AT HOME IN HEATH: THE ROCKWALL FARMERS MARKET

Well, we’ve been living in our new home for about four months now.  It’s beginning to feel like home.  One thing I’ve learned is that grocery shopping is a whole lot different out here than it was back in Dallas.  A couple of years ago, when Trader Joe’s came to Dallas, I explained how I was smack dab in the middle of grocery store heaven.  That is no longer so.

Grocery Shopping in Rockwall

I’ve had my ear to the ground for things to enhance my life on the eastern edges of the DFW Metroplex.  Though I don’t remember when or where I first heard of the local farmers market, I knew immediately it was something I wanted to check out.  I adore vegetables, especially the kind you get from real farmers, as opposed to the water-sprinkled display in the local supermarket.

In Dallas, with Market Street, Central Market and Trader Joe’s just around the corner from me, I really had all my produce needs taken care of.  In Rockwall, we have Walmart, Target, Kroger and Aldi.  I refuse to shop at Walmart, our Target doesn’t have a produce section and Aldi is hit or miss.  That leaves Kroger.  They have an extensive produce section, but it falls short of what I’m used to.  One day when I asked after shallots, I was directed to the seafood department.

We also have a Costco out this way and their produce is absolutely gorgeous.  However, there is only two of us in this household.  I’m just now figuring out how to cook.  I’m not ready to take up canning.  Everything at Costco is super-sized.  I’d have to open a restaurant to justify purchasing one of their gi-normous offerings.  That left the farmers market.

Visiting the Rockwall Farmers Market

The Rockwall Farmers Market is held every week, rain or shine, on the square in Downtown Rockwall.  (That’s at 66 and 205, for the non-locals).  They’re just about to finish up with a major renovation down there, so on my visit I had to maneuver around some construction hazards, but that frustration will soon be gone.  It looks like the finished product is going to be lovely and a boon to the farmers market.

The market is open 8 AM to noon and that, in part, is why it took me four months to get there.  I’m always up early, but I come up here to my office and get distracted by a project.  Before I know it, the morning is gone and I’ve missed the market again.  This week, I was determined to leave my office and get to the market by 9.  I did it.

I made my way through the construction and found a parking place without too much effort.  I grabbed one of the shopping bags I keep in my car and headed to the row of awnings around the square.  Right away I could tell this was going to be a treat.  I could have gotten everything I needed, and more, at the first booth, but what fun would that have been?

The mix of vendors is about one half farmer and one half other stuff.  The other stuff is everything from toffee and coffee, to honey and tamales.  I plan to give the other stuff a closer inspection on my next visit, but on this particular day I was on a mission.  I’d been looking forward to this visit, because the only thing in my crisper was a wilting stalk or two of celery.

I had planned to walk through the entire market before buying anything.  It’s not like it’s all that big, but about halfway to the end of the first row, I was stopped in my tracks by some of the most beautiful basil I’d ever seen.  The gorgeous stems seemed to be growing out of an ice chest and the air was full of their appetizing aroma.  The price was a dollar a stem.  Thinking of the sorry excuse I get for fresh basil at the grocery store I asked for two.  I could have gotten by with one and had plenty to share.  Lesson learned – and I’ll be back.  I may get the Australian basil next time.  The vendor said it had a hint of cinnamon to it.

I made it to the end of that row and turned the corner.  There was only one half of a row more.  At the end of that row I spied some chubby cucumbers that had my name on them.  Bill eats a lot of cucumber, but I’m not fond of those huge waxed creatures offered for sale at the grocery store.  These nubby chubbys looked good enough to bite, right then and there.  A basket of them was $4.  That seemed a little steep, but then I thought of the last foot long green thing that followed me home from Kroger.  Sure it had been cheaper, but it hadn’t sung to me the way these guys were doing.

I headed back towards the basil, when some big juicy blackberries halted me in my tracks.  I found myself standing next to the delicious looking berries wondering what it would take to make them mine.  “Five dollars a basket or three baskets for $12.”  I started wondering what I would do with three baskets of blackberries when they let me know I could mix and match the baskets.  That sounded pretty good, because some strawberries were already flirting with me.  Not wanting to overload myself with fruits, I ignored the grapes and glanced towards the vegetables.  That’s when I saw a mixed basket of squash.  “I’ll take three for $12, the blackberries, some strawberries and the mixed squash.”

Walking back toward where I had entered I watched for any kind of lettuce, but I guess that’s not a Texas crop.  I knew I still needed some tomatoes and purple onions.  Then I saw the asparagus.  Yep, you guessed it. Four dollars a basket.  Another $12 invested in local farmers.

TRAVEL HERE: STAMPEDE 66 IN UPTOWN DALLAS

I’ve been holding out on you.  We visited this restaurant back in July and I’ve never gotten around to telling you about it.  Allow me to correct that error and tell you about Stampede 66.

You had me at Stephen Pyles

Even though I’m the one with the never-ending list of next-places-I-want-to-go, every once and awhile I like for my husband to do the dating thing.  You know the one where they ask you out to do something they’ve picked out.  Well, the evening at Stampede 66 was Bill’s idea and I want to give him all the credit.

He sent me an email asking for a date AND he picked out the restaurant.  I’d never heard of Stampede 66 at that point, but a quick peek at Google informed that he’d done pretty good, because it was a Stephen Pyles restaurant.  The western theme explained the Stampede.  The 66 part I’m still unsure of.  Is it a reference to Route 66, Phillips 66 gasoline or an address in Forney which comes up when you put Stampede 66 into some map programs?  Or perhaps something else too subtle for me to understand.

Cowboy Cuteness

This really is a theme restaurant.  The interior looks like the inside of a barn – a chic barn mind you, but a barn nonetheless.  They have wood plank floors, a rattlesnake metal sculpture and other cowboy-ish decor.  Their website urges patrons to wear Western apparel, but I saw more short-short jumpsuits than I did silver buckles on tooled leather belts.  The crowd was one part millenials, one part out-of-towners and one part uptowners.

