Surprise Visit

Maria surprised us this past weekend with a “layover” visit. She joined her best friend, Deanne, and family on a trip to Disneyland last week. Upon examining her return ticket, she noticed she had a one-hour layover in Sacramento. Hmmmm…a phone call and credit card took care of the rest. The hour delay turned into a four-day delight! (Corny? I know…sometimes I just can’t help myself!) I picked her up from the airport around noon on Saturday. We lunched at Three Sisters in Sac and then fabric shopped at the Sewing Cottage in Jackson in preparation for our weekend quilt plans. While we were running around having fun, Verne was on his way home from Cool April Nights, a car event in Redding he attends each year with his brothers. He arrived in time to share a light dinner of pickled beets (my latest canning obsession) and crostini with goat cheese and fresh basil (an old-time favorite) and talk about our day and plans for the rest of Maria's visit.

All day Sunday and until noon on Monday, Verne waited on us (he’s such a Good Man!) while we focused on Maria’s project, which was a beautiful, floral quilt for her friend’s 50^th birthday. You’ll see by the picture below that it’s near identical to the one I’d just finished for my niece. Not surprising, as they’re from the same pattern and stash of designer fabrics. We’ve already made plans to make another…this time it will be a keeper, one for each of us.

Since our Monday plans included my Master Food Preservers’ class (I’ll get to that in my next blog post), which runs from mid-afternoon until 8 p.m., Verne fixed us a hearty lunch of his homemade pizzas. Delicious! I won’t bother with detailed descriptions and pictures, as they too were identical to the three pizzas we’d made just a few weeks before (earlier blog post called Personal Pizzas). This was the fifth in the MFP series and the topic was jams and jellies. With five weeks of anticipation and having to get through two weeks of lectures on food borne illnesses and the prior week’s class on canning chicken (by far the most unappetizing product I’ve ever seen and one I will only eat if I happen to be starving and then I may just turn to cannibalism to avoid eating canned chicken!), I was prepared to be informed and inspired! Sadly, the class was a disappointment. My team made grape jelly and I will admit it tastes just like Welch's. I happen to love grape jelly. However, now that I know the ratio of sugar to grape juice is 7:5, I will never eat it again! Our second recipe was for blueberry jam and, again, it was a lopsided ratio of sugar to blueberries. Have these people (MFP educators) not heard that sugar is sweet poison ruining our health? I don’t intend to give it up completely, but I believe we should be moving from the Ball book on home canning, which was first published over a century ago, to something a bit more modern that uses less sugar and doesn’t come out of the jar resembling thick sludge or, as Verne described the texture of the blueberry jam, tar! Having said that, I own the Ball book and find it to be an excellent reference, but it is light on low-sugar jam and preserve recipes. 

Tuesday was spent going to a movie (Captain America: The Winter Soldier), more time in the studio working on another quilting project, and finishing the day with another of Verne’s fantastic meals. There’s been a lot of repetition in this blog post with mother-daughter matching quilts, the same pizzas we just had earlier in April, and now, I’m embarrassed to say, the same meal we’ve eaten thrice before in recent weeks…Cajun BBQ Shrimp with Dirty Rice! 

It’s my fault! Verne would never remake a recipe if it were up to him. He’d always be trying something new. I can’t help it…this has got to be the best shrimp dish I’ve ever eaten and I can’t get enough of it! Also, I like to serve the ‘tried and true’ to guests (and family). Maria LOVED it! This time we got a picture of it so you’ll be able to better visualize the jumbo shrimp (wild shrimp from Alaska that Scott gives us for Christmas each year) served in a sauce of lemon, spices, cayenne for a bit of kick, and plenty of butter. It's served with a traditional Cajun side made from white rice cooked with sautéed bell pepper, onion, and celery and seasoned with cayenne. It’s amazing to me that this handful of ingredients simply prepared results in such incredible flavors. 

I think we'll have to have it again soon!