A weekend at the Gulf Coast - Part II

Initially I had planned on making this post part of the one I wrote earlier this week, but since it was becoming much longer than expected, I decided on two separate posts.

We spent the cold but bright and sunny afternoon down by the beach. First, we walked along the granite pier, holding the hands of the two youngest so they didn't fall through the cracks...

...and watched a fisherman make his way to edge of it to wait on the biting fish.

We encountered birds nearby...

The children loved collecting sea shells, baby jellyfish, and playing the sand.

A weekend at the Gulf Coast - Part I

A couple of weeks ago the discussion at the dinner table revolved around taking a short weekend family trip in order to see something other than the inside walls of our house. For the most part, I love staying at home, but every once in a while I want to venture out and see something new, photograph something different, and perhaps discover new foods as inspiration for my growing desire to incorporate new recipes into our daily life. I would have loved to flown to New England, and hopefully one day we'll take that trip, but the more sensible option was to take a 5-hour drive to the Gulf Coast. That is exactly what we did and it just happened to be Mardi Gras celebration when we arrived.

It was raining most of the morning on Saturday, but we managed to get the kids into the minivan while our belongings for the weekend were piled into the back. Around 13h, we were finally on our way. The kids got to watch one Thomas DVD - enough for one trip. Afterwards, they were happy to watch the passing scenery outside through the rain-covered windows which included cows, donkeys, and horses. At one point I noticed a field of only white cows, or at least I think they were cows. The kids were very well behaved, considering they had to sit in one spot for hours. They each had a little baggie filled with duck shaped cheddar crackers (the Whole Foods brand) which kept them busy for a while. In addition, I shared my trail mix with them - handing raisins and dried cranberries to the younger two kids and tossing whole raw almonds to Saffi at the back of the van.

Traffic in Houston was scary to say the least. At times, I had to close my eyes as my husband navigated through the madness in the rain...

...but soon, we would arrive at our destination.

When we arrived at the hotel, the Mardi Gras parade was about to start. We quickly grabbed our belongings out of the van and because of the immense crowds and closed-off streets, chose to have the van valet parked. It wasn't until after the van was gone that my husband realised that Sagey's shoes were not on his feet. How could he have not noticed his missing shoes as he was taking him out of the carseat? So, I waited over 20 minutes for someone to run to the van to grab his shoes while the rest of the family went up the stairs to get checked into the room. The parade on the main street, Seawall, was about to start any minute.

Raincoats and boots were put on...

...and we were on our way.

We first saw a band playing.

Then we walked down Seawall Blvd where the parade floats started to arrive - tossing Mardi Gras beads out into the crowds.

I've never seen so many beads - ever. Then again, I've never been to a Mardi Gras celebration. The girls were happy to have collected so many necklaces.

I was happy to finally get to eat dinner. Since the streets were still crowded, we opted to eat in the hotel restaurant instead of searching for something and having to wait for the valet person to bring our car. The food choices were minimal and the prices were high, but at the time that was our only option. Our server seemed to be lost at times when we would ask for a particular item...such as plain pasta (no butter, no sauce) for the kids or any kind of beer (which he told us they didn't have any and which turned out not to be the case). With my very picky palate, I was able to find one item on the menu that would work, but only if I could swap out one item from one menu option with another. Dexter, our server, was lost and went to find out if it was possible to make substitutions. So, another member of the staff appeared at our table and I immediately asked him if it was possible to have the Gulf caught snapper blackened, without the shrimp cream (I'm not a lover of seafood - except some fish), and to be able to substitute the plantains for some grilled veggies. He asked, "Who's your server? The Filipino, black guy, or the white girl?" "Uh...", I started to say, then with a bit of hesitation I said "...the Filipino". So, he informed me that if I told our server that I had allergies, the server would make a note of it and make it happen.

In the end, after a longish wait, our food arrived and it was mediocre at best. The kids had huge bowls of huge spiral-shaped pasta with Parmesan cheese. Now, when I say "huge bowls", I really mean large...as in about 12 inches in diameter and about four inches deep. They could hardly finish half of the bowl of pasta. We also had fresh bread with garlic butter which actually tasted good.

Afterwards, we walked up the white marble steps to our room and settled into the California King bed...Seena falling asleep almost immediately, Papa reading something on his iPhone, Sagey clutching his little lion, and Saffi controlling the remote. 

