suzilightning

Here are some of the two shelves of NEW cookbooks: and two old ones that happen to be two of my favorites.

don't know about tracey but it is the same one that came with the house we bought. maybe there was a sale on them? we still have it but downstairs in the basement. if you have a lake house up here the "front door" is the one that faces the lake since, unlike other places, our "front yard" is the area that faces the lake and usually is larger than the area that faces the street.

the last of the macaroni and cheese... and a regular o'douls. ok- now that you've finished laughing i was craving carbonation - and champagne is out since i have to hawkwatch then work- and do not like the taste of soda so o'douls fit the bill nicely.

That is ketchup but homemade sundried tomato ketchup. It's less sweet and less salty than the commercial brands. John, on the other hand, loves the commercial stuff. I love the balance it gives to a basic mac and cheese.

From Saturday a macaroni cheese. Plated with tomatoes and slaw. Last night back from the hawkwatch it was a chilled bottle of Vermont reisling and crabcakes, carrots with sage honey and dill and yellow squash with onion served on the new flounder plates my neighbor brought back from South Carolina.

tracey- just up the road, huh? what time is dinner? isn't Dietrich's amazing but if you don't want to go that far drop down 513 to 46e and Schwind's. not pa dutch but some good meats. have a blast

Well it started out ok. 4.5 hours, 16 birds including an adult Bald Eagle that went first north then finally south so I could count him/her. Since raptors are an indicator species I just count what I see but as I said earlier, being a Red Sox fan helps with that patience thing. A few more pictures to post late tomorrow before the next blogger takes over. The kitties people got home and brought me a present (thought they usually don't - the kids leave me a bottle of Korbel,usually). I made a macaroni cheese with some quinoa pasta and had that for dinner with more tomatoes and slaw. For dinner tomorrow I pulled a frozen meatloaf from the freezer. Will serve it with beans and some smashed potatoes. The leftover loaf will become sandwiches for Monday. Alton is on.... gotta go.

Ruby Chicken. Will post the recipe when I get a minute. Let's say those in the library who DO NOT cook use this as their Ta-Da dish and all ohhh and ahhhh about it. Recently she asked me for some ideas for an "easy" recipe for a shower for her future daughter-in-law. I threw out a few ideas then said "What about the Ruby Chicken recipe?" NO that is her trump card and doesn't get played....

For those of you not in the northeastern United States, this is what some of the trees are looking like. It is 1 September and it is time to pick up my instruments and put on the uniform. Load the snack box into the back of the car fudgy boubon brownies and all. Pull together lunch.

A few miscellaneous pictures. First the pocky shot. Some cookbooks. Do you think I've used the Fanny Farmer enough? Several of my mom's recipes are in the Shelter Island cookbook. Jacqueline Pell Tuttle taught home ec and was a friend of my mom's. I still refer to this cookbook occasionally.

Thanks, Judy. All the people I spoke with at work, in a coffee house and in a few delis looked at me like I was speaking Greek. It seems that now adays you are given coffee and get to accessorize it to your taste.

Toast Dope Demo John has also written The Toast Dope Manifesto which he promptly took up to Poughkeepsie with him so he will have to post that later in the Toast Dope thread. The finished product properly applied. Unfortunately I lost the best image which was the bowl filled with the sugar and piles all around of the spices and a labeled diagram of what was what. John is going to be sooooooooo angry with me.

Well, time for one last cocktail. Gimlet. I know you are supposed to use Rose's Lime Juice but I prefer fresh lime juice and a smidge more sugar. Spiedies ready to fire. and plated with slaw and tsziki sauce on a flat bread. You really are supposed to whack a loaf of Italian in half and then wrap it around the skewer and pull them off but I prefer pita or flatbread. For dessert figs stuffed with Maytag blue and draped with prosciutto de San Danielle then fired in a 400F oven for 5 minutes. Sweet fig, tangy cheese and salty ham. I then put a drop, just a drop of balsamic on each one.

Wharton in Morris County, New Jersey was originally called Port Oram. It was named after Robert Oram the manager for the New Jersey Iron Company who built the company store and worker's housing. It was renamed Wharton, after Joseph Wharton, who located his blast furnace complex in the town. Do you know if your Joseph might have been into iron manufacturing?

