Greek Easter

by Celia Hayes

My daughter and I lived in Greece for nearly three years, in the early 1980s. This meant that we were there for three Greek Easter celebrations, which were wholly unlike an American Easter, although there was a festive meal involved, and colored eggs.

In Greece, the great Easter feast was served on Sunday afternoon. Traditionally it calls for a whole roasted lamb as the main course – and roasted for most of the morning over a grill built outside in the garden. Even in the cities, this was carried out: the cover of one of the English-language magazines featured a line drawing on the cover one year, of a happy little knot of people on the top of a downtown tower block, roasting their lamb over a fire-pit on the…

Starting Fresh New Year Quotes

by Randy Watson

Here are some of my favorite quotes to start the new year. If you have any favorites, please use the comment form below:

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again. Og Mandino

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.  It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.  Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.  Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.  ~G.K.Chesterton

We spend January 1…

Christmas Eve With Tapas

by Celia Hayes

Our family was long in the habit of having pizza on Christmas Eve; it’s easy to organize for a crazy, mixed-up and chaotic evening, with about three generations present. Either take-out or deliverer - even a selection of frozen or ready-made grocery store pizza would do. There’s a variety to suit every taste, everyone can have as much or as little as they like, eat it off paper plates, and clean-up is a snap.

This year, we varied the program, mostly because my mother sent us a massive gift basket from La Tienda, which specializes in the classic foods of Spain, where my daughter and I lived for six years. We fell upon it with cries of happy delight,  reminded of certain foods that we loved. There was a…

 Lead On, Oh Turkey Eternal

by Celia Hayes

So, Thanksgiving – what about it all just inspires a hostess or hostesses to just pile on the mass quantities of food? Is it the inspiration of the turkey, which just makes everyone suddenly prone to super-size quantities of everything else? Vats of stuffing, the biggest pot in the kitchen full of mashed potatoes and a small ocean of gravy – it's all there, and a magnificent sight it is, the buffet table fairly groaning with the weight of it all – but in the whole of my life I have only once not had to deal with the resulting acre and a half of leftovers after hosting or organizing a Thanksgiving dinner. That one time was the year that I was assigned to Yongson Army Infantry Garrison Korea, as…

Italian Feast at Christopher Columbus Italian Society Hall in San Antonio

This years festival and Italian dinner is over, but if you missed it, the Ladies Auxillary holds quarterly Italian dinners ...

So, who would have guessed that there is a thriving little Italian community tucked away in San Antonio  ... well, if you have passed by at speed on the IH-35 North, just where the highway passes Navarro and Santa Rosa, you would have caught a glimpse of a tiny, ornate brick church – the Church of San Francisco de Paoli, with the Columbus Hall right next to it and the beginnings of an ornate public square and gardens out in front. The church and the hall were built by a social and self-help society formed of Italian immigrants at the turn of the…

Christopher Columbus Day Celebration and Festival 2011

FREE ADMISSION, FREE PARKING

Written by Randy Watson

Ciao a tutti! Parla come mangi ... "Hello everyone! Speak how you eat."

Italian food is simple, natural, and just plain good. Come see what real Italian food is all about. Speaking Italian and eating Italian is the thing to do at the annual Christopher Columbus Day celebration; Sunday, October 9th, 2011 from…

Sweet Poteet

So, my daughter and I went down to the Poteet Strawberry festival this last weekend; we've been to it before, at least twice - but it now seems to have grown, and grown on steroids. Wow - we didn't recall having to wait in a line of cars for about a mile outside of Poteet to get up to one of the parking lots. There weren't near as many vendors, lining the walkways of the festival grounds . . . and there certainly weren't as many outside the grounds in previous years. Across the street from the festival grounds was am unbroken row of street-food vendors, everything from aqua fresca, to tacos, to gorditas, to fruit drinks in hollowed out pineapples, freshly cut slabs of watermelon, fruit…

Annals of 1836: The Runaway Scrape

Family Fun

Follow me on Twitter @satx_randy

So, off to Wurstfest in New Braunfels last weekend: an all out community celebration of suds and sausage-onna-stick, along with culinary explorations of deep-fried-anything . . . like Oreo cookies. (Seriously. I tasted one . . . not bad, really, but just because something can be done - doesn't mean that it ought to.) Although Wurstfest after dark on weekend evenings probably does get a little rowdy - in the daytime it still is very much a family-oriented, family friendly event. The music and the fairground rides, the face-painting and the funny hats appeal to all ages, and what is more - can all be enjoyed by all generations together.

After the fairground rides…

Created Monday, 02 July 2007 09:24

The Fourth of July in San Antonio: Lots of Places to Celebrate

Written by Randy Watson

As usual, the biggest celebration is at the Jefferson Neighborhood in San Antonio will be the annual event at Woodlawn Lake Park. This is an all-day celebration that starts off at 10 AM with a costume contest and parade. Throughout the day, there will be tons of food booths, games, carnival rides, and contests, as well as musical performances by the 5 Star band, USAF Band, and plenty more local acts. Visitors are encouraged to dress in their best patriotic outfit to really get into the spirit. The celebration is topped off with the best fireworks extravaganza in the city at 9 PM.

The Fourth of July is always loads of fun,…