The Storm is in, and has washed us in an insistent but gentle padding on the sole window that opens to the air on the 4th Floor suite wall.

The Baking Time yesterday was well rewarded, like the rising aroma of the Storm Stew Vic claims he will start ladling out to the Conference Table shortly. And of course, once we have some time to get Pastor Frank to put an appropriate blessing on the mess card that this wet gray passing former hurricane will feature salty and Navigators we will always honor…

But in particular, we ladle the rich soup we have kept as a special comfort tribute to those embarked on troubled seas today.

The Conference Nook outside the Galley Hatch at the interior end of the Conference and Office Suite. The eight cubes in the office space is mostly used for sleeping for staff between more permanent lodgings or working an unfolding story. It is where a lot of Filipino stuff seems to get snagged just as it did back when Naval Air Station Subic Bay was a place that seemed a lot like home.

We had our times there on routine business and in between some other very frantic times. There was every spectrum of human life compressed into four-day port visits or extended maintenance periods that made relations between sea and shore change certain elements to lessen or channel energy.

And perhaps a mug or bowl of something we learned to cook when we were liable to be tied down for a day or two way up north when the storm comes in. Turn on one of the big plate burners with a good kettle on and prepare to make a gallon of:

Vic’s Storm Stew!

SPICY SHORT RIB NOODLE SOUP & LUMPIA TURONS!

This is what we got to after a morning production meeting that got stalled on price ambush news from {hilly, and a discovery about Vic’s colonial heraldry in the neighborhood where the shooting occurred.

What was needed to attempt to cover the eve of a holiday with recent controversy about who has equity in a neighborhood where some of us have roots is a bit disconcerting.

And we thought about getting an inch or so of really good Olive Oil in the skillet and do up some Filipino style banana lumpia- the sweet banana ginger Turons we would get in a sack to pass along on the walk back through the gate and down to the puttering jeepney to Fleet Landing under warm starry skies.

These are fun as the clouds roll out!

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