a pepe pizza party

Posted on March 3, 2023 by is there any more pie?

He ordered the Large.

Yesterday we celebrated the 37th—and LAST–session of radiation.  Banjo Man made it through this with his only side effect being tired.  His doctor beamed as they said goodbye.

Can you tell how happy Banjo Man is that this over?

A few weeks ago an article popped up on my computer screen (you know what I mean–the internet never stops surprising me with pop ups) from http://www.travel.com listing the 50 Best Pizzas In The World.  “Frank Pepe”, which began in  Connecticut in 1925, was listed as #5.  Who knew?  Only a few miles from the cancer center and across the street from Savers, my weekly donation drop off spot, it was easy to find.

We did not order the white clam pizza, by the way.

I surprised my husband with a can of his very own Frank Pepe tomatoes (after lunch he returned to the car while I stayed behind and went to the ladies room).  There’s a new Greek vegetarian recipe he wants to try this weekend and he’s sure these tomatoes will make it taste even more flavorful.

I’ve urged him to take today off and stay out of his office until Monday.  Let the dust settle.   Eat leftover pizza.  Read.  Go to the dump, buy some oranges, watch a little television.

Will he take my advice?  I hope so!

Posted in family, food, rhode island, the cancer fight | 6 Comments

rockin’ it

Posted on February 25, 2023 by is there any more pie?

See the boulder?  It used to be in the driveway.  Over the past few years many large rocks and a few boulders have been emerging from the gravel road that leads to our house and circles around the non-pond oval in the center.  Due to “frost heave”, Banjo Man explained, rocks just keep showing up year after year.

The neighbor with the back hoe had been building a stone staircase for my brother next door, so when it was finished Thursday afternoon he came over to dig out our rocks.

Banjo Man had sprayed the offenders with bright orange paint and in the course of one afternoon and the next morning they were all gone.  The holes were filled and smoothed over, the road no longer threatens mufflers and the orange rocks that littered the landscape have been hauled elsewhere.

Party time here.

Rhode Island has miles upon miles of old stone walls.  You see them everywhere, forgotten markers in the woods and elsewhere.  You can see in the above photo the amount of boulders on the hill around the shed.  Gifts from a glacier.

This is a great article about New England’s stone walls and who built them and why.  Good photos, too.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/new-england-stone-walls

I love the stone walls here.  Mysterious and old, they appeal to my Neolithic history lovin’ self.  While these 18th century Rhode Island walls are practical–created while clearing fields and marking boundaries–the stones come from the Ice Age.

Not exactly Stonehenge here, but we have our own mysterious rock creations.  And we appreciate them…until they erupt in the driveway.

Posted in family, rhode island | 1 Comment

the cord will be cut

Posted on February 23, 2023 by is there any more pie?

I am waiting for the Verizon tech to arrive this morning.  He is going to shut off our landline, remove the Fios tv equipment and upgrade the internet.

We are on “75”, which is obsolete, and are going to “1000” mbps.

I really don’t know what that means, but the “75” worked just fine.  Will Netflix load 1 millisecond faster?  Maybe.

Banjo Man is deliriously happy about the amount of money this will save each month.  I find this slightly aggravating because I have been suggesting this money-saving effort for over two years and have met with major resistance.

So before we set off for radiation (six more to go!) I will dismantle the cable boxes and load them into the car to return to Verizon.  I am pretty excited about this.  Can you tell?

We have replaced Fios TV with Youtube TV.  It includes the Fox Business channel for Banjo Man, plus the Big 10 Network (crucial!), the NFL channel and also DABL, for my favorite “Escape to the Country” show.  I especially like the fact that I can organize the channels from the  website, eliminating the ones we never watch and lining them up in my own order of interest.  Less scrolling!

Aside from sports (Go Big Red!) our tv watching is 99% streaming channels like Acorn, Britbox, Amazon and Netflix.  There are so many wonderful shows to watch and we spend our winters devouring hundreds of hours of them.

