Beach Pics from Weekend: Manasota Beach

So far we haven't noticed evidence from the oil spill, though I think it just caught up to the Florida beaches sometime today or yesterday.  These are shots from our trek to the beach just before sunset this weekend.  Great breezes, though inland it was hot, hot, hot.  The air was hazy, like looking through colored veils at the sun.  It's amazing how many colors display themselves in the short time it takes to garner a few random photos.  Note to self:   I need to get out here more to these beaches...we live within an easy drive and there's simply no reason not to soak this in whenever possible.

I just finished cleaning up the supper table from tonight's meal.  With some of the new spices received today (!!!) I used what I had on hand to make a black bean dal with some spice mix, extra cumin and ginger, couple tablespoons coconut milk, 1/4 c cream blended in blender with 1/4 c pine nuts (didn't have cashews).  The spices got heated in a bit of hot oil to bring out their fragrance, and some leftover diced potato went into the dish, too.  It turned into a thick, creamy, fragrant entree when  combined and served over hot basmati rice (in which I had sprinkled some finely crumbled dried mint).  I seared some cubes of roast beef separately in a dot of oil and some ground garam masala spices and served that on the side.  Green smoothie rounded all of it off, and cold glass of orange juice.   Wow...replete, and the house smells SO good!  And Jack's a very happy man, so I'm really happy :)

Good news on the "goals" front...I think the CNA class may happen later this summer.  Preliminaries are going well so far, with some things falling into place that, happily, are accomodating the necessary arrangements.  We'll see!

Finished off some books begun last week.  I'm still concurrently reading journals of early Florida settlers, etc...more interesting than fiction :)  Also ripped through The Historian, La Lacuna, (hard to put them down) and two more historicals...one a book about "Tokyo Rose,"and the other one called Slaves in the Family (set in the Carolinas and South and about just what it sounds like it's about), and in the fiction category,  a couple Mitchard novels (she's my recent read-through-entire-works-of author).   I hate back-editing, so am leaving that last sentence as possibly one of my worst run-ons of note.   I should never read Mitchard's palm-sized Christmas, Present for a pick-me-up, though...I snotted through a half box of Kleenex with that one (it's not about Christmas, btw).  But it's a really good story.

OK, that's about it for now.  Just had to show the shots of the beautiful sunset...so nice that my camera will adapt to the light.  It was like gazing at a subdued sun amid atmospheric mists that filtered the light as through frosted glass.

Shehecheyanu :)