Get Ready for New York City!

The Charmer Blog is doing spring break in NYC and you’re all coming! So pack your pretend bags and get ready for your virtual vacation to the Big Apple. March 16-23 or so.

As pre-trip orientation the Charmer Blog is requiring the reading assignment below to familiarize with your local hosts, the inlaws, the Speirs-O-Brooklyn. To quote Bob, "We may be crazy, but we’re not dangerous."
THE FEEDING OF THE IN LAWSTrue story. New York City blackout. 2003.

Put my brother-in-law, Ragaey, an appliance, and edible raw materials together and you get a miracle in your mouth. Great tasting food. No electricity needed. Even when a power grid outage in Ohio shuts down the entire eastern seaboard.

The in laws who Ragaey and I share, the Speirs-O-Brooklyn, realized the gravity of this emergency when their favorite neighborhood eateries could not serve. How would they get dinner? Even fast food had no power. The Speirs-O-Brooklyn knew they had one and only one chance at a good meal. Ragaey. And so the in laws, their friends, and their neighbors all made way to the homestead on 45th Street (photo). Hitching rides or walking. Everyone wondering if this was another 911 event. Picking up others along the way. In the dark. They just came.

Meanwhile, Ragaey returned from a day's work as general manager of Newark airport. On this day, generally managing the most congested airspace in the world during a blackout. But he knew that his most important mission was yet to come. He had to feed the in laws, and their friends and neighbors.

And feed he did. Ragaey neither cared nor counted how many people were there. He just fired up the grill and started cooking. Beef, lamb, chicken, fish, peppers, zucchini, carrots. He even whipped up a big pot of fluffy, buttery rice in the backyard night. Yes, fluffy rice cooked on a grill. Topping off with home-brewed Egyptian tea. (Sister-in-law Carol gets the credit for that.) It was a feast. And Bob was right in there, eating as much and as fast as Ragaey could cook. And all the Speirs survived the blackout. As did their friends and neighbors.

When the Charmer Blog goes to NYC, we will eat our way through Brooklyn. And so will you.

Get ready!

Take care, Terri

Note: This archived story was written when Bob had lost 50 pounds to anorexia, courtesy of the liver black out of 2006-07.