Grillin' and chillin'

September 5th was Labor Day, which is kind of the official end to summer in America. Right on cue, the temperatures dropped out of the triple digits and it got almost - gasp - chilly overnight. Starved for fresh air after three months stuck inside breathing air-conditioning, we spent as much of the weekend outside as we could.

Saturday morning we went for a walk over at Parr Park in Grapevine. It has a great-looking playground; unfortunately Toby's still a bit small for anything but the swings, and gets easily overwhelmed by big play spaces. Still, it's OK if you're hanging on to Mum.

In the afternoon he was grouchy. He has recently developed a scream which has roughly the same effect as a pneumatic drill boring into your brain, and deploys it to good effect. After a few hours of this Graham and I were about ready to donate him to the nearest adoption agency and flee the country. Finally he slept, and we collapsed onto the couch and tried not to snap at each other. As the next best thing to fleeing the country, we packed up a picnic and drove to the Levitt Pavilion in Arlington for one of their open-air concerts. As we spread out our beautiful wedding quilt on the grass and dug into some pasta salad, the tension began to dissipate.

Boogieing to the music

Melissa Lawson was playing, who, apart from writing some very listenable music, manages to mother five boys under the age of twelve. She certainly knows what hard days are about. Hearing a few of her stories and songs kind of put ours back in perspective, and made us glad to be a family again. Of course, it helped that Toby had stopped screaming.

Always on the move

Monday evening we did what all good Americans do on Labor Day - grill. We never did get around to buying our own barbeque, but all the parks around here are equipped with picnic tables and grills, so we hung out at Bear Creek Park and cooked veggie kebabs, corn on the cob and bacon, with a few toasted marshmallows for afters.

Tofu kebabs
1 red or green bell pepper, cubed
12 mushrooms, halved
1 onion, cut into chunks
2 zucchini/courgettes, cut into chunks
450g / 1 lb firm tofu, cubed
125 ml / 1/2 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tsp grated fresh ginger

Thread the vegetables and tofu onto skewers, and place in a large non-metallic dish. Mix up remaining ingredients and pour over. Leave to marinade for 30 min or so, turning a few times if you remember. Grill over charcoal, basting with the marinade, until cooked. The tofu picks up a lovely smoky flavour. Serve with couscous.

Isn't this fun?

Aside from the constant vigilance required to stop Toby stuffing his mouth full of dirt and wood chips (clearly he didn't appreciate my culinary genius), it was another pleasant evening.

Exploring the great outdoors - aka hitting it as hard as possible

Son-set

Comments

Where am I going now? The Portway

I should probably explain why I am pottering around Nottingham and its western suburbs, rather than roaming the Derbyshire countryside. It's not just the abundance of paved paths, although that certainly helps - I recently went on a country walk across a cow field and found myself tiptoeing gingerly across boggy mud cratered with six-inch deep hoof holes. Then I was confronted by a sign which said: Private Property, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. I congratulated myself on being on a public right of way, then, a few steps on, consulted the map and realised I wasn't. The path was across a completely different field. nice scenery, though I digress. Apart from the absence of cows and angry landowners, the reason I am walking around Nottingham is that it's the start of the Portway. There is a blog called The Old Roads of Derbyshire , written by a man named Stephen Bailey, who has also published a book of the same name. I can't remember now whether I came across the book fir...

The Portway: Lenton to the Bramcote Hills

It was cold. My fingers were cold, and my phone was cold too. The OS map was totally failing to find my location, and the more I prodded it the less feeling I had in my fingers, so I gave up, shoved both my phone and my chilly hands into my pockets, and set off. After all, I knew where I was. This was Wollaton Park. And the path was very obvious. Just follow the avenue of trees... ...past the deer... ...and out through the fancy gates. Crossing a busy road brought me into a neat little housing estate with unusual round street signs. This was built when Wollaton Park was sold to Nottingham City Council in 1925. The old gatehouse, Lenton Lodge, is now estranged from the rest of the park, and stands by itself next to Derby Road. The bridge used to go over the Nottingham Canal, which has now been turned back into the River Leen. The unfortunate river got shoved out of the way whenever someone came up with a new building project. This is not its original course. My hands were warming up sli...

Advent 2025: Mercy

I'm going to read the whole Bible. The question came up in my homegroup recently (have you ever...?) and even though large parts of the Bible are embedded in my brain, and even though I'm pretty sure I have read all of it at some point, I have never set out to read the whole thing. My friend Dave read through the Bible several times. He was one of the most Christian men I know, in all the best ways, and he died recently. So. This is for Dave, too. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I was going to start on December 1st, and I was going to do the obvious thing and start with Genesis, alongside the Psalms. Then I saw something that mentioned reading Luke in Advent (24 chapters: 24 days) and then I had some spare time today and thought why not? so here I am, a day ahead of myself already. Luke 1 is hardly a voyage into the unknown. In the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent by God, the Magnificat and the Benedictus ... all woven tightly into the liturgies of the church. But ...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

Search This Blog