Make Up Travel

This week was a fun week, and I really did enjoy the low key days as well as those with activities. I did not even mind cooking the tomatoes daily (except when we were out of town)

The break mid-week was a great way to change my perspective and adjust my attitude.

No need to post the menu that was planned, since only the hot dog meal happened:

What we did and what we ate:

Monday: 59 days till Christmas

The day was pretty and I probably should have been doing stuff outside but instead I stayed in the house most of the day doing odd jobs that I had been putting off. Other than that, I had a couple of quick errands, that really amounted to much of nothing, along with a singularly important quick one. 

Both TheHub and I are avid readers and both use the Libby app and iPads for our primary reading. Our library cards expired while I was in the middle of reading a book. Normally this would not be a big deal for I usually have several in a queue, downloaded and waiting on me to finish whatever I was reading. 

Wouldn't you know the one time I had no back up would be the day my library card expired, and I do not go a day without reading something. 

It might not constitute an emergency for some people, but the thought of finishing my book and having nothing to read that night was not going to happen.*

Monday dinner: Thankfully I had the bones of this dinner to pull out of storage, just requiring a couple of additions (glad I keep potatoes on hand nearly all the time)

Corned beef hash, coleslaw.

Tuesday: 58 days till Christmas

We woke, packed our totes and took off on a quick trip. TheHub thought after messing up our projected beach trip the week before, that we would just go there Tuesday. Because of Halloween, and the fact that I had already purchased 84 Hershey bars, as treats, I wanted to be back home by Thursday night. That made the beach trip a bit impractical because the original intent of the trip was to explore a beach about an hour and a half from the beaches we are familiar with.

Instead, we drove about 2 hours to The Shoals in Northwest Alabama. The area consists of 4 incorporated cities/towns (depending on your perspective) on the banks of the Tennessee river.

On our way into town we stopped at Trowbridge's for a sandwich and a shared scoop of ice cream. The orange pineapple ice cream is featured as one of the 100 dishes in Alabama you need to eat. We have not had all of them yet but are knocking the list down whenever we are in a particular area.

After lunch we had some time to kill and went to see the Rosenbaum house. It was designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930's as a wedding present from his parents to they young Rosenbaum newlyweds. 
I am glad we went and enjoyed seeing the house and "feeling" Wright's esthetics, but I was surprised how small and tight compact the house was. I had always thought his builds were an open airy concept. I was wrong about the actual structure, but the floor to ceiling window doors on the outside walls of each room did make the small spaces "feel" much larger. Once the tour of the home was over, (hats off to the docent who was a wealth of knowledge and graciously answered every question) it was about time for us to check in our hotel.

We decided to use  Florence (the largest city) as our base and stayed in a cool boutique hotel, The GunRunner. Each room has its own theme and is decorated based on something or someone that influenced The Shoals area. 

It was a great place to stay, convenient to things we wanted to see, and shared a bottom floor with  to a wonderful coffee shop. Morning coffee is critical to me, plus we woke each morning to the aroma of  coffee and the cinnamon rolls they baked fresh daily. 

We are going back in the early summer and might stay there again, though there is another hotel, The Stricklin we might try. Where else can you stay that has a bowling alley in the basement?

Tuesday dinner: This was our planned anniversary celebration meal. We ate at the 360 Grille, a rotating restaurant in Florence at the edge of the Tennessee river. What a fantastic meal! We will go back!!!

Crispy pork belly on glazed sweet potato slices with cotton candy and a Dr.Pepper  beurre blanc (don't ask me how it worked, but it was an absolutely delicious appetizer) I had the vegetarian plate as my entree, TheHub has salmon, and both were fantastic, creme brulee.

Wednesday: 57 days till Christmas

We woke, got dressed for the day and headed to Turbo, the adjoining coffee shop for a quick coffee and breakfast before heading out for the day. Florence is a lovely town with many locally owned businesses. We stopped by a shop filled with items made by locals (scored several Christmas presents there), hit a few more places people had recommended to us, then explored the University of North Alabama campus. 

We had a multiple folks tell us to go to Yum (Thai restaurant) for lunch. It was esthetically pleasing, but we can get much better Thai food here. It was not bad food, it was just not as delicious as we are used to.

After we ate we headed to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios for a tour of the place that recorded such artists as Cher, Rolling Stones, Paul Simon, etc. It was founded by The Swampers**, local studio musicians who backed up everyone from Etta James, Aretha Franklin, The Allman Brothers among many others. They began their careers at Fame Studio also in Muscle Shoals. The artists who recorded there were blown away by the studio musicians, who could seamlessly back up any genre from R&B, to rock, to C&W. There was a serious issue between The Swampers and the Fame studio head (it's always about money, right) which lead to their split and they opened their own studio which still stands today. (They left the original building and moved to a much larger studio space later, but this particular building is where all of their early recordings too place.) We were even able to see the toilet Keith Richards sat on for hours while writing "Wild Horses".

