3 posts tagged “4th of july”
Just for grins, more pix from vacation.
My brother Tom's wife's dad is a chef. Some of that rubbed off on her. Some of that rubbed off on Tom. They're amazing cooks. They were with us at The Cottage on the first 4th of July weekend.
Our night to cook, we grilled up some brats and dogs (not THAT kind, the OTHER kind ;-) ), cracked open a can of Bush's Baked Beans, and chopped up some cantaloupe.
On Tom and Martha's night to cook... Well, his barbecued pork took him a total of 10 hours. 1 hour to make the mopping sauce, 8 hours on the grill, 1 hour to rest. During which time he also made an entirely different sauce to serve it with, and grilled roasted bell peppers. Martha spent the day making gourmet cole slaw, lovingly chopping the cabbage by hand, toasting pine nuts, you name it. Oh yeah, they also made some kind of skillet potatoes. Mm, mm.
(I suspect that next summer, when their baby will be, what, 7, 8 months old, the dinner they cook will not be quite so labor-intensive. But, they may never stoop as low as I, cracking open cans of this and that and calling it dinner... Well, maybe not until they have three kids at least! And maybe not even then; cooking is a labor of love for them. Anyway. We sure enjoyed it this year!!)
I wish I'd thought to document the entire process, but it was only at the end, with the peppers, that the colors grabbed me, so that's when I started snapping pix. Oh well.
It was delicious. Plenty of leftovers to feed us all the next night, too.
(Tom. Martha. Gazing fondly at each other on the deck. That's their dog, Sam. My daughter adores her.)
Also from The Cottage: The Matriarch, Grandma Fran, whose cottage it is. (That's my grandma, by the way, not the kids'. Their great-grandma.) She loves gardening. Spent hours each day, watering.
Bowl of Cherries!
More scenes from vacation:
(By the way, for those who aren't family members, that's not their dad, that's their uncle, my brother Tom.)
(Just so I don't give you an unrealistic view of our recent vacation, bear in mind that I did NOT photograph the tantrums, the fights, the whining, the sleep deprivation, the almost-drowning, the bug bites, etc. <<== All of those refer to the kids, by the way. The adults were pretty well-behaved! ;-) )
New camera, new camera!! Took me a while to install the download software on my computer, etc. Also, we were on vacation with (believe it or not) limited internet access.
Scenes from the first 4th of July weekend, at The Cottage:
