A Foggy Day in London Town...

Whenever a song comes to mind for a post title I always wish I had a font that's a ribbon of lines with a musical staff and notes so all of you (who are younger than me) get it--and it looks like a song. But I don't. So I can't. You'll just have to imagine me sitting here singing. In my head. In your head. Okay, I'll stop. Cookie and I went to the beer & food pairing dinner at Titletown last night where they paired beer with chocolate. A tall order in my estimation, but they managed. We had cocoa & espresso rubbed beef satay with a peppery sweet and sour sauce to dip it in, then cocoa & basil fettuccine carbonara, followed by chicken cutlets with cocoa & raspberry mole sauce and quinoa croquette, broccoli rabe and scrawny carrots, and finally cocoa & white chocolate mousse with fudge on the bottom, a strawberry and a little cookie on top. We had a variety of beers, one with each course, even dessert. DS says that the trick is to have the beer (or wine, for that matter) slightly sweeter than the food. They served us an oatmeal stout that was amazing with the mousse, the chocolate brought out the caramel flavor in the beer. We sat next to JZ, HZ, and their friends so there was lively conversation to go along with our yummy grub. It was a fun evening, and a steal at $30/person. I have to tell you, when DS & DIL1 got home from work last Friday and saw my tracks in their snowy yard their first thought was "crop circles," then they thought someone had been dragging something like a tray around, finally they figured it out--snowshoes! Too much fun.

February 15--Edward Hopper, The Lighthouse at Two Lights. It was a long hot climb up to the lighthouse. It looked easy and gradual but once you got started the slope seemed to stretch out and up. You had to pull yourself up on the long grasses in places. Toby and Nat had grown up on the mainland in Bayfield but on summer afternoons they'd row across to AnaMaria Island to deliver Toby's mom's bacon buns to Mason's Store and get ignored by the summer kids who played tennis all summer and sailed around the island like white butterflies. They kept a couple of old 3-speed Huffy bikes chained to a tree behind the store. Mrs. Mason gave them sandwiches-bologna on rye with her homemade mustard pickles, a couple oranges or bananas, and two cans of no-name soda in a brown paper sack. They'd strap the bag into Nat's handlebar basket and off they'd ride across the waist of the island to the windward beaches to look for driftwood they could sell to Angus Finchley. Angus carved faces in the wood that the tourists fell all over themselves to buy.

I'm off to the chiro before work to get my bones rearranged and a few knots rubbed out of my neck. Later, dudes & dudettes!
--Barbara