Doray & Tom gave Monte a lime tree for his birthday (aka his “margarita tree”). It’s blooming out back, now. And after the blooms are spent, little baby limes are left behind.
Can’t wait for them to grow up. Monte’s standing by with the juicer at the ready. 🙂
This is the last of the lettuce that Monte planted about 6 weeks ago. It’s all rinsed and spun and ready to eat.
In its place, lots of basil seed has been sown — right next to the carrots, broccoli, and mystery squash.
I had a nice time last night. First, dinner at the Grove Wine Bar. Can you believe that appetizer plate?! I had wine flight #1, bubblies from Italy & France. Monte had flight #8, Italian reds. The cappuccino afterwards was almost too pretty to drink, but I’m glad I did, it was one of the best I’ve had in a long time.
Then we headed to One World Theatre for the Diane Schuur concert, which was great. She played for about 2 hours… with someone on drums, sax and bass. She sang numbers from Duke Ellington, Chuck Mangione, Stevie Wonder, and Patsy Cline, to name a few, and ended with Amazing Grace, one of my favorites.
A lovely evening, indeed.
This is the weekend of the annual Houston-to-Austin MS-150 bike ride. I don’t ride, but I am a sherpa (along with Irene) for 3 friends that are riding: Lori, Doray and Laura. For the last 10 years or so, they have been riding and fundraising for the MS-150. And I ride in the truck with them from Austin to Houston. We eat every year at Lomonte’s, an awesome Italian restaurant right off I-10. We stay in the hotel overnight. I take them to the start line in the morning, and then drive the truck back home. It’s a sweet deal for me, because I’m home by 10AM saturday morning. They pedal their way back all-day saturday and sunday.
It’s a fun girls’ weekend – for a good cause. 🙂
Nuff said. Nite nite.
I love that it’s getting dark later these days. I can get more things done after work. But it does tend to make the days longer.
Tonight it was 8:30 by the time we both sat down and and starting thinking about what to do for dinner. So, we decided to pop out for a quick, late, bite. We ended up at our local pub, BB Rover’s.
BB Rover’s is a great bar. Good food. Nice patio outside. Tons of beer. They have over 300 beers from all over the world to choose from every night. They have a tradition at BBs – once a patron has tried 100 different beers, their name goes up on the 100 Beer Club wall of fame. Don’t worry, you don’t have to drink all 100 of them in one night. 🙂 To help keep track, they have a form that you can use to check off different beers as you drink them.
We’ve been going to BBs for a long time…over 16 years. We have friends that have made it to the wall of fame. But, I can never seem to make progress towards the 100 milestone. Oh, I’ve tried. I just dug up my old scorecard. I have 23 different beers checked off, so far. But, try as I might, I usually just end up ordering a Stella on draft. I guess I know what I like. Maybe I’ll give it another go. It could happen.
In our travels to the Caribbean, I’ve found some local lagers that I like: Carib (Trinidad & Tobago), Kalik (Bahamas), Hairoun (St. Vincent & the Grenadines). But they are hard to find in the US, so they haven’t made it to BB’s checklist. I guess we’ll just have to keep going down to the islands for a cold one of them.
I’ll leave you with this (source unknown):
The Beer Prayer Our lager, Which art in barrels, Hallowed be thy drink. Thy will be drunk, (I will be drunk), At home as it is in the tavern. Give us this day our foamy head, And forgive us our spillage, As we forgive those who spill against us. And lead us not to incarceration, But deliver us from hangovers. For thine is the beer, the bitter, and the lager. Barmen
Happy Easter to you! They’re not Easter eggs. But they’ll serve. Monte, these are hidden around the house for you to find…go get ’em!
Tonight I went out to dinner with some friends to celebrate a couple of birthdays. We picked a place in East Austin for tonight – Justine’s on E 5th – a casual french bistro. It was my first time here. The food and wine was delicious. I recommend the scallops, though the sauce was a tad bit spicy.
The place was crowded and hopping after about 8 o’clock. And it got very noisy by the time we left about 9:30. Apparently this is a hot spot hangout for lots of the beautiful people in town. 🙂
It’s starting to get warm these days, but it was still cool enough to sit outside. In their courtyard they had a huge neon sign of a burlesque dancer that I wish turned out better, but here ’tis.
Happy Birthday to Irene & Lori!
My cousin, once removed (i had to look this up…my cousin’s daughter) is visiting Austin this week. Alison and her boyfriend Zac came over for dinner tonight. Monte slung several doughs and we made a bunch of pizzas. My cousin, Devitt, also joined us. We had a really nice visit. What great kids!
