Late Bloomers

Crape Myrtle Aug08
Originally uploaded by Food Fanatic

I'm a late bloomer myself, so I don't hold anything against my Crape Myrtle tree for choosing to bloom almost a month later than the neighbor's. Sometimes I wish it were a more exciting color than white, but we should strive to accept some things and people for the way they are, shouldn't we?

I've been shooting this tree for a couple of days, hoping to get a photo for a special project I'm working on. I like this one, but am not convinced that it's the one I want. We'll see.

It's been a bit hectic here, as you can imagine. Nate leaves for Erskine on August 23, so we are busy getting him to doctor appointments and shopping for dorm supplies. It's tax-free weekend here, but I'm not really mustering up the courage to go out and battle the crowds in the 90+ heat to save 7.5%. I might go to Wal-Mart today. Yup. Wal-Mart. On a Sunday afternoon. But I need his bedding and there is a pretty nice store here in Tega Cay. We'll see.

Taylor and I spent a few hours cooking yesterday for a story I wrote this morning on tailgating food. We did a cranberry walnut coleslaw recipe that I got from buddy Rena and a marinated shrimp recipe I got from buddy Sarah. We also made another batch of peach lemonade because Mensa Boy didn't get any of it last time. This was the second food story I've done in a week. The other was my annual treatise to the South Carolina peach. That one should be in next week's paper, so I'll post some photos and recipes next week.

It's been great having Taylor with me in the kitchen. Periodically I have to tell him I don't want help, though. Cooking is, after all, my hobby. So sometimes I like to just put on some tunes (typically Norah Jones), pour a glass of wine and just cook. But he does have a knack for it. Especially grilling. He pulled off some wonderful butterfly chops last week that absolutely were fantastic. They were done perfectly, very moist and yet cooked through. It took me a long time to perfect pork chops on the grill without drying them out. He's also become a bit of a grilled corn aficianado, although our attempt to cook cobs on the cast iron grill pan on top of the stove was not so great. We had copious amounts of smoke alternating with very slow cooking as we turned the heat up and down to find the right method. He finally decided he'd rather do that outside from now on, too.

I started back to work on Thursday. I was surprised to roll up to the building only to find everyone else already there. Apparently we were still on the 4-day workweek, so I had to work 10 hours that day! Since I didn't show up until 7, I was stuck there until 5:30 or 6. More like 6:15, since I kind of dithered around at lunch. But, it did mean I had Friday off, so that was cool. And this next week will be the last 4-day work week. So one more Friday off!

That's it. It's Sunday afternoon, which means NAPTIME!