The European tour continues, sort of

 

Jordan's shipboard view

It’s not actually Europe. Jordan embarked at Brest, France on a ship from the Ponant cruise line bound for Iceland. The neat part about the cruise is that instead of going out to sea and around Ireland, the ship is going up the channel between England and Ireland, so she will get to see England and Scotland on the starboard side and Ireland on the port, including the city of Dublin. I am pretty sure they won’t disembark, but she’ll get a glimpse. And since she wasn’t along when her older brother and sister and I went to Scotland, I am glad she’ll get this glimpse of the land of my ancestors.

Of course, she has a glass of wine in her hand in most pictures, but she also has apparently ordered hake again, this in a lovely presentation on a bed of vegetables. Since she likes it so well, I checked Central Market, but when you search for hake all kinds of weird things come up, like baking powder and a plant-based protein chocolate shake. I love shopping at Central Market, but their website frustrates me.

Hake with vegetables

Meanwhile back at home, I’m busy planning menus of things that Central Market does carry, as opposed to hake. Today Christian fixed a pot roast with carrots, onion, potatoes, and onion soup. Delicious, and a good thing to have when Jordan’s out of town because she would say it’s heavy. I’m going to make a shopping list for coronation chicken salad and old-fashioned pea salad for Saturday—I presume there will be coronation reruns Saturday night.

So tonight I’ll decide what to cook for three other nights, so that we have supper the first night Jordan’s home. She definitely won’t want to run to the grocery store that first day back. Menu planning is one of the great pleasures of my life and the reason I cancelled the Home Fresh order that Jamie so sweetly gave me. Jordan forwarded an email, apparently unrelated to Jamie’s gift, that said she had somehow been awarded eighteen free meals. We jointly agreed not to claim them.

Meanwhile, it was a beautiful day in Fort Worth—sunny and about eighty degrees. Subie and Phil came for happy hour, and we sat on the patio. Sophie overcame her bad manners of the last time they were here and was sweet and docile, except for a couple of barking periods. Subie and I agreed she likes for us to be outside. Christian came home in time to join us and recounted his trip to San Miguel, where Subie and Phil visited a number of years ago.

We also touched on politics, so here’s my two cents for the day: If you live in Fort Worth District 9, please vote for Elizabeth Beck. She’s been pro-active for neighborhoods and an active council member. I know nothing about her opponent, Pam Boggess, save for a slur kind of post on Facebook which I will not repeat. But Beck deserves re-election. No sense changing horses in mid-stream for no good reason. Maddie Parker appears to have endorse both candidates, which cancels out her endorsement.

My other political note for the day is that I am delighted that Colin Allred is going to take on Ted Cruz in the next senatorial elections. Allred has been a rising star in the Democratic caucus in the House and takes a risk by challenging the incumbent, but Beto O’Rourke came so close to beating Cruz last time that it seems possible to unseat the senator. I am cheering for Allred.

Otherwise, a workday. I am revising my Helen Corbitt manuscript, pulling 3,000 words out of 28,000 for an article. Today I went through seven chapters, choosing article material and fixing in my mind the theme of the article—how Corbitt and the Zodiac Room at Neiman’s changed Texans’ palate. I even think there may be a second article buried in that material, but I will have to find a food magazine that is an appropriate outlet. Fun to have a project.

So that’s my day. How was yours?