Getting readjusted

After a few days of healthy (and yummy) food at my sister's, we were off to Carolina's Outer Banks, specifically Ocracoke Island. The ferry ride from Cedar Island was smooth as silk, with the water ruffled only by the occasional family of dolphins.

We found a crowded but friendly RV park and pulled out the barbie. We'd bought some pre-cooked chicken, but it was all the better getting reheated on the grill of the little Weber unit.

For our side dish, we had the leftovers from the previous evening's Chinese takeaway (rice and Szechuan chicken, plenty of vegies), along with the usual green salad.

As for the photo, that was appies -- source of a couple of treats, stolen fresh from the sea.

Four...treats for me

After a day spent out of the house (again -- but this time because the builders were jackhammering, yoiks), I decided to stop by for takeaway Japanese food.

The picture shows how cute it all looks in its little takeaway box. Weirdly, I don't like the taste of eating food off of plastic, so before I ate it, I transferred the items to more normal plates. It just didn't look quite as pretty as it had.

There was also a container (which left its styrofoam cup for a lovely pottery bowl) of the always happy-making miso soup.

Yin and Yang

It started as a celebratory snack: takeaway sushi as a surprise to acknowledge the start of the DM's winter break from work.

Only then, when I did a fast supermarket shop, I grabbed a container of fresh oysters, thinking they could work their way into some complementary stir-fry as follow-up supper.

But some inventorying of the gifts we've prepared, followed by a couple of games of backgammon, led to it being time for supper. So, the whole lot got served together -- a mix of hot and cold foods.

The two little glasses up high on the left are the starters, a raw oyster in each glass, topped with fresh lemon and a dollop of hot sauce. Then there are the two plates of sushi treats with the cooked oysters (done with black bean sauce and chili oil) bottom right. The plate at the top right is steamed shrimp dumplings, part of our dim sum stock from the freezer.

Quite the mix, but a great way to start a holiday!

Ordering in for someone special

If she’d been able to be with us, she’d have wanted to take us out to supper. But with the early darkness, complicated by today’s rainy weather, she’d probably have been just as happy to have the restaurant come to us. So that’s exactly what we did –ordered in.

The family together, sharing food and memories - had she been alive, that’s exactly the kind of supper my mother would have loved. One year since she’s gone, we’re keeping our love for her alive.
And even acknowledging her Christmas Day birthday with treats from the freezer.

Sanity in the midst of chaos

Life has been pretty crazy here, because we're doing renos again. Thankfully, even though he isn't well, the DM had the sense to suggest that we order in.

Tempura and sushi, complete with trimmings, made for an easy in-front-of-the-tv Friday night supper.

Just say "Cheese!"

It's a Friday night pizza night, so that means plenty of cheese. We rented a couple of DVD's, so there's some more cheese.

Heck, there's even blue cheese on the salad.

Cheesy, eh!

Getaway takeaway

Even though it's Thanksgiving weekend, we've hit the road. Most of the family seems to have had the same idea, so it's not as though we're hurting anyone's feelings.

We're camping out in our hotel room for supper tonight, having an assortment of takeaway sushi treats from a little place just down the street.

I thought the addition of a tiny 'bouquet' might make the meal seem slightly more civilized, or at least more Japanese. So I pinched a flower from the extravagant hotel garden and tucked it into the tiny bottle from the comp shampoo I'd just used.

No matter where we are, I like to think of supper as a special meal. In my mind, tonight's styrofoam serving plates are our very best china.

Early birthday celebrations

Tomorrow is the day that's actually the Dear Man's birthday, only he's not going to be home for supper tomorrow night. Instead, he's spending the day doing what's dearest to his heart -- playing golf. He's participating in a tournament and a fancy dinner is part of the event.

I've got heaps to do tomorrow too, so it's just as well to have our celebratory meal tonight. Dear-hearted man that he is, his request was a simple one: he wanted an assortment of takeaway from the local Greek place. Really, how hard was that? It's no wonder he's known as the D.M.

Dessert (not a birthday cake) was also super easy. A couple of pieces of baklava, accompanied by a first-time (for both of us) taste treat, fresh dates. The dates didn't taste anything like what I'd imagined. More like tiny, rather juiceless apples. Still, they went perfectly with the honeyed baklava.

Adventures in laziness

I'm almost embarrassed to report yet another lazy supper.

Still, we were out in the forest for most of the day, foraging for this and that, both edible and for the garden. Even though we weren't as successful in finding mushrooms as we've been other years, both of us took a lot of photographs, so that made the day worthwhile. And really, all that marching about in the fresh mountain air is hard to beat.

Anyway, as soon as we got in the door, we put in an order for pizza. Just enough time for shampoos and showers, with supper delivered to the door.

As an added bonus, we even found a coupon for a free Caesar salad. Double-easy, double-lazy. Yes!

Tonight's the night

It's a big event for me tonight -- a book launch, so the Dear Man has been kind enough to buy us some takeaway for an early, easy supper.

Up, up and away!

Two Part Feast

As if making up for being deprived of seeds and grains this week, we celebrated my ability to eat again by getting our best-deal-in-town takeaway again. It offers more than a little bit of nearly everything I love.

The first part was miso soup, tempura, and assorted sushi treats. The second course was beef teriyaki, rice and a mix of vegies.

I couldn't eat all of it, but made a valiant try and enjoyed every variety-filled morsel, especially the sesame seeds, rice and other grainy-type treats.

So many choices!

