Last Weekend of 2013: Floyd Bennett Field Hike - With Another Snowy! - And Some Onolicious Soup.

Couldn't have asked for a much nicer last weekend of 2013.

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous. If we'd gotten our acts together we might have gone kayaking, it was a little breezy but warm enough that that would have been OK. Lucky for the dog, we weren't that organized, so we ended up taking her out for a hike at Floyd Bennett Field. 

We like the "Back 40" hiking area for walking Bella, so we end up parking over by the Aviator Sports facility. As I mentioned in the Owl Paddle post, my friend Mary, who's a great birder, had mentioned that in addition to the snowy in the marsh islands of Jamaica Bay, several had been spotted at Floyd Bennett, and our friend John D, who's a ranger there, had confirmed that, so I was delighted, but not surprised, when the first thing we spotted after we got out of the car was a small cluster of birders around a scope - and the second thing we spotted was the snowy owl they were admiring. They let us sneak a peek through the telescope, which was very cool - what a handsome bird a snowy owl is! I wish I'd brought my Lumix with the zoom, but at least I'd thought to pop the Pentax in my pocket as we left. 

 Beyond that, just another gorgeous winter day at Floyd Bennett Field. 

Approaching Mill Basin - 

TQ and Bella heading for the beach

 Back Forty trail

Bella again

And another trail shot.  

Those loopy vines remind me of those Patrick Dougherty sculptures they had at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens - remember those? Here they were in the Boxing Day Blizzard of 2010. 

Happy we haven't had any snow like that yet this winter! However, we did have plenty of precipitation on Sunday, and that actually worked out well. TQ had gotten me a spectacular Christmas present this year, he'd ordered a package of Hawaiian foods - check this out, since the local L&L Barbecue shut down this year, this is better than diamonds! I don't think I'd posted that here yet so yum, here it is! He had them all in his freezer and I was squealing like a teenager at a Justin Bieber concert with each thing he pulled out (amazing that he kept going but he did). The missing item from this picture was a spicy Portuguese sausage - I left that at his place when I brought home the goods because I thought I would share that with him. 

I would have just cooked it for breakfast (probably with eggs and rice, rice for breakfast is a good Island thing), but I happened to have made pernil last month and I had left a lot of meat on the bone and put that and the pan juices in the freezer for later use. Couldn't think of anything much better to do with that and the Portuguese sausage than a big pot of bean soup. Originally I was going to make that on Saturday, but switched that to Sunday when I realized that Saturday was going to be the Outside Day and Sunday was going to be the Inside Day. We still ate Hawaiian food for dinner after our hike - TQ was curious to try the lau lau and the manapua too so I brought some of that over, along with some poi. Perfect post-hike repast and he liked everything (including the poi)!

Sunday it rained all day - perfect for the soup I had in mind. Started out browning the sausage with onions and peppers in the Dutch oven to get some good flavor in the pot - set those and some of the pernil aside to add later and then started the pernil bone (plus a steak bone from Mandy and my post-window steakhouse splurge at Mark Joseph) on a nice slow simmer around 2:00. A few hours and several ingredients later - yum. Now that was a good way to share a Portuguese sausage!

And in fact that's what's for dinner again tonight, and I should probably head on over there now. Happy New Year to all if I don't have a chance to post again before it's time to put up the Sebago New Year's Day Frostbite Regatta pictures. Adobo's marinating for the potluck, can't wait!