Warm days and awesome music!

Clearwater Jazz Holiday 2012 was awesome! As my girlfriend Donna said, the weather had "cooled down" to the 80s, and it was beautiful - not too hot, not too humid. Good thing, because all the music was in a park on the water and it was terrific! Here's the view at sunset from our seats in front of the stage:

 My favorite acts were: Jazz saxophonist and Tampa Bay Area native Mindi Abair & Friends, which included  Jeff Golub and David Pack from the 1970s-80s group Ambrosia. Wow, they were fabulous!
The Avett Brothers, not jazz at all, but a kind of alt-indie-rock group from North Carolina that had the whole place jumping. So much fun!
I also loved Esperanza Spalding and saxophonist Tia Fuller, both of whom perform more straight-ahead jazz and are beautiful talented young women. Whew!

(I missed Bonnie Raitt, darn it, because I arrived in Tampa too late. I think she would have been one of my favorites too - Donna said she was wonderful.)

Of course, very dear to my heart was the food! When I'm in Florida, I feel like I should eat fish, preferably fish I can't get on the West Coast. More to come soon on where we ate Grouper Salad and Bang Bang Shrimp. Yum!!

On the road again to Clearwater FL

Tomorrow I'm leavin' on a jet plane for Clearwater, Florida (right next to Tampa) to spend a few days with my friend Donna and listen to hot music at The Clearwater Jazz Holiday. Bonnie Raitt, Mindi Abair...wow, it's going to be fun - and HOT (Donna says FL has "cooled down" to the 80s).

The Tampa Bay area, which includes Tampa, Clearwater, and St. Petersburg, is such a beautiful place. I can't wait to share photos with you while I'm there. Stand by for more!

One more pillowcase!

Dear reader, please indulge me. I have one more pillowcase to show you.

This one is a little different from the others, in that I started out with a regular boring pink pillowcase that came with the pink sheets. It is a nice soft cotton pillowcase, and it is a pretty color of pink, but I really wanted to fluff it up a little, so I added a wide eyelet edge and now I'm in love with it.

It gives me so much more pleasure, and it was very easy to make:

• Just measure around the edge of your pillowcase and cut a piece of the eyelet edging the same length plus one inch for a seam. Sew the seam, which will be a 1/2 inch seam, and press it to one side.
• Then press under a 1/4 inch fold on the straight edge of the eyelet. Pin the straight edge of the eyelet to the hem seam of the pillowcase with the fold to the inside, matching the fold of the eyelet with the seam of the pillowcase. Machine sew very close to the fold.
• Pin and machine sew a second line of stitch where the original pillowcase ends, catching the edge of the pillowcase in the stitching.

Here's the finished product. Isn't it pretty?

Roasted tomatoes, plus dill pickles

Buried in luscious homegrown tomatoes? This time of year is a real challenge - you don't want to waste a single precious tomato, because once they're gone that's all you'll get till next year! But wow, so many tomatoes. How many sliced tomatoes, how many BLTs, can you really eat?

I found a great recipe for roasted tomatoes, which I can then freeze and use for fresh roasted tomato sauce in January when you can't find a decent fresh tomato anywhere! I did it today, and it was easy. Besides, the roasted tomatoes are so delicious, I've already eaten two right out of the pan. Mmmmmm.

• Preheat your oven to 275 degrees.
• Prep a cookie sheet with sides by lining it with parchment paper.
• I used Roma tomatoes, because they have less water in them and are best for sauce. Use whatever you have. Core and wash your tomatoes, and cut them in half lengthwise. Put them cut side up on the parchment, one right next to the other. Fill that cookie sheet up! Then peel some garlic cloves and strew them right over the tomatoes. Take some fresh (if you have it) oregano and basil and strew those leaves over the tomatoes. Sprinkle on a little sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Top with a good drizzle of olive oil.
• Roast in your 275 degree oven for 5 hours. Yes, you saw that right...5 hours.
• Let cool, then put the tomatoes in a freezer bag, including any oil and herbs and garlic, and freeze. Keeps for 6 months.

