Thanksgiving on the land

The spread

The people

Going back for seconds

The Fun.

Read about the whole story on our land blog. This is where my family blog and land blog start to merge on occasion.

http://twistedthyme.xanga.com/weblog

Lighthouse, Beach, Food, Forts

It's a long way up from here.

Here's a view from the top, it was a cloudy morning and threatening to rain. But still so hot.

Today we got up early to get to the lighthouse before the heat turns up. It's not a very tall lighthouse, luckily since there was no breeze at all from the top.

The Hunting Island Beach. It's still early, so not many beach goers.

This is Gullah Grub, we stopped here twice while in the area. Our first visit we arrived about 30 minutes before closing time, but stayed for about an hour and a half. We talked with the owner (also the cook) and his son. They are Gullah with roots that go back as far as the island itself. They are also fox hunters, and hunt on horseback. It was a great time learning so much from these men. The food was amazing, slow cooked local, seasonal food. We had to stop by again.

We found this chapel with the wonderful aged rock walls, it made for some nice pictures
This is a small store we stopped at with lots of unusual gifts and local items.

On the front porch where these neat rockers, I love the bright color of the green one.

We drove down this long road and came across this huge fort, I just didn't understand why it wasn't in any tour guide book. I think it should be preserved as a fort and they should have a visitors center and charge admission to visit it. It could be wonderful, but unfortunately it is covered with graffiti and looks like a local party pad.

This is a store in Frogmore called This and That. I was hopping for more, it was mostly just fad items that where overpriced.

This little gem is the Red Piano Art Gallery, they have wonderful art pieces, I would have liked to purchase something, but with our house not complete yet, I don't know our colors or what we really need.

We watched a man catch a stingray from the dock, he is trying to get it off his hook, not sure if it lived after he got it off the hook and threw it back in.

This little place is Sgt White's Diner. We had lunch there one day. Richard had fried chicken and I had fried pork chops. The lemonade and sweat tea where the best i've ever had. All the food was wonderful. Another great little find on our trip.

This is the cemetary that has graves that go back to the civil war.

Here is a local cemetary, I love the look of the old rock and the brick. We tried to find a local ghost tour, but there was not one currently in operation. The ghost tours are always our favorites, I was hoping, we called a few numbers found on the internet, but none of them were current.

Boats at sunset from the Beaufort dock. We sat in the swing and watched the sun go down.

water pumps, jerky and carpet

After months of checking and adding water to the yellow Suburban we finally bought a water pump for it. Cory and Chad installed it yesterday but it was still leaking so today they had to take everything back off and see what was causing the leak.
Chad took the black carpet out of the orange Mustang. He had to vacuum it before putting it in the blue Mustang. It still had glass pieces all over it from the accident. It was not glass from Chad's car but from the other car, that's how hard they hit.
Chad got the carpet in the car, then the dash, now it's time to hook up all those plugs and wires, the fun part.
Getting ready for the shrimping trip, Richard has been working on his boat when he has a chance, adding lights and a deck to throw the net from. I thought it would be good for them to have some homemade snacks to take along so I am marinating some meat that we will put in the dehydrator and make jerky out of. They love jerky.
Kyle had a flat tire on his bike coming home from a ride last night, so he found a new tire today and replaced it.
Cory was working on his instrument cluster, getting the fuel gauge to work correctly.

I made this rabbit hutch last year, as you can see it has weathered as I never got to sealing it when it was finished. So today Kyle treated it for me so it won't rot away. I am hoping to get some rabbits to fill it back up, but I need to put a wire bottom on it first, as this is what happened to the last rabbits. We believe the fox got to them, but one must have gotten away since we've seen it running around with the wild bunnies. I had read not to catch rabbits that have gotten loose, so we've just let him go. Not sure if it is a disease thing or what, but I imagine he is happy to be wild.

Birthday/Anniversary Dinner

After a hard days work on the land we took mom and dad out to dinner for there anniversary and dad's birthday. My aunt Sheila and Uncle Reg were able to join us. Kyle had a friend stay over and he went with us as well. We invited Carrie and Olivia to go, but there was a big accident right in front of there driveway and it blocked them in, so unfortunately they were not able to join us.

Thanksgiving prep

Mom is having Thanksgiving at her house again this year. Next year I hope to have our house done so we will have plenty of room to have everyone over.

Because mom and dad are going on a cruise with us in December mom had to give up her day before Thanksgiving, that she takes off every year.

So I am doing a lot of the baking. Here is my pumpkin pie, pecan pie, apple pie, banana bread, cranberry bread and pumpkin bread. Everything is homemade with the best ingredients I could find. I picked up the apples this morning from our local orchard.

Paula Dean's Baked French Toast

I found this recipe on foodnetwork.com and decided to try it out. I did have to adjust it some, but as you see it turned out beautiful. It had a taste of sweet bread pudding, so sweet it never needed syrup. Here's the link to the recipe if you'd like to try it yourself. It's a great make ahead breakfast for company. http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_26774,00.html