours away, and I'm sure we'll go back sometime. I loved the tiny Asian bowls there -- like little finger bowls. They sell all the whole spices I love to keep on hand: allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom. Having a kitchen with bags of all these spices makes me feel ridiculously wealthy. Asian markets sell these spices in quantities that show they are food, and meant to be eaten more than a 1/4 teaspoon at a time, ground up as we Americans buy it. If you have an Asian market in your town, be adventurous and go roam their aisles. You may find something to love.

We had other adventures in Wilmington today, and I'll share those with you next time --

Of Books and Happiness

I have loved books and reading all my life, but in recent years my reading habits have declined. I read voraciously as a child, avidly as a young adult, and sporadically in recent decades. I have lots of books I've loved.

 

Above are my favorite books. Below are the children's books I've collected.

 But for all of my love of books, how much do I actually read? Not much. I read for a few minutes before bed each night, perhaps a page or two. It's shameful! I claim to be a reader, a book-lover. I feel like someone who claims to love traveling but no longer owns a passport.

What happened? I'll tell you what happened. #1) I had children and began working. #2) The internet invaded my personal time. 

Reading takes mental energy; it is no passive activity. One must engage the story and retain information from the previous 220 pages in order to comprehend the remaining 156 pages.
Right now, that's where I am in Tolkien's The Silmarillion.

It's a thick read, compared to many. I spend much time thumbing through the Index of Names in the back, reminding myself where Dorthonion is, or who Finrod Felagund is. Tolkien's world is worth knowing, worth turning my brain on. But if I read it two pages at a time each evening, I'll finish sometime after 2020!
Under our Christmas tree are about a dozen books for me. (That's embarrassing.) I do love books, I love finding them, and buying them, and fingering them. I told myself, "These are my reading list for the next year." But truthfully, I did not finish my books from last year. Some still sit in their pile, under dust. 
I must get after it, discipline myself, and become a reader again. I must keep my brain engaged, stop scrolling Facebook, and make myself sit for more than five minutes at a time, and put pages between my fingers. Mustn't I?
Have I lost my love of books? Is it wishful thinking to want to be a reader again? Have I lost my ability to concentrate on a plot? Can my diminished brain only be entertained by a screen? Oh, I hope not.

I finished "Punkin and the Littlest Mouse." Here is the cover.

We will be making copies soon at Staples from this original. The cover will be card stock, and the pages will be regular paper. The illustrations will be in color. If you already told me you want a copy, I have your name on a list! If you haven't told me, do so. 

I want to return to books. Somehow, I must extricate my brain from my laptop and immerse myself again in a slower, more creative world, a happier world with less bickering, politics, medical advice, and national tragedy. Don't worry -- I'll still visit your blogs :)  But if I'm not here as often as before, you'll know ... I'm just reading. And being happy.

Christmas Cheer!

For Adam and me, the Christmas festivities began on Saturday night in Oriental, where our church served hot cider and cookies in the freezing rain to the hardy souls there for the lighting of the star and the Spirit of Christmas events in town.

This included a flotilla of kayaks decorated in holiday lights (including a massive inflatable swan that we saw running down the street beforehand.) Only in Oriental!
Nautical street lights are the norm.

 

Boats large and small were bedecked and lit.

Another fun doing was a little lunch for four ladies from our church. Three of us visited a (slightly) older lady, bringing along a lunch of egg salad, celery and peanut butter, and a warm fruit pie. She was delighted, and we enjoyed her immaculately decorated home. What a treat! I got no photos except this gorgeous poinsettia.

The next day Adam and I went to the Episcopalians' Christmas Tea. Lovely tables were set.

I couldn't resist sneaking a peak at the pattern names of some of the china. Isn't this one lovely?

The nibble were quite yummy. I had a few of these.

We sang carols and silly songs and laughed. That was Tuesday. Wednesday it was very cold. Adam made soup. Today I returned to a local assisted living facility with a friend, to sing Christmas songs there with the sweet ladies. I knitted at prayer shawl group this morning, and Adam spent the day in "big town" with an elderly parishioner at several doctors' offices. Tomorrow we have been invited to a Christmas dinner. The busy season is upon us! It's rather exhausting, as Trixie demonstrates:

I apologize for her somewhat indecent posture. She is "draping" - hanging her head over the edge of the couch.

She's also stretching out with her ever-lengthening legs. We call it "long-doggin'" around here. She's so snoozy at night.

She's about 13 pounds now. Her coat is slowly fluffing and growing. You can see the tufts around her fanny. She's also quite fluffy around her neck, and she's developing feathering on her tail, and wavy patterns on her back, plus several cow licks on her chest.

Her silly face, however, remains rather common and speckled, and with her big ears makes her look like a small shepherd of some sort. We haven't figured out her genes yet.
Adam continues to bake and I continue to knit, but nothing new or extraordinary. We await the arrival of the two girls sometime in the next week or so. Then Christmas will seem to have come. For now, we are doing "social Christmas" and being snoozy with the dogs. Oh ... and watching "The Crown" on netflix. If there's anything more unusual that the British monarchy, it's the BBC's imagination of the British monarchy!

