An Easter Story
Peeps Washington Cathedral from The Washington Post
Many, many years ago when my children were approximately five and seven years old, I decided to go clean about Easter and all the candy. Remembering back to that time, it was probably my first foray into eating healthy and trying to clean up my act. I had had some stomach issues, what mother of young children doesn’t, and had begun to eat a very low carbohydrate diet. This was the first of many diets I can assure you. My children were very excited about Easter. Naturally the television had advertisements for those perennial Easter peeps – I just don’t get the excitement around them but the children did. (I found out a couple of years ago that someone created a diorama using Peeps and The Washington Cathedral. It was fun to follow it on-line and to see the display. I guess some people have lots of time on their hands and are blessed with creativity.) Adding to the children’s excitement were the constant advertisements for jelly beans and chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies. You could not go into a store without seeing all that Easter stuff out on the shelves and always at the checkout counter, of course. I knew the excitement was building the closer we got to Easter. We attended a little church in York Harbor, Maine, and all the Sunday School children did nothing but talk about Easter Egg hunts and how much candy they would be getting.
Enter the Mean Mummy! My plan was to set up a scavenger hunt for Easter Sunday morning. I left notes all over the house that led the girls to the next location. I actually thought I was pretty clever. However, it backfired. The children got up Easter morning and discovered the first of the notes. They began the hunt in earnest while my husband and I watched them go from place to place. It wasn’t a very big house so it didn’t really take very long. The final spot was under the kitchen sink. The girls eagerly anticipated opening the doors to find their Easter baskets, but NO! There were no Easter baskets; there were two gorgeous Pocketbook Plants with their names on them. To say that the girls have never let me forget it is an understatement. Every year without fail the story is brought up at Easter, even if we are not with them. I have spent close to 40 years trying to make up for this incredible disaster of an Easter egg hunt. Even this year, I went to our local chocolate store called The Chocolate Tree and bought them real chocolates for Easter and sent the chocolates to them. I have made peace with the fact that chocolate is an Easter treat so I buy the best chocolate I can find. This store makes everything in house with the best possible ingredients. Despite the fact that the girls will never forgive me for this faux pas, they certainly have gotten a lot of mileage out of their mother’s attempt to eat healthy and, believe it or not, I smile every time they tease me about it with a little cringing inside. Happy Easter!
A New Goal for Walking
The month of March was a banner month for walking. I exceeded my 100 mile goal with four days to go so I decided that I needed to up the game again. I have set a goal for 125 programmed miles for the month of April. When I say programmed, I am referring to the defined daily walk that is monitored by my Runkeeper app, not to the number of steps, translated into miles, using my Fitbit. Since the Fitbit measures every step during the day it always comes out higher than Runkeeper. So it’s more of an Activity monitor and the Runkeeper is more of a programmed walking tracker. So far I am on track for the month, but a little vacation is coming up and that might just change the plan. It really pleases me that folks notice my walking and comment on it. My neighbors, many of whom are friends on Facebook, keep track of me and my walking goals and they mention it often when I see them at various functions. It is also an accountability issue for me as I do not want to let them down. I suspect if I didn’t walk for awhile someone just might say something! Looking down the road for another “race” to enter. I believe there are some coming up pretty soon.
A side benefit to all the walking is the fact that I get to see a lot of the “wild kingdom” that we have here on the island. Some huge alligators, the great blue herons and their nests, hundreds of birds, owls, hawks, eagles, osprey and now we add snakes!!!! Wasn’t sure what this guy was so I put it out to our wonderful internet and received over 40 responses. The consensus was that it is a Corn Snake which I am told is a good snake because it eats rodents (insert marsh rats here) so we want to keep them around. It does look like a copperhead but the head of a corn snake is round and a copperhead is diamond shaped. No matter, he/she was a very large snake and I almost stepped on him.
Food and Fun
It’s not all about walking; we do other things to and we added a softshell crab festival and boating to our repertoire of things to do here in the Lowcountry. How many of you made some of your first and maybe your best friends when you were raising your children? I certainly did and I am very lucky that I can keep in touch with so many of them now that our children are grown and on their own. Now we have our dog to thank for helping us meet new people and share new experiences. Our 7 month old Winchester (Wyke) has a girl friend and her name is Abby and her family has a boat. We were invited to join them for a cruise and, since the weather has been outstanding for the last few weeks with each day getting warmer, we accepted with pleasure. Wyke was really not sure about going in this boat. He immediately lay down on the dock and didn’t want to budge. However, once Abby got in the boat and then John got in, he tentatively tried and with a little help from his people he was safely in the boat. He lay down on the bench seat at the back and really didn’t move until the boat got going and the temptation to play with Abby was too much. He ended up having a wonderful time as did we until he was desperate to get back to shore. We got back and he immediately pulled John to a grass patch – let’s just say he is the best dog ever!!!!! That would not have been pretty if we hadn’t made it home in time.
The first part of the day was spent at the Port Royal Soft-shell Crab Festival. We had never been to it, and so had no idea what to expect when we got there. Well, it is HUGE! The main street is closed off to traffic and hundreds of booths are set up offering everything you can imagine and then some. There was even a psychic reader. Not sure how many food vendors were there, but we tried quite a few of them. I do not eat softshell crabs, but John does. In fact he introduced me to softshell crabs on Thanksgiving 1970. How do I know the date. Because when I saw him eating the sandwich with the legs sticking out of the bread, I went into labor with my Katie. I did enjoy the shrimp, so I wasn’t left without anything to enjoy. We had a wonderful time exploring everything and even looked at a few of the many, many old cars that were there. Loved the MG’s. We are already anticipating next year’s festival and will return ready for the crowds and the food and the music.
Recipe to Try
It is time to try the Preserved Lemons. They are ready, or we think they are. We first put them in the jar on March 11 so it has been just a wee bit more than a month that they have been preserving themselves. They have been sitting on my counter and we have turned the jar upside down every couple of days. They look preserved to me. I have no idea what they are supposed to taste like but I have a couple of recipes that call for them so I think it is time to give it a try. Here is the recipe for Moroccan Chicken with Preserved Lemons from my favorite cookbook. I will let you know if it is successful. Who knows what might come out of that jar!!!!
[mpprecipe-recipe:80]