Maybe we need that 1000 mbps of internet after all.

 

 

Posted in rhode island, television | 1 Comment

more comfort food, please

Posted on February 18, 2023 by is there any more pie?

Last week we learned that Banjo Man’s radiation treatments would not end on February 21, but on March 2.

37 total. That’s a lot, but still…completely doable. He’s disappointed, of course, and wearing down, but the weather keeps cooperating and Spring doesn’t seem all that far away. It’s only 25 degrees out today, but the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I’ll take it!

And there is this:

Let the basting begin!!!

And now I give you Banjo Man’s favorite Comfort Food of the Week, “Amish Baked Custard”. I served it with my Idaho canned peaches and it made him very, very happy.

Ingredients:
1 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
4 Cups of hot water
6 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
nutmeg for sprinkling on top afterwards

Preheat oven to 325. Combine condensed mil and hot water in a large glass or metal bowl.
In a separate bowl beat eggs until light and fluffy. Pour a bit of hot milk mix into eggs to temper, then combine them fully (do not beat, but mix well). Stir in vanilla and salt, then pour into ramekins or 2-qt baking dish.
Put in a large pan with high sides and fill with 1/2″ water. Bake ramekins for an hour–or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. If you’re using a large baking dish it could take at least 1 hour and 40 minutes. Mine took almost 2 hours to bake.
Allow the custard to cool for an hour. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Serve warm or chilled.

I found this recipe on a site called “12 Tomatoes”, via Facebook, but it was adapted from http://www.createdbydiane.com. I’ve checked out her blog and the recipes look delicious.

Enjoy the weekend!

Posted in family, food, rhode island, the cancer fight | Leave a comment

the bavarian gift

Posted on February 16, 2023 by is there any more pie?


This beautiful china belonged to my mother.  When she moved to an assisted living facility I packed it up and stored it for my nephew.

I had no idea if he would want it or not, but perhaps one day he would value it?  It was a longshot, I knew, but I had to save the china just in case.

Sets of unwanted china litter consignment stores.  Really, you can’t give this stuff away…or so I’ve been told many times.  I have four sets of my own and I love using the plates on Thanksgiving.  But I don’t kid myself that anyone is hoping to inherit them.

Fast forward a few years, when my nephew’s parents assured me that the china would make a great gift for my soon-to-be-married nephew and his lovely fiancé.  Oh, the joy!  Last weekend I started the unpacking-scrubbing-stacking-counting process.   This china had never lived in a house with a dishwasher, so I washed it very carefully in the sink.

Because there were pieces missing (my mother bought the set from her landlady back in the 1940’s) I searched the internet for pieces to add.

“Replacements.com” referred to the pattern as “BAV137”, but had nothing available.  Neither did Etsy or Ebay, but I will keep looking.  It’s very old, possibly from 1898-1903. Or 1898-1923.

I know china is a thing of the past, like wedding goblets and cloth diapers, but I think it’s still special.

Do you?

Posted in family, rhode island, secondhand stuff | 2 Comments

hallelujah, a journey, a song

Posted on February 13, 2023 by is there any more pie?

Do you remember Leonard Cohen? Judy Collins’ singing “Suzanne” and “Bird on the Wire”?

I still remember all the words.

Have you loved the song “Hallelujah”?

I don’t know the words.

This documentary about Leonard Cohen’s life and song-writing journey is on Netflix and well worth your time.

Banjo Man and I enjoyed it so much. If you have the time, check out the trailer:

Posted in a more pie opinion, music, television | 1 Comment

super bowl 57: day of weird food

Posted on February 12, 2023 by is there any more pie?

Because I am neither a Kansas City Chiefs fan or a Philadelphia Eagles fan, I have decided to put a little effort into the food today.

No, I am not having a party.  Daughter Nancy is stopping by to hang out for a while and I really, really hope she is hungry because I feel like cooking.

