Mother’s Day Weekend 2020

I guess you could say this post is sort of a test–a test to see if the Social Distance Police will come and take me away and a test to see if posting regularly on Instagram and Facebook has damaged the traffic to my actual blog posts.  I don’t think the police will come get me, but I do fear that more and more folks (even my age) are keeping up with real-time events via social media. I know there are some holdouts, and for YOU I am very grateful.

However, as my fellow bloggers know, it takes hours and sometime days to put together a good blog post.  Editing photos is quite time consuming, as well.  Furthermore, I realize it is my fault for being so absent from here, but my absence could not be helped. So, please forgive me.  

I’m getting back into the swing of things, and if this post receives some reads AND comments that indicate to me that folks ARE indeed reading and engaged, then I will be encouraged to continue. Not just for me, but comments encourage bloggers to continue writing just for the sheer love of doing it. So, bring on those comments, please!

I realize my daily life is no more exciting than another person’s, but when it has something to do specifically with our life here, I like to share that with  you.  I hope this is one of those posts.

So, here’s to my writing and to your reading about Mother’s Day 2020 under very unusual circumstances.

My middle son, Capt. Dan, and his wife, Gingie, came down for the weekend. It’s important to note that Dan has been running on a tug boat for 35 days and just got off work.  Gingie, on the other hand, has been quite content to stay home that entire time, not even leaving home to do shopping. Suffice it to say, they were both more than ready for some great outdoors, and I felt safe having them come here.  Besides, I’m not high risk, so they were no threat to me or Miah.

Gingie was craving fresh crabs, Dan wanted fresh shrimp for the freezer, and we all wanted boiled crawfish.  So, they purchased crawfish from the seafood market and fresh shrimp straight from a shrimper.  All that was left was to do was to catch a few crabs, and everyone would get their wish!

Dan left the crawfish “purging” while we put his brand new, hand made, super-duper crab nets to the test. Man, those things are nice! They held the turkey necks on very soundly. We put the nets out in the bayou and checked them constantly for about an hour. 

The first net we checked held a little surprise!  Who knew that bream eat turkey necks?  Well, they eat crickets, grubs, and worms so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, but a bream is the very first thing we caught in the nets. About a dozen little fat crabs soon sniffed out the turkey necks, and after about an hour of crabbing, we returned home to tend to the shrimp and crawfish.

While the water was heating up, we all sat around and made short work of breaking heads on 30 pounds of beautiful 21/25-count fresh shrimp. How does the old saying go?  Many hands make short work?  Yes, indeed!

Dan did a bang-up job with the boil, including potatoes, L’il Smokies, cauliflower, mushrooms, crawfish, shrimp, and crabs.  It was all delicious!  Oh, and of course we had some of that tasty Side-Item Dip!  Lately, we’ve been spicing it up a bit with Sriracha!

Mother’s Day morning for breakfast I made hash browns with the leftover potatoes, and if you’ve never done that, then you are missing out!  I cut up the little sausages and added to the hash browns.  I chopped up the mushrooms and added them to scrambled eggs. Breakfast was fantastic, too!  Of course, we topped it off with some stout Community Coffee!

After they headed back to the big city of Baton Rouge, Dotter invited me for dinner, and I was happy to oblige.  She outdid herself with a lovely meal topped off with a type of “cake” I’ve never had before.  She made a fresh fruit simple syrup sauce and poured it over Panettone and topped it with cream. Then, we did a Google search to read all about the product we were consuming!  We didn’t know much about this “leavened cake” except that we wanted to try it. It’s unusual but enjoyable.  

I really appreciate Dotter’s efforts, because she is 38 weeks pregnant with their second daughter, and we are so excited.  (The belly makes it kind of challenging to get up to the stove!)  I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of us but we didn’t dare get that close for a photo! (You know, social distance policing and all!)

Everyone is well.  The weather has been unbelievably gorgeous down here, so much so that all my flowers are behaving and putting on a brilliant show of color and aroma! My hydrangeas are striking and the gardenias smell satisfyingly sweet, their fragrance wafts up to the porch where I sit and enjoy the view.

Well, there you have it–Mother’s Day Weekend, bayou style!

Please comment below and let me know how you celebrated during these oh-so-strange times, ok?

Until next time,

BW