He Bakes to Cope

The weather has turned cold and wet. Adam is miserable. Nothing gets him down like bad weather. Soggy, bone-chilling weather drives him straight to the kitchen, and he starts to bake. He made lovely sweet-potato rolls.

Then he made a first, and a second, loaf of Challah bread.

He came in the bedroom this morning (where I sat huddled in my chair under many layers) and asked, "Do you want potato soup or French onion soup?" I said potato. I told him, "Now don't make any more bread." I know how he is. But it was too late; he already had a batch of focaccia in the oven.

Add to that the batch of oatmeal/cranberry cookies he baked yesterday --

-- and the tray of cracker cookies I made, and it's ludicrous that we still consider ourselves to be dieting. Those cracker cookies, BTW, did not turn out like the cute facebook video promised. The saltines turned soggy, the chocolate chips refused to smear, and Adam told me to throw them out, which I did not.
In spite of our dead heat pump and temps in the 30's, we are actually warm enough with three of these:

A small house is easier and cheaper to heat and cool, even if its roof somehow mysteriously still leaks :(

The Christmas season is upon us! Last night we went to Pamlico Chorale's Christmas concert at the Methodist church in Oriental. It was lovely! In spite of reduced number and limited male singers, I thought it was a fun, sweet, pretty concert. It's so important, no matter what group you're in (church, choir, family, neighborhood) to remain optimistic and happy when people leave. Be thankful for who's there.
I'm plotting my own Christmas music, setting two songs for autoharp. It's challenging and fun to find the chord structure and make it work on an instrument with only 15 chords.

"O Come, Little Children" is a solo for tomorrow (2nd Sunday in Advent). Rutter's "Nativity Carol" was more challenging. I couldn't find its chords anywhere online, except it was in the key of D major. If I'm brave maybe I'll record myself singing and playing for you. Hmm. I might need more rehearsal.
The house is decorated at last.

 

 

I intend to continue my Jesse Tree and lighted village even without children living at home. My mother-in-law said wisely this morning that as you age you enter into a second childhood of sorts, when you may do as you please as long as you don't go to town in your robe and slippers. Much of my Christmas stuff was for the kids when they were little, but I love it still.

And that made me think that after I finish this story about Punkin and her baby mouse, I should write  a little farm story about Christmas. I understand Beatrix Potter a little; watching the small animals on a farm gives you limitless material for stories. A little sparrow just lit on my window. The chickens are mincing their way through wet leaves. Sometimes I hear a little mouse crunching away on a poison trap in a closet. Ned is afraid of the rain. We saw a small squirrel leap from tree branch to tree branch -- almost -- attempting to escape the dogs and reach the orchard. It fell quite far through the air and landed in a small apple tree, unhurt.

My little oil heater is gurgling as I sit in my studio and watch the mud puddles and the birds, hunting breakfast. I skipped the farmers' market this morning. It's 37 degrees, Adam says. 
Stay warm, folks, wherever you are!

It's SpringAutumnWinter ~

Around here, we get confused about the seasons. It was 70 degrees today. By this weekend, our lows will be freezing. Technically, it's autumn, but everybody else is having blizzards and ice. In this part of the South, December and April feel similar.

I'm drinking hot tea each day. I made a quick little cozy for my mini-teapot out of ultra-bulky yarn.

My daughter-in-law Shani works for the amazing greeting card company, Love Pops. They make cards so gorgeous that they are gifts in themselves. Peter sent me a dragonfly!

See how he perches on the lily pad? Look at his lacy wings!

Adam baked some apple turnovers on a chilly day. When weather turns cold and damp -- especially if it's rainy -- Adam bakes.

The apples and sultanas had been soaking in vodka for three months. The alcohol, of course, cooks out during the baking, but the fruit is left with a lovely, rich taste.

The first Sunday of Advent was also communion at our church.

The Bradford pear trees in front of the church are gorgeous right now, the perfect shade of autumn orange.

Trixie loves to play in her daddy's straw piles. She's becoming long-legged.

While snipping willow wands, I discovered an oak tree, cut off and scrubby like a bush, but it has the most wonderful color in its leaves! Here are a few:

Next to it, a crab apple is in its yearly state of confusion about whether to bloom or not.

A couple of our fig trees are similarly baffled about what season it is ... springautumnwinter?

I'm slowly making progress in my spinning. I'm more nervous about launching into this craft with reckless abandon than I usually am. Initially, I had raw alpaca fleece but none of the tools needed to process it. Adam made me a second hackle with the tines set closer together.

He also made me a new diz from a cut piece of PVC pipe, with multiple holes of different sizes for pulling the fiber through. I've made three nice coils of roving now, more consistent and better quality than the first I did. I'm hopeful. 

I don't know that I'll be able to really process yarn well until I somehow acquire a spinning wheel, but I'm having fun nonetheless. I'll probably end up with bags of roving, in anticipation of getting a wheel at some point. I bought a dog grooming comb with tines perfectly spaced for alpaca, although the tines are rather short. Adam plans to make me combs too, with longer tines.

Here's a video I've been enjoying of a lady in Virginia who clearly adores having fleece and fiber in her hands. I listen to her as background because I enjoy her voice and her devotion to the craft. This is what I aspire to be!