My "Bouquets of the Day"

I love all the beautiful flowers of spring, summer & autumn. I have multiple gardens in my yard. I mostly focus on summer flowers since I am so busy in the spring and fall with school and teaching.

I also enjoy the Facebook page "Bouquet of the Day" based in San Francisco, CA. They feature a new bouquet each week day (Friday's bouquet is for Friday-Sunday) from flowers grown in their own yard.

If you enjoy flowers, you should follow them. Then every day there will be a bouquet in your home feed.

I've been feeling very inspired by their bouquets and started to but more flowers to arrange in my home this summer. And take pictures of my arrangements. And post them on Facebook. Like these:

I also noticed that occasionally on Bouquet of the Day they had a guest arrangement. So I decided to message them and see if they accepted photographs. They responded with a "yes, but we are picky". Fair enough, their bouquets are gorgeous. So I decided that sometime this summer I would send them a picture.

Last week I was out in the yard collecting some bee balm for a bouquet. Then I saw that my honeysuckle vine was flowering again. Hmmm dark pink & orange? It needed some white to pull it together. A little flowering oregano, Queen Ann's lace and feverfew to balance things out. A little riotious. But I sent it in to the good folks at Bouquet of the Day. And guess what? They liked it. So it was the guest bouquet of the day for July 20, 2015. Thank you thank you!  You made my summer! <3

The best book I've read so far this year (2015)

Maybe it's a little early to choose my most favorite book of 2015. But this book was amazing! Beautifully written, powerful story, a twist on the usual WW2 novel. If you haven't read it, go out and get a copy. Now. Read it. 

Strawberry Banana Bread

A belated Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there. We had a lovely day yesterday. We went on a hike on the new Tidal Marsh Trail in North Haven (a little difficult to find, but a beautiful 2 mile walk, with nice cooling breezes) and then our younger daughter Julia dragged us to the middle school and we ran on the track (1 mile, huffpuff) while we tracked our progress on our new RunKeeper app. Okay I only ran three laps (0.84 miles) so I'm working up to it. I'm really a walker but want to improve my lung capacity so hope to be able to do some running but not so much that I wreck my knees or further aggravate my plantar fasciitis. But how does this all lead to Strawberry Banana bread?

Well after a lovely dinner of grilled london broil & lamp chops and assorted veggies - we had homemade strawberry shortcake for dessert!  With super sweet and yummy strawberries from our local Pell Farms.  And I got carried away and prepared 3 quarts of strawberries for our strawberry shortcake. There are only three of us at home now. So we had way too many. And I was browsing through pinterest recipes to help my older daughter find a recipe for a sweet bread for her faculty breakfast this week and suggested she look for strawberry bread. Long story short - I found this recipe and thought this is perfect for ME!  We have an over-abundance of strawberries, some over-ripe bananas and I have some homemade yogurt. Of course I tweaked things a bit - so here is my version:

Strawberry Banana Yogurt Bread

Ingredients

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

½ organic cane sugar (or brown sugar)

2 large ripe bananas

2 eggs

6 ounces plain yogurt (or use vanilla or strawberry-banana - mine was plain, homemade)

2 cups diced strawberries

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees, grease a loaf pan (mine is a pampered chef stone one).

Combine flour, baking powder & salt in a small bowl.

In a separate bowl, mash bananas thoroughly. Add eggs & sugar to the bananas and mix thoroughly. Then add the greek yogurt and strawberries. Mix very well so there are no lumps.

Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Mix until just combined.

Pour your batter into your prepared loaf pan. If you have extra strawberries, scatter some on top of your loaf.

Bake in your oven about an hour until the top is golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.

Cool at least 10 minutes before slicing.

Pumpkin Love Again

When visiting our son in upstate New York this past weekend (Sept 27-28) we visited the Fingerlakes Beverage Company and were astounded by all the brews they had. We noticed a bunch more pumpkin beverages and decided to do a "2014 pumpkin tasting part 2". We picked up 9 different brews.

We decided to do our tasting "flight style", where we poured 4 different types and tasted one at a time. We then could retaste any of those four in determining which was best for the round. 

Our first round had Post Road Pumpkin (Brooklyn 5%), Wolavers Organic Pumpkin Ale (5.35%), Wilhealm Scream Pumpkin Ale (Magic Hat 5.4%) and Captain Lawrence Pumpkin Ale (5.5%).

