Whoa! Creepy Guest on Fake Halloween!!!

BOO!
Last Wednesday was Calendar Halloween,
but because of Superstorm Sandy, our mayor
moved the holiday to Saturday, and then our
governor moved it to today, Monday.

So we have been prepared for

Trick or Treaters for 5 days.

Halloween decorations are still up.

The 3 Musketeers Bars are snuggled in their basket, waiting.

Howard and I have been keeping each other honest.

Black paper bats are great fun at Halloween.

Back in 2010, I had them all over our fireplace wall.

In real life, bats are not as cute.  Read on.

We've had no trick or treaters yet.

Unless you count this one, which Howard

found when he went to take pictures of

another disconnected gutter on our second floor:

Yeah.  A real bat!  Hanging inside a bedroom window.

Talk about Eeeeeekkkkk!

This poor little guy had somehow squeezed himself between the screen and the storm window.  It took some finagling to free him.  Sadly, he had perished before we even found him.  We like our bats here at That Old House.  They do a bang-up job of keeping our yard pretty much mosquito-free, and they are also kind of neat when they fly out overhead on summer nights.

As long as they don't nest in our attic, they are most welcome.

No jokes now, about my being batty.

'Cause we all know . . . I am.

*************************************

Also still decorating the porch and the side yard,

our Jack-O-Lanterns.

It's hard to get good pictures of them because it is DARK

when they are lit.  Duh.

Daughter Anne's haunted house pumpkin.

Carved days ago, by last night it was showing its age and

beginning to crumple in on itself.

Carved pumpkins don't have much of a shelf life.

And what would Halloween be without a 

Shoe-O-Lantern?

My handiwork.  Oy.

Tonight we'll candle up all 4 of our carved masterpieces,

and hope that we get at least one group of trick or treaters.

Who don't have fur, wings, and hang upside down.

********************************

Sunday night was our last normal dinnertime until next weekend;

Howard doesn't get home from work until 10PM during the week.

So I set a very casual Halloween table, and served up what I realized,

after I filled the serving dishes, was just

about the whitest, most colorless, dinner possible.

Really.

Cauliflower.

Mashed potatoes.

Roast chicken bazooms.

Remember when every home in every home dec magazine was

slathered in white and beige?   Page after page of . . . no color?

This is the dinnertime equivalent of that.

At least I had bright place mats, and Halloween napkins I sewed back in the day, when I sewed dozens of napkins for all occasions and holidays.   Hey, getting your first serger is a heady experience!

If you are in New Jersey,

Happy Halloween on this November 5th!

And I hope you have power by now; so many still out!

Now I need to find a roofer and a gutter guy (do gutter guys have

names?  Gutterer?).  I know we'll be at the bottom of their priority

list, as we still have a roof even though it's compromised,

but I completely understand that.  

Tuesday, Election Day -- A Post about Dylan our new dog,

and how our beach house fared in Sandy.  And remember to vote!

-- Cass

Holy Turkey Day, Batman! And a Cake. Of Sorts.

3 weeks from yesterday, we'll gather 24 people
at That Old House, to celebrate America's 
favorite family holiday - Thanksgiving.

Is my T.B.D.B.T. List done yet?  Nope.

Have we had other fish to fry,

more important than sewing dining room curtains?  Yup.

Am I panicked?  Not yet.

Plenty of time for that later.

There's always room for Jello, and there's always time for panic.

******************************

We have so much to be thankful for, even while we
weather some recent challenges and trials.

There's a new boy in our life, 3-year old Dylan,
a 13 pound bundle of energy and passionate affection
whom we adopted on the Sunday before Sandy
from Cavalier Rescue.

Dylan's first days at That Old House involved a lot of rain.  Yes, he was damp.

***********************************
And, today, I ordered a really gorgeous looking roasting pan - 
one that can handle any turkey my husband decides to haul home.

I may regret this.
I emailed Howard and told him I'd ordered a great big roasting pan.
He answered: "You have thrown down the gauntlet, my dear."

Howard, 2011, with a bird he considered
woefully inadequate.  In my defense,
 I roasted two of them!

Since my husband has been known to hunt out 32-plus pound
turkeys on the day before Thanksgiving, even though I didn't have
a large enough roasting pan to cook that big a bird,
I may, as I said, regret this.

********************************
. . . and now for something completely different.
A Cake.
At least, it's billed as a cake in any recipes I found.

Anne made it, and she says "It was odd, but delicious.  Too sweet."

So here it is, something called a Dump Cake.
Because you take 3 or so ingredients, and dump them,
bake them, and then . . . eat them.

You need:

Yes, boys and girls, we used canned apple pie filling, and discovered
that it is wicked sweet.  So -- in went some big squeezes of lemon, a
pinch of salt . . . and still too sweet.  Like scrunch your face sweet.

Hmmm . . . what to do?
We happened to have a can of tart-sweet whole cranberry sauce in the pantry.

Plop - plop - plop - dump.  Right onto the apples.

