how i roll

Oh yes I did.  Radio silence for two months, then back with an atrocious pun.  Pow!

I may never buy store-bought hamburger rolls again.  I won't if The Awesome Husband has anything say about it, anyway.

These were somewhat time consuming in a plan-ahead sort of way, but not overly difficult.  My perspective may also be different now because the process of cleaning up after cooking finally involves putting bowls and spoons in our dishwasher rather than into the sink where they'll mock us until we wash them by hand.  So now everything feels easy-peasy.

Anyway, yeah, homemade hamburger rolls.   We had these with black bean burgers, sweet potato fries, and a salad.  Yum!

orange + chocolate = delicious

One of my eccentricities is a very, very strong aversion to wastefulness.  I should probably put another "very"  in there, just to be accurate.  What this meant when I made candied orange peels was that I couldn't bring myself to throw away the orange-infused syrup left behind at the end of the steeping process.  Most of it went into the freezer to await further inspiration.

An idea hit me before the pot hit the sink, in fact.  I added milk to what I couldn't scrape out and stirred it over low heat, then added cocoa powder and whisked it until it was incorporated.  

Orange hot chocolate.  My new favorite toasty beverage for winter.  Yum.

settling in means being festive

Let's take an intermission of sorts from the posts about our old house.  I suppose you could also call it an intermission from not-blogging.  That wouldn't be inaccurate.

We're about 90% settled in at the new house.  There are some boxes left to unpack, which drives The Awesome Husband nuts but doesn't phase me much.  There's some art left to hang on the walls, but I'd rather wait until we're sure of where we want things to go before we go hammering nails every which way. 

Thankfully the kitchen's pretty well put together at this point.  Pots and pans and mixers and appliances are all where they need to be, which made it much easier to make some festive treats last weekend.  There was this wonderfully adaptable recipe, which I made as cranberry lime bread.  And then, because I wanted to make something for someone allergic to eggs, peanuts, and dairy -- the horror! -- I also made a small batch of candied orange peels.  

I think they turned out pretty well.  And hey, in the background and stuff, that's our new kitchen!  

   

a very good day

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with good food and good company. 

I'm thankful for lots of things this year.  I won't bore you with the whole list, but Mr. Cecil is certainly on it. The dog beach 10 minutes away is on it too. 

"Leave it!"

urban hiking

Now, I'm using the term "urban" loosely here.  This isn't a major metropolitan area by any means.  My point, though, is that we went hiking this weekend on a lovely wooded trail that's adjacent to my town's biggest commercial center.   You can go to the mall, and then a fraction of a mile away you can hike for a solid hour.  No joke.

You can hear cars going by, but visually you'd never know you're still remarkably close to civilization most of the time.  We even watched as an owl flew across the trail in front of us, landed on a branch in a nearby tree, and stared at us for several minutes.

in bloom: pale pink daylilies

Apparently 2012 was the Year of the Daylily around here.  I've already done posts on two different varieties this summer.  We'll, they were different colors and they didn't bloom at the same time, so I'm assuming they're different varieties. 

The pale pink ones were my favorite, though.  My fourteen-year-old self, who hated frilliness and being called cute, would probably engage in much eyerolling about that.  That's ok, though.  They're just plain pretty. 

They're also likely to be the last "in bloom" post this year.  Cue relief or disappointment.  I'm pretty sure everything in the garden now that's gearing up for the end of the season was the subject of a post last year already.  (Though, now that I've said that, watch some beautiful dark horse of a weed turn up next week...)

conveniently, we're growing beets this year...

On Tuesday, The Awesome Husband and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary.  We both took the day off from work, and we had grand plans to go kayaking!  And have a picnic at the place where we got married!  And be outside in the late summer, not-quite-fall air!

But it rained all day, so we changed our plans.  It was ok -- we still had a great time spending the day together.  One thing The Awesome Husband in particular had as a priority for the day was to make sure we did something new, because of the fascinating science behind this article.

With that in mind, we went to a restaurant we'd never visited, sat at the bar, and had cocktails and appetizers.  The wonderful bartender (seriously, can't say enough about her -- friendly, knowledgeable, made excellent drinks) gave us an unanticipated sample of infused vodka. Infused with beets and tarragon, mind you. If you're like me, that sounds... interesting.  Not tempting, not horrible, but interesting.

