Lazy Sunday Morning

My favorite time of the week is Sunday morning. Quiet, full of promise and lacking deadlines or chores. Except maybe a egg-centric breakfast...which is always a treat. This morning we indulged in potato pancakes as I had some left over mashed potatoes to deal with since my refrigerator is not working too well. That's another story, however I'm not going to let that annoyance disturb this beautiful morning!

The cats are in their post-feeding nap mode. Dillon and grandson Spike (foreground) have an uneasy truce over the sofa as a prime nap spot, the center between the cushions being all things perfect for comfy kitty dreaming. It is the only thing they will agree on and Spike is a perfect little snot at all other times toward his grandfather. I guess I am grateful Dillon is so tolerant because in his day he could take down full grown rabbits and big barn rats with one pounce and shake of his victim. We were still in California when Dillon came to us from another horse farm. Our best guess is he is about 20 years of age. A recent change in his diet has brought on a greater level of energy and he seems to be far more comfortable moving around with his broken hip.

While I enjoy a second cup of coffee and contemplate my day, Remy keeps a watchful eye out for squirrels, a word which we have to spell in front of him, by the way. He has quite the vocabulary and the tree-rat word sends him into a frenzy of whining, "Let me out...let me out...let me OUT!" Not that he has a prayer to catching one and I think he really just wants to play if his wagging tail is any indication. Another favorite word is "Lunch!" which I yell to Chris who is typically in his office at that time of the day catching up on emails (or maybe playing solitaire?). Remy dashes to his bowl and begins wolfing down his food...it's so cute. Say "Jeep" in front of him and he almost wags his back end off..."Let's GO!" He has full command of his toy collection and when you ask, will correctly bring you his ball, the ring, the snake or his squeeky toy.

On my To Do List for today is dream up an appetizer to take to our friend's house tonight. Roast beef dinner - yum!

Dipping My Toe in the Oven...

I know we have been gone a long time...but you all understand, right? Thanks for your patience.

I know I probably write about cooking more than anybody cares, but I have special reason to rejoice today...I FINALLY have a stove again. My oven conked out last June and it has taken until now to get it fixed. Now I admit it is partly because we are gone so much so the scheduling of service appointments gets difficult. But a large part of it is the imcompetent manufacturer and back ordered parts, non-existent parts, wrong parts and parts that don't have anything to do with fixing other parts. Sooooo, a $1,000 later, my oven works and we move on...

to scones! About 30 seconds after the repairman left, I fired up the oven and it has hardly had time to cool off! This morning I made Cherry Almond Scones for a leisurely Sunday morning breakfast. Heaven! So to thank you to you for your patience, here is a simple satisfying recipe with endless variations. This goes together in a flash and will make you look like a rock star.


Basic Scones

Pre-heat the oven to 425 F.

Place a shifter over a large mixing bowl and sift all the dry ingredients into the bowl:

2 cups AP flour (300 g.)
2 t. baking power
1 t. salt
1/4 c. sugar

Cut in 6 T. unsalted, cold butter until the butter is in pea sized pieces.

Add any other dry ingredient desired now: dried cherries or raisins or walnuts or fresh blueberries, orange zest - you get the idea.

In another bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients:

3/4 milk
1 egg
and any wet flavoring desired like a teaspoon of vanilla or almond extract.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet. Mix gently until reasonably combined. Scrape it out of the bowl onto a well-floured counter. It will be messy and wet, so use enough flour and knead no more than ten times. The less handling the better.

Pat the mound of dough into a square or a round about 1/2 to 3/4 inch high (it will be about a 7" round) and cut into squares or triangles. Or use a cookie cutter to make large or small rounds. I like triangles.

Bake on a ungreased cookie sheet for 12 to 15 minutes.

Make these savory scones by omitting the sugar and using minced onion, spices, herbs or chives.


I found this scone recipe in a cookbook from one of the windjammers that glide by Ash Island out my Maine living room window with their week-long compliment of guests. I figure my house guests would have to like them too...



I was so frustrated without my oven as I use it almost every day. For example, yesterday I roasted root vegetables for a soup recipe I am trying to re-create from Chase's Daily in Belfast, Maine where we had lunch a couple of weeks ago. Here is an article in the Boston Globe about them. Big chunks of oven roasted beets, potatoes, turnips, carrots and shallots in a garlicy vegetable broth, drizzled with olive oil and croutons. I am drooling just thinking about it. This afternoon I am slow cooking beans to use during the week. Tonight will be shepard's pie with oven roasted brussel sprouts that I guarantee will have even the most ardent brussel sprout hater asking for seconds. Maybe an apple crisp or rustic tart for dessert if I have time. And tomorrow no-knead bread will make an appearance on our table once again. Oh my, have I missed baking bread. And pizza!!! Toasting nuts for salads and making spicey hot roasted tomatoes or caramelized chunks of butternut squash to marry with cool globs of goat cheese over brown rice or lentils. Sorry...I'll stop now.

