Off to Nantucket

An Expensive "Shack" to Rent

It has been 3 years since I've visited my brother Dave on Nantucket Island, so since I was back from trips to somewhere else, I decided this was a good time to go. I made ferry reservations back when I first got back to Oswego from my winter trip. As usual, the price of tickets & vehicle has gone up - $487.00 round trip for the driver & truck. At least the truck isn't 6" longer; that would have moved it up a class for more $.

For the first time in history, the Guido's were at the ferry before me. I joke, but I have a habit of leaving Oswego early enough so I often arrive in time to squeeze on an earlier boat. Don & Anne were coming from Vermont, so they had a shorter drive. We pilled their stuff on top of my stuff in the back of the truck & sat around for an hour waiting for the "Eagle". An uneventful ride across the 35 miles to the island, except for buying a soft pretzel that has around a pound of salt on it.

I have to admit we arrived on the island on the 9th, and I have put off posting anything until today. We really didn't do anything worth posting about, so I put things off. Actually, last night's dinner was worth a posting, but none of us thought to take photos.

My brother David made a wood fired pizza oven in the back yard, so we decided to make a from scratch pizza. I found pre made dough at the Stop & Shop, added some peppers, onions, mushrooms, sausage & pepperoni. We never gave the dough enough time to rise & get punched down, so it was a bit springy. On top of that, I'm not used to making a pizza that cooks in a 900°F pizza oven. The result was a pizza that was charred black on the bottom, done on the top, and had raw dough in the middle. I guess wood fired pizza needs to be thinner crust.

So, Don & I stood around picking at the top of the burned pizza while David went to find more dough so we could try again. According to David, the last people that made pizzas in his oven made smaller ones that were thin enough that they made 7 from one lump of dough. I did use a roller to thin out the crust on the next batch, and David, Anne & I each made our own version of a pie. David is the only one that made a round one - mine looked a bit like Nantucket Island & Anne's looked like a large amoeba.

By then the oven cooled down to around 500°F and the pies cooked OK. In the end we had a pretty good dinner, even left over piece that David had in the morning.

Today we decided we had to do the tourist bit & check out the boats at the town dock, do a little shopping, including a trip to the Nantucket Hospital Thrift Shop for books. While the trffic was havy as usual, we did manage to easily find parking spaces. I took a few photos at the docks & downtown:

Dinner tonight is going to be a pot roast, something that I think I still remember how to make...