When we arrived at the Red House, the rain stopped long enough for us to bring everything inside without getting soaking wet.  Our other activity that evening, unfortunately, before we could have a cocktail or even think about eating was to haul all the trash we had collected two weeks ago plus all of the recyclables (mostly beer and wine bottles!) we had collected from LAST summer to the curb.  Thing is at the Red House we have trash pick-up once a week — on Friday’s.  Since we usually arrive Friday night, we always miss trash pick-up and have to always take the garbage home.

Since most of the trash we had bagged consisted of debris from the house, many of the bags were simply too heavy to lift (for me at least), let alone carry down the very, very long driveway to the curb. That’s when Lynn and I decided we would put a big blue tarp in the back of the car, hoist the bags onto the tarp, and DRIVE down the driveway. It worked. However, spying on the garbage guys the next morning, they seemed a little perplexed by both the appearance of trash in front of a house that looked abandoned, coupled with the sheer weight of what we were ditching.

It rained all day Friday and Saturday, and part of  Sunday.  While this was supposed to be our planting weekend in addition to our finally sheet-rocking the upstairs bedrooms, the most I could do via planting was to layout all the little packets I wanted to put in the ground.

Now the only reason I even contemplated planting all these goodies from “scratch” or seed actually (which I had never done on Long Island) is because everything I planted last year from these same little packets grew!  I may have gone a bit overboard by the number of packets I purchased, but I figured what the hell, let me at least try.  But I’m not an idiot, I did have a back-up plan in case nothing grew and bought lettuce, two different kinds of tomato plants, basil, and marigolds (to keep the deer away), too.

The other good news about the property is we finally found someone to mow all four acres.  Our landscaper actually showed up to mow on Memorial Day and with two really big ride-own mowers and a helper, he did THE ENTIRE PROPERTY IN TWELVE MINUTES.  I felt so bad that Lynn used to spend hours, entire weekends actually, trying to mow the meadow on the Troy-Bilt.

One good thing about a rainy weekend (even a long holiday-one) is that you are forced to tackle projects you’ve been putting off.  This enabled us to start sheet-rocking one of the upstairs bedrooms.

We, however, got off to a bad start.  It seems we had forgotten how difficult it is to rock a ceiling. So even with me standing on a chair and Lynn standing on another chair, holding up a piece of rock by myself with Lynn trying to secure it to the ceiling with a power tool wasn’t working. Apparently, I was a lot stronger three years ago than I am now… But then we remembered the last time we rocked the living room ceiling, we had rented one of those sheet-rock “helpers.”

It’s basically a drywall lift that puts the piece exactly where you need it to be without killing yourself trying to do so. So we bagged the ceiling idea until we could rent one and Lynn focused on doing the walls instead.

Meanwhile the amount of weeds that were growing in the garden and around the house needed to be dealt with.  So despite the pouring rain, I went outside and pulled as many weeds as I could thinking at least once the rain stopped we would be able to till the soil and plant anew.

I hadn’t forgotten, however, in doing this project that Lynn, always the perfectionist, wanted to do the ENTIRE garden over again.  That meant before I could plant (provided of course, I got all the weeding done and it stopped raining), he wanted to put down new sheets of weed-blocker, plywood dividers, and bags and bags of small marble chips.

While he was doing this part, I decided I wanted to try and make pulled pork sandwiches that we could eat if we ever got back later that night to Long Island. I found a pork shoulder that was small enough to fit in the toaster oven, cooked it for about 5 hours at 275 degrees, and voila, it did turn out to be quite tasty!

I also picked some more asparagus from the garden that I discovered hiding underneath all the weeds! I can’t tell you how tickled I am to snip asparagus from my own garden. Lynn is tickled that they look like the “real” thing; I’m assuming he means the supermarket variety.

I also decided to take some photographs of the property.  I still love the color and look of the “barn” aka garage door, and hope even if we have to rebuild it someday that we can at least duplicate its rustic look.

My other culinary find this weekend was to see huge bags of fiddlehead ferns at the local farmer’s market.  I have to admit the first time I ate fiddlehead ferns was in Cape May, New Jersey, of all places. Since their season is so short and they have such a unique texture and earthiness, to me they’ve become that much more exotic (and thus a must for my table!)

Of course the weather finally cleared up just as we were about to leave the Red House. We had hoped to set up the deck furniture and have a meal or at least a glass of wine outside during our time there but it wasn’t to be. I thought about other Memorial days we had spent together, one in particular when we were living in a $375 a month rent-stabilized apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Since combined we made little more than that each month and thus had no extra cash for anything, we would often find ourselves many hot summer evenings on “tar beach,” aka the roof on the top of the apartment building. If we were “tanning,” we’d lie on a towel, if we were trying to be civilized, we actually sat on a couple of director chairs that we had bought at Conran’s back in the 80’s.

Originally the chairs had black canvas seats and backs but somewhere along the line I must have replaced them with what looks to be now like a light blue. There was one chair left and our son Nicholas wanted it for his up-and-coming photography and video studio. I took a picture of it before I sent it off to him. Who knows, maybe one day he’ll do a photo shoot at the Red House and bring it back…It’s got a lot of history you know.

When I started to think about all the chicken, pork and beef we had consumed in the last seven days we were at the house together, it made my head spin.  Some days we had meat (or a meat product!) for lunch and for dinner!  Some days he even made little amuse bouche hot dogs (topped with a potato chip no less) to try to get me to eat what he wanted to eat (which was hot dogs).  Surely all the weight I had dropped being by myself and eating quasi-vegetarian coupled with the fairly hard physical labor I was doing would be in vain with all this fat I was consuming.  (Actually, I got on the scale and haven’t gained or lost an ounce — could the scale be broken?)  In any case, here’s a look back at the week’s meals.

