Happy Halloween!

I hope you all woke up to less snow than I did yesterday - we got 15 inches, and have downed power lines and trees all over the neighborhood.  It will certainly make for interesting trick-or-treating!  Our house is one of those houses - you know, the one that gives out king-size candy bars.  I hope that the snow doesn't deter too many of the kiddies from coming out - we have 50 candy bars to hand out!

Since we have apparently skipped straight from late summer to the dead of winter, I thought I'd share a few of the recipes I've been dying to try for fall.  I intend on making a few tonight, but I think we will have to stretch October well into mid-November to get these all in:

Pumpkin spaetzle with bacon - we plan on making this for dinner tonight!

Roasted pumpkin seeds - this year, we won't try to dry the seeds on paper towels and end up losing them all

Chocolate cinnamon bread - they used to make this at Starbucks, then gave out the recipe right when they stopped having it.  So glad they did!

Pumpkin smoothie - seriously, this looks ridiculously delicious.  Must have this week.


Normally I would end with some cute pictures of our jack-o-lanterns, but we still haven't carved them!  Hopefully we'll have some time to throw them together tonight......happy haunts, everyone!

Welcome to fall....and maple caramel coffee

I feel like I suddenly woke up and it's fall.  The air is much colder than before, and the leaves are starting to turn - Brendan and I even went up to Vermont last weekend to look at the fall colors.  The colors will be prettier in a week or two, but it certainly feels like fall already.  It's so much cooler here than it was in Philly during the fall!

The fall weather means that I have been having more warm drinks - hot apple cider, pumpkin spice lattes, and tea.  But I have been making a lot of coffee at home, too - those pumpkin spice lattes get expensive!  So I was thrilled when, as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program, I got free samples of Godiva coffee.  I got a bag of Pumpkin Spice, and a bag of Caramel Pecan Bark - along with a challenge to create a fall-inspired coffee recipe.  Bring it on, Godiva!

At first, I was a bit stumped.  I didn't want to go the pumpkin spice latte route - too obvious.  I looked around for some inspiration - and my eyes landed straight on a bag of maple sugar candies that I brought back from Vermont.

(um, yes, I'd definitely eaten most of the bag by this point!)

Now, of course, not everyone has fresh maple sugar candies just lying around - but I'm sure maple syrup would do the trick, too.  But none of that corn syrup-based stuff - you've got to use the real thing!  To go with the maple candies, I used the Caramel Pecan Bark flavor coffee.

The recipe for this is simple, but here's what I did:

1. Add one maple candy to a mug  (more if you like extra sugar in your coffee!)

2. Add coffee to the mug

3. Add milk, stir, and enjoy!!

The result?  A delicious drink filled with rich fall flavors.  It was really yummy!

For what's left of our weekend (really, just Monday) we are off to find pumpkins, drink even more cider, and go to the Topsfield Fair - we've got a wonderful day planned!

Oh, and last week I joined a gym!  More about that later on this week, once I try everything out - I will most definitely have reflections on Body Pump :)

Back again!

OK, so I kinda fell into a black hole.....sorry about that!  Hope that whoever reads my blog stuck around!  My disappearance was due to a little family medical emergency - but everything is ok now.  And hopefully I'm back for real now :)

Hope you are all having a wonderful start to fall and enjoying the best season of the year!

Where did the last month go?

It's now August 12 - and another month has gone by since I last posted.  This time I have a better excuse than my usual laziness general busy-ness.  I actually ended up being surprised by some last-minute grant writing for my new job - whether I should have been surprised is up for debate, but nonetheless it sucked up every last minute of free time I had in the last month.  On top of grant writing, I also had a few other deadlines - revisions for a paper my old lab's revising, a few other things for my new lab, and a deadline for a newsletter I edit.  This was one of those times where I'm not sure how I came out alive - but I'm here now, and I made it.  I even got everything done on time!  Whether I got out with my soul is unclear - but that's a subject for another time.

For now, a few updates:

- My garden is coming along quite nicely.  We have seen the comings and goings of several flowers, I've done some major weeding, and we've successfully grown tomatoes and strawberries.  More on that soon, I promise!

- I am now seriously considering what I actually want to do with my career.  This goes back up to the whole "did I get out with my soul?" question above - and I'll talk more about it later too.

- I am planning on running a half marathon in November.  I may be insane, since there may be snow in November and it's right before someone's wedding, but it's the soonest I could get together a training plan that worked, and I'm actually pretty psyched to run on Heartbreak Hill (even if it is the sane wrong way).  The training plan doesn't start ramping up for another few weeks, but I've been putting some miles in lately and I feel pretty confident that I will be ready.

- We are going to Maine in a few weeks and spending a whole week there!  We've never done more than a weekend, since it's always been me coming up to Brendan's, then us traveling out to Maine, but now that I'm here we're doing a real vacation.  I am so, so in need of a vacation, and Maine is my favorite place to spend time with my sweetie.

Hopefully I will be back soon with more substantial stuff (and pictures!), but I just wanted to say hi to everyone - and a special shout out to my old lab, who is currently spending the day at the beach without me.  So jealous!