 At first taste we were leaning towards the Wilhealm Scream - it had a distinctive rich caramel taste but wasn't too sweet (as we found the Post Road to be). 

But in our "retasting" we found that the Wolavers edged ahead - the flavor really popped as the brew warmed a bit. The decision was the Wolavers would win this round. 

Our next round would include Harpoon UFO (unfiltered) pumpkin ale (5.9%), Hudson Valley Fall Hornin' Pumpkin (6%), and Ithaca Brewing Company Pumpkin Ale (6.3%). The later two had unimpressive flavor. The first was very well received - a nice balanced taste with good carbonation. 

Our final round was two heavier brews - Red Hook "Out of Your Gourd" Pumpkin Porter (5.8%) and Fisherman's Pumpkin Stout (7%). 

This was an interesting round. We found the Red Hook was quite heavy and stout-like with a smoky taste. The stout was lighter, more porter like and initially the flavor did not impress. But we found the stout did get better as it warmed up - but the porter won this round. 

Then we went back and revisited the winners of each round.

 After much discussion, it was decided that the Harpoon UFO pumpkin was the clear winner of this tasting.  This was a delicious brew that merits a second look and definitely would be purchased again by our tasters. Check out the particulars from the Harpoon brewery people. Harpoon Brewery

**a footnote - we had earlier tried a pumpkin ale at a local brew pub in Ithaca NY - Bandwagon Brew Pub Pumpkin Ale. It was excellent and we wish we had some to include in this tasting. It might have possibly edged out the UFO. It did have the advantage of being very fresh and on tap. It was delicious! We highly recommend a visit to this pub if you are in Ithaca. Bandwagon Brew Pub

Many thanks to Phil, Nick and Teodora for their tasting expertise in this tasting event. xo

More Pumpkin Love

Well I'm hosting a pumpkin tasting tomorrow (focus is on rating ales). So I'm making some pumpkin goodies too. And we have a breakfast tomorrow at work, so I'll making something pumpkiny for that.

First two ingredient pumpkin brownies. Well I added an extra ingredient.

Limited edition, bought at Target.

And I stole this recipe from cookies and cups. I used one family size box of Betty Crocker Dark Chocolate Brownie Mix (19.9 oz) and a can of Libby's Pure Pumpkin (15 oz).  Added about a half of a bag of the morsels.

Mix it up well so there are no dry bits. Line a 9 by 9 pan with foil and spray.  Smooth into pan.

Cook at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.

I also made pumpkin butter last night.  See Easy Pumpkin Butter for the recipe. Which I'll make one of those baked brie in pastry and put the pumpkin butter on top of the brie (and inside the pastry) with salted pecans sprinkled on top.

And for breakfast tomorrow morning it will be BAKED PUMPKIN CREAM CHEESE FRENCH TOAST from the blog "Damn Delicious". I always find great recipes on her blog.

And I mostly followed her recipe. Just I used whole wheat cinnamon swirl bread by Pepperidge Farms (about 1 1/2 loaves), egg beaters instead of eggs, increased liquid ingredients a bit and whisked in about 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree in the liquid ingredients. I omitted the nuts since this is a faculty breakast. And it's going in the fridge overnight.  Here's a picture from the blog, I'll try to add my own picture too tomorrow!

update - the bread pudding was a success!  Here it as a few minutes after I put it out for the breakfast:

Pumpkin Love

We had our official math department "Pumpkin Tasting" Friday Sept 19th. We sampled autumn themed snacks, cider and most importantly - a wide variety of pumpkin ales!

At 3 PM we scurried around assembling our snacks and organizing the tasting.

Steff made a very delicious pumpkin bread with cream cheese filling.

We organized our 13 different contestants with a detailed poster, listing the types and percent alcohol.

Let the tasting begin! We all sampled small amounts, paying attention to nose, color, front, middle, and finish. 

We individually rated each brew.

Although there was some variation in taste,we came up with two clear front runners and a clear third place.  First place goes to both  Weyerbacher Pumpkin Ale and Two Roads "Roadsmary Baby" (the later definitely wins best name!).

The imperial pumpkin ale by Weyerbacher was a rich strong brew with a good balanced pumpkin flavor. 

