Casual day

Food-wise casual, that is.

I had big plans for Sunday: get up, cut the grass, shower, head to the farmer’s market and Costco, hit Publix for the other things we needed, then get a big batch of sauce going for canning.

It didn’t quite work out that way. For some reason, after getting back from the beach Saturday evening, we all had difficulty getting to sleep and staying asleep. I held off on cutting the grass since everyone else was still sleeping when I got up, and instead, headed out to the farmer’s market for a few things.

I love living in Florida during the summer, blazing heat and all.

Since Sunday was the first preseason football game, I decided that guacamole and pizza should be the fare of choice. My intent was to have the sauce made and do some pizza dough. Alas, my energy was flagging, so it was jarred sauce and readymade pizza shells for us tonight. Not bad, but for some reason, the Boboli shells always feel greasy to me. This may be because they are in fact greasy. But they still have a decent taste. Not homemade, but good enough in a pinch.

Guacamole is remarkably unphotogenic.

Pizza toppings look much better.

Action!

One sister’s pizza.

Mom’s pizza, BC (before cheese).

My other sister’s pizza, fresh from the oven. She likes her toppings on top of the cheese, so they can get crunchy.

Football on, pizza smells wafting through the house…felt like fall, except that it was 94 degrees outside at 8 PM. Two weeks to our first home preseason game. Can’t wait…

Dining seaside

Saturday, we – my mom, my sister, and I – went to the beach to visit with some friends who have a house that bumps gently against the dunes. The house is glorious. They’ve done quite a bit of work on it, and even added on to it. The second story facing the beach is almost entirely windows, and overlooks the water.

The menu:

Homemade hummus
Homemade pitas
Shrimp two ways
Broccoli-two cheese casserole
Tomatoes with fresh basil and balsamic vinegar
Deviled eggs
Fresh breads (baguette, olive-basil, and rosemary)
Pineapple upside down cake

Creamy hummus.

Pita dough, cut and ready for rolling.

The first couple of pitas were sacrificial as I got the hang of making them. Once that round was over, though, the rest turned out very well indeed.

The casserole, before the topping mixture.

And after.

Mom’s famous pineapple upside down cake.

We packed all that up, along with a very good bottle of wine, and made our way to the shore.

I always wanted to sail…

This is what a nicely done appetizer plate of hummus and pitas looks like.

And this is what happy people look like when they’re sitting out on a deck on the beach with that nice plate.

I had a cut on the tip of my middle finger on my right hand, probably from the server I was setting up in the wee hours of Saturday morning. I didn’t notice it until I was making the marinade for half the shrimp and was squeezing some limes and lemons. Ouch. Half the shrimp was boiled, half sauteed after being in the marinade.

Eventually, you have to put everything together. Shrimp and deviled eggs.

Broccoli casserole, hot and bubbly from the oven.

Tomatoes, sliced, with basil picked just that morning, dressed with balsamic vinegar.

Warm, sliced bread.

The long view.

Al fresco dining on the deck.

Action photo. Photo by me, action courtesy of Mother Nature and the relentless attack on the shore by the waves.

Look to the west.

You’ll see the sun set.

The beach will empty of people.

But the moon will keep you company.

Back on the deck, we enjoyed some dessert.

And after a bit more visiting, we said our goodbyes and headed home, pleasantly full and tired. Too tired to sort through the photos afterward and post about it, in fact.

Meat and potatoes

“You know what I really want right now?” asked my sister the other night, still wrapped in her towel and dripping from her shower. “Fries. Real fries.”

I’ve never worked in a fast food joint, so I’ve never had the opportunity to ask people if they wanted fries (or anything else, for that matter). Usually, this is always the way it is: people tell me what they want and I make it.

We had some potatoes on hand, leftover gravy from steak night, mushrooms, and ground beef. Hamburgers and handcut fries it was.

I cut the fries and soaked them in a bit of salty water, set them out to drain, and then fried them in batches.

Get a couple of hamburgers going, break out the gravy, toss some mushrooms in, throw some fries on the plate, and you have dinner. Except my sister, who doesn’t like gravy because she’s weird, so her burger was segregated from the gravy burgers.

No green stuff with this meal. Meat and potatoes all the way.