————————Sept. 2023——————————–
I have created some of my own recipes over the years, and this cottage cheese salad is one of them. Diced onion, peppers (red and green), diced tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste, and the cottage cheese. Very refreshing and an excellent foil to the spicy, garlic heavy spaghetti sauce I make. Cleans the palate.
I don’t eat pasta unless it’s angel hair pasta in soup so I just make a pot of spaghetti sauce and eat it from a bowl along with the salad and some garlic bread.
And of course, the meal isn’t complete without French Vanilla and Orange Sherbet ice cream swimming in ginger ale.
On rare occasions, if I have a bottle of Burgundy, I’ll have a glass to go along with the meal.
It was around this time that my favorite daughter and I decided that there just aren’t enough radishes in the world so we started a garden in her back yard. My side is on the right, her’s on the left. We’ll see who the better gardener is.
Flushed with exertion and the sun, taking a break on her patio. Me too.
And my cool car chilling under the carport.
There’s a French restaurant that’s been in downtown Walla Walla for like 3 years now that I wanted to try, Vin Brie Cafe’. So, no time like the present, my first visit.
This was some kind of steak entree’. I recall that the steak taste was good, but mostly overpowered by the sauce. Fries were good.
This of course, is Crème Brûlée. Yummy.
I sampled several things on the menu including that large jar of olives…many more olives than I expected. Those should have been a condiment but they price it like it’s a meal.
Sampled 3 of their French wines and they were all delicious, I settled on one with the meal. The main course was, um, okay I guess? Everything was good, but not knock your socks off good. Cost me $125. For one person. Yikes.
I helped my ex-FIL build this garage 40 odd years ago and someone asked me about the rafters I’d mentioned in a FB post so I’m plugging them in here so I have a way to post the pics in FB. FIL was Walla Walla’s senior building inspector and when an old high school gym was torn down, he got his pick of these beauties. Old growth timbers, rough hewn. Things were 50 feet long. He cut them to 16 foot lengths to get them home. Then since I was younger, I lifted each one up to the top of the garage sill plates. They were so old and dry (from 1889 or near), the nails we used required pre-drilled holes. They were either 24″ or 18″ wide by a true 2″ thick as I recall.
This garage is hell for stout as the supporting 2″ X 4″ are actual dimension too, from the same building as the rafters. Really a bitch trying to drive nails in them.
I didn’t write my name or date of construction on any of them. I should have though. Maybe I’ll do that.
———————————Oct. 2023—————————————————-
In the 2nd week of October, went back to the Vin Brie Cafe’. I like to give a place 3 tries to see if it might become a regular destination for dinner. This time tried different offerings on the menu. Again had a taste of 3 wines and settled on a nice Chablis with dinner. And had a pre-dinner beer too.
The fries were delish.
The soup was delish as well. A Soupe du Jour. So, cooks choice, this is tomato bisque I think.
And the main course…pork chop with bone in, swimming in a not so delightful tomato based sauce. Not so good. Again, the sauce overpowered the pork chop flavor.
The desert was great of course. This was Crêpe au Nutella.
This time only cost $90 plus a $20 tip. So $110. I suppose I could get away with a less costly meal but I wanted to try some of the side dishes. I guess the place has two names, as I also have it listed as the Brazzier Four Cafe.
Usually I give a place 3 tries but I decided 2 times here was enough. I’ll probably go one more time when I get back to Walla Walla in the spring. Enjoyable, yes, but the pricing? Non.
Took a short trip to Weston, Oregon one day. And this cafe’ was closed for a family thing. Dammit.
Nice old car on the rack. I never cared for that design though. Windows were all too small to see much while on the road.
Old, old house.
And late October it was radish harvest time. My countertop dishwasher has a veggie washing cycle and even a basket for that so they were nice and clean when I munched several of them.
Hmm, commercial size. Now if I can get a restaurant to feature them.
These are the 4 varieties we planted. The two middle varieties didn’t fair so well in this fall weather, but the outer two did great.
Quite the haul for a single harvest. In the fall.
James wanted me to check out the building for sale on the east end of Walla Walla. Thing was listed two years ago at $550,000, the next year $850,000, and this year? A whopping $1.2 million! It’s huge and has 2 acres with it. Could be sectioned off into apartments. Used to be the HOME of a local building contractor. We snooped around and looked in the windows and there are several gigantic rooms. Couldn’t see the kitchen though but the pictures on the internet showed that it was more a commercial kitchen then a home kitchen. Maybe it used to belong to a local chef?
And then we drove clear out to Waitsburg as James wanted to visit this brew pub. Told me I’d been here with him and my brother Dan a few years ago. Took quite a while before I remembered being here. Had a couple not very good brews and dinner.
Dumped my old bike. It was getting rusty being on the road attached to the back of my RV for a few years. Found another one at a yard sale, nice and clean with excellent paint still, and I didn’t inspect it well enough, gave the guy $60 for it (asking $90), but I got screwed. James fixed up the minor problems for me but there is a main gear box issue that I’ll try to get fixed in Mexico.
And Ms. Kitty pissed at me for being gone so long.
And that’s the end of Oct. 2023. I’ll be back soon with Nov. and Dec. Thanks for reading!