 Next step -- the cake part.
You dump the cake mix right over the fruit.
Yup.  That's it.

Dumping layers.  Apples.  Cranberries.  Cake Mix.

Then comes the odd part.  Butter.
Our recipe said two sticks of butter, cut up and distributed over the cake mix layer.
Anne and I thought, "Yikes, two sticks?"  She did a stick and a half.

Into the oven.  350-degrees, preheated.

 For . . . until it's done.  It took awhile.
About an hour.  Maybe a little more, as we wanted the top nice and brown.

The sugary fruity parts got nicely caramelized.
But you can't cut this like a cake.
Well, you could, but it would be a holy mess.
Anne scooped out bits, topped them with whipped cream,
and served her grateful parents.  In bowls.

It was good. More like a cobbler than a cake.
But eventually, it all disappeared.  Like Magic.


Join Michael Lee West at Rattlebridge Farm
for Foodie Friday.  Click here!

And enjoy!  -- Cass 

Adorable Dylan Dog, Abominable Sandy Storm

We are so very lucky that the damage to
That Old House was limited to some gutters that
decided to part ways with the house  . . . 

. . . and bits of our roof that went

flying off in the high winds.  Landing on the ground.  

Oh my, those poor weeds!  Just smashed flat by Sandy.

All over the place.

On the sunroom roof -- doesn't that hunk of shingles look like a Muppet face?

We checked up behind the house to see where

most of the shingles came from.  We found it:

That's down to the tar paper there.  Ooops.

But compared to the heartbreaking losses, of life and property,

and the misery of continued power outages, food shortages, and
no gasoline, all up and down the East Coast, this is nothing at all.

******************************

Our little Dylan,

a rescue Cavalier we adopted on 10/28,

is keeping us occupied.

If you think he is adorable, you are right.

The thing with a small, adorable dog is . . . it's too easy to let him be a brat.

Because he's just so cute.

"Look Ma, I'm a real boy!"

So Dylan is in Doggy Boot Camp here at That Old House.

We'd gotten used to running a home for geriatric spaniels over the past few years,

and having a bouncy, curious, untrained 3-year old dog in the house has us digging

back into our bag of dog-training tricks and methods that we'd almost forgotten!

But there's no such thing as not being able
to teach an old dog new tricks.

I'm sure Dylan will be able to teach me plenty!
-- Cass

Another Carving Throw Down, Halloween Postponed, And a New Dog Gets Named

Whew!  Lots of ground to cover today.
Grab a cup of a comforting beverage -
mine is coffee - and settle in.

New Jersey and New York are beginning the 

long, hard, sad, and expensive cleanup from Sandy.

***Note to Martha at Linderhof -- (Greenport, NY) We walked down this street and the
pier to get to Crabby Jerry's (at the end of the pier) for lunch back in September
when you and Jim visited.  Sandy tore up and destroyed the docks at Crabby Jerry's,
and flooded much of the business district where we walked and browsed.
A little different now from that beautiful Sunday we were there enjoying oysters and clams!
(Photo by Sebastian, from the Suffolk Times website.)

************************************

We grownups are heartsick over the

terrible damage and loss from this massive storm.

But kids have had something else on their minds.

Will this mean there's no Halloween?

Thank you, Graphics Fairy!

Not quite.

But it means that, at least in our town,

Halloween has been moved to Saturday.

No Trick or Treaters today.

************************************

Which might be just as well.  

Another couple of days can give me a chance to redeem myself

in a pumpkin-carving contest in which I am the only competitor.

The other participant is not competing.

Which is odd, 'cause she'd totally win.

Our efforts from a few days ago:

Mine.

Anne's.

You see the problem?

So yesterday, because we were again home due to the storm, we

carved two more innocent pumpkins who had never done us any harm.

Okay.  Our efforts from yesterday:

Daughter Anne's.

A haunted house.  Second Empire, no less.

And to the left of the haunted house, a spooky tree . . .

 To the right of the house, a ghost perches in another tree,

above a cemetery with a weeping angel monument. 

Detail:  Mansard roofs.
This is the second pumpkin Anne has ever carved.

And now (drum roll, please!)

my own carving masterpiece:

I hope you didn't have a mouthful of coffee when you saw that.

It's supposed to be a shoe.  And I really did have a plan.

It just got lost along the way.

My detail:

A pumpkin covered in red Magic Marker lines.

Who knew that wouldn't wipe right off a damp gourd?

I am going to probably ink the whole cutout area in red MM

so you don't see my primitive scribbles.

As I said, I am the only one thinking this is a contest.

It's really not. It's me doing clumsy carving, and Anne

doing her own, patient, art-kid thing.

Ha!  My pumpkin is way bigger than Anne's.

I win.

I hope our Jack O Lanterns last until Saturday!

And don't you think it would be cool to have a

carved turkey pumpkin for Thanksgiving Day?

********************************

Now, about our new family member,

the Cavalier King Charles tricolor boy we

adopted from Cavalier Rescue on Sunday . . . 