Euro Trash Talk

Well, I missed it. We were watching CNBC a month or so back when a report came on about the euro falling against the dollar.

I said "If it gets to 1.10, I'm buying some to hold for our next trip to France."

"Good idea. You could use some of that cash you're hiding in all those envelopes under the mattress." Chris replied.

"No way! I'm saving that for a *real* emergency."

Chris looked at me with the Where does she GET this stuff from? expression. "And what emergency would that be?"

"Like if some wacko terrorist drops a nuke on Port Newark and we have to run like scared rabbits for the hills. You won't laugh at me then, when I have cold hard cash so we can barter with the mountain folk. No sirree Bob"

"I see, so that money is for food, fuel and ammunition."

"Food? No, that's what the ammunition is for." Note to self…add varmit rifle to the Emergency Plan Packing List.

I sleep better at night when I have a plan, you know.

Spring Business or Maybe Busy-ness

While Chris was off grunting his way through the installation of a new air filter on the motor home, I decided to take a wander in my garden. First stop was the rhubarb stand tucked away behind the David Austin roses in Brent's entry garden. After wrestling out a goodly amount (and one Borer Beetle) I pondered on what to do with it all. Growing up, my mom used to make rhubarb sauce, which we dumped over vanilla ice cream. Serious yum, to say nothing of the sugar buzz. Didn't know about all the evils of sugar back then, I guess. I'll post later on my culinary decision. Next I came upon the scrouge of spring, bane of gardeners everywhere, shame of nurseries who continue to sell it...Chameleon houttuynia. Bad, very bad, berrrrrrry berrrrry bad.

The most infintesimal of root left in the ground will sprout a thousand offspring. In other words, there ain't no gettin' rid of this sucker once you plant it. Agent Orange won't kill it either. (Don't ask, I won't tell who my contact is at the DoD.) Oh, and the smell? Think of cilantro on steroids. That alone seals the deal for me...hate cilantro.

So why is it in my garden you may well ask. Well, go ahead, ask! BECAUSE I'M AN IDIOT IS WHY! There, you happy? Back in my baby gardening days, when I knew C&#P about anything, I was beguiled by a poetic description of this "carefree groundcover with spring flowers like strawberry plant blooms, pretty color and easy care." Huh! This is the kudzu vine of the north.

Still grumbling, I headed back inside and was stopped dead in my tracks by this....

Each of those flowers is almost six inches across. It is clematis Dawn and she is blooming about a month ahead of schedule. A freakish hot weather spell a couple of weeks ago got the ball rolling early this year. I keep trying to convince her to go UP on the arbor over Brent's door, but she prefers smothering my prize Japanese cut leaf maple.

What I am most pleased about is how the Lolly garden bed is shaping up. (I name some of my garden beds for special people in my life.) I completely revamped the bed last year...started from scratch with a design of my own. I think it is going to work out! Yeah!

Allium 'Lucy Ball' is blooming; nepeta 'Six Hills Giant' offers softness underneath. Tucked in among that are peonies and Blushing Knock Out roses. Way at the back are oriental lilies. Later there will be catmint nepetoides, smaller alliums and queen anne's lace. The obelisk will support a couple of clematis and a climbing rose a bit later in the season.

A Sweet Girl

On the left is my "goddaughter" Abby. Just as her "mom" Donna is Remy's "godmother. Abby fell ill two weeks ago and did not recover despite the best efforts of her veternarians at Cornell U. She will missed deeply by us and her family.

Shut-up-itis

There is a popular cable show where the hosts have a special expression when something amazing, usually good, happens…they look at each other and one of them says, "Shut UP!"

My dad used to say in his succinct way, "If you have nothing to say…shut up."

My mother phrased it as "If you have nothing to add to the conversation…shut up." Or if we were in polite society, she would say it to me in French. I know it was French because when I repeated it to my high school French teacher, I got detention for a month.

Mom also had "The Look" that said shut up in great, big CAPITAL LETTERS, italicized, bold, underlined.

My brother would roll his eyes and say SHUT UP Pea Brain. (His favorite pet name for me.)

My early years were steeped in mastering the art of shut up. So you can believe me when I say I am very, very good at it.

Usually.

Most of the time. Really.


OK, there was that one little, tiny incident at a business conference where I provided some audience participation to a strictly rhetorical question. Even though the audience was appreciative, Chris's boss was not amused by my contribution. But the speaker, I think he was chairman of some big Swiss bank, kissed me on both cheeks when we met later that evening.