Correction:  I feel like cooking weird food.

These “L’il Smokies” are wrapped in bacon and will be topped with a combo of melted butter and brown sugar, then baked. Ridiculous. I made them once in Austin and son Ben declared they were delicious but I should never make them again. The guy who never eats vegetables had a health-conscious opinion?

Go figure.

So don’t ask why I am serving them today. I don’t know.

Then there is a recipe I saw on the internet. It required three ingredients: a bag of frozen meatballs, a can of pineapple and a bottle of bbq sauce. Dump everything in the crock pot, stir and cook on low or high, depending on when you want to eat.

I can’t remember when I last bought frozen meatballs. Maybe sometime in the 90’s. The weirdness of this recipe appealed to me, so on our last phone call I ran it past my grandson (we like to discuss future meals for the summer) and he thought it sounded good, but without the pineapple.

We’ll see.

And then I did this:

I bought dough. And I am going to make my own pizzas this afternoon. Picking up pizza–as good as it is–at the local Italian place seemed like a hassle, especially on Super Bowl Sunday. And I really didn’t feel like going out.

Who is going to eat all of this? The three of us. This is not the winter to entertain.

I will root for Patrick Mahones. I will pretend I’m having a party. And I’ll go to bed at halftime.

How about you?

Posted in family, food, just for fun, rhode island, television | 1 Comment

it’s a small, small world

Posted on February 11, 2023 by is there any more pie?

In my neverending stacks of plastic bins a colorful part of my childhood was stored.  Yes, the “dolls from around the world” had been waiting to be discovered again for fifty-eight years.

I was very happy to see them.  Maybe unearthing the past is actually fun after all.

Barbie and two Breyer horses were also in the box.  Some of you might recognize this early Barbie (circa 1960-61).  I sewed a lot of clothes for her out of scraps from my mother’s and grandmother’s sewing boxes. She was a good friend.

The Breyer stallions will be bid a fond farewell and listed on Ebay. They’re still gorgeous, but I know of no horse-mad little girls who would love and care for them so off the stallions will go.

The collection of souvenir dolls was created by my Navy father, who bought them at various ports-of-call before I was born.  Some of his Navy friends joined in, so for years the collection grew.  From Hawaii to New Zealand, China to Israel, Italy to Mexico to Haiti and more.  They hung from pink yarn on my bedroom wall.

Banjo Man suggested I display them again and use the old cabinet (it once held razors in an East Providence barber shop) to do so.

Banjo Man is a genius.

Here’s a start.

And more to go:

I’m trying to be very quiet this morning as Banjo Man has gone back to bed.  Exhaustion has hit him hard these past couple of days and he needs more rest.  I won’t be rearranging dolls or moving shelves or experimenting with ideas to attach them to the cabinet until later.  This afternoon I will drive my tired husband to the dump and the grocery store (he is determined to take advantage of a sale on oranges and won’t let me shop for him).  He has seven more radiation treatments left, but has been warned that it will take a while after that to recover his stamina.

It took me a year to feel “normal” again.  It was frustrating, somewhat embarrassing, hard work.  But Banjo Man will be back to his energetic self eventually.

I keep reminding him there’s no hurry.  He’s doing just fine.

 

 

 

Posted in family, rhode island, secondhand stuff, the cancer fight | 2 Comments

craving turkey

Posted on February 10, 2023 by is there any more pie?

I may never eat turkey again.

I’ll back up.  Last week Banjo Man had a craving for turkey soup.  His appetite has diminished during radiation and his love of soup has drastically increased.

So I cooked a turkey last Sunday.  And then we had a mini-turkey dinner, which pleased my husband no end.  Until he cleaned his plate and asked when I was going to make the soup.

I stuffed the carcass, wings and thighs into a large crock pot, covered everything with cold water and simmered it overnight.  Early the next morning Banjo Man picked all the meat off of the bones, chopped onions and carrots and then as soon as I woke up proceeded to ask me–as I sipped my first mug of coffee–when I was going to make the soup.

