A Morning Of Sleet And Gray

8:41

9:10

It's 8:45 and I was out kayaking for forty minutes, a slight wind and sleet made it colder than I expected.  I took my usual paddle, down to Sandy Bottom and back, staying close to the shoreline after hearing about the four hunters whose 15-foot boat capsized yesterday morning and had to be rescued by the fire department at 6:30 a.m., lucky to have been saved. 

Kayak Morning

Yesterday was a gray, cold day, perfect for staying inside and enjoying the indoors.  I started as usual with a short paddle, blog, and breakfast.  Evie then got busy, getting organized for our Middle East dinner, more accurately, Palestinian dinner.  First, we cleaned up the kitchen and cleaned out the refrigerator, making sure we had all the trash so that I could take it to the Transfer Station, always a busy place on Saturday mornings. 

Duck Hunters Brave The Cold Water

Setting Out The Decoys

We were having Linda and Ron over for dinner, again, and we both wanted to try a couple of recipes from Sami Tamini's cookbook, Falastin. Both were complicated and Evie had made neither one of them before.  So some of the morning was spent prepping for both Fattoush, a Middle Eastern salad with toasted pita, and the main course, Chicken Shawarma Pie, a complicated mixture of marinated chicken thighs, seven spices, potatoes, tahini, all baked in a filo dough pie.  

After helping some, mostly doing up some dishes, I had the leftover chicken parmesan for lunch, watched some football, and started a new series, Undercover, from Denmark I think.  I fell asleep watching the Ohio State game, read some, then helped Evie more in the kitchen.  We did not get in a walk, alas, but it was just not that nice outdoors. Once dinner was prepped, Evie quickly put together baklava for dessert, grinding the walnuts, layering the filo dough, baking it, and then pouring the cold sugar syrup over the piping hot baklava.  It's fun to hear the sizzle. 

Chicken Shawarma Pie

Most of the dinner, putting it together, especially the Shawarma, had to wait until 5:30.  I read the directions as Evie layered the filo, potatoes, spicy chicken, tahini, and more filo.  It baked then for an hour. Linda and Ron arriving at 6:00 while it was still baking, and we had our drinks, appetizers, and cheese while doing something different.  We sat around the dining room table, coloring the tablecloth, talking, and enjoying our drinks and cheese and crackers,  

Coloring With Appetizers And Drinks

The pie came out at 6:30 and Evie let it sit for 30 minutes.  It then came out of the springform pan perfectly.  While we cleared off the table and set it, Evie made the fattoush salad of onions, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, and pita with a vinaigrette flavored with pomegranate molasses and sumac seasoned onions.

Fortunate To Be Together

We sat down to eat around 7:30 and devoured our dinner, enjoying the Shawarma and Fattoush with its many Middle Eastern spices.  It felt like we were back in Istanbul.  We sat around the table talking until we decided it was time for dessert, so Evie served lemon sorbet with a couple of pieces of baklava, a perfect ending to our meal.  Linda and Ron left just before 10:00 and we spent 15 minutes washing and drying most of the dishes.  It's nice to wake up to a clean kitchen.  We watched some of Trump's crazy rally, addicted to his whining and lies I guess, before going up to bed.