Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Seeing Red

Aunt Tish's man Joe has a thriving business bringing heirloom tomatoes and such from the country to Louisville's restaurants.  Saturday night is leftovers.  Wow!

This watermelon was so good.
 And this mango salsa was sooooooo good.
And this salsa, oh my. I divided  it and added quite a bit more peppers for the Handy Man.  We ate it for most every meal till it was gone.

 Beyond what I needed, Joe had a ton of Roma tomatoes.  Noella uses tomatoes in everything I have seen her cook.  I brought home a box full.  I got fifteen quart bags for her. In addition to her not having to pay for them, she also doesn't have to drag them home on the bus this winter.
I want to give a big shout out to my family.  I've shared before that while Noella was more than happy having a mother figure, I wanted Ivonne to have some experience with people of different ages and with guys and cousins.  They all showed up to shower them with love in celebration of Ivonne's 2nd birthday.  He didn't quite know what to think of everyone showering him with attention.


 He loved his birthday banner with cutest pictures I've taken.
 The kids played and played with him.  So sweet.

 Since Noella had Easter with us, she has wanted to cook "African" for my family.  As best as I can tell, she is accustomed to turning whatever meat she might have- beef, chicken, dried fish, goat ( what she calls "maaa"), into stew. Always with onion and tomato, but additionally anything she might have.  Along with a little meat, a bit more stew, is a good amount of some sort of starch that I'm guessing is meant to be the filling part.  She makes several starches but the two she made for were from plantain and corn flour.  The consistency is much like playdough and is used as the utensil to scoop up the stew.  She is showing Gwen how it's done.  You have to beat the daylights out of that stuff.




With supper cooked, but a while till dinner time, we turned our thoughts to presents.  Ivonne had no idea  what to think. 









Ceece had a job to get to, but Noella wanted her to try her cooking, so she sampled first and liked the stew and edible spoon dumpling. 

I was proud of the kids for all giving it go, though different than they'd experienced before.  In addition, they were so great to show their appreciation to Noella for her hard work. 



It seemed the men folk agreed that the "maaaa..." (goat) was  a favorite and we'll probably laugh about what we all now call it, for a long time. 
 When it was time to light the candles, Pappy was behind Noella and Ivonne and when so grown up Giddy-Up struck the first match Ivonne wanted up in Pap's arms and away from the fire. That was a first.


 He wanted nothing to do with those little flaming sticks.

We then enjoyed cake and ice cream.  Noella said she wanted to come to all the family parties and was so thrilled with cake and gifts and banners and pictures.  
It is delightful to be a part of her joy.

1 comment:

  1. How wonderful! I laughed out loud at the little one jumping into Phil's arms...too funny! I guess those little firey sticks can create quite a scare!

    ReplyDelete