Well…I have to tell ya that Neil went to Fort DeSoto State park on Monday…Connie had a lunch thing so she didn’t go…and got the most spectacular display of a Reddish Egret feeding that either he or the two fellas photographing it with him have ever seen…it was truly outstanding…and he’s got about 1,000 photos he hasn’t processed yet…but they’re acoming… I promise ya that.

And…tomorrow we’re off to Corkscrew…and Ima sure he’ll have some more photos to show ya from there…but then that’s tomorrow and he’s gotta process all those before I can blather on about them. 

And…lessee…what else. Sunday April 2 is Neil and Connie’s engagement anniversary…it’s been a long time since 4/2/1976, 47 years to be exact…and as the song says “She’s still the one.” Ya know what I mean Vern.

And…well, she’s really busy with various singing things this week and next. It’s almost Holy Week…or the “Choir Week From Hell” as she frequently calls it due to all of the choir commitments. And she discovered…yesterday…that the choir is singing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah (the Shirmer edition if ya have any inkling what that means) on Easter…and that means it’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that she’s sung the piece numerous times before. The bad news…is that she’s singing soprano now in her choir and previously she always sang as an alto…which means she needs to learn a new part. Actually…she’s always been more of a mezzo-soprano than a true alto as she can get to the high ranges the most altos just can’t reach…but she has always preferred singing alto as it’s normally not the melody line and her interests have always been in learning and singing something *other* than the melody. But…she’ll persevere, adapt, and overcome…and Ima sure that by Tuesday she’ll be ready to go.

And adding into the choir stuff next week…Sunday…before they have their anniversary dinner…she’s singing the spring concert with the Fort Myers Symphonic Mastersingers…so she’ll be going into the restaurant afterwards in her sparkling floor length skirt and top that is the uniform for the Mastersingers…but he’s planning on buying her a nice dinner afterwards.

And finally…although we never really suffer for food since Neil’s a pretty good home cook and the “leftover king” as Connie calls him…but both of them agreed that he pretty much hit it out of the park today. Technically…it was chicken day (we rotate beef, chicken, pork with interspersed seafood or pasta)…and today was chicken day but she really wasn’t interested. So…he looked in the freezer and pulled out a package of frozen winter squash ravioli…then decided what to do with it.

After some thinking…he sez to himself that he usually pairs winter squash with nuts and maple…it came to him. So…he fried up some bacon to make crispy lardons…then set them aside. Browned some thinly sliced shallots in the bacon grease and set them aside. Toasted some pecans in the skillet and set them aside after roughly chopping them. Put the ravioli on to cook in some salted water…and added some flour and olive oil to make a roux. Added some white wine and let it cook off…then added thyme, sage, cinnamon, white pepper, salt, and Italian herbs and some half and half (I said it was good…not lo cal…he don’t cook that way). Once the sauce came together…he added some maple syrup so that it was maple-ey and sweet…but not actually sweet. They tasted the sauce and added a bit more maple, salt, and white pepper and declared it excellent Tossed in the now cooked ravioli and let it coat and thicken a bit. Served it up with the toasted pecans and bacon lardons (that’s a high tech French word meaning fried crispy bacon)…poured a couple glasses (well, they were well past a couple by then) and it was outstanding. They frequently tell themselves how good dinner was…but today I think they actually meant it because it was delicious.

Last night…while having tacos at Date Night…they discussed photo backpacks and lenses for Neil…so he’s ordering some new stuff soon. Details to follow of course.

No images today…or even interesting stuff found on the net…cuz he’s out of gas and still needs to do dishes…so…

Cyas.