Hurricane Sandy went right through the bottom of NJ, the state I have lived in for over 20 years now. I never thought I would experience anything this disastrous living here. I remember my dad driving us through the Mission district in San Fransisco after the earthquake of '89. I can still picture the haunting scenes of houses crumbled to the ground, and I was only 5. No one ever expects to experience something like that twice in their life. Honestly, I hope that is the last time I have to experience it.
We were sitting in the living room listening to the wind bang against the windows, shaking and cracking the house, listening to things breaking and flying around outside and there was not a thing we could do about it. We lost power around 8 pm and didn't get it back for about 36 hours. Not an easy thing to deal with when you have a small child in the house.
The next day we looked around at the devastation, fortunately we didn't have too much damage. Some broken plaster from our ceiling on the floor, shingles missing and part of our fence broken, but other people fared much worse including my parents.
The Weather Channel was broadcasting from the hotel next door to our beach house throughout the storm and Fox news visited that area the next day and showed this and a few other pictures of the inside of our house on the news. Since the state is restricting who can go into the disaster zone it was neat to be able to see what happened to our house.
Savannah go to take her first quad ride with Jake
She didn't like it very much
On a happier note, when the power came back I couldn't wait to cook, so I celebrated by making a new kind of pizza. Vodka Rigatoni pizza!
I make pizza about once a week because that was Jake's family tradition, and I had leftover vodka rigatoni. I make the dough using the recipe in the Joy of cooking. I also make my own sauce, for the vodka sauce I use my regular sauce, 1 cup cream, and 1/3 cup vodka. It took a while to learn the tricks, so first: prepare the dough on large bread kneading board, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with garlic powder. Then move onto pizza peel with a generous covering of corn meal. Add your toppings. I always add ricotta cheese to my pizza, it just makes it even yummier. Cook for 12 minutes at 475 on a pizza stone.
I have been getting Savannah used to feeding herself with a spoon. She does good for a while, then discovers it's easier just to use your hands. She is learning so much lately. She puts her cup in the cup holder, clucks her tongue, says no and yes, night night, waves and says bye bye. All this in just a few days. She's also getting a little more confident standing.
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