As I crawled into bed, I took the remote from Saffi and landed on a channel where German was being spoken. I thought it might be interesting to watch the movie but I quickly fell asleep only to be awoken by my husband near the end of the movie, asking me whether I was still awake and watching. My gaze was fuzzy as I struggled to stay awake just to see the name of this terrible movie. I recognized one American actor and noticed that the movie was not what I had initially thought it would be. After the credits rolled by, I still didn't catch the name of the movie since I was half asleep. I started flipping through the channels and discovered a new food channel - the Cooking Channel. Rarely do we watch tv at home, so it was interesting to find yet another channel dealing with food. The show I watched was unfamiliar to me - I did not recognize the people but it looked interesting. In this episode of Extra Virgin, Debi and Gabriele were getting ready to throw a dinner party for their friends. He was roasting a lamb in a pizza oven and she was busy learning how to make a new drink. It was a typical show where cooking seems so effortless to those watching from the comfort of their homes. I can just imagine the sheer effort that goes into the production of such a show. It would be interesting to see the behind-the-scenes action and to be able to smell and eat the food being being prepared. As the show came to an end, everyone was enjoying the wonderful Mascarpone Amaretti Cup and I was glad I discovered even more new recipes to try.

The night was short for me and I found myself up around 3,30h typing "Brad Pitt bad German movie" into Google search where I finally came up with the name of the movie I wished I hadn't stumbled upon - "Inglourious Basterds". I brushed off the thoughts and decided to start reading Molly's blog . I must have been awake for about two hours reading her blog instead of her book that was sitting in my backpack on the floor at the foot of the bed. I started to read from the very beginning, which means I have so much more reading to do in the upcoming months, not to mention having to try all of the recipes she posts. The Gâteau au Citron might have to be the first recipe I try this weekend.

I did manage to get in a few more hours of sleep before the family was ready to find food for breakfast...which actually turned out to be brunch. So, I Googled "best breakfast Galveston" and discovered that Mosquito Cafe had the best reviews.

It was a Sunday around noon, so the line meandered outside the door. While waiting in line, we met several interesting people, among them a husband and wife from Houston - the husband reminding me a lot of Harrison Ford. My husband chatted with them while I browsed the menu to see what I could eat. Have I mentioned that I'm a picky eater? Yes, finding food that I will actually eat is the biggest challenge when travelling. That and making sure that I eat in a timely manner, lest I become a lion who will bite off your head.

So, I actually found several items that seemed interesting.

Since we had in effect skipped breakfast, I chose the roasted corn chowder and the breakfast bowl which consisted of roasted potatoes, fresh sauteed spinach, and two poached eggs, with the cook kindly leaving out the bacon. The food was superb and I would have loved to have returned the following day had it not been for the restaurant being closed on Mondays.

The only available table at the time was one right at the back door which wouldn't have been a problem had it not been so cold outside. Seena was shivering, but Papa quickly bundled her up in his warm down jacket and she continued eating her fluffy buttermilk pancakes with fresh strawberries.

Saffi was all grown up with her own fork and knife and was cutting up her pancake all by herself, while Sagey waited patiently for Papa to cut the pancake into bite-sized pieces.

As we were finishing our breakfast, the couple we met in line were already getting ready to leave. "Harrison" was insisting that his wife take his scone along with hers, but she refused and headed toward the back door, passing us in the process. "Harrison" looks over to me and says "After 30 years, she still doesn't listen to me." I smiled, and he smiled back as he opened the door and followed his wife out the their car.

After brunch, we walked over to Patty Cakes Bakery across the street, and bought three different fresh baked cookies to eat later that evening...a coconut macaroon, chocolate chip shortbread cookie, and a chocolate crinkle cookie.

We all piled into the minivan and drove back to the hotel where I swapped out lenses before we headed to the beach.

For the love of books

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at my desk when I noticed the UPS truck slowing down in front of our house. I watched as the UPS man grabbed a fairly large box and carried it to our front door. As he left the box at the doorstep, he rang the doorbell and walked back to the truck.

“What did you order now?”, I ask my husband, knowing that all of the packages delivered lately have been something to do with his electronics hobbies.

“Nothing”, he replies.

Then, a smile comes across my face as I remember that large order I placed on Amazon last Monday…the one which shipped only on Thursday. “That was fast”, I thought.

My husband looks down at the large box from the upstairs balcony and asks, “How many books did you order?”

“Uh, five, I think.” Ok, it was really seven, but who’s counting.