One of my favorite features of the decor is a series of wooden squares hanging on one wall.  Each square has a really silly sounding word or phrase on it.  After a few moments of reading through the squares I realized they were all names of Texas towns.  I wonder how many of these millenials,  out-of-towners and uptowners actually get that.

Cowboy Delicious

The menu describes itself as Modern Texas Cuisine and they’ve got the Texas part down pat.  We’re talking quail, chorizo, meatloaf and chili.

My husband chose the Barbequed Brisket with Potato Salad, but it wasn’t the same stuff you get at Dickey’s.  He swears its the best brisket he’s ever had and that he will be going down there pretty frequently for another helping.  I tasted it and I have to agree it was pretty darned good.  The Potato Salad was orange, so that tells you its not what they had at the last family reunion – ketchup maybe?

I had the Shrimp & Grits and it was good, but I’ve decided I must not be a big fan of Shrimp & Grits.  I like Shrimp and I like Grits, but somehow, whenever I have them together it never tastes exactly like I think I want it to taste.  The next time Bill goes down there for some of their brisket, I’m trying something else.

So, do I think you should go to Stampede 66.  Well, of course!  But think twice before you wear you bandanna and Stetson – it’s not that kind of Cowboy.

AT HOME IN HEATH: MY INNER CHEF HAS BLOSSOMED

Bill didn’t marry me for my cooking.  The only food I cooked for him before we got married was my signature spaghetti, which was pretty awesome, but he should have realized there was a problem when he had to teach me to make coffee.  During our first year of marriage we discovered the dishes I’d learned to make in my mother’s kitchen were not to Bill’s taste and his Egyptian dishes were out outside my skill set.  We did not have compatible cuisines.

Confessions of a Yo-Yo Dieter

I was single for a long time.  I’d grown up helping my mom out in the kitchen, but I’d never developed any food management skills of my own.  I ate a lot of fast food, loved frozen chicken pot pies and could make a meal out of a bowl of rice.

From time to time my poor eating habits would catch up with me and I’d fall back on the Scarsdale Diet.  It worked and the simple meals were easy to fix, but you were supposed to rotate the diet with “regular eating” and nothing about the way I ate was regular.  Once the weight was gone, I’d just go back to my bad habits until it was Scarsdale time again.

Then I Got Married

Poor Bill has had quite a ride with me.  Before I really got an opportunity to develop those menu planning/food preparation skills, Bill was already fed up with my efforts.  Not only was he tired of my less than restaurant-quality offerings, he was thoroughly disgusted with the number of things that went bad in my refrigerator.  We ate out, ate a lot of convenience foods and hobbled along for a few months until I had packed on the pounds again.

My best friend introduced me to a crazy 500-calorie-a-day medical diet and in desperation I joined.  Bill nearly had a heart attack when he found out what I spent, but it was non-refundable.  I saved most of my 500 calories for dinner time and we hobbled through meal time until I lost the weight – again.  And of course, eventually I gained it all back.

At some point near the ten year mark, Bill had lived with me through several phases of my yo-yo dieting and I was back on the porky side.  That’s when I discovered Jenny Craig – another diet that “worked.”  I was always great at losing weight when I set my mind to it, but then I’d always gain it back.  Bill liked that Jenny Craig worked, but he didn’t like the cost of meals he couldn’t even share with me.  This yo-yo thing was beginning to wear on us.

And Then There Was South Beach

Over the years Bill and I did discover some dishes we could cook that both of us would like.  We also ate out a lot, like everyone else this day and time.  We weren’t eating healthy, however, and Bill’s doctor introduced him to the South Beach Diet, because he had all the symptoms the diet had been developed for.  I wish I could tell you that I embraced this chance for us to eat together, but I was in the middle of my five year care-giving crisis and Bill was mostly on his own when it came to eating what the diet recommended.  I’ll have to give him creds.  He lost the weight and got all his numbers in the right place.  He about drove me to distraction talking about how wonderful the diet was though – and not just to me, but to anyone who would listen, as well as a few folks who didn’t.

I Finally Gave In

Bill is by far the most persistent person I have ever known.  Most of the time that’s a good thing, but from time to time, it’s not so good.  I finally gave up and tried South Beach.  He’d managed to be successful with it by embracing the rules and applying them to his eating, but I’m not so good with rules.  I knew I’d have to do the diet differently or it would be a waste of my time.

One November day in 2013 became Day One of Phase One.  I followed the diet religiously, faithfully producing every dish on the suggested menu.  Some dishes were a success.  Some were not.  I certainly wasn’t a pro at managing the refrigerator and pantry, but when Bill wanted to complain about a head of lettuce in the trash or wilted asparagus in the crisper, I’d remind him that this diet was his idea.  That seemed to do the trick.

I guess you’re not surprised that the diet worked.  I lost the weight and I was doing pretty good at maintaining it until THE HOUSE.  Those of you who follow my blog know the trauma we went through getting this Home in Heath built.  My diet went out the window and yep, all those pounds came back.

I Came Back

You know what, though.  I missed the Beach.  I’d learned to love frittatas.  I was craving all that spinach, tomatoes and salmon.  I also missed the pals I’d made on the South Beach Diet Chat Groups.  After Bill and I had been in the house for about six weeks, I pulled out my tattered copy of South Beach Diet and my notebook full of kitchen-tested SBD recipes.

This time things were different.  Somewhere along the line those kitchen managing skills I hadn’t possessed in the past had somehow developed.  I was becoming a champ in the kitchen.  I used the SBD book to get me started, but long before Phase 2 was over, I was planning my own menus and modifying recipes to better suit our tastes or to utilize what we had in the pantry instead of making yet another trip to the store.

Our New Paradigm

Shhhhhhh! Don’t tell Bill, but I’ve gotten to the point that I’d just as soon cook at home as go out to eat.  I like my cooking.  He likes my cooking.  I have fun trying new recipes.  I enjoy planning meals.  I even like grocery shopping.