Some of you chimed in with name preferences,

from yesterday's post, and most were for Dickens.

"Dickens?  You think I am a little Dickens?"

"I am a mighty hunter!  Go away, leave me with my fresh kill,

a fox that smells oddly of acrylic fake fur and PetCo,
and sadly has no squooshy stuff inside."

Anne and I test-drove "Dickens" as the name for our

new little guy, but he didn't seem to like it.

I liked the name "Pip."  But our dog?

He prefers Dylan.

He already answers to it.  Dylan it is.

BTW when we got into the car to drive home from Dylan's

foster home on Sunday, with the clouds and wind from

Sandy blowing in from the Atlantic, I turned on the radio, and the

first song I heard was Bob Dylan, singing "Shelter From The Storm."

"Let me in!  It's wet out here!"

 s'Truth.

I keep thinking this is Thursday, but it is not.

It's Wednesday.  And there's a chance Howard will be able

to get a bus, or maybe a car service, home from NYC tonight.

Hope so; I miss him!  -- Cass

P.S.  If you spotted a lead hooked to Dylan's collar in his bare-it-all picture, it's because he is not used to walking on lead, and thinks this snake-y thing around his neck is either a toy, or an instrument of torture that must be destroyed.  So we are letting him drag the lead around, to get used to it, and we randomly pick it up, hold it casually, then give him a little treat for not going bonkers.  Hey, I like getting treats for not going bonkers; don't you?

Bad Sandy, Good Dog, One Pic

Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy
roared through New Jersey yesterday.

She was not a nice guest.

At That Old House, Sandy tore hunks of roofing off and hurled them onto the sunroom roof, where they skidded to the ground,

and let me tell you, when a roof is made of translucent

poly-something-or-other, having hunks of roof

banging and skidding over it is very very noisy.

And scary.

Noisiest surprise -- a long length of gutter tore off the attic roof, 

hit the sunroom, and is still dangling half-on, half-off the house.

Lovely.

**********************************

But many places fared far, far worse, as you know if you haven't

been hiding under a rock.  New York City is reeling.
My husband has been staying at a midtown hotel since Sunday night.

He worked 13 hours on Monday, same today,
and will maybe get home late tomorrow night.

(Update: H says it is doubtful he will get home on Wednesday.  Bummer.)

*********************************

We don't know how our beach house in New York fared,

'way out on eastern Long Island's North Fork.

Southold cops closed the road leading to it --
 impassable because of floodwaters.

That's not a really good sign.

But as my Mom used to say, "If it doesn't bleed, don't worry about it."

And she was right.  Whatever happened to our beach house,
or to That Old House, is fixable.

*****************************
We are all safe and sound,
including our newest family member.

Photo courtesy of Cavalier Rescue.  He has been moving too fast for me to get a good shot!

He is a 3-year old tricolor Cavalier King Charles Spaniel,
and we adopted him Sunday afternoon from Cavalier Rescue.

He's a little bit of a boy, only 13 pounds, but he makes up for his
lack of size with loads of energy and curiosity.

And no manners.
This is not his fault.

He was given to Rescue by owners who could not
care for him, and he had about as much training (meaning none)
as a 6-month old puppy.  Only he's 3.

But we've trained lots of dogs in our time, with all sorts of issues,
and this guy needs us.  Like we need him.

He's adorably affectionate, and his favorite place to be
is curled up in someone's lap.  The closer the better.

I promise more pictures of him, and pictures of our house,
in tomorrow's blog post.  I am racing the power grid;
our electricity comes and goes; luckily for us,
it's been on for a few hours, 
that's liable to change at any moment.

Meanwhile -- please help us name our new boy!
We are changing his original name, as it might carry
"bad vibe" memories from his last home.

Anne and I have narrowed our choices to four:
1. Dylan
2. Pip
3. Hugo
4. Dickens
What's your vote?
*****************************
My heartfelt sympathy to the storm veterans who have lost their homes, and in some cases family or friends, to the terrible Sandy.  To any people from Canada to North Carolina, west to Michigan, who are soldiering on in primitive conditions -- we are praying for your welfare.  Many thanks -- more than can be expressed -- to the emergency and utility workers who perform miracles in these situations, and risk their own well being to do so.
You are amazing.
-- Cass

Sandy

Hurricane Sandy has already messed up my
weekend plans.  Anne and my sister Peggy and I
were supposed to be enjoying a road trip to 
Virginia, coming home on Monday.

A look at Sandy's own plans for Monday, and we decided to

stay put, right here in good ol' New Jersey.

That Old House has weathered many storms since 1832.

This is one more notch on her bedpost.

Peggy and Bill are battening down the hatches at our

beach house today.  Fingers crossed! 

To all who are in the path of what might turn out to be one

doozy of a storm . . . good luck, and let's use the good sense

God gave us to stay out of harm's way!  :-)

We are getting in our own car right now, though.

We have a date, with the little fella in the picture, above.

He's interviewing us.

Stay dry, East Coast Peeps!  -- Cass