Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been

Well, thank goodness Juicy Pernil has been on the table while I've been doddering elsewhere away, or there'd have been nothing to eat at all!

Been back in the big city since Tuesday evening but haven't been able to muster the concentration to say a thing about our little time away. Stayed mostly at, and can't say enough nice things about, the North Fork Table and Inn, in Southold. The people and the place, both, fabu. We chatted each morning with Claudia Fleming and gorged ourselves on her scones. We poked around Southold, Greenport and Orient, and our last full day mostly lazing and swimming at Crescent Beach on Shelter Island. Most amazing were the backroad ponds and marshes out at Orient. I'm ready to sell the house, buy a shack, and suck on clams and oysters, watch ospreys fish and out-still the herons. Aldo's was open (hallelujah) and we drank his espresso every time we passed through downtown Greenport. On the trip home we visited our friends at Channing Daughters, and in the few days before then we also stopped in at Old Field, Shinn, Wollfer, and the Tasting Room - we dwank widdle bit, and bought more. We saw the fireworks over the fireman's carnival, and listened to Big Suga playing on the waterfront to the local crowd. We ate the tasting menu at NoFoTI, and three dinners at Frisky Oyster's two places. (It's true: God Bless the Frisky Oyster.) Ate 'em raw, and ate 'em friskafella'd. Begorrah!

Our last meal out there was a breakfast at Pat & Steve's on SI. I had the omelet special: shrimp. It was late for breakfast at P&S (though probably before anyone had breakfast yet at Sunset Beach). Cook came out, apologized for interrupting us, and asked how the omelet was. Great, I said. She told me I was the only person to order it, that her Dad mad it up that day - he likes to make things up - and she'd let him know. I told her it's become my policy to never pass up a shrimp omelet. Complements to Dad.

Oh, it was a lovely, lovely time away. (!05 denrut iroL, hhhss, dnA)