Persimmon Picking

Last weekend went by far too quickly. On Friday we went to the Gingerman to meet up with Rene who was back in town from Calgary, before heading off to the Alabama Ice House. The regular was there as he is every time – comfortably occupying a table! To Stuart’s great pleasure he had tamales for his dinner - $7 for 10 of them. I am not keen on them – they don’t taste of much to me except being a bit stodgy, so I had a chicken taco from the taco truck for $1.50! (Fortunately I didn’t get deli belly!).

Poor Stuart got dragged home at 9:30pm on a Friday night – as he kept telling me! But once again I had to be running at 5:30am so I was keen for some shut eye! Amy and I met up with our fellow runners towards the Galleria and we started our 15 mile mammoth session. It is certainly the furthest I have ever run in my life but I survived and only one slightly bald toe on one foot.

Next Bill and Marah came over to pick Laura, Stuart and me up to go persimmon picking up near Tomball at Matt Family Orchard. The orchard was about 1 hours’ drive away. They grow more than persimmons, but we were all there for them, us and lots of Chinese. We got a couple of shopping baskets, cutters and a pole for reaching the high ones. We walked the rows looking for the ripe persimmons that turned more like a tomato as they ripened. The really ripe ones were either eaten by Bill or the bugs had already got them! Eventually we had enough to keep us well satisfied on persimmons for some time, and they just cost about $20 for the total amount picked. I then had to decide what to do with the fruit – well persimmon liqueur seemed like the way to go. It will be ready in time for New Year and I will let you know how it tastes! Maybe it will be a new feature on the shelves at Demijohn?!

I should say the weather has suddenly cooled down and it is now beautiful clear blue skies and about 20-25 degC during the day. I am feeling it being a little cool but it is just relative from the change - 20 degC drop in temperature in just a weekend.

Laura then took Stuart and me off to the Little Bitty Burger barn – her favourite burger place! It was quite good and what was even nicer was sitting outside at lunchtime and not sweating! I don’t think we needed so much for lunch as we went off to some other friends for dinner and got extremely well fed.

I let Stuart go off biking with the boys on Sunday so I could have a little extra sleep. But I couldn’t lie in too long because I agreed to cook kedgeree (and make mackerel pate) using the mackerel Stuart smoked the day before. The kedgeree, and the pate, was a hit with all our American guests!

This weekend featured eating a lot, as you can probably tell, and to top it off it was wine dinner this month (Monday night) so I was dreading weight watchers weigh in! Since I have paid for it there is no way to avoid going – so I stood tentatively on the scales to find out I managed another 2 lbs! That makes 10 lbs down and my clothes are already fitting better, but I still want to keep going until they all fit better!