this week on tumblr

A few recent favorites from my tumblr...

 (via myfarmhouse)

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(DIY Artwork: Frame an Everyday Object  

via Apartment Therapy Re-Nest)

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(via garance doré)

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“Today’s meditation is a wish for you: may you be thoroughly, completely, absolutely in the middle of Summer. May you notice the hot pricks of sun on your skin (maybe just a little too hot but not too too hot.) May you wear big fat sunglasses and little patches of sweat here and there on your body. I hope your pace has slowed, even just a little. You can even be a bit cranky, but not so much that it completely spoils the fun."

(Weekend Meditation: Summer is for Ripening
via Apartment Therapy: The Kitchn)

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 (The Pup. via Oh, Darling! Photography)
This one is for you, Al.  Almost as cute as Dixie.

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(On the Street…Heat Wave, New York City via The Sartorialist)

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(Margaret Oomen’s Little Urchin Crochet Covered Sea Stones via the purl bee)


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Click over to my tumblr page for more finds and inspirations-- including a cake dress (yes, it's what you think) and more...

bread on demand

I KNEW I wasn't the only sucker for Ramona and the Babysitters Club.  Thanks for backing me up.

So Mom loaned me her bread machine and I've made four loaves and a pizza crust.  Not too shabby.  In a perfectly cute and quaint world, I might forgo the bread machine and knead it all by hand, patiently punching it down in between rises and then baking it in my outdoor brick oven.  So I could either wait for that day to happen and in the meanwhile enjoy exactly ZERO loaves of homemade bread (except for that one no-knead loaf), or I could surrender to the glory that is The Bread Machine.  I'm years behind on this one, but for those of you who are also years behind, let me tell you how the contraption works.

You put in the ingredients, in the order they are listed.  You turn the bread machine on.  Three-ish hours later, you have warm, homemade bread.

I know.  I KNOW.  I was just talking to Sister about how new technology often strikes me as really futuristic and sci-fi... for instance, I saw a program on my friend's phone awhile ago that can identify every constellation/star/planet you are looking at just by pointing your phone it that direction.  It's really insane.  It also draws the pictures of the constellations around the stars, for those of us that just don't buy some of the more interpretive constellations (Orion's belt?  WTF, it's just three stars).  And basically every time I see an iPhone app commercial, I'm like "Whooooaa what?!  Hallelujah, praise be to God and Tech Geeks."  These innovations lead me to believe that Smell-O-Vision is not too far off, and also that the best scientific minds of our time have an awful lot of free time on their hands.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that the bread machine is one of those things that seems futuristic to me, even though the internet tells me that it was invented in 1986.

Tell me about your bread making adventures, but do not tell me about your brick oven blah blah that you built on your property and then the honey you gather from your own bees and the homemade peach preserves and the little forest gnomes that help you churn butter, etcetera.  No one likes a show-off.

ramona ramona

Mom, sister & I saw the Ramona and Beezus movie last night, and thank God it didn't disappoint.  If they bastardized the story, the mood, the characters, the ANYTHING there would have been at least three very upset moviegoers.  But the movie was adorable and perfect.  Plus they included my all-time favorite Ramona moment-- when she goes to crack a hard boiled egg on her head but... it's not hard boiled!  It's raw!  No!  Disaster ensues, her teacher calls her a nuisance and I am forever mistrusting of hard boiled eggs.  Can't eat one without thinking about Ramona Quimby.

These are the book covers I remember.  As far as childhood friends go, Ramona and Beezus are right up there with Nancy Drew, the gals from the Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High and characters from more than a few Judy Blume books.

Beverly Cleary wrote Beezus and Ramona (which you can read for FREE here, go do it) in 1955 and continued writing about Ramona until 1999.  Soooo, kind of an enduring classic, right?

Unofficial poll:  Who else is with me?!  Did you all read Ramona books?  Babysitters Club?  C'mon, fess up.  What are your favorite childhood books?  I only read a few Goosebumps books, but never got that into them.  Too wussy.

five

We missed yesterday's farmers market so we picked up the ingredients this afternoon at the co-op.  I've got a bread maker on loan (more on this later) so we made whole wheat pizza dough and let the machine do the rest of the heavy lifting.  Then we mostly followed a recipe from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook.  The sauce is a blend of ricotta, sour cream and fresh herbs and then we added garlic, caramelized onions and sliced tomatoes on top. 

Combine it with a mesclun, cucumber & blueberry salad, two Long Trails and a picnic blanket on the first low-humidity night in awhile, and we had ourselves a nice anniversary celebration.  Followed up, obviously, with a little dessert-- a blueberry tart and Adirondack Creamery coffee bean ice cream.

