Living in Long Beach

My cousin Scott (aka Ford) came down to Long Beach to spend Christmas with me. As soon as it got dark, we made the trek to Naples (it’s about a mile from me) to see all the holiday lights by the canals. As usual, some of the homes went all out with a crazy amount of lights. Many homes had several decorated trees. I forgot my tripod and just took very quick pictures as we walked by the homes. However, there are a few that turned out okay so I thought I’d share them with you…    Although this one was very pretty, it reminds me of a display window for a shop.  This one had lots of fake snow in their display. I guess that’s the closest thing to snow that  Long Beach will ever see!!   This one had several disco balls and disco Christmas music   playing and a bubble machine. Steve Rubell would be so proud. Of course, there were lots of animals. Pictured above are some polar bears (that remind me of the coca ...

I love collecting and reading old cookbooks. So last month I created a challenge for myself to make one recipe a month for a year from old cookbooks. You can read my original post here . I also said that if anyone wanted to send me an old cookbook, then they could chose the recipe for me to make. Well, a few days after that post I received a cookbook in the mail from my aunt. Here she is with me and my cousin (her son) on a vacation we took to Savannah, GA in the 70’s. The book she sent is the ABC of Gourmet Cooking that she got as a present from a close family friend back in 1963. The book is copyrighted in 1956. She selected the Quiche Lorraine recipe for me to make. She says she has made it (and many variations of it) many, many times throughout the years. (Click on picture to bigify it.) I was very pleased that she picked a recipe with few ingredients and that looked relatively easy. Plus, I have never made a quiche before! But before I get to the quiche, I’d like to...

So, the cat’s out of the bag. For those of you who didn’t already know, I am moving. To where? Well, that is TBD!! But I am moving out of my condo in January. Our book for the month was picked by Lora, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. The thing that we all seemed to like best about it was that it was a quick read! But overall, I did like this book and would recommend it, especially if you are in a book club as it gave us a lot to talk about. But then again, we are all talkers. Since it was to be my last book club and some of my neighbors did not know about my move, I decided to make them a little “Celine” gift. If you remember this post here , I had created a design for us to label my door and all my “French” food. I decided to revisit that design and make a Stoneybrook Book Club book mark! First I cut the design in half, then printed them on business cards. (This took two tries due to borders.) Then I glued the cards together…punched a hole in them…and tied a piece ...

The last time I was in Nashville visiting my nephews, I made a promise to Langston that I would make him a Lightning McQueen rainbow cake for his birthday. So the Friday after Thanksgiving, I had the boys all to myself.  All three of us made the cake together. I wish I had some pictures to show you because it was all so cute (and so professional!) Desmond, who is only three, cracked his egg without getting any shell in the mixture. (Langston and I only got a tiny bit of shell in the mixture but we got it all out.) We followed all the directions to the letter and then Langston decided on the colors. We had special Wilton Lightning McQueen colors but tried to use very little of them per instructions from their mother. She prefers that their food be as natural and organic as possible. Langston is a pretty easy going guy so he was okay with the colors being muted. We chose three colors plus the uncolored batter, which was yellow. And then we just plopped all the colors inside ...

This picture from my 365 Project sums it all up: So, as I was saying in my last post before I got all caught up with Neely, Ann, and Jennifer (the dolls!!), this year Thanksgiving was celebrated at my little place in Long Beach. We ended up having 14 people, although one didn’t eat at the table with us because he is only 4 month old! I borrowed a table and many chairs from two different neighbors. One neighbor emptied out most of her refrigerator and freezer for me to use for the week. I also used a different neighbor’s oven for several dishes when we figured out that the turkey was sitting in an oven that had been turned off an hour earlier! Nothing like a little Thanksgiving turkey drama. I made several copies of the dinner menu for guests to peruse before dinner. My mother got many compliments from Tinu’s cousins about her cheese ball. We’ve all been making her recipe for years. It’s a family favorite. She also got raves for a new recipe that she created – Blue Cheese Slaw. ...