I guess it's a good sign that I haven't written in a while.
Yes. We've been busy and we're going to be busy for the next couple of weeks. It seems that towards the end of our time here in Florida everyone feels the need to get together and see each other. Especially if we haven't had the chance to. There are guests that arrive that we want to see, and people who are here who we haven't had the chance to spend time with.
Friday night we had a group of friends, who are connected by their "roots" to the Bath School District: Bob and Sue, who own a mobile-home in Northport, and Carol O and her sister and brother in law, Patti and Joe, who are visiting from Rochester, NY. We had cocktails here (We're very careful about how much we drink, knowing that we're going out for dinner. We only have one drink.) Then went on to the Venice Moose for a fish fry. We prepared loads of food for the cocktail hour, so much so that we only made a dent.
We set all the food out on the cocktail table in the new room - imagining that everyone would sit around the food. Nope. The men came in and sat immediately at the Island. The women sat in the new room. Interesting. The women helped themselves to the two pounds of shrimp cocktail and soft cheese spread that I make with a recipe from my former mother-in-law. (It's so good!) So I put the food on the Island, and the men helped themselves. This made only a dent.
When you go to a club like the Moose Club, you're limited to the number of guests you can have. So we were glad that Bob also had a Moose membership. It helped with our guests - Carol, Joe and Patti.
I don't know why, but lately we've been able to get a table immediately when we get there. Bob and I spied it and immediately commandeered it. And - it was one empty table right in the middle of things that had seven chairs around it. Just the right number. That's unheard of. To get seated right away. This is kind of a miracle to us, as we've been known to wait quite a while. Logically, I think it's because we're waiting for a while to go. All the old people have early dinners 4:30 - 6:00.
Afterwards we all came back to our house for dessert - I made two pies: chocolate and key lime. Everyone had some and proclaimed it delicious. (both diet, but I didn't tell them. ) and there was a lot left over. Dang it. Again. I hate so many leftovers, but I had a great suggestion to myself:
Saturday Circlewoods had their chicken barbecue in the clubhouse. We were going with two sets of neighbors. See - this is another group we wanted to see before we or they leave. Actually they'll leave before us because they have a Greenhouse up in their northern home in Massachusetts. They have to get the plants started.
So - on the spur of the moment, we invited them here for a drink and some hor d'oerves beforehand.
They came at noon, ate some, but not enough, shrimp, and had a soft drink before we left for the BBQ at 1:00. We chose the 1:00 rather than 12:00 seating because we thought the chicken would be more done. Well. . .
Paul thought the BBQ stank. It's true - they didn't use any BBQ sauce, and the skin wasn't cooked crispy, but I thought it was a reasonable facsimile of a BBQ chicken.
My thoughts are: Paul just has to go there and offer his expertise and his Cornell BBQ recipe and they'll just love it and hire him and he'll be responsible for the BBQ forever. But a more reasonable imagined response is to have the neighbors over for a chicken BBQ next year and use the Cornell recipe.
Which reminds me of some other chicken. I'll explain later or in another post if I don't have the time or this is getting to be too long.
Last Monday I had made a ten-serving shrimp and sausage gumbo. It's still in the fridge after four left-over events. It'll be thrown out. It was good, but it's been in the fridge too long. I missed its freezer deadline.
Instead of dinner Saturday night, we had shrimp cocktail and crackers and cheese spread in front of the TV. That finished it up. Don't think I want more shrimp for a while.
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