Still Colder Than Heck!

Our Son Tom, His Wife Mary, In Cabo, Mexico For A Few Days

Well, another sunny and one below morning in Darien, fourteen below at the lake.  Thank goodness for a furnace, for the comfort of a warm home, for not having to build a fire to keep warm like our ancestors.  I can remember my grandparents having a coal furnace, having to drop a large square of coal, about 12" by 6", wrapped in paper, into their furnace all day long.  That was back in the late 1940's.  As I remember, my parents had a oil/gas run furnace in our new home, built in the late 1940's I think, on Briardale Ave in Euclid, Ohio.  Ours was the first generation to grow up with gas/oil furnaces in our homes, with no need for coal or firewood.

Mitch and Rami, Off To Visit Columbia

Mitchell and Ramiro went to the city yesterday morning, leaving the rest of us home and cosy on a very cold morning.  Mitchell was touring Columbia University, one of his college interests.  For now, he is interested in engineering and Columbia has a very good but selective engineering department. They toured the school, which I remember as like a walled city, of stone buildings, on the border between Manhattan and Harlem.  A highlight for Mitch was eating lunch in the diner where Seinfeld often took place.

Evie and Marisa, Loving Fairway

The rest of us hung out in the morning, no baking or cooking, lots of backgammon, the new passion in the household.  Around 11:30, however, Evie, Marisa and I, drove off to our other favorite grocery story, in Stamford, Fairway, a newer store built in one of the poor, undeveloped parts of the city which is now flourishing because it's near the water.  We have always taken Marisa to this store because we love the vastness of its vegetable and fruit section, like a huge Van Gogh and they have lots of freebies.  Our favorite is the olive oil and vinegar bar.  You can have all the baguettes with oil and vinegar you want.  We ended up buying a bottle of olive oil from the French Riviera for twenty bucks, like a fine wine I suppose.  We then went to the coffee area, where they have huge bags of at least thirty or forty coffees from all over the world.  We picked out a Brazilian and a Italian roast for our mornings.  And I bought our favorite cheese from our life in Istanbul, what Turks call Kashar, the Greeks, Kasseri,  but it's called Kashkaval in the store.  In fact, the women behind the counter was unable to find it at first.  We had to point it out.  It's popular in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. We love it in a toasted cheese sandwich.

Kashkaval...salty and creamy

We shopped for a half hour, then went to their deli/sandwich/bar where we love their French fries, freshly cut and wonderful.  One order is enough for the three of us though I had a Philly cheese steak sandwich, more than I could eat unfortunately.  It was lunch time so the dining area was crowded with workers from the area, feasting on the various delights.  The fries were so hot we had to wait to eat them, dunked, our course, in Heinz ketchup.

We were home by 1:30, in time for me to take Cody out for his daily constitutional,  a walk up the street and back.  And it was cold, so much so that my eyes were watering, my hands frozen by the time we got  back.  The rest of the afternoon we hung out, playing backgammon, Evie and Marisa making more chocolate chip cookies, and I watched the Duke/North Carolina basketball game I had saved from the previous night.

Around 5:00, Marisa's friend Mary came over to play and her mother brought us a nice surprise, a dinner for us, one of our favorites in fact, Chicken Marbella, from The Silver Palate cookbook.  How nice for Evie and Beth, no prepping for dinner, just put it in the oven for an hour.  It was great, the adults loving it, the kids not so much because of the prunes and olives.  We then watched the finals of Top Chef with Marisa, before she went up to bed late, around 9:30.  The rest of us then watched more of the first season of House of Cards before going to bed.  I finished, finally, WILD, and started Jojo Myers newest, ONE PLUS ONE,  which just appeared on my new Kindle. So far, so good.