Organizing the pantry, freezer and fridge is sort of like a game.  I’m even discovering that when we go out for a meal, it throws a kink in my food planning.  Not to mention the fact that more often than not, I like the way I cook things better than what I’m served.

I’m still working my way through the huge assortment of recipes South Beach Diet has online, because I want to keep the weight off this time, but I’m beginning to have an urge to crack open my recipe books.  Even though I was never much of a cook, I liked picking up cookbooks when I traveled.  I kept assuring myself that at some point in my life I would actually have time to cook.  Then I inherited all of my mom’s cookbooks.  My sister had no interest in them and I certainly wasn’t going to throw them away.  I’d need several lifetimes to use all the recipes I have in my kitchen, so I guess it’s just about time to get started.

I never dreamed that I was as good of a cook as I’ve turned out to be.  I still have my moments.  I forget to preheat the oven, chop up my other vegetables with my onions when I’m supposed saute the onions separately, substitute crunched crackers when I run out of bread crumbs in the middle of a recipe and that sort of thing, but I’m learning that none of it is the end of the world.  When in doubt, I just add some pepper and keep on cooking!

TRAVEL HERE: DINNER AT THE ROCKWALL’S  FATTED CALF

After a year of building our home in Heath and several months of living in it, we’re finally getting around to visiting some of the restaurants in downtown Rockwall.  We’d visited The Londoner and Bin 303 much earlier in this process, but recently we made it to the Fatted Calf.

Diner or Dinner?

So, I’d heard several people rave about the Fatted Calf, but their descriptions made the place sound more like a diner than someplace to have dinner.  I had it mentally bookmarked in the brunch category.

Then we made a trek to downtown Rockwall on a Friday night.  We’d seen construction going on around the square, but we’d never paid too much attention.  Having to negotiate it for parking made us actually look at what was going on.  I’ve got to tell you it’s a mess right now, but it looks as if it’s going to be pretty amazing when they get through.

Stepping around the construction mess, we first dropped by an outdoor venue where a duo were singing away about some woman’s headache.  It was probably worth more attention and we plan to find out how often they have this kind of thing, but we were hungry.

Our destination was actually Zenata’s, but when we got there it was WAY too loud.  We were looking for a quiet, perhaps even romantic, spot for dinner and we’d heard it was a Mediterranean restaurant.  It was a very loud pizza joint.  We sat for all of about 45 seconds and almost beat the hostess back to the door.

My next thought was Oscar Delta, a restaurant around the corner, which we pass by frequently, but we came up on the Fatted Calf first.  I didn’t think I was anymore interested in diner food than I was the noise at Zenata, but Bill convinced me to at least check out the menu.  The Fatted Calf is not a diner.

Table for Two

Folks in Rockwall must go somewhere else besides Rockwall on Friday nights.  Well that, or they’re over at The Harbor and the I-30 Restaurant Row.  There had been a nice crowd at Zenata’s but Fatted Calf was empty.  Maybe that’s because, like me, everyone thinks it is a diner.

Come to find out the Fatted Calf actually has a split personality.  According to our waitress, the restaurant opened as a diner, but added dinner later, which may or not have coincided with their relationship with the owner of Culpepper’s and The Oar House.  Apparently, the news hasn’t spread as far as it needs to or they would have had a few more tables filled.  There were several folks enjoying themselves at the bar, but up there where the food was served Bill and I were all alone.

My emotions were having a bit of a bouncy ride: Enjoying the improvements downtown and the musicians; Finding Zenata’s and then leaving; Thinking the Fatted Calf was a diner and being pleasantly surprised by the menu, but feeling apprehensive about all the empty seats.  Then the waitress mentioned Culpeppers and The Oar House, which the restaurant was associated with in some way.  Well, I loved the steak I had at Culpepper’s and the musicians who had been playing when I visited, but The Oar House experience had not been as good.  All this and I still had to figure out what I was going to eat.

What in the World is Perloo?

According to the menu, Low Country Perloo is “BASMATI RICE/SHRIMP/ROASTED CHICKEN/PEPPERS/SMOKED SAUSAGE/ SCALLION BUTTER.”  Bill decided to be brave and try it, in spite of the waitress’ less than enthusiastic recommendation, “It’s not my favorite, but people seem to like it.”  She was more excited about my choice, Ted’s Crab Cake.

When the plates arrived they both looked great, but Bill seemed to be crazier about his food than mine.  The crab cake was fine.  I have no complaints, but it wasn’t a standout entree for me.  In fact, what I liked best on the plate was the “CORN MAQUE CHOUX.”  It was about the most delicious corn I’d ever had in my life.  When I googled it I discovered it was pronounced Corn Mock Shoe and it’s a Cajun dish.  Call it what you will and I’ll just call it scrumptious.  Also on my dish was something that looked and tasted like mashed potatoes, but the menu claims is lobster bisque.  I think it was mashed potatoes.

So do I think you should go visit the Fatted Calf?  I’d say it would be a nice night out.  I’m planning to go for brunch someday, because the menu for that meal looks appealing, but since Sunday is our usual brunch day, I’m not sure how I’m going to work it in.  Come back next week and I’ll have some more recommendations for you.

TRAVEL HERE:  APPS AND APPETITE AT CROSSROADS DINER IN DALLAS

Looking for a great place for brunch in Dallas?  Try Crossroads Diner!  On a recent Sunday we were headed to the Kimbell Art Museum to see the Botticelli to Braque exhibition.  You can read about that here, but on the way we stopped at Crossroads Diner for a delicious brunch.  You should go soon, too.

Me and My Talk Shows

Bill says I’m addicted to conservative talk radio.  I say he’s brainwashed by the liberal media.  I do listen to conservative radio, but I balance it with lots of mainstream reporting and the Facebook postings of my liberal friends.  I figure some spot in the middle of all those sources is the truth.