And apparently this should have been equally obvious, watching The Outlaw Josey Whales.  Again.

bc photos (last post)

Finally!  Photos are all up on flickr, if anyone needs an additional BC fix.

And here are our vacation postcards in case you missed them:

• postcard no. 1, vancouver
• postcard no. 2, going to nanaimo
• postcard no. 3, nanaimo
• postcard no. 4, victoria
• postcard no. 5, signing off 
• plus, the winner of our unofficial fish & chips contest

vacation bedroom

Can someone find me an inexpensive, linen or linen-look duvet in a natural, sandy color that will make my bedroom feel like a resort?  Thanks.  I've done some online research myself, but I hate this sort of research so I'd appreciate your help.

(Photo via Real Simple)

phunky fresh

I do love fresh produce.  The top two are from the farmers' market and the bottom bag was brought back for us from a lovely garden in the north country after the boy's 150+ mile bike ride from our current town to his hometown.  I know, my bum hurts thinking about that long a bike ride too.  I've made up an eggplant salad with Israeli couscous, a zucchini quiche and a summer squash, potato, asparagus gratin.  And over the weekend I ate a quart of blueberries.

salad with feta vinaigrette

A quick salad for these steamy summer nights...

I modified this recipe from Eating Well.  I'd recommend using super fresh feta, if possible, instead of the already-crumbled kind that comes in little tubs to cut down on saltiness.  If you do use a pre-crumbled package, you probably don't need to add any additional salt.  We dressed a spinach salad with red onions and cucumbers for a light summer meal.  

Feta Vinaigrette

• 3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 c crumbled feta cheese
• 2 tbsp cider vinegar
• 2-3 tsp lemon juice, to taste
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp salt

Blend, food process or just whisk all of the ingredients together until smooth.

ps-  There's a book that's been on my Amazon wish list for awhile now called No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. Is the author trying to tell me something?

fish and chips, the winner

Last week, we stopped a few places for fish and chips.  And then we sort of voted on them, using the categories listed below.  

Fish

Chips

Tartar Sauce

Atmosphere

Price

Overall

Remember kids, this is a judgment-free zone, a circle of friends, a safe place... um, so no smirking about all of the fried food, ok?  You would have understood if you were there.  That place just beckons you to eat fish and chips all day long.  Every day.  Nonstop.

I just started filling out a matrix that actually ranked these places by the above categories.  Then I stopped.  A fish and chips matrix?!  C'mon.  Overboard.  So I'll end the suspense and say that Fish & Chips No. 3 in Victoria is the winner!  Congratulations, Barb's Place, you already won our money and now you've won the grand acclaim that this very scientific view is sure to yield.  It was juicy and not tooooo greasy and it was on a floating dock right next to the houseboats.  Fish and Chips No. 1 was quite tasty, but I have suspicions it had been frozen.  the Fish and Chips No. 2 was uber-greasy (but this is coming from a place that also deep-fries candy bars).  Chips were good all around.  I didn't even think I liked tartar sauce, but it turns out, I do.

Heard enough about fish and chips?  Probably.

Note:  Judging may have been unfair as all three places served up different fish:  halibut, cod & haddock, respectively. 

homemade strawberry ice cream

The northeast has been suffering through some balmy weather recently (though I was happy to miss the worst of it while I was on vacation) and clearly the only remedy for it is ice cream.  I happen to think that the only remedy for a lot of problems is ice cream, but this is an obvious one.  I don't have an ice cream maker, but I remember the one we had as kids and I remember freakin' loving it.

So I made some no-churn strawberry ice cream, based on a recipe from Planet Green and incorporating a few other tips from around the internets.  I cut the recipe in half so that if it sucked, I wouldn't be wasting freezer space that could otherwise be holding Ben & Jerry's.

Ingredients:

• 1 pint of strawberries
• 1/4 cup sugar
• lemon juice
• 1 cup Greek yogurt
• 1 cup heavy cream

1. Puree the strawberries, sugar, lemon, and yogurt together in a blender until smooth.
2. Whip the heavy cream to medium peaks.
3. Gently fold the strawberry-yogurt mixture into the cream until mixed and place into a freezer-safe container.  Put ice cream in the freezer.  After 45 minutes, remove it and stir around with a spatula or whisk to break up any frozen sections.  Return to freezer and continue to stir it up every 30 minutes or so.  You can use a hand held mixer if you'd like.  This step keeps it creamy and less icy.  Keep doing this until you forget (I remember to stir it about 3 times).  After about 5 hours it should be ready!