Having tasted it, though, I can assure you it's delicious.  It was definitely something new.  Bring on the dopamine and norepinephrine!

sightseeing

While I was on the trip that I recently returned home from, I took some photos.  I went through them this week and realized that quite a lot of them, taken at area historic sites, are non-descript as far as the location goes.  I could have gone anywhere!  How mysterious! 

Or, you know, not.  These were all taken here and here.



Sedum



Windmill!



"... leave a message and I'll call you back." (Anyone?  Bueller?)

 

stormy weather

It rained buckets here this afternoon. There was thunder and lightning. There were sheets of water. Even before I walked outside, I figured I'd write a post about it: about how I hoped the seeds I planted this weekend didn't get washed away, about how I had little pieces of cheese at the ready to drop on the floor for Mr. Cecil after each thunder clap.

The storm moved past us, and now it's remarkably sunny. I took Cecil outside for a minute, and when I stepped into the backyard, I realized this was an even more eventful storm than I'd first thought.

Thankfully, the only casualty was the bark on the side of this tree stump:

in bloom: first daylilies

We were lucky enough to be given several varieties of daylilies from family and friends at the end of last summer.  There were so many plants, in fact, that we had the luxury of doing a little experiment: some went to the front yard, where they get full sun, and the rest were planted in a newly created, make-shift garden along the back of the house (which is to say, we dug up some grass and plopped these guys in). 

The backyard is fairly shaded, but oddly enough these were the daylilies that bloomed first.  They're taking an incremental approach, just a couple flowers each day.  I suppose that's fair considering it's their first year here.

in bloom: hydrangea

I find it so interesting that hydrangeas can be bluer or pinker depending on the soil they're growing in. At our house, we clearly have blue-ifying soil, whatever that is. And I've decided that "bluer" and "pinker" are words for today.

We got this plant from a dear friend when she sold her house and moved across the country. (Psst, M, let me know in the comments if I can link to your blog!) The Little Hydrangea That Could had a tough go of it last year, what with being transplanted and all, but it's rebounded a bit. Apparently it's also one of the more thirsty plants in the front garden; it wilts alarmingly after a dry day of sun and will only perk up with a couple gallons of water. 

 

holiday

(Taken during our trip to Castine last year)

May you all have a happy -- or reflective and appreciative -- Memorial Day.

In bloom: daffodils

Is that time of year: the garden is starting to look like more than a patch of dirt once again. I'm hoping to be able to post only about different flowers than I did last year. Not that you all keep track of what I've already shown you or would necessarily notice if the photos were very similar, but for me it's more interesting to talk about new things.

To recap, here's what I showed you last year:
sweet peas
chives
irises
anemones
strawberries
marigolds
sedum

Now for the daffodils. Oh, the daffodils. They were in the garden last year, but I never posted about them. They've declined a bit each year (apparently bulbs have a shelf life), so by now it's mostly daffodil shoots with no actual flowers. This year they also migrated so they've sprouted up through the lawn instead of the flower bed. I guess we've got rogue daffodils.

They're in short supply, but they're pretty nonetheless.

(to be fair, it disappeared long before it would've dried out)

When I mentioned yesterday that I suspected I may have found a new go-to cake recipe, I was 100% correct.

I made this recipe for German Chocolate cake, and it was excellent. It's not health food, but it also won't break the nutritional bank. Ordinarily, I'd type out a modified repice for you here, but since I didn't change anything (I KNOW, who am I?!), I'll just give you the link. America's Test Kitchen deserves all the credit here, for sure.

Oh wait, I did leave out the coconut it calls for on top of the cake. And I used walnuts instead of pecans because that's what we had in the house. Eh, those aren't substantial alterations (but I do feel better now and more like myself).

The other thing I might change, if when I bake this again, would be to make more frosting than it calls for. There was just barely enough, and the recipe called for 8 ounces of evaporated milk from a 12 ounce can. Next time I'll likely just use the full 12 ounces and increase everything else accordingly.

As an added bonus, I got to use our cake stand. It keeps the cake from drying out and makes it extra stylin'.

in bloom: sedum

There's only one item in the front flower garden that's remaining from the days of the house's prior owner. We've been taking out various overgrown shrubs bit by bit as new plants have gone in. The last of the evictees, the azaleas, got the boot a few weeks ago.

The one holdover we've permitted to stay is the sedum. It takes zero effort from us to look good, and it flowers at the end of the summer, when the irises are long gone and even the anemones are petering out. I think it's pretty cool, too, that it's a succulent but still manages to survive as a perennial as far north as we are.