If I’m in the car on weekday mornings, I will tune into The Mark Davis Show.  He’s definitely Conservative, but he’s also mild-mannered – unlike some more famous conservative pundits.  For a while he was on WBAP, but he’s moved over to The Answer, where I also listen to Sean Hannity (another of the more pleasant forms of Conservatism). Anyway, that’s how I found out about Crossroads Diner, listening to the radio.

Timing Issues

I’ve been hearing about Crossroads Diner for a long time, but was having a hard time connecting with it.  The diner, located near the intersection of Central and Walnut Hill, is open from 7 AM- 2PM Tuesday through Sunday, but I’m rarely in that part of town at that time of day and even when I am, it’s a place I wanted to share with Bill, not make a solo trip to.

Also, the diner is right next door to Cedars, one of Bill’s favorite mezza grills.  So, even if we happened to be in the area come lunch time, Bill would always choose the Cedars over someplace I’d heard about on that radio station he hates.  So I knew if I was going to get Bill to the restaurant, it would need to be for breakfast, but the opportunity never presented itself – until Sunday.

Something Different 

Even though we’ve only been in Heath for a few months, we’ve already been creating some ruts.  A couple of Sundays ago, Bill wanted to crawl out of one of them and he let me know early enough in the day to get him to Crossroads Diner for brunch.

As I feared, plenty of other people know about Crossroads Diner and the front of the restaurant was covered up with folks waiting for a table.  We feared the worst, but we were assured our wait would be less than half an hour and then they wanted my phone number.  This was a new twist.  I wasn’t making a reservation they’d have to call me about.  I was right there in front of them.

They said they wanted the number because they were going to text me, but a test text to verify my number said it was powered by No Wait, so of course I had to check it out.  I’m not one of those people whose eyes are permanently affixed to my phone, but I love clever apps.  Way back when smartphones first came out and I was still using a flip phone I was inordinately jealous of folks whose phone could read those blocks of data on museum walls.  Red Laser was one of the first apps I downloaded.  I dig apps.

I downloaded the No Wait app and found out 23 parties were in line ahead of me.  That was discouraging.  I checked it a few minutes later and there was only 18.  Suddenly I loved the app.   We’ve all had that nagging worry the hostess has forgotten about us or we’ve been skipped over.  No more!!  BTW, Crossroads got us in well within the twenty minutes they promised and I loved being able to watch our progress on the app.

My guess is that this app is going to spread like wildfire.  No more starting out on the wrong foot when you’re eating out.  Imagine knowing how long the wait is going to be before you head to a restaurant.  Even better, imagine putting yourself in line and the restaurant being ready for you just about the time you arrive.  I’m sure there’s a downside to it, like people who put themselves in line and then don’t show up.  And then there are all the people that will figure out a way to mess it up for everyone else.  I hate those guys!

There’s another reason I like the app.  You know how you go to a restaurant and put yourself on the waiting list.  Then after a few minutes you decide the wait will be too long or you think of someplace else you’d rather be.  Well, I always hate going back to the hostess to confess we’re leaving, but I also don’t like to think of them calling, “Jane, party of two,” and having to repeat it while all the other patrons curse whoever it was that skipped out without notifying the hostess.  No Wait lets you get out of line with the just a click.  Brilliant!

So How Was the Food?

OK, I’m getting to that.  I just had to tell you about my new app.  The food was great.

The decor in the diner is pretty simple.  Nothing to write home about – except for the chandelier made out of industrial-sized whisks.  I thought that was pretty clever.  There’s an upstairs which I assume serves private parties.  Oh, and if you like outdoors the way I do, there’s a small patio outside with lots of seats.  Most of them were full during my visit, along with every other surface to sit on or lean against.

Bill had corn-beef hash which he loved and it came with pancakes.  Warning, asking for whole wheat will cost you a dollar.  What he was most crazy about though, was the coffee.  First and foremost, it was hot.  Bill has a real fetish for hot.  Our microwave gets a lot of business from him.  Restaurants never serve the coffee hot enough for him, so he was first blown away by the temperature and he insisted that I mention it in my blog.  Then he TASTED the coffee and he was overcome with joy – so much joy that he had to ask what kind of coffee it was and could he buy any.  The coffee is illy, BTW, and I’m guessing you’ll soon be able to get a cup at our house.

I had a frittata, something I love but can rarely get.  I’m not a fan of omelets, because all the stuff in them is basically raw.  With frittatas everything else is cooked before you throw in the egg and I like it that way.  I had the Greek Frittata and it was delicious.  Had I been cooking it, I would have crumbled the feta as opposed to throwing in cubes of the stuff.  It looked a little odd and I just think the whole texture thing would have been better with crumbles.  Then again, I’m funny about textures, so I probably don’t count.

So that’s it and I know I’ve gone on too long, but I had a lot about this visit that I wanted you to know.  come back next week and see what else I’ve been up to.

TRAVEL HERE: SCOTLAND NATIONAL GALLERIES VISIT THE KIMBALL ART MUSEUM IN FORT WORTH TX

It’s been very nose-to-the-grindstone around here lately, so when Bill said, “Let’s do something different this Sunday,” he didn’t get any argument from me.  In fact, I’d already been formulating a play date in my head.

Day Tripping to the Kimball

On Sundays, the Kimball doesn’t open until noon, so we took a leisurely attitude about our drive.  It’s been a good six months since our last visit and probably longer since we were on I-30 west of Dallas.  We were amazed by the construction.

A companion for our beautiful Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge  is being built to replace the old I-30 bridge.  I’m looking forward to that.  The current bridge has been in bad shape and sadly insufficient for a long time.  I’m sure the daily commuters who are dealing with the construction issues are even more eager than I am for the new bridge.

In fact, much of I-30 is being renovated.  I remember when the thoroughfare was a toll road, but that was a long time ago.  As a child, I was fascinated by the punch card the toll equipment spat out.  It indicated the entrance you had used and being a child, I wondered how it knew.

