Guess What I Did on Saturday

Why, yes, you are correct -- I went to the Amherst Farmers' Market! And I had a fine time.

Of course, I had to make picio pacio with fresh basil and tomatoes. I did use shiratake angel hair instead of pasta.

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On Friday night, Cyndi and I went to see Finding Dory. I enjoyed it immensely. The animation was great, the voices were great and it was a relaxing escape from the real world.

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Fireworks in Cape Charles, VA, were wonderful. So was the company. Emily drove (God bless her!) and we arrived a day before our hosts. When I called David, he said, 'Go into the back yard and look at my tomatoes!' 

You see that bush that's taller than the six foot fence? Yup, those are his tomatoes. I think they are planted over a plutonium dump ...

The next day, Emily and I decided to treat ourselves to supper at the marina. It's a very casual fisherman's bar and restaurant. When we were leaving, we saw this:

You can't really see it from my cell phone picture, but it was actually a double rainbow. I had never seen one of those in person before this.

After all of the crew had shown up at the beach house (8 people, 4 dogs), some of us zipped over to the marina to meet the crab men.

This is a bushel of crabs. (The basket comes with a lid.) I wonder if they recycle the basket -- I'll bet they do.

This is the first cooked batch of three. David has perfected his steaming method to ensure even cooking. He only cooks 1/3 at a time. Emily fished the clawing crabs out of the basket and put them into the cooking strainer. My job was to spread the hot crabs out on the table so they would cool a bit. We covered a whole large picnic style table with crabs. And we sat crab picking for a couple of hours. I was trying to be neat, but I smelled like a giant crab. And Alec, was like a crab picking machine. He ended up with about 2 pounds of crab meat -- which Alex turned into wonderful crab cakes the next day. No wonder crab meat is so expensive!! It's hard work picking crabs!

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While at Cape Charles, Emily treated Jane (our hostess) and me to nail wraps. It was fun -- as long as Emily was applying them!

These remind me of Delft. They are called "Amsterdam."

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Got some new sandals.

They are fun, but I learned the hard way that if I wear them too long, the soles of my feet hurt. They have little raised dots that are supposed to massage your feet (I guess), but after a while, it hurts me.

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Who knew? Who knew that a "sirloin steak" from Aldis is a bunch of layers of thin beef? I should have known because the package said, "Great for fajitas!" So to fill the crockpot, I cut it into chunks, added a tiny bottle of red wine (individual glass sized bottle), mushrooms and onions and I got a wonderful beef soup! I then added shiratake "rice" and it's yummy!

I also made a veggie casserole with queso fresco. I used onions, green beans, zucchini, black beans (canned) and a bit of low carb tomato sauce.  Oh, yeah, when the casserole was in the oven, I also roasted some brussels sprouts. I did some more cooking for the week, but I don't want to bore you with it. I'm bringing lunch every day and I just heat up for supper so this method of cooking works well

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I got a new deck! Well, sort of. We were able to keep the stairs and the flooring, but all of the spindles and the top railings had to be replaced. I know I should have taken "before" pictures but it looked so awful -- unstained and very warped -- that I didn't. I'm very happy with it now. JB from across the street did it and today he refurbished my tired air conditioner in the kitchen. Yay!

I have been dying to put my umbrella table on the deck -- and it has been raining off and all weekend. I don't really want to encourage mildew on the umbrella so I will wait. It's a little deck, but it's what I could afford way back when and it's still a good size now. Neat but not gaudy!

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I worked some more on my landscape quilt tonight. I need to used several different colors of thread and it's a pain in the neck winding a bobbin for each color. At the same time, I was watching, "Dancing on the Edge" and "Endeavor" on PBS. I'm liking both series.

Oh, yes, I discovered "Marcella" on Netflix. It has six episodes. It's about a British detective who returns to work after a Mommy hiatus. It's not for the faint of heart! There is a serial killer murdering people by putting a plastic bag over their head and watching them die. Ugh, ugh, ugh. But I liked the rest of the drama. The last episode had one scary part that had me scream and leap out of my chair. 

On a brighter side, I have been watching "Transparent" on Amazon Prime (thanks to Emily). It's quite good with an ensemble cast. Jeffrey Tambor is an older actor who plays a dad who has finally decided to live his life as a woman. I've only watched three episodes, but he is struggling with telling his three adult children. His divorced wife is Judith Light (from "Who's the Boss?") and she plays a great Jewish grandma (aka Bubbe).