Gustav is 2 hours away from landfall and could still increase its strength. At present it is packing winds of 115 mph which is quite bad enough. To Marilyn who says she loves storms, I have experienced a number of hurricanes, from a distance and I assure you, to stay if you can run is totally foolish, although I have just seen an interview where people did try to run and got stuck in the traffic for hours so ended up going back home. They estimate there are about 10,000 people left in New Orleans, however around 2,000,000 have evacuated the coast. They sure learned their lessons after Katrina. These are killer storms, Katrina killed something like 1,600 people, they are not storms you just sit around and watch. Even if you have reason to suppose your home is strong enough to withstand the winds, there is still the storm surge which is a major factor on the coast of Louisiana. Luckily it was never a problem where we lived in North Carolina. Just to add to the problems, they are predicting 12 to 14 inches of rain which is enough to cause floods on its own without any storm surge. If you want to sit around and 'watch' all that Marilyn you will be all alone and maybe no longer with us afterwards to tell the story of how exciting it was. The picture is again from the Weather Channel and if you want to view their latest videos
click here to see what they have to say. Bush will not be attending the convention for McCain today because he is keeping his eye on the hurricane and after so much criticism last time, he and the government are poised to bring relief to the area straight away. One thing I wonder, having had a lot of experience evacuating from hurricanes, is where all these evacuees will go. Its all very well to ship 2 million people away from the coast, but there won't be hotels which can cope with that many people. I don't know if they have shelters set up somewhere away from the coast or what? Its a lot of people to deal with. By the way, it is Labour Day in Canada and the States today, what a heck of a way to spend a holiday, running from Gustav.
Animals are a big problem too. Hundreds of pets were abandoned and drowned last time,
hopefully more people will have taken their pets with them. I know some of the Canadian animal shelters went down there to rescue as many animals as they could. We contributed a few dollars to help. I don't know what happens to cows and horses etc. although I remember seeing pictures of dead pigs floating by. I sure wonder what happens to wild animals. Some might be safe enough in burrows unless those flood of course.
Picture from webranding.typepad.com - shows a sad little group of dogs on top of a house. There are dozens more even sadder pictures of what happened to some pets during Katrina.
On a happier topic, I think I have mentioned Carbonite before, it is a wonderful programme. I first came across it from the Canadian Association of Retired People generally referred to as CARP (there is an AARP in the States) who recommended it. It is a backup programme and just sits in your toolbar and quietly does its job whilst you get on with whatever you are doing. The other day I realised I had lost a whole folder of pictures that I had been using for this blog. I checked back into Carbonite's restore feature and there it was. A couple of clicks and a short wait and now I have all my pictures back. Marvellous. Everything is stored on line and encrypted for safety. I can't recommend it highly enough. You can try it for free
at this address so you can see for yourself how good it is. I am not certain, but I think it costs around $56 a year and it is, in my opinion, worth every penny. If you had lost as much stuff as I have over last 20 years or so through forgotten or inaccurate back ups you would be leaping at this.
Another wonderful programme I use is Plaxo which stores all one's email addresses and keeps
everyone up to date. If I change my email address, every one of my contacts on Plaxo will be notified automatically. Not only that, I lost the addresses once and Plaxo had them all stored safely for me.
Plaxo's Page will tell you all about it. It even tells who, among your contacts, has posted blogs in any week. And no, I don't have a financial interest in either of these websites, I only wish I did.
I mentioned, a week or so ago, a dish Matt does with baked tomatoes. Taking plum tomatoes, cutting them in half, adding fresh basil, salt and olive oil with a dusting of sugar or Splenda and then cooking them for a couple of hours in a slow oven. He did them over the weekend and they were delicious as usual. I took a photo to show you the tomatoes before they went in the oven. They got devoured too quickly once they came out so I forgot to take a picture of them then. He does add a little extra olive oil after about the first hour of cooking. You end up with some lovely flavoured oil which can be sopped up with a nice piece of crusty bread. MMMMMM.
I have mentioned tomato toasts before, a thing we used to do in the States when we had a really
nice back deck, was to lightly toast a Ciabatta bun, rub garlic on it, spread a little olive oil, some well seasoned tomato and a slice or two of Havarti cheese. We just popped them back under the grill long enough for the cheese to start melting and then ate them sitting on the back deck watching the birds sipping on a beer at the same time. That was the life. This picture isn't quite the same, but it shows you the type of bun we used to use. We did not close the bun but put filling on both halves. I've just had breakfast and I am making myself hungry. I have remembered another sandwich I make for myself, especially, butter two slices of decent bread (no not mayo, butter) then add, in layers, some lettuce, onions, tomatoes and cucumber with plenty of salt and pepper. Put the top piece of bread on and smoosh it down. The flavours meld and are wonderful. It doesn't need anything else I promise you.
