John's day in the "Man Cave"
Dinner on Sunday night—another reunion get-together—with Candy and her husband, Michael, Dave and Dozie and Spike . Candy and Michael live in a beautiful old subdivision in Cleveland Heights—Amblerside. They bought the childhood home of one of their school mates and have lived there for 31 years. Another grand old Cleveland home. It was a lovely evening…
As we left, Candy gave us a huge package of fresh trout that Michael had just caught. I asked if it was filleted, not wanting to deal with cleaning out fish guts and she assured me that it was. Having never cooked trout, I spent some time finding some wonderful recipes for trout filets. Time to prep for dinner and I had picked a lovely recipe- chopped pecans, bread crumbs, rosemary, parsley—a simple baked trout. I got the pecans chopped and the spices mixed up—then pulled the fish from the refrigerator. I took it out and gasped—it wasn’t lovely trout filets….but 2 huge trout—complete with head and bulging eyes. Never fear, the internet was there with a step-by-step guide to butterflying a trout, complete with photos. After cleaning out the left-over guts (just a bit of blood and gook) and chopping off the head, I was feeling like a pioneer woman. John walked me through the knife cuts. I did so well with the first backbone cuts—and voila, the backbone was removed. (Well, not exactly “voila”—it took me about ½ hour to just get this far). Then, there were still two remaining rows of bones to be removed. We tried to understand the photos and directions—to cleanly cut the bones out- I ended up pulling them out, one at a time, swearing and cursing the damned fish. At this point, I made a vow NEVER to buy a whole fish again- I will pay any amount of money to get them without head, tail, fins and skin!
Dinner with Candy and Michael's house
When we had dinner the other night with Jeff and Booty, her brother-in-law was talking about his hobby-pet portraits.. He casually suggested that I send him a few photos of Chloe....and a few weeks later, he called to present us with this amazing water color/oil (he uses a bit of both, I think). He captured her expression so perfectly--it's eerie!
We went to Sal's house a few times this summer. Her house is stunning. When you walked in, you passed through an entryway and then onto the large open plan kitchen, dining room, living room and huge deck overlooking Lake Erie. The lake is part of the Great Lakes chain--so it looks more like being on an ocean or sea. She's got a small private beach in front of her house and a huge-wrap around deck. She added a second floor --her master bedroom--with floor to ceiling windows looking out at the lake. Then, in the basement, she took the old boat house and made a "theater".
4th of July at Sal's
An evening with Dan and Marge Jeff and Bootie at Wendy Island. What a great location—a bit like the Freezer! Made us feel like home.
A wonderful evening with Jim and Frannie, their daughter and granddaughter and Jeff and Bootie. The meal was amazing—thanks to the culinary skills of their daughter.
Jim's Norton