Alison and Zac are both amazing musicians. They were playing Rachmaninoff – from memory! Our own house concert. 🙂
Back at the marina, today, we saw Pam & Mark and visited with them for a little while, then packed up and schlepped our stuff back up to the car. We popped into Shades for lunch. They are finally open for the season, and this was our first time in this year.
Ok, back home now and getting ready for Monday. *sigh*
But what a fun weekend!
It’s hard to believe the lake was once at about 701′ (about 62′ higher than it is now!). But just to jog memories… here’s a pic from the July 6th flood of 2007… the old Aunt Tilly’s sitting in the same spot as Shades.
Now you know why the new restaurant has its kitchen, bathroom and office in trailers that can be driven away before the next deluge.
I made it home last night at 11:45, so I was able to give Monte a birthday hug before it was over, after all.
We’re having a lovely Saturday, so far. I love being home.
I enjoyed walking around the yard this morning to see what had changed in the last week. Just 7 days ago monte planted some rows of lettuce seed. As you can see in the shot above, by this morning they’ve formed little green lines of lettuce seedlings.
We took a walk through the park at the end of our street this morning and ended up looking for one geocache there that has eluded us several times. We couldn’t find it again today. (darnit!) When we got home I looked it up again to read recent comments from people who had found it. It bugged me so much that we decided to go back to try to find it again. We also checked the magnetic declination (the difference between magnetic and true north) for our area and updated the GPS. And this time we took our bikes. We ended up finding it… FINALLY… and then went on to look for (and found) two others in another park nearby. Whew. What a relief.
Now we’re plotting how to spend the rest of St Patrick’s Day.
I hope you have a great one, too!
Hot blueberry scones for breakfast. Not from scratch….but Sticky Fingers Scone Mix. Easy and fast!
Some friends and I signed up for today’s bread baking class at the culinary center at Whole Foods downtown. I’ve been looking forward to it. The class was hands-on, showing how to make focaccia and ciabatta bread, both of which I LOVE.
I love to bake, and have baked bread before, but never these Italian breads. I enjoyed the class. The instructor taught us several techniques and tips that I can’t wait to try on some of the other breads I’ve made (especially my baguettes – which usually end up with too thick of a crust). We also learned how to make a starter for the dough, and brought that home for the next loaves I’ll make.
I thought it was interesting that you make both breads out of the same dough, just prepared differently — you add lots of olive oil to the focaccia – before and after you bake it, and sprinkle with rosemary and salt.
I had fun, and the breads turned out great! The shot above is a picture of the final product. Yummy!
I recently browsed back through my blog posts for the last month or so. I guess it’s been a long time since I’ve posted any “photographic” or artistic images — more posts about what I’m doing from day to day. I do love looking for beautiful things to photograph. But, I suppose that I’ve been less focused on that lately. That’s ok – my life is full of both the beautiful and the mundane 🙂 so, you get a little of both here on sheila365.
Speaking of the mundane… I thought I’d share something that I enjoy with you. A few years ago my sister, Noreen, introduced me to a really easy to make smoothie. And I think it’s delicious. I have been making myself one every morning for the last several weeks. Try it, you’ll like it 🙂
Sheila365 Smoothie
1 cup (8 oz) V8 V-Fusion juice
1/2 to 1 cup frozen fruit
Pick the juice flavor and fruit you like best. Pour juice in blender, add frozen fruit and blend til smooth. That’s it. The first time you make it, you’ll have to play around a bit to find the fruit-to-juice ratio that works best with your blender. I find that it works perfect if I put in only enough fruit to stay below the level of the liquid… but if you add too much fruit, and your blender gets a bit bogged down, just add a little bit more liquid.
I avoid any diet drinks with aspartame, but found that I do prefer the V8 V-fusion Light version of the juice. The regular version is just too sweet for me. The Light version contains sucralose, though, so if you don’t want any of that, stick with the regular.
An added bonus: 8 oz of V8 V-fusion juice contains 1 serving of vegetable and 1 serving of fruit.
We went to dinner at Rob & Jen’s tonight. Their friend, Matt, who we met at their wedding, was visiting from out of town. Rob baked up a delicious batch of stuffed lobster. And, we were treated to post-dinner fireworks, as is the custom on Zyle Road. 🙂 I guess you could say we were celebrating January 14th!
Sheila365 