Hope you are all having a much more relaxing summer than me.....can't wait for the fall, though!

Our first harvest

OK, so the title is a bit excessive, given the size of our "harvest" - but we have a strawberry!  I mean, a real, actual, honest-to-goodness strawberry!

It was tiny, but red, peeking out from under the leaves of our strawberry plant.  Unfortunately, Brendan just had his wisdom teeth out today, so he couldn't share it with me - but I most definitely brought it in, washed it, and ate it.

And it was delicious - made even sweeter by the fact that I grew it myself.  So, so wonderful - can't wait to have more this summer!

Hiking adventure

Recently, Brendan and I went on a little hiking adventure.  It was a few weekends ago now, but I'm just catching up with a backlog of things to write about, so cut me some slack :)

We are total hiking novices, but wanted to do something a bit difficult and not just go for a regular walk outside.  We went to the Wachusett Mountain State Reservation, which is a ski area during the winter, but has some really neat hiking trails during the summer.  We hiked from the visitor's center, and took what seemed like a relatively easy trail around the side of the mountain for a bit.  The map is here, and we started out at the little house icon at the right and continued down the Bicentennial Trail.

And then things took a turn for the interesting.  Somehow, we decided that the Loop Trail sounded like a great idea.  Here's me, looking optimistic towards the beginning of the trail:

You'll notice that even at this spot, there's not so much a trail as a bunch of rocks.  That's how it was the whole time, but it got progressively more difficult.  I don't have any pictures of the harder parts of the trail, but we took quite a few breaks along the way to just breathe.  It did pay off with a good view somewhere along the way, though:

The trail was REALLY hard after this, and I don't have any pictures, but it looked something like this, with more green foliage  - it doesn't quite do the steepest parts justice, but it's all I can find (source):

We struggled upward for a while, and had a bit of a meltdown when we started to worry that we weren't coming upon the trail we expected to - did we miss the trail sign?  Nope, we were just going that slow.  The whole trail was only about 1.5 to 2 miles total, but the terrain was so strenuous that it took forever to climb to the top.  We eventually did make it up to the Mountain House trail, and discovered with delight that we could take an actual road down for a bit and reach Pine Hill trail, which is substantially easier.  Instead of random boulders, Pine Hill has rocks stacked in a bit of a staircase formation, which is a lot easier to climb (up and down).  Here's Brendan looking accomplished near the end of our journey:

As we finally reached the bottom, exhausted, we weren't sure that we'd do much more hiking - but both of us realized that we really did have a lot of fun.  I have been begging Brendan to go back since we got home, and we might just go next weekend.  Now that we know how long the trail is and what to expect, we'll have a lot more fun!

Anyone have any ideas for hiking trips?  Next time we'll bring a water pack instead of water bottles, but if anyone has any ideas for making hiking trips more fun, or anything important to bring, I'd appreciate it!

P.S. For you crazy people out there doing ridiculously long trail races - I don't know how you do it!  I can't imagine running up even the easiest part of the trail we did!  Major kudos.

Happy (belated) 4th! Have some pie!

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July!  I spent the long weekend enjoying the company of family and friends - mostly Brendan's family and friends, to be precise, but I had a really nice time.  We got to see our niece (I say our although she's obviously not my niece yet, we're not married) - I hadn't had the pleasure of meeting her yet, so that was really great!  Isn't she adorable?

We had a partay at Brendan's parents' house, had yummy delectable food, spent some time gardening (more on that in a future post), and watched the fireworks on TV (don't worry, we'll see some in person next weekend).  Overall, a super relaxing weekend.  Which is good, because this week has started out a bit rough - it's a good thing I got some rest!

On the food front - I made pie!  Well, pies, actually.   I made strawberry pie following this recipe, cherry-blueberry pie following this recipe, and pecan pie following my Great Aunt Myrtie's famous recipe.  The pies were all for the party, and most of each pie was gobbled up before I could even snap a picture.  I did manage to get one of the leftover pecan pie:

Delicious, right?  I know it's more typical to see pecan pie at Thanksgiving time, but it was a really nice treat for summertime too.  This recipe is FULL of sugar, so it's not good for you - but it sure is yummy!  You should all make some for your next summer getogether - or, well, for any occasion, really.  When is there not a good time for pie?

Aunt Myrtie's Famous Pecan Pie
Serves 8 (less if you're hungry!)

Preheat oven to 350.

 

Use unbaked 9-inch pie crust.

 

1 cup corn syrup (Aunt Myrtie used Karo)

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

2 tbsp. melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

 

Mix all of above ingredients together thoroughly.

 

Stir in 1-1/2 cups chopped pecans or pecan pieces of the size you like. 

Pecan halves can be put on top of mixture if you desire.

 

Pour into unbaked pie crust;  Place on cookie sheet to catch any drips.

 

Bake on center rack of 350 degree oven for approximately 60 to 70 minutes.

 

Foil can be placed over the crust (not filling) to prevent crust from burning.

The foil should be removed about 15 minutes before end of cooking time to

allow crust to brown.

Enjoy!