SUNDAY DINNER

Pork cutlets in a mushroom cream sauce with roasted potatoes and broccoli rabe. (At least we had a vegetable and I’m not talking about the mushrooms.)

MONDAY LUNCH

Curried chicken salad with grapes. (Would he have noticed if I had just made a curried grape salad?

MONDAY DINNER

Chili made with chopped meat, black beans, red kidney beans, and onions. Granted I could have made a veggie chili using just the beans but the truth is I had two packages of chopped meat in the freezer that I wanted to get rid of.  Once dished out on our plates, we topped the chili with sour cream, green onions and some chopped up cherry tomatoes that my very lovely neighbor, Sue, had brought over with some fresh basil.  (Why if I made enough chili to feed four did we eat the entire pot with half a box of pasta to boot?)

AWESOME CHERRY TOMATOES

TUESDAY LUNCH

Lynn ate the leftover pork cutlet (UCK!) and I ate some of the aforementioned tomatoes and leftover cheese and crackers. (As he was eating the cutlet, he kept pushing a forkful towards me asking “Are you sure you don’t want any of this?)

TUESDAY DINNER

I was already on meat overload and convinced Lynn that I would drive back to New York City and/or pay $100 for a piece of salmon if need be.  (Well, not really but you get the idea.) Luckily, we only had to drive five miles to the supermarket where salmon filets were to be had, on sale no less for $3.99 a pound. Besides the salmon, I also put some corn on the cob on the grill and some fresh carrots sprinkled with olive oil and oregano.  Going through the August issue of Food & Wine, I came across a recipe for grilled watermelon with feta.  That went on the grill too (the watermelon, not the feta).  (Yeah, a decent and meat-free meal!)

CARROTS ABOUT TO HIT THE GRILL

WEDNESDAY LUNCH

We went out for lunch and since I had been raving about the fish tacos I had eaten at this restaurant a few weeks prior that’s what I convinced him we were both ordering. (Why then around us did I see everyone else eating burgers?

WEDNESDAY DINNER

The original plan had been to put some steaks on the grill.  Problem was the steak at the local supermarket was looking less than appealing but surprisingly the short ribs looked decent.  I bought the short ribs. I wrapped them in tinfoil and put them on the grill for a little bit over an hour to slowly cook then made a nice sliced tomato, basil and mozzarella salad as a side dish. When the meat was done, I grilled some slices of Italian bread. (If the meat won’t kill me, all this bread I’m eating surely will.)

FRESH MOZZARELLA, HOMEGROWN TOMATOES, BASIL

THURSDAY LUNCH

Why exactly did we have to have hot dogs for lunch?  Just because they were in the freezer didn’t mean we had to eat them.  Couldn’t we just have a salad?  To entice me to eat one, Lynn made me an amuse bouche hot dog.  This meant he took a hot dog and cut it in half.  I had to take a picture of it because I didn’t think anyone would actually believe this story.  The first half of the dog went down fine.  To get me to eat the second one, he put a potato chip on it.  Lynn had three hot dogs; I had “two” amuse bouche.   Although impressed with the potato chip garnish, the spongy white roll stuck to the top of my mouth like the 61.7 pound container of spackle sitting in the dining room.  (There is absolutely nothing else to say about this lunch.)

HOT DOG AMUSE BOUCHE

TOPPED WITH A POTATO CHIP!

THURSDAY DINNER

Well, let’s recap.  So far we’ve had pork, chopped meat and short ribs.  Guess it was time for chicken.  I picked up some chicken thighs that were on sale,  found a couple of chicken cutlets in the freezer and stuck everything in a bowl with some olive oil and spices.  Everything got wrapped up in tinfoil and put on the grill.  An hour later I went out to check the chicken and realized we had run out of propane.  Luckily by then I’d also had two cocktails and the chicken looked reasonably done enough to eat. (Surprisingly, no one got sick that night eating partially cooked chicken.)

FRIDAY LUNCH

We went out for lunch and had fried halibut.  (Interesting isn’t it that our lunches out consisted primarily of fish?)

FRIDAY DINNER

After a day of sightseeing (Yes, we really weren’t working!) we decided to do takeout from the local BBQ place. The sampler platter consisted of “Texas-style” ribs (meaning they were really big) a good beef brisket with a side each of cole slaw and potato salad.  Since I knew the sampler platter wasn’t going to be enough for Lynn, I also ordered a large pulled pork sandwich.  (I’ll admit the BBQ was good and if nothing else I didn’t have to do any grilling or cooking the entire day.

SATURDAY LUNCH

We both had a kielbasa sandwich from the local Polish church which was topped with sauerkraut mixed with chunks of what looked like pork sausage or chunks of pork (I couldn’t tell) on a hot dog roll. The kielbasa was a tad strange so I tried not to look too closely at it as I was eating it. (What exactly were all those flecks in the “meat product?”)

SATURDAY DINNER

We put some steaks on the grill and I made a salad with green beans, beets, leaf lettuce and fresh goat cheese.  Also made half a bag of fresh spinach fettucine and tossed them with olive oil and butter.  I loved the pasta and the salad.  I ate as few slices of the steak as possible.  (After this week, I really could become a full-time vegetarian.)

SUNDAY

We were heading back to Long Island.  Lynn has offered to cook for me the rest of the week.  I will encourage us to have a lot of salad and grilled fish. What did we have for dinner when we got back?  Chicken cutlets.

p.s. There’s a reason I posted pictures primarily of vegetables…