Have a great day.
It turned out that Gustav wasn't as bad as they predicted, by the time it made landfall it was only Category 1. I say only, that is in comparison to a 4 or 5 which was what they were talking about. It was still responsible (or was it) for the deaths of 8 people on the US mainland and a heck of a lot of damage in Louisiana. New Orleans has lots of flooding although not as bad as last time. I say 'or was it', if people didn't get out of the way, is that the hurricane's fault? The levees were overtopped again but they are not scheduled to finish rebuilding them for several years yet. One thing I was pleased to hear, people were allowed to take their pets with them when they were evacuated. Some said they wouldn't have gone without them this time. Photograph courtesy of the US Coastguard/Associated Press. One thing that does concern me, those who evacuated this time will eventually return and say "why did we leave, it wasn't necessary" with the result that next time they may not go and another Katrina situation could develop.
However, we now have Hanna and Ike frolicking around in the Atlantic plus Tropical Depression 10. At present Hanna is destined for the South East coast of the States. That's where I used to live. They have been hit hard by hurricanes over the years, but not much lately they are pleased to say. Hurricanes come in cycles of about 10 years according to the weather boffins, I guess we are now in another cycle this year. That doesn't mean hurricanes don't form, there just aren't as many and certainly not many landfalls in some years. Of course the Caribbean Islands get quite a pasting when all these storms go past. Gustav did a lot of damage in Haiti and The Dominican Republic.
I was surprised to get a question about Havarti Cheese yesterday. It is a Danish cheese which is
also made in Canada, must admit I prefer the original. Wikipedia have a great description of it click here and also describe how it came to be made in the first place. It is a wonderful cheese for toasting too. I just slap a slice on a buttered bun and stick it under the grill. Yummy. Today, Marilyn of French Marilyn's Blog (see link this page) told me of another recipe using Mozzarella. In fact by the sound of it, the recipe is really for Bocconcini which are small cheeses very similar to Mozzarella. In her recipe they are served sitting in a bed of caviar. Not many 
of us can afford real caviar so one can make do with lumpfish roe or something similar which is not very expensive. It is something I must try, sounds pretty good. Think I have some lumpfish roe and the local grocery sell Bocconcini. Yes I know, lots of people don't like any kind of caviar, Matt isn't that keen, he would rather have a good paté de foie gras. I, on the other hand, take after my mother and love the stuff. Don't know if I told you the story of a flight to England a few years ago, we were travelling Air Canada and I commented that on a Canadian plane we should be serving Canadian wines, not French. Canada does excellent wines these days. We got into chat about the whole subject and finally the chief flight attendant got involved in the discussion. I happened to mention that I had always wanted to travel first class because of the better food, but had never been in a position to do so They said it wasn't much different, but then it turned out they had had paté and caviar for supper which we certainly hadn't. In the end we were brought small bottles of Canadian wine and a serving of paté for Matt and a serving of caviar for me. The rest of the passengers must have wondered at this special treatment. This had not been intentional of course, but on the way home I tried it on again, no success that time.
Its Canadian Diabetes volunteer day again today. I already know one job I have to do and it won't be easy as the Word programme on the computer plays me up. Maybe it doesn't like me although I never have trouble with Word on my own PC.
Here is a pasta recipe I picked up and which I haven't tried yet. I like both goat's cheese (Chèvre) and sun dried tomatoes so thought I would save the recipe to try. I usually enjoy the recipes of Giada di Laurentis on Everyday Italian too so figure I have a winner here.
Angel Hair Pasta with Sun-dried Tomatoes & Goat Cheese
Source: Everyday Italian
Picture from Slowtrav.com
Servings: 4
1 (10-ounce) jar sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, chopped (oil reserved)
1 small onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup tomato paste
2/3 cup dry white wine
8 ounces angel hair pasta
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 ounces soft fresh goat cheese, coarsely crumbled
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes in a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomato paste and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the wine and sun-dried tomatoes and simmer until the liquid reduces by half, about 2 minutes.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup of cooking liquid. Add the pasta to the tomato mixture and toss to coat, adding some reserved cooking liquid to moisten. Season the pasta, to taste, with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with the goat cheese and parsley and stir. Mound the pasta into bowls and serve.
Have a great day.