Somewhere along the way, they made the road free and named it to honor a beloved coach of our Dallas Cowboys, Tom Landry.  A few years ago, they started using his trademark fedora as an icon for that stretch of highway.  As a long time Dallasite and a big fan of Landry, I was glad to notice they are incorporating an image of the fedora in the overpasses.

The Exhibition 

We scored curbside parking under a tree and entered the museum.  To get to the Piano Pavilion, where they house the special exhibitions, you have to go back outside and walk across the museum’s campus.  Usually this is a pleasant prospect, but in the melting heat we did not linger.

The masterworks of Botticelli to Braque, Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland were drawn from three different museums in Scotland: the Scottish National Gallery, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.  I’d been to the Scottish National Gallery a long time ago and had been amazed by their collection, so I was thankful for the opportunity to revisit a few of them.  All fifty-five of the paintings are gorgeous.  You need to see this exhibition.

The first thing you will notice when you enter are the bright red walls of central section of the exhibition.  It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started to pay attention to the color of walls in a museum.  Usually they are some shade of white, but somewhere along the way they started using color on the walls of exhibitions and I like it.  It helps set the mood for the show.  These red walls mimic the red walls of the National Gallery of Scotland, as illustrated in a lovely photo near the entrance.  I don’t remember if the walls were red when I was there or not.

Mr. Bill immediately walked into the glowing center section, but like a good museum girl, I read all the information posted on the entry walls and then headed to the left, just like I was supposed to.  That placed me right in front of the Botticelli – The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child, which immediately became one of my favorites of the exhibit.  I love that the Kimbell includes an audio tour in the price of admission.  From it I learned the lovely pink roses of the painting had no thorns, which symbolized the virgin birth and that the sleeping Christ child sleeps to remind us of the three days of His death before His Resurrection.  I was also reminded to look in the lower corner of the painting to see the symbolic strawberries, but I had to turn to wiki to discover what they were symbolic of, but the list was too long to include here.

Another favorite of mine was a small portrait of a young girl mourning the death of a bird, painted in lovely pastels.  The complexion of the girl is absolutely radiant and the whole painting seems to bloom with warmth  I’d love to show it to you, but couldn’t find it online.  I found the title and the artist, but they have it attached to a different picture on several sites and the Scottish National Gallery site says there are copyright restrictions.  So, here’s another reason to go to the show.

A John Singer Sargent portrait of Lady Agnes of Lochnaw stares steadily from one of the exhibition’s walls. According to the audio tour, her calm confidence is deceiving, because while she appears stoic in the painting, she famously suffered a nervous breakdown while enjoying the fame the painting brought.  Nearby is the familiar Three Tahitians from Gaugin.   I also enjoyed Matisse’s charming little painting that comments on imagery.  I couldn’t find it online either, but for a final taste of the show I offer Watteau.

The Second Look 

One of the benefits of twenty-one years of marriage is that you finally figure out how to do things.  We do exhibitions differently.  He rarely starts at the beginning, doesn’t like audio tours, infrequently reads exhibition labels and hence is usually through long before I am.  At the Kimball, he found a comfy, out-of-the-way chair and cat-napped while I lingered lovingly over each and every item.

When we were first married, we tried visiting museums in lockstep, but that only resulted in frustration for both of us.  Enjoying the art and exhibits separately, lowered the frustration, but I missed  sharing part.  Our compromise is to look at exhibits separately, then go back through for an overview, showing each other our favorites and comparing our opinions.

The painting of the skater on the brochure above was one of Bill’s choices.  He hadn’t been as fond of the Botticelli and had missed the strawberries completely.  Most the other items on his list were very different from mine. This is the Carot he wanted to take home.

Do make time in your schedule to see this exhibition.  It will only be in Fort Worth until September 20th, so make it soon!  And come back next week, because I’ll tell you where we had a marvelous brunch before we headed over to the Kimbell.

AT HOME IN HEATH: OUR HOME CAME WITH EQUIPPED WITH GOOD FRIENDS

Last week as I told you about the ups and downs of building, I mentioned Reggie, one of the neighbors we’ve gotten to know here in Buffalo Creek.  Not only did we find the perfect lot and build a beautiful home.  We also moved into one of the friendliest places I’ve ever lived.  One thing we haven’t had to look for in our new home is friends – they’ve found us.

Our First Friendly Neighbors

The first neighbors we met were Reggie and Rita.  They were considering a lot at the end of our cul-de-sac, but hadn’t yet signed on the dotted line.  We didn’t meet them on their best day.  Rita was madder than a wet hen.  She’d loved the house in Buffalo Creek they’d just sold and moved out of.  Reggie’s dreams for a house at the end of our street weren’t translating into anything she understood yet, so there was a little discord on the day we met.

They did decide to buy the lot and we were soon commiserating with one another over the slings and arrows of building a home.  We quickly discovered Rita’s sunny disposition was going to bubble to the top, no matter how concerned she was about the house and Reggie is about the most even tempered guy we’ve ever met.  They have become our dear friends.  Chats in the middle of the street became dinner at their favorite local hang-outs.  We celebrated New Year’s Eve with them and have enjoyed their knowledge of the area.  They make us feel like natives.

As I said last week, Reggie passes our house almost every day when he plays golf.  More often than the builder would like to admit, Reggie’s daily golf habit saved us from loss and damage when a sub failed to lock up our house.  He got to the point where he knew almost as much about what was going on with our build as Bill did and Bill was there every day.

More Friendly Neighbors

In the meantime, we met two more couples:  George & Janice and Pete & Sherry.  We met George one day when he was outside staking a tree.  Their house had been built on spec by our builders and we’d actually had meetings there several times before it became George & Janice’s house.

Like Rita, George was a little grumbly the day we met.  He was livid over the state the landscaping our builder dumped on him, but it didn’t take him long to warm up to us and his wife is a delight.  The pond which brings us so much joy (and the occasional water moccasin), has been leaking on their end and hampering the building of their swimming pool, but it hasn’t stopped we two couples from becoming friends and sharing the occasional happy hour.

