It is nice to be on vacation, especially here with so many familyfriends who care about my welfare and health. Our grandson and his significant other are here in the same house, and those two have been cooking and baking like there is no tomorrow. Every meal is like "eating out." The only difference is that these two youngsters use top-quality ingredients and lots of time and patience. A couple of days ago, we were treated to a pumpkin pie, for example, that was made from "scratch," including baking the actual pumpkin (not opening a can of pumpkin pie filling) and making a crust out of roasted pecans (ones that they roasted themselves). Last night, we had roasted stuffed red peppers, stuffed with organic vegetables and quinoa, topped with a singularly creative mustard-basil sauce. It was spectacular. Every meal here is a "hummer," meaning that there is a great deal of approval in the form of loud hums throughout the entire meal.
There is much reading, relaxing, and movie-going here. We last saw "Invictus," and even though some reviewers have called it overly emotionally manipulative, we enjoyed it. Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon did a good job in their respective roles, and I think Clint Eastwood did the right thing by concentrating primarily on the rugby team theme and not on the political situation during this trying time of transition. I felt it was touching and poignant.
Despite some pretty serious back pain from lumbar stenosis, I am still determined to get out and about and not miss very much of the continued newness of being all the way across the country and into a landscape that is so dissimilar from the Chesapeake Bay.
Merry Christmas to all, whatever your faith or lack of it.