OK, so I have lapses. But I am not entirely without other social aids. Oh, no. I have the Voice Inside My Head. It's the Immodium to my diarrhea of the mouth disease, if you will.

Allow me to illustrate. I will be about to say something monumentally stupid when...

ViMH: "Shut up Barbara"

"Why? I have something *** to say [ *** amusing, clever, poignant - you fill in the blank]."

ViMH: "It's not ***. Just shut up."

By now I am practically twitching in the effort to open my mouth. "But it's really, really ***," I argue.

ViMH: "No, it's not. Trust me."

"Puleeeeeze!" I whine.

ViMH: "NO! Shut UP Barbara!"

And on it goes until the ViMH wins. Usually wins...

Unlike the other evening when I said to a complete stranger at a perfectly lovely pool party,

"Oh my God, what happened to you?" looking at what I thought was a large bruise and she replied,

"It's a birthmark."


I prefer white wine with my foot, thank you very much.

A few weeks ago, the contractor working our Maine house emailed pictures of the snow storm. He said the house looked like a frosted cake.




No kidding!

Merry Christmas!

Chris and I were enjoying our Christmas morning coffee in front of the fire when he commented,

"It would really be nice to be doing this in front of the tree."

"Well, go ahead!" I say.

"But I don’t want to go outside. It's too cold." he whined.

I guess I have to blame this exchange on my fit of the Bah Humbugs! I just didn't feel like putting up the tree this year.

Part of the problem comes from the sheer unwieldiness of the 12 foot artificial tree with deluxe light package we purchased several years ago.

"Just join the two sections together and plug in to any standard wall outlet.
So easy a child could do it!" the box claimed.

Well, I'm here to tell you it's like wrestling with a sea monster. A creature with long prickly fingers that can hook the glasses off your face, poke sensitive spots - VERY sensitive spots - and consume a third of the floor area in the living room.

At one point, attempting to adjust the base so the tree wasn't leaning so precariously over to one side, Chris belly crawled under the lower branches and completely disappeared. Eventually the tree was standing straight, but next time I'm going to tie a rope on him to make sure I get him back.

Add to that, Chris needs a body harness and winch to place the angel on the top of the tree. It's an effort on a par with Mary Martin flying across the stage as Peter Pan, only without the green tights. A ladder does not work because even though we place it as close as possible to the base of the tree, you're 20 feet from the top branch once at the top of the ladder. And no matter how c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y he places the angel, she flops to one side like a drunken wench who's been at the spiked eggnog for too long.

Coupling the lights between sections is a Gordian knot with the added bonus of threatening to electrocute one of us. Two seconds after we unpacked the box the first time, the little color coded sticky things for matching which socket goes to which plug all fell off. So we grunt and huff as we reach into the bowels of the branches, I holding a socket, he holding a plug, trying to meet up, as it were, so to speak. "...little more left - no, no, YOUR left! Ow! Sweet mother of God, I think I've lost an eye! ABORT, ABORT, ABORT!"

All this before we even unpack the first ornament.

So, no tree this year. Deal with it. But I did scatter poinsettias all around and that brightened things up considerably.


Some of the family and friends joined us Christmas evening for dinner. We started by the fire in the living room with pate and camembert cheese topped with Cranberry Drizzle. I made prime rib this year - two roasts in fact since the end cut is so popular. That worked out well. Amy's cheesy potatoes was the perfect partner for the roast. Homemade ice cream, Pear Tarte Tatin and Nantucket Cranberry Cake finished up menu.

It was a great Christmas!



Cranberry Drizzle



Combine 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar and 3 cups cranberry juice in a saucepan. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. simmer, uncovered, for 45 minutes until tmixture is reduced to 1 1/3 cupes.



In a bowl toss together 1/2 cup cranberries and 2 tablespoons sugar; add to juice mixture.

simmer 5 minutes more or until cranberries begin to pop. Remove from heat. Cool.



Refrigerate up to 2 weeks.

Winter Flavors

When we went to the races way back last October, I was asked to bring a dish along. Since I had some pears on my counter,

that got me thinking about a recipe for roasted pears I had recently seen that seemed interesting. Well, of course, I could not remember where I had seen idea, so I cast about on my favorite food internet sites for inspiration. Several hours later and now so ravenously hungry I was wondering if I could fool myself into thinking the cat food was really expensive pate - I mean, a little parsley sprinkled on the top and some ritz crackers...mmmmmm...who could resist? Thinking better of THAT plan, I headed to the kitchen, clutching several pages of recipes for roasted pears.