Pete & Sherry are building on the other side of us.  They are the “senior statesmen” of our street, but they keep leaving us “youngsters” in the dust as they zip around the neighborhood in their shiny Corvette.  Pick a weekend, any weekend, and you’ll discover this pair has an agenda that would wear out a Marine battalion.  Still, they find time to be good neighbors.  On moving day it was Pete and Sherry who showed up with a care package to kept us going through the frustrations of our fire and rain move.  We can’t wait to return the favor.

An HOA with Hospitality

Our HOA is also doing their best to connect dots between neighbors.  We’ve been to holiday parties, pool openings and HOA meetings and at every one we meet new people we’re glad to have as neighbors.  Take Omar & Nohilly for instance.  I’ve heard of parties looking for a place to happen and that is definitely this couple.  I met Nohilly at the Winter Holiday Party and she promised to keep an eye out for us.  Shortly after we moved in she knocked on our door and she’s been taking care of us ever since – amazing meals and happy hours happen at her place.  Two lovelier people don’t exist on this earth.

So yes, I am at home in Heath.  I’m still looking for a place to call my church home, but we’ll soon be wrapping up our return visits and doubling down on the churches we like the best.  It’s not a decision we have to hurry, because we’re not going anywhere!

AT HOME IN HEATH: OUR HOME ONLINE

If you think we’re proud of our new house, you should talk to our builders, Whittle and Johnson Custom Homes (W&J).  They just put us on their website.

Finding Our Lot

The first Whittle we got to know was Rob Whittle of Whittle Development.  He found us wandering around a parcel of land in his Buffalo Creek development.  Sure, he wanted to sell us some land, but he was also a very nice guy.  He’s so in love with Rockwall County that he wants to share it with everyone.  He showed us several lots before we happened on to the one we bought and the one we picked was one for which he’d already had plans drawn.  Still , he was almost as excited about our plans for the lot as we were.

Now that we’re in the house, he’s just as excited about us as he was the first day he found us.  We had some tough days during the build, but Rob was a straight-shooter every step of the way and took the hit a few times when others might have stuck it to us.  Not everybody in town is as fond of Rob as I am, but I appreciate the vision he had and still has for the area and the determination and perseverance he’s applied to making his vision a reality.

The Other Whittles

Once we were the proud owners of our pond-side lot, Rob handed us over to a couple more Whittles, Mike and Aaron, a.k.a Whittle and Johnson Custom Homes.  Mike is Rob’s brother and Aaron is married to Rob’s daughter.  If you go over to their office you’ll find more of the Whittle clan.

There are very few lots left to build on here in Buffalo Creek, so Rob’s primary concern these days is a huge development called The Heath Golf and Yacht Club.  What was nothing but some empty land this time last year now has roads, sewage, utilities and more.  Were you to attend a meeting of the Heath Planning Department, I’ve heard you’d have to listen to a lot of chatter about the new development.   The Whittles also have projects in Royce City and other Rockwall County locations.

The Good News

We absolutely adore our house, but you guys know I am very honest here in this space.  I tell you what I love, but I also tell you what I don’t love and why.  I love Rob Whittle’s vision.  I also appreciate that when the results of a routine inspection came in after we’d purchased the lot said our lot might benefit from water injections for the foundation, he didn’t sweep it under the rug (which he could have done), but revealed the findings to us and split the cost of it with us.  I love his enthusiasm for our area and the way he keeps plugging away at developing it, even in the face of a lot of conflict.  If you Google him or Whittle Development, you’re going to read a lot of ugly things, most of which are based on mis-information.  You have to have a tough skin to be a developer, that and the heart of a salesman.

I’m also fond of Mike and Aaron.  How could you not like Aaron?  No matter what we threw at him, and we threw a lot, he always had a smile for us – and still does.  If his name were on our deed, he couldn’t be prouder of the finished product.  Mike, too, is a nice guy.  He works hard and his heart is definitely in the right place.

The Less Than Good News

Even though I happen to be a personal fan of Rob, Mike and Aaron, I haven’t come away from our building experience with complete satisfaction.  It’s not that they don’t know how to build a house.  It’s that they are first and foremost a builder of spec homes and “custom” isn’t their usual gig.  I’d have no problem going out and buying a house built by Whittle and Johnson, but I’d never have them custom-build for me again.  We know that we couldn’t have built this house so economically with any other builder, but the headaches and heartaches sure made up the difference in sweat equity.

Basics to the custom home building process like, “tell-us-before-you-spend-our-money“, seemed impossible for them grasp. We’d ask what the standard was for a Whittle home, go out and research other options, and then we’d ask, “What would it cost to do it this way?”  Either they’d go ahead with it before telling us any price or they’d start the upgrade while we were still negotiating a price.

This would happen, in part, because they use the same subs for their custom builds as they do for their specs.  The subs are used to doing things the “Whittle Way” and that didn’t always line up with our way.  For instance, the brick layers showed up one Saturday in December and started putting down brick.  Our build was the next project on their schedule, but we were still discussing ornamental treatments with Aaron.  A neighbor called us and alerted us to the fact that the walls weren’t going up as we’d told him we’d planned.  What a nightmare!

Another challenge was making changes.  This wasn’t our first build, so we knew the difficulty of change orders, but this project took the frustrations to a whole new level.  Because W&J have been using their subs for so long, the subs, like the brick layer, make assumptions about the way things are going to happen.  Compound this with a lag time between when we’d tell Aaron what we wanted and when Aaron would tell the subs.  Pure frustration.

Far too many times we walked into the house and what we saw going up was not what we wanted.  We’d stop the sub and try to contact the Whittles.  Everything would then come to a screeching halt and the sub would move on to their next project.  It could take months to get a sub back to finish something.  Sometimes the other subs would just have to work around a project on hold, but sometimes everything would have to stop. During one of our many complaint sessions, I was told one of the reasons we were having so much trouble was because we were interfering with the sub-contractors’ rhythms.  That explained a lot, but it does not recommend W&J as “custom” builders.