Roadsmary's Baby had a distinctive spiced taste with good carbonation.

Third place goes to Dogfish Head Punkin Ale. Another strong brew (7%) - a brown ale with strong pumpkin, brown sugar and spice flavors.

The full ranking is as follows (out of 40 total points - 8 tasters, scale is 1 to 5).

1st & 2nd  Roadsmary's Baby by Two Roads (6.8%)  27.8 points

3rd  Dogfish Head Punkin Ale (7%)  25.8 points

4th Wachusett Pumpkin (5.2%)  25 points

5th Blue Point Pumpkin Alg (6%) 21.1 points

6th Sam Adams Fat Jack Pumpkin Ale (8.5%) 19 points

7th Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale (6.35%) 18 points

8th Kentucky Pumpkin Barrel Ale (10%)  14.5 points 

9th  Woodchuck Hard Cider Private Reserve Pumpkin (6.9%) 14 points

10th Harpoon Imperial Pumpkin Ale (10.5%) 13.5 points

11th Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin (9%) 10.5 points

12th Sarnach Our Pumpkin Ale (5.4%) 9 points

13th Southern Tier Imperial Pumpkin Ale (8.6%) 7.75 points

A fun time was had by all, even though we are not professional tasters, it was interesting to see ther wide variety of pumpkin brews that have entered the fall market and all the interesting styles and tastes. 

Many thanks to our hard working tasters and support personnel. A special thanks to Matt & Steff for providing the brew samples, Jeff for his superior hotdogs and everyone for their snack contributions and general enthusiasm for this even. We missed you Alison. 

I Love my CSA

I love vegetables and in my first years at our house I had a thriving vegetable garden. Then as I had kids and they got older, I got busier. And to make matters worse, my soil developed all kinds of problems - different microbes and such that limited my harvest.  My tomatoes got black spot mildew, my potatoes attracted pests, my corn was hijacked by squirrels, my rhubarb roots were nibbled up my voles, etc.

So I scaled back my garden, focused on herbs and went cold turkey with tomatoes for 4 years to see if I could get rid of the mildew. Said I would go to Farmer's Markets. 

Well, I started sneaking in some vegetables and Farmer's Markets can be very expensive (sorry Farmers, they are fun but they do get pricey).

I found a wonderful alternative - Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). 

What is this new fangled thing? Actually not so new.... from Learn More about CSAs

Here are the basics:

For over 25 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer.

A farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a "membership" or a "subscription") and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.

This arrangement creates several rewards for both the farmer and the consumer. In brief:

Advantages for farmers:

• Get to spend time marketing the food early in the year, before their 16 hour days in the field begin
• Receive payment early in the season, which helps with the farm's cash flow
• Have an opportunity to get to know the people who eat the food they grow

Advantages for consumers:

• Eat ultra-fresh food, with all the flavor and vitamin benefits
• Get exposed to new vegetables and new ways of cooking
• Develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food and learn more about how food is grown

Amazing idea, no? 

This is my second summer with a CSA. I live in New Haven County, Connecticut and there are a lot of choices. Wherever you live I am sure you have some options.

We use Defrancesco Farm in Northford CT. 

They've been great. They offer a wide variety in our weekly boxes (this week we had 6 ears of corn, 6 large tomatoes, basket of cherry tomatoes, an eggplant, two zucchini, 4 apples, 4 large sweet potatoes, head of leaf lettuce, two heads of broccoli, and a small jar of honey). We get boxes each week from the last week in June until the last week in September.

Is this too much food? Absolutely not!  My husband and I share this weekly allotment and we don't waste any food. We do love vegetables. And if you are not a big vegetable eater, this may encourage you to become one!

One of the cool things about our CSA, they provide us a recipe (or two) each week to go with the produce they have given us. This is really fun too, and I've tried some delicious recipes!

Next week is our last week. Wah. But that's okay, I'm so busy with school that I can't focus so much on cooking and veggies right now (in fact I missed the CSA pick up yesterday, plum forgot until 4:30 this morning when I woke up and said "oh crap, I forgot my CSA"). But they let me pick it up today. I love them.

So next week I think they will let us sign up for next year. Absolutely I'm going to do that. I'll share information on how to sign up if you are local to Northford CT, otherwise - search in your area for next year. This is really a wonderful thing to get involved in.