Seafood Francaise and a Mandatory State of Panic

We were anticipating having guests the night before Hurricane Irene.  

We had planned Seafood Francese with a sparkling Pinot Grigio.  I wanted to try it out the week before as I had never made this dish and don’t like to use dinner parties as test kitchens.    

I purchased a small amount of fish, shrimp and scallops and invited my Dad for lunch to be taste tester, prior to taking the pictures for my post.

Good thing, or you would never have seen this dish.

For several days prior to August 28^th, the hype and build up of the Hurricane threat waged on.  All of the computer models on all of the news stations showed Her heading right for us.  The Weather Channel predicted an unprecedented storm.  Just like they did for Hurricane Ike last summer.   Ike evaporated into nothing more than a nasty summer storm, even though the supermarket shelves were devoid of water, bread and milk.

That Saturday morning the threat level started to escalate and speed up.  We got no less than 6 pre-recorded emergency messages on each phone line, from the First Selectmen of our town, warning us to stay off the roads from 9pm to 3pm the following day.  Then the Governor goes on TV and issues a travel ban for all roads, saying, “If you are out on the road, you will be stopped.”

Chris:  “The Governor has issued a Mandatory State of Panic”

Me:  “Should we cancel dinner?”

We did.  Chris and I stayed up and watched Hurricane footage until about 11:30pm and then went to bed.  We lost power about 30 minutes after that, and got our power back 8 days later, about 30 minutes after we got our brand new generator started.

After that, we had planned a short getaway for the Labor Day weekend, and when we got back, Summer was gone.   Time to put away the crisp whites and the ocean and sky blues, and do some fall cleaning.