It is still a functioning recording studio, as is their newer space. 

About 30 minutes after we finished that tour, we drove about a mile away to Fame Studios, for another tour of where it all began. It was interesting but it was more about the physical studio than about the artists who had recorded  (and continue to record) there. Fame has two separate recording studios and both have different sounds based on the construction and materials used in the building. Like I said , the Fame tour was geared more to the actual studio than the musicians. Though we enjoyed both tours we liked hearing the skinny on the time the musicians spent in the studio  more than learning about the more technical side of production.

After the tour concluded we headed to Sheffield (next town over) for dinner.

Wednesday dinner: We heard from a couple of people that Southern Grocery was a great  Cajun inspired place to eat.

Shrimp and Crawfish Cake (dinner) Gumbo and side salad (me)***

Thursday: 56 days till Christms

We woke dressed and checked out of the hotel. It was rainy, cold (cold is relative and we were cold though some of you might call it springlike weather), and very windy. We had planned to go tour Ivy Green (Helen Keller's birthplace) and actually drove there but the grounds are pretty big and of course we wanted to see the water pump where she "found" language. (If you have never seen The Miracle Worker you really should watch it. I recommend the original with Ann Bancroft and Patty Duke)

We decided to pass and go back in the summer when we can not only tour the grounds and house, but can also see them perform a play "The Miracle Worker".

We also ran by W.C. Handy's (father of the blues) birthplace, but could not find an place to park. It will also be part of our summer time visit.

We left the area and headed home after lunch, stopping at The Dutch Oven Bakery, which is about midway between the Shoals area and home. We have been there a couple of times before and came home with 3 different breads and a pound cake to share with Son2 and MBS, a couple of cheesecakes for the freezer, and some chocolate covered nuts because, well just because.

Thursday dinner: We were getting home right at dinner time so we stopped and picked something from Guthries and brought it home.

Shared 6 piece chicken tender dinner with coleslaw for each of us.

Friday: 55 days till Christmas

Happy Halloween. It was a good day, with a phone call from Kim and Sissy, then getting ready for the big nighttime event. We had 75 ghosts and goblins ring the doorbell, because I am The Big Candy Bar Lady, and none of the kids ever skip my house.

Friday dinner: Every Halloween when our kids were young and trick or treating, we had hot dogs for dinner before they went out. It is something we have continued.

Traditional hot dog meal

Saturday: 54 days till Christmas

We use YouTube tv as our television subscriber.  They are in a dispute with Disney, particularly ESPN, and there were no SEC games available for us to watch. I know those of you who do not watch college games on Saturday have no clue how despondent we were having to settle for Big 10 games on CBS. 

The upside I suppose is because we could not watch the Auburn game, we watched the last game of the World Series. I was pulling for the Bluejays, but it did not work out that way, but you can't complain when the 7th game went 11 innings.

Saturday dinner: We wanted and easy to eat meal before watching the Series.

Chicken and dumplings, coleslaw

Sunday: 53 days till Christmas

We woke and for the first time I was wide awake when we went to the early communion service. Guess that is what happens when I gain an hour. Afterward we went to traditional  worship at 8:30. Our church celebrates All Saints Day the first Sunday in November, remembering those who are no longer with us. It is always a very touching service saying the names of church members who died during the year, ringing a bell as each name is said, and lighting a candle for each. It is a lovely way to remember them.

After Sunday school TheHub and I at first were going out for an early lunch, but decided to take out Chinese. 
The rest of the day we pretty much just hung out doing little other than reading and watching the documentary Muscle Shoals.

Sunday dinner: Because we had a big lunch we opted for a simple dinner

Chili mac soup

Possibilities for the coming week:

1. Chicken patty, potatoes, tomato onion cucumber salad

2. Leftover Moo shu pork, rice

3. Stuffed bell pepper, coleslaw

4. Steak, baked potato, tossed salad

5. Chicken stew, cornbread, coleslaw

6. Sandwich meal TBD

7. Out to eat

Books read in October:

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

107 Days

The Women

The River Is Waiting

Firefly Lane

Have a great week staying on plan, going off plan or with no plan at all.

May all your weeds be wildflowers.

Anne

* There is an online renewal process but it has a 72 hour delay, which was unacceptable! 

** The Swampers have only one member who is still living, and he drops by the studio at least once a week.

***I will never be one of those people who leave negative Yelp reviews but this was honestly the worst gumbo I have ever been served. It tasted like someone had put red beans and rice in Campbells tomato soup and floated a slice of sausage, no seafood in it. I have never in my life sent anything back but I did and had them take it off the bill. I tried one spoonful then TheHub tried one just to make sure it was not just me. It wasn't.

TheHub's shrimp and crawfish cake was little more than fried sweet cornbread with one or two small shrimp pieces in it.

Won't go back and will not recommend this place to anyone.