“Are you going to read all of those?”, he asks.

“Sure, eventually…”, I reply. Yes, eventually it will be as I recall that another seven books were delivered to our door less than a month ago, three of which were for the kids.

I decided to check Amazon’s “Your Orders” section, selected “Orders placed in the last 6 months” from the drop down menu, and counted five orders which made a total of 35 books. Yes, thirty-five books. A dozen books deal with food and food photography. Nine books were children’s books, two were for my husband as a Christmas gift and dealt with woodworking, four are in the photography/videography category, two deal with psychology, three have to do with business and/or writing, another is the new Grisham novel (which I finally finished a couple weeks ago), one is book of poems, and the last book is one woman’s story of moving to a small village in Croatia with her husband and two children for several months. I’ll have yet to find time to read that book. Of course, I’m interested in seeing her view of the encounter with her long-lost ancestors, even though she had no immediate connection to any family and, most importantly, did not know the language before embarking on this adventure. One day I hope to write a book about the island where I spent several of my summers as a young child. In my case, I do know the language and do have a lot of family scattered about the country – both along the Dalmatian coast and in northern Croatia. I also plan on including many photographs.

I’m looking forward to spending time with all of my latest books this year as I explore new recipes, photograph the food resulting from those recipes, and watch my children look through their new books – my favorite being “Harold and the Purple Crayon”. I’m sure it won’t be long until the UPS man returns with another shipment from Amazon. Until then, I’ll be "plenty" busy.

Mirror, Mirror...Everybody Lies

“Everybody lies”…at least this is what Hugh Laurie’s character, Dr. Gregory House, espouses on the TV show House.

We live in a society where it has become acceptable to lie. Even children are taught to lie at a young age, their adult-like filter being put into place. The filter that tells us it’s ok to skew the truth. At times, we might call them “little white lies” told in order to keep the peace and not rock the boat, but in reality, lies are lies - little or otherwise - and they always have a way of catching up with you at some point.

In the American culture, the well-known saying goes “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”. Why is this? Why are you afraid to tell the truth, to speak your mind? Why do you hold back? It is my belief and observation that people simply do not wish to rock the boat and stand out against the crowd – against the masses who all hold the same view.

In the modern age of technology, it has become even more prevalent to feel the need to go with the masses. You see this on social networking sites such as Facebook where people post photos or questions with the intention of wanting others, for the most part, to agree with them and to like them. Anyone who does not agree gets stones cast their way. A couple of years back I made a comment on a well-known Alabama photographer’s site that went against all of the other hundred comments. Nobody seemed to have wanted to offer an opinion other than the ones being spewed by everyone else…except me. The interesting fact was that during this time I received several private email messages from people who knew this photographer and told me that what I said was true. My assessment of this person was correct but they also told me that they could not say so themselves and were happy that someone did. For the most part, I refrain from commenting on posts or photos on Facebook or Flickr unless they truly move me, at which point I let the artist know that their work is inspiring.

The truth about lies is that everybody does it…in America at least. My German (-American) husband posted this after yesterday morning’s discussion about the topic. In the post he states, “Germans are known to be direct and rude. In the German culture lying to be nice is considered fake and not replying is considered rude. People prefer inconvenient and uncomfortable opinions over no answer or a faked one.” This topic comes up regularly in our household and did so yesterday morning when I discovered that a Facebook “friend” lied about the reason she removed me from her Friends list. Now, I’m not one to really care about the reason why. I just don’t like being told something that is not the truth. There is no reason to tell me that you’re updating your Facebook profile to only family and will thus be removing me from your list.

I know that Facebook is a virtual world…another topic of discussion that comes up regularly. People are on Facebook to interact with each other – with people you might know, but mostly with people you do not know and happen to meet online. I do not know of a single person who has only family members on their private list. Why would you need to? Regardless, I found out she was not telling the truth. How? Well, you don’t have to be an IT specialist to look at the list of Friends on a mutual contact and notice that she did not remove them. I would much rather someone tells me the truth than have to go through such lengths as to fabricate a non-truth. In my opinion, it takes more effort to tell a lie than the actual truth.

We lie not only to others, but to ourselves as well. How many times has a woman stood in front of a mirror with her husband in the background asking that well-known, and (for men) dreaded, question: “Does this dress make me look fat?”? An American man knows better than to speak his mind and tell the truth. Whatever he says, he’s doomed, and any chance of “dessert” after dinner goes out the door. Instead, he lies because that is what she wants to hear. The woman will interpret ever little intonation, analyze every word spoken, and notice even the slightest aversion of eyes unless he says “You look great honey!”  And women…are you really that insecure that you even have to ask? Can you not look in the mirror and see for yourself?