Another issue was their spec sub-contractors aren’t familiar with custom features.  The builder’s tile guy is one of the sweetest, hardest working subs we had working on our house.  We have a lot of tile in the house so we really got to know him and like him a lot, but Carrera marble on the shower wall with black grout and a glass tile feature, slate laid in a Versailles pattern on the patio and other custom features were either just at the edge of his capabilities or in the case of the Versaille pattern, beyond them.

Bill actually had to sit down and figure out a pattern which would properly utilize the tiles which had already been purchased and then supervise the installation.  Bill is not in the tile business, but even after we googled Versaille pattern and gave it to the tile guy, the tile guy couldn’t figure it out.   Our wooden stairwell with slate trim and rod iron balustrades?  I don’t even want to go into the challenges we had trying to get three subs and various suppliers to cooperate with our design.

There was more – like locking up at night.  It’s one thing for a builder to decide they can live with the risk of leaving a spec house open overnight.  They do have insurance after all.  But when clients have installed one-of-a-kind or hard-to-find features, the risk of theft and vandalism escalates. We were lucky to have befriended a guy that plays golf on most afternoons.  After seeing the house wide open late in the day, as he played the hole next to the house, he gave us a call and offered to lock up for us.  Then, the situation repeated itself so often that he just got in the habit of locking up our house each night.

After Everything, We Still Love Our House 

I think you get the idea.  All this and more is why, even though I love the finished product, I hated the nightmare of the build.  We’ve been here for three months and W&J are still working their way through our first punch list.  It’s been tough; a real love-hate relationship.

Building a house is always a challenge.  We can tell you nightmares about the house we built in California too, but those have more to do with tree-huggers, slow-growth proponents and restrictive CC&R’s.

Don’t build a house unless you are really ready for a lot of headaches.  Were the headaches we had with W&J out of the norm?  You’ll have to be the judge of that.  I’m never, ever going to build a house again.  Next time Bill suggests it, I’m going to show him this blog post and this napkin.

Come back next week and I’ll tell you about that nice guy that kept locking up our house each night and some other wonderful people we’ve met here in Buffalo Creek.

TRAVEL HERE: CULPEPPER’S HOSTS FRANK MARTIN GILLIGAN & JOE GAVITO

It started earlier in the week on Facebook of all places.  I have a cousin down Houston way who is heavily into their music scene.  If Gene Alton likes a band, then it’s a good band.  He posted a video that I don’t even think I watched, but I noticed one of the comments was from Joe Gavito.

Who in the world is Joe Gavito?

Now Joe Gavito probably isn’t a household name where you live, but he features large in one of my childhood memories.  I moved to Dallas in 1966 at the age of eleven.  Back then I had no idea I was going to love Dallas as much as I do.  I was pretty partial to Augusta, GA which had been my previous home.  I can tell you this, Mapquest says there’s about 930 miles between Dallas and Augusta, but when you’re eleven years old, it’s more like 930 galaxies.

See, I was the cat’s meow at T.Harry Garrett Elementary School. My friends were Grayson Bailey, Caroline Swink, Patty Harrison, Margie Ann Bowers, Donna Rice and Martha Bowling.  None of us liked Judy Moody, because she had a mean streak, but we all harbored crushes on her brother Tommy and that new guy, Paul, who had moved in at the end of the street.

We lived in the right neighborhood and attended the right church.  I even took ballet from the right ballet school, piano from the right teacher and belonged to the right scout group.  My dad had the right kind of job and we owned season tickets to The Masters.  Life was good.  I was about to enter sixth grade and I’m sure that along with my peers on Persimmon Road, I would have put on my white gloves and attended the right social dancing classes.

In Dallas I was nobody.  We lived in a rent house in a modest East Dallas neighborhood and were still looking for a church.  There was no ballet or scouts and my piano teacher was not remarkable in anyway.  Dad still had the same job, but it didn’t carry the same cachet in Dallas and he’d forfeited his season tickets.  And social dancing? HA!

I didn’t look like my Dallas peers either.  When we got word my dad was transferring, Mom had already purchased my wardrobe for the school year.  My wool plaid skirts, knee socks and penny loafers were all the rage over in Augusta, but Dallas had moved on to mini-dresses, fishnet hose and kitten heels – in sixth grade.  No one in Georgia would have dreamed of heels until they were in their teens!

I suffered through my sixth grade year and dreamed of social dancing classes in Augusta.  I wondered who had been lucky enough to be Tommy Moody’s partner and if there was any chance it would have been me if we’d stayed there. (Probably not, since over the summer I’d shot up at least a head over everyone in my class, especially Tommy Moody.)

Then came the invitation to Cynthia Rodger’s birthday party – Cynthia of the long blonde hair, mini-dresses, fish-net hose and kitten heels.  Now I can imagine a conversation in which Cynthia’s mother told her that if she was inviting the rest of her class to the party that funny girl from Georgia would also have to be invited, but I was too unsophisticated in those days to even think of that.  Instead I was over the moon.  I was going to Cynthia Rodger’s birthday party!

I remember very little from the party, except for Joe Gavito.  This suggests that I probably did not have the rapturous time I had hoped to have at the soiree, but it’s still a party I can’t forget.  We were kids.  Eleven-year-olds.  I still had a hard time chewing gum and walking.  Joe Gavito sat down at a drum set and played Wipeout.  It was the coolest thing I had seen up to that point – and I’ve never forgotten it.

Nearly five decades had passed when I saw Joe Gavito’s name in my Facebook feed, but something prompted me to ask if he happened to be the Joe Gavito who attended sixth grade at MT Reilly.  Lo and behold, he was.  He even remembered the awful cat’s eye glasses that I wore – something else that had been just the thing in Augusta and absolutely the worst thing in Dallas.   What’s more he was still in the music scene AND he had a gig around the corner from me on Friday night.  Talk about coincidences!

