Paradise served Daily…

It is 9:24am on another beautiful day  down here. The waves are still a fun chest to head high out front as they have been all week and you know Hermosa is overhead right now.  The way the tide is right now, it was surfable early and now the tide is going low so it gives a nice break for second breakfast, a little bit of work, and surfing again at 11:00am as the tide starts to fill back in a bit.  the nice thing about this tide window is that it stays good the rest of the day on days like this. Three surfs a day is never a bad thing. The weather has been amazing for the past week offering partly cloudy skys making for not too hot days and beautiful sunsets. Last night had one of the best sunsets I have ever witnessed. Both Danielle and I were surfing at the time and when you looked out to the horizon It glowed yellow and gold with a yellow sun sending pale cream colored rays through all the surrounding clouds which had hues of dark purples and grays with lavender and pink accents.  The water was amazing too. Between the sets it had a unique dark blue with the yellow gold shimmer and when the waves came they turned green with golden lips throwing little tubes.  There was an ecstasy  in just duckdiving. You'd purposely wait to have it barrel over your head and take it all in.  As I'd look over to Danielle she'd be glowing too from the lighting. To cap it off, when you looked back toward the beach there was a rainbow coming down from the lavender mist over the mountains and extending down to end on our place.  it was a cool moment.  The whole time I was wishing for a camera, but didn't want to get out of the water to miss any of the actual experience. Bill had a camera on it, but in the evening as he was trying to get them onto the computer it asked him if he wanted to reformat the camera and he accidentally did. That deleted anything on the camera,  which was tough, but some experiences like that are illusive and  are better left as experiences and mental memories. i'll do my best to paint my impression of it for you and I will try to get it up on this blog or the next one.  One of the nice things about down here is that they get in the Holiday spirit early. They don't do Thanksgiving so they start marketing Xmas now. Trees are up in places and the poles and pillars of the grocery stores are wrapped in ribbons and bows and their is holiday music playing. Danielle and I have been getting into the spirit drinking hot cocoa in the evenings and watching holiday movies on youtube.  It's been nice.  Groups of Americans down here are always doing a thanksgiving too so we will probably celebrate that as well with some friends in a few days. For Danielle and I we will make homemade stuffing, coconut rice with black beans, yummy salad, and pumpkin pie. Never a bad day. For those wondering how to make really yummy coconut rice use the same ration of two cups rice to four cups water, but then add 3/4 of a can of unsweetened coconut milk. and leave it uncovered and just boil it down until almost no liquid remains then stir it, take it off the heat and leave it covered until the rest of the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. At the same time you were doing that  stirfry up lot's of garlic, onion, and red bell pepper in olive oil until the onions caramelize.  Dice up a tomato into small chunks and add it to the caramelized onions and let that all cook down. You had already put 1/3 of a  bag of black beans in a crock pot in the morning with a diced onion and some whole cloves of garlic to taste. So once the tomatoes have cooked down dump scoops of your black beans (strained) and your onion/garlic/red pepper/tomatoe mixture into the rice. Add the remaining 1/4 can of coconut milk, hot sauce, curry powder, black pepper, and a tad bit of raw sugar to taste. and complement it with a simple home made salsa (tomato, cilantro, onion, jalepeno) Delicious.!!!!!  Vegan stuffing is really easy too. Peparidge farm bagged stuffing is vegan and then chop up an apple and some celery and steam them for a few minutes with a handful of chopped walnuts that you throw in the bottom of the pot of boiling water to soften them. Dump those into your stuffing mixture and bake for a bit and your vegan thanksgiving is almost ready. Most pie shells are vegan so is the pumpkin filling. Throw the pie in when you stuffing is done and don't forget to take it out.