We spent today at the PNE, the Pacific National Exhibition. It started out 99 years ago as an agricultural fair, but today the farm aspects seem a small part of the show.

With so many differenct kinds of food -- everything from little doughnuts to emu burgers (and just about anything else you can think of in between), we settled for two combo dishes from a Vietnamese eatery. The styrofoam plates and plastic forks never add anything positive to a meal, still -- it was easy enough to 'do' the dishes.

We did a bit of exchanging this for that, so both ended up with a sampling of some very tasty foods.

Still summer pizza

It was much more than changing the page on the calendar. This afternoon there were a few splatters of rain. And when the breeze picked up, I even saw some colourful leaves swirling down. So the signs are definitely here.

Still, a visit with friends who live by the beach reminded me that summer's still with us, along with the bounty it brings.

The friends were generous about sharing the season's ongoing crop of figs. The figs are perfectly ripe, so besides the one I ate on the spot during the picking, I used a few of them to make our evening's salad.

Figs and sliced pepper and chunks of blue cheese. While I played at making that, the Dear Man picked up a pizza to go with it. A few slices of easy pizza and all that luscious fruit made for a nice still-summer supper.

Friday night supper on Saturday

Because we had three rousing games of bowling, pizza seemed like the way to go for an easy supper. We'd even brought menus along so we could order and pick up the pizzas on the way home. Only it turns out once we got home, we discovered the vegetarian one had shrimp on it. Not a bad thing in itself, but the vegetarian who planned on eating it is allergic to shrimp, so another call went in to the pizza place.

Turns out it was their mistake, so some poor delivery guy will bring one out to the house, but here's where it gets weird: they phoned back and said we'd have to give back the shrimp pizza. Like, so they can throw it away? For sure they can't sell it again, and I doubt that health laws would even allow employees to eat it.

Closer inspection of the menu reveals we were supposed to get a free six-pack of pop. Not that I'd even especially want it, it's just the principle of it.

I have a feeling this will not only be the first time we order from this place, I'm pretty sure it'll also be the last.

Oh well, with a salad and an avocado on the side, I bet we'll survive.

Sunset delight

I'm so lucky to be part of the Denman Island Writers' Festival. Not only are there interesting people everywhere, the hospitality feels endless.

Because the Dear Man was joining me here tonight, and not getting a ferry until after the supper hour, the staff prepared plates of supper for both of us to take back to the luxurious seaside home we've been assigned. We're considered 'non-vegetarian' and tonight's supper was proof of that fact, big racks of ribs with spicy sauce. The DM had also picked up a few fresh oysters, so those got heated up in the same pan as the ribs, and made for the perfect islandy complement.

A wonderful medley of vegies was chockablock with pine nuts (I'm much more chintzy with those). The mixed green salad came home with a creamy dill dressing on the side. The women even packed us pieces of an orangey cake with icing -- as if, after all of this, we might need any dessert!

All of this is hard to beat. Sitting out on our deck, looking through the forest to the sea -- the setting only made the food that much more delicious!

Friday night pizza on Thursday

The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival kicked off today. Tonight's a gathering of writers, volunteer workers, and just plain friends.

A few people brought salads; the pizzas were made by the island bakery/pizzeria.

And lucky us, the weather is the best of all the toppings!

Lazy Friday

I was out to a luncheon at a restaurant today. While I was there, I decided to be lazy and order something to take home for supper. An appetizer of calimari sounded like the ticket. A couple of pitas and some satziki even came along with it.

So tonight, while the calimari and pita warmed up in the oven, I made an odd sort of pseudo-Greek salad (blue cheese instead of feta, no olives) and then spooned out some homous.

Sort of Greek, very Friday, very lazy.

Welcome home treat

The Dear Man picked me up from the airport and suggested a supper of sushi. Despite the variety of foods I've been eating, sushi is probably the single item that hasn't been on the menu. But then, maybe the prairie isn't really the place for fish you intend to eat raw.

He ordered from the place where we get our occasional Friday night feasts, but added a new item to our order, the romantic-sounding French kiss roll.

At the top of the picture, you can see how beautiful the roll was. Made of black rice (more purplish than black), it was filled tuna, salmon, tempura prawn and one of my favourite treats: flying fish roe (crrrrunch!).

And yes, going away is good. But often, one of the best parts is coming home again.

Two-parter

It's a beautiful evening, so tonight's supper is happening in two segments.

The Dear Man went out and bought the outrageously huge takeaway meal for us to share.

For Round One, it's sushi. And with it, assorted tempura and a bowl of sunomono, the Japanese salad of noodles, cucumber, and prawn in cool sweet vinegar.

Intermission's a photo walk at the prettiest local golf course. Right now, so many trees and shrubberies are in bloom, it'll be one steady click-click-click.

Part Two is the warm part of the meal: miso soup, beef teriyaki with rice and vegies. We're even adding a piece of gomae and heating it (even though it can be eaten at room temp). This part is for back at home, as the sun is going down, and we're snuggled in front of some lazy Friday night tv.

The High Price of Lazy

It's been a while since we've been for what we used to call 'cheap takeaway'. But yikes, it sure isn't cheap any more. It's doubled in price, almost to the penny.

I've been noticing the price of food going up and up, but doubling -- this is the first time I've spotted this trend. I hope I won't be seeing more of it.

Still, because we were both outside for most of the day, we were hungry. And because we were tired out by the fresh air and wind, this seemed easy. But even though this is what we're having tonight, you can bet we won't be going back again soon.