I decided right then and there, in honor of the magic Joe created so long ago, I was going to hear him on Friday night. My husband reluctantly agreed to go, with the same excitement one might expect if I’d asked him to join me for dinner with my college sweetheart.  My best friend agreed to go, because she always agrees to do whatever I want to.  I extended the same invitation to several others and ended up with about seven interested couples.  Before the end of the week, two couples had conflicts and my bestie’s husband got sick, but we still had a table-ful.

Getting Re-Acquainted

The official name of the act is Frank Martin Gilligan.  He’s a singer/songwriter in the country/western vein and Joe plays backup.  I didn’t know what to expect.  I was just in it for the fun.

Frank started off with a few cover songs and then moved into his own music.  The cover songs were good.  His songs were great.  He’d sound good singing pretty much anything, as he demonstrated by singing both Willie Nelson songs and a hit from Les Miserables.  When he added his own amazing lyrics to the sound, it was rapturous.  I hate to sound like a groupie, but my best friend studied opera and she agreed on both counts.

We planned to stay for one set.  We stayed for two and Deb was still there when we left. Between sets I chatted with Joe.  That’s when I found out that Frank Martin Gilligan had been the moving force behind Mason Dixon.  I remembered Mason Dixon!  Frank dropped out of the music scene to raise his family, but that task being done he’s returned to his first love – and that’s a good thing for you and me.  Joe says that thanks to the internet, the new CD, Silver Dollar, is enjoying some success through online downloads for the media.  In fact, Frank got a call from a DJ in Australia that wanted him to know how much they were loving his music Down Under.

The title song “Silver Dollar” is a ballad about the path an 1890’s Silver Dollar might have gone, in it’s journey to a friend’s pocket.  I loved this feel-good song about the history of our great nation, but it wasn’t the only selection he played from his disc.  I caught tears in the eyes of my companions during “I Remember Who She Is”.  See if you can listen to it without crying.  The CD is one great hit after another.  You’ll love it.

One more thing.  Joe Gavito was not playing drums.  He’s moved on to the guitar.  (In fact, the more I think about it, he was probably playing drums at the party I remember so well.  Memories blur over time.)  He juggles between two instruments as he accompanies Frank and he’s great on both of them, but one was a very small guitar from Tacoma that he says is called a traveling guitar.  Whatever it’s called, it sounds like a mandolin and Joe is a maestro at picking on it.

So, you missed a great show at Culpepper Steak House last Friday night, but I’ll be keeping an eye on Frank’s Facebook Page , because I don’t want to miss it when he and Joe are back in town.

TRAVEL HERE: SALTGRASS STEAKHOUSE IN ROCKWALL TX

The plan was to visit a steakhouse on the other side of the lake from Rockwall, but I-30 Westbound was closed. That made Saltgrass Steakhouse look pretty good.

My History with Saltgrass

In a place like the Metroplex, there are so many restaurants to choose from that you can’t get to them all.  Saltgrass has been around for a long time – perhaps decades, but we don’t usually go out for steak, because hubby cooks a mean steak on our grill.  In fact, this was exactly my fifth visit to a Saltgrass, but it made me think there would be more.

My first visit was on a night in January and I’m pretty sure it was way back before we went to California. We went there to celebrate my mom’s birthday and as Snoopy would say, “It was a dark and stormy night.”  The food and service were both good, but the weather was so terribly awful that just driving by the place years later made my clothes damp.

Years later my friend and I wanted to go to a restaurant out close to the airport, to kill time before her son’s plane arrived.  I had a coupon for a free appetizer, so we went to Saltgrass.  This time the weather was fine.

Then, this fall, when we were still enjoying building the house, we ended up having dinner at the same Saltgrass we’d gone to with my mom, only this time the weather was better.  In fact, we had delicious dinners washed down with cold beer.  It was on the weekend and the place had a good vibe.  We laughed about the fact that we had avoided the restaurant for so many years.  I remember pointing out that we had a Saltgrass in Rockwall, close to where we were building.

So in January, when I had my sister and her husband out to Heath to see our house under construction, Saltgrass seemed like a good choice for lunch.  It was!  We shared a bottle of wine, ate great meals and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  I was on a Saltgrass roll.

Visit Number Five

Still, when we made plans for dinner with some friends, they wanted to go across the lake, because they had never been there.  They came over to our house to see the progress we’d made since we moved in.  They were interested because they are building down the street with the same builder and wanted to know how the punch list was going.  After a glass of wine on the patio we headed out, but not to Saltgrass.

The closer we got to the highway, the more congestion there was.  At first we thought it was just the usual mess at Horizon and Ridge, but as we were sitting through the same light for the third time, we got a clue that things weren’t quite right.  By the time we got to the access road, we could see nothing was moving on 30, so we opted for Saltgrass.  Seems a whole lot of other people had, too.  The place was packed, but on Saturday night at 8PM, where are you going to go – especially if 30 is a parking lot.

We got lucky and found some seats near the hostess stand and started comparing building notes.  That can certainly eat up a lot of time.  Before we knew it, our page lit up like Christmas and we were led to our table.

What a great experience!  The food was delicious.  Rita had some amazing tacos, I had a very nice steak, Bill had a mound of tasty ribs and I forget what Reggie had, but he loved his too.  And can you say generous portions?  Reggie had ordered the Queso Fresco and I think we were all satisfied after that scrumptious delight – But we’d already ordered dinner.

Confession, I ate my baked potato (a treat I usually don’t allow myself to have) and after a bite or two, saved my steak for another day.  Bill had more than enough ribs and sweet baked potato for several meals.  So we not only enjoyed our visit to Saltgrass, we continued to enjoy it for several days.  What’s more, Reggie and Rita were reminded how much they liked the place.  I’m thinking we’ll all be back there – and often.

Come back next week and see what’s up!