Winter Is Still Here… Would Rather Be On A Beach …

Well,  I’m finally on vacation … not the one that I wanted, but it’s turned out pretty good so far … except for the foot of snow that came in last night. This past Saturday we were supposed to be on a cruise and today we would have been on the beach in St. Croix, U.S.V.I. – in reality I was blowing out our driveway (and two neighbors as well)  with the handy dandy snow blower … which ran out of gas Good thing I filled up a jerrycan two days ago This time last year was the first day of a 12 day cruise in the Caribbean – Kelly celebrated her birthday in St. Croix, and I celebrated mine in St. Lucia. Next year it will be Kelly’s in St. Lucia and mine in Domenica So we took Doug the Doggie to the vet last week to get his  nails clipped – and his Xmas picture taken; that’s him on the left. On Saturday we took a little drive down to Aylmer – there’s a great grocery store and market there where I stocked up on  Mexican cheeses, tomatillos, and peppers (also picture at left). I’m doing a fair bit of  cooking this week as I have all this time off and no where to go. Last night I made a Yucatan Chile Verde – pretty good – and tonight Mexican flavored chicken breasts with a Caesar salad. I’m also preparing a German Sauerbraten – it takes at least seven days to marinate so we will have it next Tuesday. Last week was a mixture – leftover seafood chowder, steaks, beef and broccoli with oyster sauce, Boeuf Catalan, and others – I’ll be posting the recipes online later this week. I got the tv fixed last week … but then Kelly’s laptop blew up Thank God for Black Friday sales – Kelly got her Christmas present a little early  Sunday night we finished watching the seven part series ‘Queen’s Gambit’ – a very fictitious story about how a female orphan who became the World Chess Champion at the age of 20 back in 1967. I say fictitious because a female didn’t beat  a world class chess player until 2002 – and Judit Polgar was Hungarian, not American. The series is very popular on Netflix but I found it to be poorly scripted and acted We are looking for some new series to watch – there’s a German and a Norwegian Christmas series  coming up – we will give those a try. I’ve given up on  ‘Pablo Escobar – Patron del Mal’  - it was starting to drag on. I replaced it with ‘Cocaine Coast’  - loosely based on real events – which looks at the rise of the drug trade in Galicia, Spain from 1980 to 1990; every episode is a different year. I watched all eight episodes of ‘Green Frontier’; an excellent Columbian police / murder  mystery that takes place on the edge of the Amazon Jungle on the Columbian / Brazilian border. Beautifully shot and well acted it’s a slow burn mystery that has flashbacks over the last sixty years. It can be a little hard to follow at the beginning but  worthwhile to watch just for the scenery itself. No golf this past week – but the Mayakoba Classic in Mexico City starts this Thursday. No major upsets in the NFL games on Sunday – although the Pittsburgh / Baltimore game keeps getting rescheduled, on Wednesday now - but my Seahawks played last night against the Eagles – and won!!  (Well, they were expected to win, but they sure took their time getting started). They are playing the Giants, Jets, and Washington in the next three weeks – that should set them up pretty good  for getting into the playoffs!!   With L.A.’s loss to San Francisco on Sunday the ‘Hawks have a one game lead in the NFC West Got to go and cook …Have a great and safe week … we will see you in a bit!!