A Fun-Filled Non-Sailing Weekend

Saturday was "work weekend" at the Harlem. This event is held each spring and fall to get a lot of projects done at the Club with free labor -- except that a delicious "free" lunch is served. "Will work for food" is what my sign reads. If you don't show up you are encouraged to pay $25, but this "rule" is not enforced and I do work on other days for the Club so I did not pay when we missed the event the last few years. But I like work weekends because they are a great way to meet our members - working alongside them and talking. Such members, co-workers really, become friends in the process.

 I was assigned first to pull weeds on the north side of the clubhouse. This was a solo job and damned hard work. The last stage was pulling little ground weeds like the ones a person would find in a garden. These did not become visible until the huge vines, growing through the chain link fence, were cut away. The vines blocked the narrow passage between the property fence and the refrigeration equipment hidden away near it and removal of this thicket was the purpose of the project. I would have been well served by a pair of pruning shears; lacking such, wearing work gloves, I ripped the damn things out. All except one vine that looked to me like poison ivy.  Then, before and after lunch, I worked with two others on scraping, priming and painting the wrought iron outdoor deck furniture. After washing all the green paint off my hands (when will I learn to wear rubber gloves?), I helped Rhoda and Lloyd remove their sails, it being such a windless day.

Finally a Club membership meeting from 5 to 7. I rather enjoyed the civility of it all, especially compared to the past, when ad hominem attacks were regrettably common.

Sunday I worked from 6 am to 6:30 pm, cooking a “gourmet dinner for six”  that I had offered to the Club in a "Goods and Services Auction". The auction was held last winter while we were away. In the past, for other organizations, I have offered a ride on our boat, perhaps a dozen times, but such an offering would not work at the Club because we all have boats.  This dinner had been "won" by three of our past commodores, Ernie, Stu and Mark, and their wives. The guests were all friends who we have sailed with and hence people who I would have liked to have invited to a dinner party even absent the auction. 


Today's work (may I call it a labor of love) was after more than a day of planning the menu, shopping for ingredients and doing the cookie baking beforehand. But the folks came and enjoyed so the challenge was worth it. Lene helped with preparing some of the ingredients, printing out the menu, setting the table and serving and clearing, tasks which would have been quite difficult for me without her. Unfortunately for Lene, her current dining plan precluded her from joining in the eating part of the evening  -- enjoying the fruits of her labors. 

The menu:

 Dinner for Three Past Commodores and Their Commodorables

                                          October 14, 2012

                                            Theme:  Circles

     Wines:

         Shiraz  --  Nine Stones --  Mclarenvale, Australia – 2008

         Pinot Grigio – Bollini – Fruili Grave, Italy – 2008

     Before:

          Green olives, Dates with edible pits, Pate of truffled livers

     Bread, home baked, with butter

     Soup:   Peach and Pumpkin

     Salad:  Beet, Orange, Fennel and Calamata, vinaigrette

     Entrée:

          Pork Loin stuffed with Drunken Prunes

          Garlicky Mashed Potatoes

          Stir Fried Snow Peas, Scallion, Ginger, w/ Pecans and black and white Sesame Seeds

     Desert:

         Roasted spiced pineapple a la mode (pineapple and Vanilla) over Strawberry Coulis

         Rugelach and Biscotti

     Coffee or Tea

     After:  La Grenade Liqueur -- product of Grenada

I always search for themes for our dinner parties. This time the theme of "Circles" came into my mind 

when I realized that many of the dishes were round: olives, dates stuffed with almonds, soup (in 

bowls), beet and orange slices, pork and pineapple. So I cut little circles of the pate with an apple 

corer and portioned the mashed potatoes in a half-cup measure to form timbales, to augment the theme.

The salad:

Altogether a very fun filled weekend, without being aboard a boat, other than a boat on the hard in removing sails.