Even with the periodic stirring, it wasn't quite as creamy as regular ice cream but in the end, it was still ice cream so that means I was still way too excited.

postcard no. 5, signing off

 
Our whirlwind vacation in BC has officially drawn to a close, as I am writing this final postcard from my very muggy apartment with my backpack and clothes and toiletries strewn all about.

We ferried back to the mainland on Friday, took the light rail, a bus and a long walk to finally reach our last destination five hours after we left Victoria.  In one of the all-time best last-minute decisions, we decided to stay at a different hostel than planned.  Instead of going back downtown near the pubs and restaurants and crowds, we found our way to Jericho Beach, 20 minutes outside the city center.  Ah.  We ate our final BC dinner and pie slices at a cafe that sources all of its produce, dairy and meat from a local farm.  Then we walked 2 minutes from our doorstep to the beach and watched the sunset (which, by the way, didn't happen until after 9pm!) and the people and Vancouver's sparkling skyline.  The next morning we ate breakfast outside and made the trek back to the airport for our flight home.

To summarize:  Vancouver is big and fun.  Nanaimo is small and relaxed.  Victoria is medium and pretty.  We did not see a single Orca, bear or teen wolf.  We walked approximately 1,796 miles, ate our weight in fish and chips, touched the Pacific, filled my camera's memory card and avoided getting sunburned, blistered or deported.  We traveled by foot, airplane, train, bus, light rail, car and seaplane.

If you've made it with me this far, you might be so kind as to indulge one or two more BC posts... we still have to declare a Best Fish & Chips winner, after all.  Also, considering that a fair amount of you readers actually clicked through last summer's What I Did On My Summer Vacation slideshow in its entirety, I'll upload the rest of my photos to flickr soon.  Whatever floats your boat.

postcard no. 4, victoria

Our train ride took us right through the woods and over two seemingly treacherous bridges before conveniently plopping us just a few blocks from our Victoria hostel.  It's a huge backpacker's inn with Indonesian art everywhere and apparently you can do 3.5 hours/day of housekeeping work and get a free dorm bunk to stay in.  (In which to stay.)  Our room felt like a funky little college dorm room.

Victoria is awesome.  Great-sized city, in my opinion.  There were lots of shops and walking around and staring out into the harbour.  Stumbled across a ska festival.  And the most magical houseboat community ever (is that redundant?).  I wanted to dedicate a whole post to these houseboats and to the fact that one of them is for sale and it's perfect and a 45 second walk to a top-rated fish and chips stand, but I didn't.  Y'all know how much I love houseboats.

Found some almost-open ocean and sat there daydreaming for awhile without sunburning.

Enjoyed dinner and a few drinks at our hostel's cafe and played a weird round of bingo while eating an obscene amount of edamame, which I wasn't even sure I liked before this.  Didn't win bingo.  Thought I saw Marty McFly once, but it was someone else.

postcard no. 3, nanaimo

Well well well, Vancouver Island.  Very pretty.

 

After our grand entrance to Nanaimo on Monday, we settled in at the most lovely hostel.  So lovely that I would like to remodel our apartment to look and feel like this hostel.  Even the shared bathrooms were a-ok.  And there was a big, wonderful kitchen and common area that was cozy and bustling.  And there was a foosball table.

Also in Nanaimo:  two consecutive days of fish and chips (so fresh!  don't judge!) and ice cream cones by the harbour and backgammon in the common room.  Not in Nanaimo:  Alex P. Keaton.

On Wednesday we got a car and drove to see some big ass trees at Cathedral Grove.  Old growth forest style.  They were large, and I would say in charge, excepting for the fact that a windstorm decimated a bunch of them in the nineties.  

I believe this is the second time I've mentioned Ents here, but I was crossing my fingers the whole time that one of the trees would start talking and defeating evil.  Just sayin'.

And then we hopped a train through the forests down to Victoria, where we'll be soaking up the beautiful weather until Friday morning.

postcard no. 2, going to nanaimo

We went to Nanaimo on a float plane.  A freakin' FLOAT PLANE!  OMG.

As you were.

postcard no. 1, vancouver

29 hours in Vancouver and still no Michael J. sighting.  We have since moved on to Nanaimo.  But before we moved on, we strolled about the city, had some poutine and the world's best cream puffs (allegedly), and saw some totem poles.  Technically didn't have to use my shower flip flops yet, but I did.  Why did I pack my shower flip flops?  Because we're hostel-hopping and I don't want a foot fungus souvenir.  Wow, I just grossed myself out. Last night's hostel was very hostel-ly. Know what I'm saying?  But also spunky and generous with their free breakfast and filled with uber-trendy Europeans in jeggings and heavy eyeliner.  But we had a private bathroom, and I still wore my flip flops.  You dig?

Remind me to tell you how we got to Nanaimo.  Because it's awesome.