“Can I get dressed first?”

“Well, all right,” was his reluctant reply.

The house reeked of turkey.  I lit a candle.  Then another.

I ended up not making the damn soup until after we returned from radiation, around 3:00.  And there was so much turkey I made two soups, one a creamy wild rice turkey soup in the 7-quart pot.  And a turkey orzo soup in the 3-quart pot.

That was Monday.  Banjo Man has refused to eat anything else but turkey soup all week.  He is so happy.

Here are the links to the recipes, though I didn’t follow them exactly.  I rarely do, admittedly.  But they served as inspiration and the soups turned out just fine.

https://kitchenconfidante.com/brimming-with-gratitude

https://thefoodcharlatan.com/turkey-wild-rice-soup/

If you have an extra turkey in your freezer and forty people to feed, go for it.

 

Posted in family, food, rhode island, the cancer fight | 1 Comment

23 below zero

Posted on February 4, 2023 by is there any more pie?

We’re setting records this morning in the midst of an “Arctic blast” in New England. The temperature outside is -6, with a wind chill temp of -23.

But the sun is shining, our pipes didn’t freeze and there are no trees blocking the driveway despite the roaring winds throughout the night.

There is also no snow. And no ice. And warming expected tomorrow.

Our kids in Austin were out of school for four days last week and the city has been declared a disaster area. Power outages and a gazillion fallen trees and branches have made the Texans’ Arctic Blast a real ordeal.

Meanwhile, back by the ocean, we’re going out to dinner tonight. Just a few miles down the road is the General Stanton Inn, recently purchased and reopened by an energetic couple determined to bring this old gorgeous place back to life.

I very much hope we get the room with the colonial fireplace, originally built in 1667.

Here’s a bit of history from the website:

The Inn’s history begins in 1650 Colonial America. The Niantics, a tribe in Narragansett Nation, rewarded Thomas Stanton property in Charlestown, Rhode Island for brokering a deal to return their beloved Native American princess who had been abducted. The notorious Manese tribe had staged a daring night raid and kidnapped the young princess, taking her to their village on Block Island. Thomas Stanton rowed 12 miles over ocean swells to the island and negotiated her freedom. Upon her return, the Narragansetts gifted Stanton with a four by two-mile tract of land. The General Stanton Inn resides on this land today. 

The Stanton’s were enduring friends and lifelong champions of the local tribes. In 1740, Thomas Stanton’s grandson, Joseph Stanton II, built the Inn next to a small “dwelling” on the gifted land. He converted this small dwelling, which dates to 1667, into what is believed to be the first Native American school in Colonial America. The “schoolhouse” has been preserved in its original colonial-period form.

An early member of the Sons of Liberty, it is believed Joseph Stanton III used the tavern in the 1770’s as a secret gathering place for George Washington’s revolutionary war spy ring. Washington’s trust in Colonel Stanton dated back to their French Indian War fighting days. His nephew, General Joseph Stanton IV would later serve as  the leader of Rhode Island’s first militia, using the tavern to plan Revolutionary War strategies to defeat the British. Having served with distinction, he would later be elected Rhode Island’s very first U.S. Senator.

In the 1800’s the General Stanton Inn became a welcome stop for horse-drawn carriages and stagecoaches on the well-traveled Post Road between Boston and Philadelphia. The Inn also became a hideout for fugitive slaves and clandestine gatherings. In the early 1830’s Brigadier General Joseph Stanton V befriended abolitionist Moses Brown who enlisted Stanton to assist runaway African American slaves traveling north on the underground railroad. 

You can read more about it on the website, http://www.thegeneralstantoninn.com

Last time we were there, in early January, Banjo Man and I ordered the 1740 Prime Burgers and agreed they were the best burgers we’d ever had in our lives.

Definitely worth braving below zero temps for.

 

Posted in food, rhode island | 2 Comments