Hi everyone,
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. I want to apologize for the email you may have received last week about a recipe exchange. I am now going to send out this blog email using blind carbon copy so that this kind of thing doesn't continue to happen. I would also ask that if you do want to reply to these emails, and I do love receiving your feedback, that you do not use "reply all". I know that we all receive more emails than we would like and hopefully this will help. Also, if you ever want to be removed from my list, please just let me know - I will not be offended!
We returned from our weekend in Louisville, Kentucky yesterday. Jack and I enjoyed our visit with David and Cora Potter and our newlyweds, David and Libby Potter. We had a wonderful tour of Louisville and Lexington, had some great Kentucky cooking, spent Thanksgiving with several other Potter relatives and got to know other family and friends at a reception for David and Libby at the Potters' beautiful home. We had a great dose of that Southern hospitality. We even visited a labyrinth at the Church of the Epiphany, a Catholic Church in Louisville - http://www.churchofepiphany.com/labyrinth.html. David took some great photos which I'll try to include soon. I'll have some other details below in the Cooking and Dining section.
Book Report:
I've been listening to Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer - it has been a great "read" to listen to.
Amazon.com
What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life? Noted outdoor writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer tackles that question in his reporting on Chris McCandless, whose emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992.
Described by friends and relatives as smart, literate, compassionate, and funny, did McCandless simply read too much Thoreau and Jack London and lose sight of the dangers of heading into the wilderness alone? Krakauer, whose own adventures have taken him to the perilous heights of Everest, provides some answers by exploring the pull the outdoors, seductive yet often dangerous, has had on his own life.
Rae read and enjoyed the memoir, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powel.
Book Description
Nearing 30 and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, JuliePowell resolved to reclaim her life by cooking, in the span of a singleyear, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's legendary Mastering theArt of French Cooking. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respectfor calves' livers and aspic, but a new life--lived with gusto.
Website of the Week: Audible.com - a great source for audio books that can be downloaded to your Ipod or burned onto a CD - http://www.audible.com/adbl/site/homepage/home.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0562690118.1196033503@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccciaddmjddmdlecefecekjdffidffj.0
Podcast of the Week: The New Yorker Out Loud - you can either go to the New Yorker website http://www.newyorker.com/services/rss/summary or do directly to www.itunes.com and search for The New Yorker Out Loud
Vocabulary Word of the Week - Querulous - from Dictionary.com
querulous \KWER-uh-luhs; -yuh\, adjective:
1. Apt to find fault; habitually complaining.
2. Expressing complaint; fretful; whining.
Querulous Oscar rattles on, never more or less than himself, but never much more than the content of his grumpy rattling.
-- Sven Birkerts, "A Frolic of His Own", New Republic, February 7, 1994
Mam is a tragic figure when transported to New York by her successful sons -- querulous, unable to get a decent cup of tea.
-- Maureen Howard, "McCourt's New World", New York Times, September 19, 1999
Men who feel strong in the justice of their cause, or confident in their powers, do not waste breath in childish boasts of their own superiority and querulous depreciation of their antagonists.
-- James Russell Lowell, "The Pickens-and-Stealin's Rebellion", The Atlantic, June 1861
Querulous comes from Latin querulus, from queri, "to complain."
Cooking and Dining Report - notes from our trip to Louisville:
We arrived in Louisville late Tuesday evening and went directly to our lovely B & B, The Inn at Woodhaven http://www.innatwoodhaven.com/ . A delightlful Victorian home just up the road from the Potters.
Breakfast on Wednesday morning at the Inn was excellent. Scrambled eggs and bacon for me and blueberry pancakes for Jack. Cereal, fruit, yogurt, muffins and pastries were out and available as well.
David and Cora graciously gave us a tour of the Lousiville and Lexington countryside, featuring the most elegant and grand horse farms. Of special note were the stone fences built by Irish masons and continue to be maintained by descendants of those Irish families. After a stop at the Woodford Reserve Distillery http://www.woodfordreserve.com/age.aspx for a sample of honest-to-goodness Kentucky Bourbon - did you know that only Kentucky is allowed to used the name Bourbon? Tennesee and Virginia call their version Whiskey. The good news is that we got to sample very special bourbon; The bad news is that I really liked it!
Lunch was at a very special place in Shelbyville, KY, called Science Hill Inn, formerly a girls' school building, and now a restaurant and the WakefieldScearce Gallery http://www.wakefieldscearce.com/visit.aspx. The menu featured High Country Southern cooking. David and I had shrimp and bacon with grits which was delicious and quite rich. Cora had a grilled eggplant sandwich and Jack had the fried chicken - yum! After lunch, we toured the amazing gallery which featured silver antiques and other gorgeous home accessories, all of which were for sale.
Back to the Inn for relaxation and hot tea for me - I sat in the parlor, sipped tea and read my book - the perfect way to spend the rest of the afternoon.
Libby, David, and Violet arrived on Wednesday evening and we all (Violet stayed home with her "cousins", Lucy the black lab and Charlie, the chocolate lab) headed out for a low country Southern dinner of fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, great coleslaw, corn bread that looked like latkes, fried oysters, porkchops - dry county, no alcohol! Fun place - great southern cooking!
Of course, Thursday was a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with the Potter family - the turkey was delicious!
Friday's reception for Libby and David was catered by O'Callaghans Catering. The food and presentation were outstanding! Some of the features were a cheddar cheese mousse, brie in puff pastry, farfalle pasta salad, and beef tenderloin - all delicious! Cora's friend Bonnie provided a beautiful wedding cake for dessert.
So with all the wedding festivities and Thanksgiving behind us, it is now time to start thinking about the upcoming Chanukah and Christmas holidays. I'd like to feature some of your favorite holiday traditions,gift ideas and shopping websites over the next few weeks, so please share those with me soon.
Have a wonderful week ahead.....
Love,
Susan
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment