is there any more pie?

Next year I am buying the gravy and I am not going to make homemade dressing.  No more oven-toasted Italian bread cubes for me!  I’m returning to bags of Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix and calling it good.

Why, you ask?

Neither process went well.  Just ask my daughter Nancy, who did her best to rescue the gravy, add flavor to the dressing and solve the problem of undercooked turkey breasts (it was only on one side and easily fixed with another 20 minutes in the oven, but still…) while happy, hungry friends came through the front door.

But despite all that, a good time was had by all.  I’m so glad Nancy had the brilliant idea to take a picture.

Ah, the food…

There were the usual fabulous desserts. And a new game: Catch Phrase. I’m not sure we were playing it properly, but there were a lot of laughs as we tried.

Every year we are all together for this holiday, I am so, so grateful.

Karen, me and daughter Nancy at the Breakers in Newport

Banjo Man once told me he had 40 first cousins.  I found that hard to comprehend.  My side of the family is woefully short of relatives, but a second cousin–on my mother’s side– surfaced in Austin about three years ago and connected with us.  We even ended up having lunch together two years in a row.

Karen–my mother’s grandniece– had never been to Rhode Island and very much wanted to visit, so I picked her up at the airport last Wednesday afternoon and brought her home to our little place in the country. She has always been a city girl, so her first question was, “What kind of wild animals do y’all have here?”

Thursday morning, having survived a quiet night with no wolf attacks, we headed to Newport with daughter Nancy. It wasn’t the most beautiful day–cloudy, cold, rainy–to cross the bridges, but the Vanderbilt’s “The Breakers” awaited.

The ballroom:

We ate lunch at the Brick Alley Pub and shopped the stores lining the cobblestone street behind Memorial Boulevard.  Souvenirs were purchased.  As were cupcakes and coffee.

That evening we were at the Matunuck Oyster Bar with Banjo Man. Followed by family stories and a genealogy lesson. Banjo Man was fascinated with the colorful (to put it mildly), bewildering side of my family, with a cast of characters (bigamists, gamblers, dancers, shrimpers) light years away from his Nebraska roots.

We took her to the train Friday, as she was heading to NYC for a reunion with high school friends from New Orleans.

It’s always fun to play tourist and see this area through the eyes of someone from another part of the country.  Rhode Island has a ton of problems, but if you put those aside and simply enjoy the food and the ocean and the history, well, it’s a good place to visit.

Just ask Karen.

This was the view from our table at Champlin’s, in Galilee, on Sunday afternoon.

We decided to take a drive to the fishing village and eat fish ‘n chips while watching the boats come into Salt Pond from the ocean.

Banjo Man took a break from leaf-blowing and I fled my sewing machine to enjoy an afternoon admiring the ocean, the boats and the beauty of New England before the snow arrives.

It was a gorgeous day, a bit chilly, but the November sun was bright and the parking spaces plentiful.

I love Champlin’s fish ‘n chips more than anyone else’, due to their using flounder and not cod. Thin, flaky, with just the right amount of breading, better fish cannot be found, I dare you!

Visiting family love to come here and load up on chowder, clam cakes and fish while watching the boats, the ferry, the seagulls.

Just a little piece of New England.