We took a trip up the coast to Rockport, Mass. and stayed in the perfect seaside retreat.
The house has 10 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms; a good thing when 21 relatives are reuniting in it for four days. Here’s the view from the lawn:
Two working lighthouses on an island in the bay, one beach in walking distance and another, sandier beach a short drive away.
We had some lobstas:
And some steamas:
and stopped pronouncing our “r”s, especially when we went into Glousta, er, Glouchester.
The girl wrestled with and ate her own lobster, filling us with pride.
It was a great family reunion in a perfect vacation spot. We had a great time visiting with family, eating tremendous amounts of delicous food and relaxing.
I’ve been away on a several-city tour including Newport News, Williamsburg, Virginia Beach, Norfolk in Va., Clifton Park in N.Y., Rockport, Boston and Glouchester in Massachusetts and now we’re home.
Much reading to do and catching up before returning to work on Monday.
I’ll fill you in on the travels as soon as I’ve recovered from the journey. Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.
Get it? Pie Ate Us = piatus = pie hiatus? A lotta late night time burned thinking up that one. The Life of Pie experiment will continue; to date I have created eleven pies. For those of you playing the at-home game, the pie posts are linked here:
Oh, My: Pie! In which I buy a book and decide to bake. Obsessively.
In which I search for The Lard.
My first pie, Fancy Sweet Potato, which made Benticore fall a little bit in love with me.
Where we named the pie blog Life of Pie — thanks to Maya.
Then there was the utter disaster we called Banana Cream Soup. Splooosh.
Chocolate Chess Pie. It’s a Southern thing.
In a rush, I made two “cheater” pies for the band banquet.
I made Stuff I Had in the House Pie. I don’t recommend this.
I then made my most beautiful pie to date, the Blueberry Lattice Top Pie, which sent Dwight out onto the streets of Cleveland in search of pie.
Ignoring orders to knock off the pies for awhile, I made two graduation pies, a sugarless berry apple and a bourbon apple.
Last weekend, I made a Cheddar Cracker Apple and a Chocolate Brownie Pecan for a picnic.
So I have to knock it off for a few weeks to accomodate some family time and to lose the three pounds I’ve gained back. (The Chocolate Brownie Pecan was irresistable.)
When I get back to it, probably in July, I would like to make one of YOUR pie recipes. If you have a favorite, send it to me. I won’t make anything with walnuts or bananas but those are the only rules. I’d love to know what pies you like or what pie you challenge me to create.
Thanks to everybody who commented in an attempt to win a Grill Daddy.
I hate to say it, but ya’ll are just not that funny. I really thought I’d be like Ree, holding my sides and guffawing my way through the comments, or at least completely grossed out by your grimy grill descriptions, but no, not really.
A couple of you did make me wrinkle my nose or chuckle a bit, and these three are the WINNERS:
Zuzu said: “We were cooking hamburgers and my husband noticed that the top rack was really dirty. He absent-mindedly scraped the top rack with the grill spatula and watched as a little shower of rusty METAL powdered our hamburgers. He thought he could get away with blowing it off the burgers, but when he blew, all the scrapings of a hundred previous grillings billowed up from the coals onto the bottom of our burgers. Not willing to admit defeat, he served the burgers, displayed prominantly next to bottle of seasoned salt that looked conveniently rust colored.”
OMG — I can’t believe your husband served metal studded burgers to your family — that’s a winner.
Stormy made me snort a bit when he said: “When summer rolls around and I want to experiment with fruit on the grill, it takes a ton of cleaning or my grilled peaches taste like peach flavored hot dogs.” Mmm. Peach hot dogs.
Suzanne B. said: “When we smoked, we used to put all the cigarette butts in the grill when we were done with them. Well.. it kinda got full. When summer rolled back around and my other roommate went to grill something… well.. needless to say we got another grill.” That one made my jaw drop. I could just imagine somebone cooking with all those butts burning down below. Gross!
Congratulations to Stormy, Zuzu and Suzanne B.!
I was born on a Friday the 13th. I consider them my lucky days. My mother actually chose to have me on that day, given the choice with a scheduled C-section she was asked, are you superstitious? She said no, and the date was set.
I look for lucky things to happen to me on Friday the 13th. But today might be YOUR lucky day. There are 15.5 hours left in the Grill Daddy Giveaway! You could be a winner!