We all like praise. We all like to be liked. What we do not like is to know the real truth. In the end, it comes down to is being able to look yourself in the mirror and see the truth and to believe in yourself enough to be able to speak it, even if it means going against the masses. Speak your mind. Dare to be different, to be an individual, not just “one of the crowd”. You won’t always be popular, but you will be true to yourself.

2012 | The first 3 days...

  First photo of the new year...my Sagey sleeping.   The first day of the New Year started with my waking up to the sight of my 2 1/2-year old little boy sleeping on his elephant pillow and sucking his thumb. Everyone slept in late, but me. I was already up and about, ready to start my day. Shortly after taking the above photo, I went upstairs to photograph a few new hats.

Half an hour later I was back downstairs to upload the photos and prepare listings for the previous day's photo shoot.

  

At that point, the family was awake and ready for a late breakfast. These little citrus fruits are Calamondins which we discovered was perfect for flavoring teas.

Even my daughter started to drink tea like a grown up, although she did manage to spill some camomile tea on the table as the cup slipped onto the glass table.

After breakfast, Papa continued the cleanup of his office and the game room upstairs in preparation for setting up his Carrera Bahn slot car racetrack while the girls enjoyed their last couple of days on holiday vacation before heading back to school. I had one more photo of my oldest to take before the day's end and Safi asked if she could make a sad face.

She is quite the silly girl and tried looking sad, for whatever reason, but looks more pouty here to me. She then ran off and played with her siblings, but not before Seena had her turn on the window sill. She, on the contrary, was going for a "happy face". 

Dinner was very late as I started making the pizza dough later than I normally would. In the end, the wait was worth it. No photos of the pizza as it was past 20h and we were all too hungry to wait for me to pose the pizza for my shots. Instead, I took a photo of the recipe the following day.

 

Day 2...

It's not quite 9h and I'm already awake and setting up a few new headbands to photograph. I had a lot of fun arranging and photographing my newest halo headbands, each one being photographed in a different and unique manner - unlike anywhere I've seen before. The colors are so vibrant and makes me wish that Spring was already here.

After my fun with the headbands, I went downstairs to try a new multigrain pancake recipe from Heidi Swanson's "Super Natural Every Day" cookbook. Her blog  is full of healthy and great tasting foods and I look forward to trying many more new recipes this year.

Once again, no photos, but later that evening I photographed the recipe I used.

I made a couple of changes...added a tablespoon of poppy seeds, one more tablespoon of sugar, and zest from one Meyer lemon. The pancakes were really tasty and all gone in no time. I found that these tasted better with a Croatian sour cherry jam than with pure maple syrup and so did my kids.

My husband finished cleaning the upstairs and the kids enjoyed having a big empty and uncluttered room to run around in. My boy rediscovered his jumper and had a lot of fun jumping up and down.

My daughter enjoyed playing with the wooden train that Nona got one of the kids...

  

...and they all loved sitting and watching "The Letter Factory" - a DVD that went missing for most of last  year until it was discovered on this day behind the DVD player and TV (and after I had purchased another one for the car only a few months ago).

 

She was singing "every letter makes a sound" right as I took this photo. Her clothes were in their play kitchen washing machine, which is why (at this particular instance) she was down to her underwear even though it is Winter. I'm sure she'd think differently if we lived in Germany. I doubt she remembers how cold it was two Winters ago while we spent five weeks in Berlin in the cold snowy weather - most of it indoors in our apartment.

Dinner was something simple and the kids went to bed "early" as the oldest was returning to kindergarten the following morning.

Day 3...

An early start to the day. I was hoping that everybody would be at the table, but they all chose to sleep in a bit longer, leaving Safi eating breakfast with me.

 

I went to the bedroom to check on the others and found Sagey staring back at me. A few minutes later, he was fast asleep.

 

With the oldest off to school, the day began early. Late breakfast with the rest of the family, trip to the post office, then to Williams Sonoma, before heading back home. Safi requested that Papa "abholen" her from school, which he did. She then spent some time playing with Legos and built a very nice layout of an ice cream shop.

Safi said the guard wanted to cut the flower.

My creative girl...