Yes, John plays guitar and bass. He also composes as well as writing songs. Here is the pinot grigio vinegar and another I am fond of. Believe it or not I get the pinot in the grocery store.

Lately our usual Friday night dinner is one of John's favorites :pizza. I have learned to like pizza and love a few. Where I grew up there was one little Italian-American restaurant, Nettie's, run by Mrs. Gallucio. She made lasagna, cannolis and pizza. Then there were those thick squares of mainly bread with some sauce and cheese on them that the cafeteria served on Friday - if it wasn't fishsticks and french fry day. When I took my first professional job the department's secretary, Joyce Lissandrello, and I became good friends and I was quickly absorbed into the family. Friday night at the Lissandrello's was pizza, salad and Scrabble. In fact when I recently went to visit on a Friday and Joyce said we were having chicken I felt...deprived? bereaved? all of the above? Conne, Joyce's mom, makes some of the best thin crust pizza I have ever eaten. I came home and dusted off my Road Food book for this recipe. Proofing yeast - is there a better smell anywhere than yeast waking up and starting to go to work?, working the dough, onto the board and after two rises. After the second rise I punch it down, scale it to 8 oz balls then usually bake off two and put two into plastic freezer baggies that I've sprayed with cooking spray. This way I have built up some 20 or so pizza crusts for use this fall. Oh, those odd flecks in the crust aren't dirt. We like to add dried basil and oregano to the crusts.

Since I wasn't sure when John was going to go to visit - Friday night? Saturday?. I put my spiedie plans off until Saturday and decided to serve Chicken Saltimbocca which is one of John's favorites. Inside the Apple Tree are three substores: Apple Tree Deli, a sushi area and A & S Meats, my usual butcher. From the deli I pick up Aurrichio Provolone which has a nice somewhat strong taste and Prosciutto de San Danielle which I much prefer to Parma. From A & S I'll get the chicken which is from Pennsylvania. Since Wharton, the town this store is in has quite a large Hispanic population I love to see what things will appear at this market. I have gotten chivo which became a goat curry and gallina to make broth. When I was there there was a beef tongue, pigs trotter and quite a bit of tripe in the case. This is where I usually get my tomatillos and poblanos to make green chili, favas and figs. Quince make their appearance as well as carambola and aloe. The raw ingredients. The chicken breast butterflied and pounded; salt and sage leaves on it. Slide into a pan and cover with the prosciutto. After about 3 minutes flip over until the chicken finishes cooking and the prosciutto is crisp. Normally I would lay the provolone on top and let the heat of the meat melt it but John now has a 4 pm golf date with 2 of his brothers and his dad. I slip the cooked chicken into a container, cover it and include the cheese and reheating/finishing directions for his mom - for the microwave.

When I got home from work last night John had the following waiting for me. We drank the Piper-Heidsieck and I cellared the Roderer for after the Hawkwatch. I particularly like this Brut Divin. It is not as toasty as some others but the mousse is exquisitly fine it is smooth on the palate and at 25.00 USD not a bad value. There was an incident in our neighborhood last night so we didn't get to open cards and wine till almost 10 pm. Consequently we slept in later than normal(for me) and just right(for John). Since John is off for a 4 day weekend we had breakfast together. I made an old camping standby: eggy potatoes. Now if we were camping I would have used bacon to get the fat to cook everything in but since we were at home I simply cooked the onion in some olive oil then added the potatoes, eggs, some parsley, salt and white pepper. One thing about my eggs. I buy them from a young lady who raises them as her 4-H project. She has had many prize winning fowl at the Sussex County Horse and Farm Show, now the New Jersey State Fair. They are truly free ranging birds and I can tell the difference in the taste. The only problem is I have to keep a few industrial farmed eggs around so I can make hard boiled eggs! John had his accented with the last of the smoked salmon. I finished off the Westphalian ham. When we were up in Vermont on vacation last month my I had found Dutch Loaf in a local supermarket deli. That set her off remembering the cold cuts her mother used to get at Karl Ehemer's shop in Poughkeepsie, especially the suelze. Well, we have a German butcher in our area so I was pretty sure that Schwind's carried it. I told John I would go and get some for him to take up to his mom...along with a few other things for here. Those are bauerenwurst, weiswurst, chorizo, andouille and quark which I will use to make tzatziki to go with the spiedie later. I also picked up Westphalian ham and Black Forest ham for sandwiches.

