Blowin in the wind

The wind that caused us to cancel my birthday dinner in Ashland, is upon us this morning. The remay is barely hanging on over my raised beds, so I'm going to have to get out there  as soon as I'm out of my pj's and re-do it all.

My birthday wound up to be a shopping and cooking day because of the impending bad weather. Dinner plans changed twice; but I finally settled on steamed clams which I found at Costco. Jim opened a great bottle of Cake Bread chardonnay and I heated up some sourdough and we feasted on 5 lbs of clams steamed in wine, garlic, butter and herbs.

None of the stores had the ingredients I needed for the royal icing to decorate the gingerbread men, but the heavens blessed us and when we got home from all that shopping, the package arrived with that meringue powder. Two days ago an email from the company said due to weather conditions countrywide, I wouldn't be getting delivery until after Christmas. Thanks goodness they were wrong. So sometime Friday or Saturday I'll be decorating those gingerbread men for the grand children.

It was too late by the time we got home from all that shopping to get into the studio. Groceries had to get put away, more Christmas packages had to be opened and stored, clams had to get soaked, animals fed and walked, and on and on.

Time now to get dressed and re-cover my raised beds and hope that my winter broccoli and cabbage haven't turned into popsicles from the cold and wind. Then it's going to be an oatmeal breakfast, finish email, and  studio time for a few hours. Somewhere in the day I need to make that banana bread. The bolognese sauce that I planned as a dinner substitute last night, before I found the clams, is defrosted, so I'll be making that easy, pasta dinner tonight.