When you want to make a sauce, thaw the tomatoes in your fridge. Saute an onion in olive oil, then add the thawed tomatoes and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Toss with pasta. Delicioso!

P.S. I tasted the dill pickles I put up two weeks ago today, and they are good. Tart! Dilly! Tasty! Yum!

Photos of Modica

My photos of our trip to Sicily in May 2012 have been posted here. I'll add Wayne's photos soon. We had such a lovely time there, and consider it a place we'd be happy to return to.

Here's where Modica is on the map of Sicily (lower center-right of the island):

The apartment we rented for our stay in Modica was so lovely, and it was very typical for the region. Modica is a city and area where people have lived in caves in the limestone cliffs since before recorded history. Indeed, people continued to live in caves nearby until they were forcibly moved to other housing in the 1950s. Our apartment was a cave, although a very fancy cave with running water and electricity. Nevertheless it was a cave, and a part of the timeless thread of history we felt in the entire area. It was a unique experience, and on top of that (or could it have been a part of some ancient energy?), we had some weird (coincidental, I'm sure) things happen in connection with our cave!

The last night we stayed there, Wayne and I planned to have pizza at a favorite local restaurant at the end of the "magic path" from our place into the center of town before sleeping for a few hours and then leaving for the airport in Catania at 3:00 a.m. Leaving our packed luggage inside the apartment, I locked the door with the key, and we walked one last time into town. When we got to the restaurant, Wayne decided he wanted to go back for his camera. I searched in my purse and the house key was nowhere to be found. We walked back along the path and didn't see it on the ground. Mindful of the time, I texted the apartment manager that we apparently had lost the key, and then met him at his office a few blocks away to get a replacement. Meanwhile Wayne searched the path again, assuming we had dropped the key. It was never found.

After we returned home to Oakland, one day we locked up our house and walked down to a shop at the bottom of the hill. When we returned home, our house key with security lock was nowhere to be found. I knew I had put it in my purse. After searching the sidewalk on our path down the hill and back, Wayne took my purse and turned it upside down for probably the 3rd time to empty it. Then he felt the purse.
"I feel the key in here," he said. Sure enough, the house key had slipped into the lining of the purse. And in there with it was the key to the cave in Modica.

The second experience involved several copies of New Yorker magazine that I had finished reading during our stay in Modica. I left them in the cave, thinking the next tenants might like some reading material. Two weeks after we returned home I got an email from a woman I knew only from email - a friend of a friend I had corresponded with once about a recipe for biscuits. "Imagine my surprise," she wrote, "when I found these New Yorker magazines in my apartment in Modica with your name on them." How we both managed to stay in the same obscure cave apartment in the same obscure town in Sicily, one right after the other, I don't know. I think it might have been a message from the universe.

Anyway, enjoy the photos, and I'll put more of Wayne's in as I can. It was a lovely trip and a lovely place.

Mike, Julie, and Modica

Yesterday our friends Mike and Julie texted that they were in San Francisco visiting Mike's daughter, and could they come over to Oakland to see us? Well, of course we were glad to see them! Mike and Julie own the apartment we rented in May in Modica, Sicily, and they just happened to be visiting there at the same time we were. They stayed in the upper apartment of the duplex cave (more about that later), we stayed in the lower apartment, and we hung out together for a week or so.

Initially I found the apartment on VRBO, and that led us to Mike and Julie and their website Magnificent Journey. We loved the apartment, we loved Modica, and we loved them!

So when they visited us yesterday (they live in Oregon), it reminded me that I have never posted our fabulous photos from Sicily. As a teaser, here's Wayne on the magic path between our cave and downtown Modica.

Soon, very soon, I'll put up the album of all my photos and maybe even add some of Wayne's. More to come !