As is the way with all things dealing with Poughkeepsie up until last night John was/wasn't going. Wednesday I figured he probably would be so did a set of Portugese sweet bread for him to bring up. He eats it and his mom likes it as well. Then of course there is the Cookie Monster, his brother Michael, who will eat anything not nailed down. Since it was going to be pretty hot and humid I got up and got going early. The wet ingredients. That's 3/4 cup milk, 1 stick butter(margarine), 2 tsp salt and 1 cup sugar minus 1 Tbsp. As I was afraid it took all 7 cups of bread flour to get to this condition. I use bread flour for the loafs but that's AP flour in the cup as my bench flour. Ready for the final rise. The final cool after what turned out to be 40 minutes at 350F.

Ah, yes. The beer and wine stash. John could never understand the guys he grew up with in Poughkeepsie. On a Friday night they would buy a 6 pack or maybe a 12pack of beer. Then, along about 11 pm, someone a collection would be taken up and someone would have to do a beer run or as his friend says "additonal purchases for medicinal purposes". John's favorite method of operation is buy in bulk and you don't have to risk a DUI. Last year he was a favorite of Sheri, the manager of our local Bottle King. He went in to buy me some champagne/sparkling wines as a gift, decided he should drink more red wine, got a Bottle King card and proceeded to buy 4 mixed cases of red wine, 1 case of sparkling wine(to be portioned out to me over various holidays) and a few bottles of sherry. That certainly helped her bottom line. The same for the beer. Actually what you see there is a summer/fall transition set up with the Coronas and Newcastles in the front. In about 3 months it will switch to Newcastles and Guinesses for the fall/winter. John rotates his beer stock like a woman rotates her wardrobe. Me? An occasional beer, an glass of wine matched to my food but I do love my bubbles.

While we are downstairs we have a dry bar with a smallish drinks fridge behind it. I'd like to do something with this space but the kitchen needs work first. Our wine racks. John bought the top set of racks for me for Christmas two years ago. Except for 5 bottles or so all the rest of the wine is his. The second picture was a birthday present several years ago. John paid $1.00 for it at our local Rescue Squad's garage sale. I actually have two of the racks from the last picture. One upstairs and this one downstairs. The picture on top is of my last cat, Allie, whose domain was this entire lower level. In the back room the pantry John promises to clean up the basement this winter/spring. What you don't see are two racks with empty beer bottles and about 6 - 5 gallon carboys for brewing. When he decides on a hobby he jumps in feet first.

If anyone is interested you can find the geese and other assorted and scary animals by typing the following search into a browser bar: "home grown" enesco The cauliflower sheep and the lemon goat are quite cute.

I'm not sure what John's was but he said there was butter in it so he had to take a lactaid pill. Mine was a mapley vinegar reduction. I can't be more specific than that because I didn't copy it down and it wasn't on the website's menu link. Yeah, I have learned what you mean about that joker in the pack.

Fridge and freezer shots It took me 4, count them 4, tries to get usable pictures. I don't think I was meant to post these. Let's see if they post or self destruct. First the upstairs fridge. The freezer The downstairs freezer that I can't live without. Along with John's beer stash Finally is how I keep track of what is in them. The big list is for the downstairs freezer, the two little lists are front and reverse of the upstairs freezer.

Breakfasts tend to be the same for me. This morning was cottage cheese and fresh Jersey peaches. I love this time of year. Actually I think the peaches are even better than the corn and tomatoes in indicating summer in this part of the state. I was able to use a gift card at Bed, Bath and Beyond that my mother-in-law gave me to get a new toaster after the old one self destructed so I could make John's breakfast. Really hot and humid here so today was my day to stop at Smart World Coffee for a Chocolate Raspberry Swirl. Lunch was a small salad.