Eventually I ended up with the salad pictured above - roasted pears, pancetta and toasted walnuts with blue cheese over arugula dressed with lemon vinaigrette. Well received and versatile as either a salad or addition to a beef flank sandwich. I also want to work on a roasted pear chutney, which I think would be fabulous with pork, but that is for another day.

Roasted Pear Salad with Pancetta and Blue Cheese

serves 6

3 bosc pears, halved and cored, sliced into wedges (4 or 5 per half)
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
1 t. kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper (to taste)
12 slices of pancetta
2 to 3 ounces blue cheese (I used bleu d'auvergne)
1/2 cup walnuts
arugula

Pre-heat oven to 375

Spread the pancetta slices on a sheet pan and bake in oven until crispy. Watch as slices can go from done to burned in a second. Better to take out a little early.

Toss the pear slices with the evoo, salt and pepper. Spread on a sheet pan. Roast in oven for 15 to 20 minutes, just until edges are starting to caramelize.

Place the walnuts in a dry saute pan (do not use non-stick) just large enough to hold in one layer. Toast over medium high heat, tossing frequently, for 3 to 5 minutes.

Dress the arugula with Lemon Vinaigrette (recipe below). Arrange pancetta on top, then pears, blue cheese and walnuts.

Everything can be prepared ahead of time and assembled just before serving.


Lemon Vinaigrette

1 garlic clove

big pinch kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

1 T. dijon mustard (plain or grainy)

zest from 1/2 of a lemon

2 T. fresh lemon juice (never bottled!)

4 T. evoo

Shred the garlic on the tines of a dinner fork in the bottom of a mixing bowl. Add the salt, pepper, mustard, zest and lemon juice and stir to combine. Whisk in the evoo until dressing is emulsified.

You can also place all the ingredients in a lidded container and shake hard to combine.

Taste dressing and adjust seasoning, adding more evoo if you prefer.

A Day at the Races

I have lived in New Jersey for much of my life, but I had never attended the steeplechase races at Far Hills until this year. This annual event is well known in the NYC area and was a favorite of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Remember the pictures of Carolyn on her pony Macaroni? If you click here, you will find an article in the NJ Star Ledger (don't miss the comments…jeez, get a grip people). I even got a picture of the horse head ice sculpture mentioned in the article…talk about rubbing elbows with the “greats.”

If you ask me, this ice sculpture is a bit more interesting…it’s a “Shots Luge” You stick you mouth at the bottom of one of the trenches and they put a shot of vodka or tequila down the trench. Are we a great country, or what?!!

At the same spot, a display of pumpkin art caught our attention. Here are couple of my favs…

(No pumpkins were harmed by the making of these models…or should I say “hack jobs?”)

Decorations were rampant - er, I mean, there were many, many lovely, tasteful displays of gracious magnitudeness. We, on the other hand, preferred a more simple approach... Here I give you Mary Pat with our tail gate decoration...Tail...Gate....get it?

To say a bit of drinking goes on would be an understatement. One tailgater had five - count ‘em - five kegs of beer. Of course, we did our share…not saying we didn’t, but five kegs???? Here’s a victory pic of Mary Pat after she accidentally fired the cork from the champagne bottle - missing Chris and Michael by a hair - for a direct hit on a race goer strolling past our site. Thank goodness the woman’s down vest averted a bloody, bone crushing injury. "Oops, sorry…my bad - are you all right, dee-ah?"

I have only recently met Mary Pat, but so far she was two for two on the day. I am sure she and I are going to become verrrrry close friends. She is definitely my kind of gal!

Fox seem to be a favorite decoration…

All in all, it was a beautiful October day spent with good friends, lots of food and fine wine. Can’t ask for more!

L to R Christine and Doug, Chris, Michael, Mary Pat, Steve, Katy and Lisa (Ignor the fornicating fox on the left in the picture - they got into the sherry.)

August Happenings...

Just kidding...I know it's October!

Actually August was a blur of working on the cottage, as was September and a bit of this month. Just to give you an idea of all we have accomplished, I offer a few before and after pics below.

We also took care of the wet basement problem by installing a French drain along the back of the house. It was quite the project, but we think we have finally fixed the problem.

The discovery of three springs along the back wall of the house explained a lot of it. Even more water ran into the trench before the excavator dug the outlet trench. The outlet pipe now runs with a constant stream of water 24/7; most of which was in the basement before.

Chris finally dragged me home on the 9th. The fall colors were just getting to their peak, but much needs attention here at home.

Old living room...

Ta daaaa! Not too shabby for mostly garage sale finds, bargain bin buys and a bit of home DIY projects (more on those later).

The old driveway and garage entrance...

New screen door on garage, new drive and in the background, fence and garden shed through the arbor.

We added a deck to the front to replace the old sidewalk and patio.