Jazzy evening

I thoroughly enjoyed the Ocracoke Jazz Society Valentine's Day concert tonight, and got to support a good cause (the Fire Department) at the same time. It was a terrific evening!

The Community Center was decorated to the nines...



...there were plenty of sweet snacks...



...the music was excellent...





...and there was even some dancing!



What more could you want for a Saturday night out?

SNOW!!

Ocracoke has joined the rest of the mid Atlantic coast in the fact that we've now had snow, too! It started snowing late on Friday night, and continued for several hours, switching to rain in the early morning. Here are a few pictures I took during the evening while the snow was still coming down.

I loved the way the snow looked on my front door mat.



I elected not to sit down...



It's difficult to photograph snow falling, but this shot turned out pretty well, I thought.



These next few photos were taken on Saturday.



It cracked me up that this guy only scraped the snow off the driver side of his windshield!



Snowy fence.



I found this combination of thatched top and snow amusing.



Ducks staying warm on a Silver Lake dock.

O'cock shelling

Have I blogged before about O'cock shelling? If not (well, even if so, really), I'll explain. It's the way locals go shelling in the winter: driving down the beach, looking out the car window! When you see a good one, you just pull up close, open the door, reach down and pick it up. It's shelling for people who don't want to get cold. Love it! Here's my latest O'cock shelling find...the big ones are easy to spot!

Friendship bread

If you've ever heard of or made Amish friendship bread, you know the general idea. You get a starter bag from a friend, which you watch over for about 10 days, adding a few ingredients around day five. Then you pour it into a bowl, add more ingredients to create four more starter bags, one of which you keep and the other three you give to friends. Finally, you add a bunch of ingredients to what's left in the bowl, and bake up three loaves of delicious bread.

If you've only ever had friendship bread while living in an average sized city or town (not a small community like Ocracoke), you probably haven't had any challenges with the process. Around here, getting all the ingredients turned out to be impossible for me. When I went to the Community Store and discovered they didn't have any vanilla instant pudding mix, I didn't think anything of it. When I went from there to the Variety Store and learned that they, too, didn't have any vanilla instant pudding mix, I realized it was a pattern. And then it hit me: of course both stores are out of vanilla pudding mix! Every 10 days, an increasing number of people is coming in here to buy it so they can make their friendship bread.

The solution? I made CHOCOLATE Amish friendship bread. It is insanely delicious. I have two starter kits (one's already taken), so let me know if you want one. (The starter isn't chocolate...you can make it chocolate or vanilla, or any other available pudding mix flavor, for that matter!)

Wild and windy

The wind has been whipping the island today, rattling doors and windows and making my awning flap wildly. The mainland ferries were shut down this afternoon after the mid-day runs, and the Hatteras route stopped running early in the evening. I've heard there's some flooding on Hatteras island, but am not sure whether there has been any here or not (there isn't any in the area right around my house, where I've been most of the day since this crazy cold I have just won't seem to go completely away).

Hopefully the crazy weather we've been having recently will settle down soon...but March is still ahead, and it's often one of the windiest, rainiest months! I've certainly had my fill of wind, rain, flooding, and icy cold, but there's no controlling the weather, so I guess we'll just have to see how it goes...

Pub project

There is a construction project going on at the Pub right now. (I suppose that's one benefit of being closed for a while!) I'm curious to see when this is completed whether it's simpy an extension of the porch area, or if it will be enclosed, enlarging the bar area.



I'll try to keep you posted as the work proceeds. It should be done fairly quickly, since the Pub is supposed to reopen in March.

Sunshine and ice

It has been really cold here for the last few nights. The puddles which are still around from the last rain freeze over each evening. Just looking at them makes it seem even colder to me.

The afternoons, however, have been beautifully clear and sunny. Outside my window, there's a shady spot where the ice stays all day in spite of the sunshine, making for an odd feeling. It looks warm and cold at the same time!

I can't complain, though...at least we're not getting the blizzards that keep blanketing much of the rest of the east coast!