Country Drive

After breakfast A. and I made a trip to the local Amish produce center...and another farmstand...in order to get a few things for the planned dinner. We drove down country roads laden with pretty. It was overwhelming. The problem with pretty places is that there are so many things to sigh over and want a piece of, but, you can't take pretty home with you. What? We drove past signs for towns with names like Ovid and Covert.



I had a moment where I thought to myself that maybe it was in this area I should buy myself my little hermit house and while away the rest of my days in contented misanthropy...but then I remembered how crazy the winters must be up this far...and my curmudgeonly temperament lessened considerably. What?
So many old barns. A. and I discussed our mutual interest in living in a barn. I wondered whether a barn that has gotten to this point of dilapidation can be renovated.
At the Amish produce place/farm there were chickens! Fancy fancy chickens! It was out of control how fancy they were. It was also difficult to take photographs of them because many of them (including the non-chicken peacock) were enjoying the shade of the coop, and the mesh keeping them enclosed was an awkward size for the camera lens.
I think if I were to get a tattoo, it might be of a beautiful chicken.

We purchased basil, raspberries, bacon and maybe something else. They did not, however, have fresh corn.


Moo cows!
Because the Amish didn't have fresh corn, we went to the other favorite produce spot of A.'s family. There were these lovely arrangements of freshly cut flowers that I just couldn't get enough of looking at.

And there you have it, that was our drive to get veggies.

Saturday Morning at Cayuga Lake

Last Thursday A. texted me and asked me what I was doing for the Labor Day weekend. I reported that I had nothing on my docket, and then she asked if I'd like to join her at her family's house on the lake. I did not hesitate in saying yes. The drive up under optimal circumstances would take about four and a half hours, but we (A., G. and I) didn't make it to the house until six hours had gone by...traffic on 76 and 476, boo. Any how, I woke up on Saturday to the sound of mini lake waves landing on the stone shore and a few slivers of a sun peeking through the curtains. Though it was not even 8 o'clock (and I do like to sleep in when I can) I couldn't help but get out of bed and walk out and take photographs of the early pretty.


More people were stirring in a bit, and A.'s father made up some delicious, spicy scrambled eggs.

A.'s mother, in preparation for two of her three children's arrival (along with three friends) baked a coffeecake. I forgot how good coffeecake really is. Mmmmm.

Flowers on the table.


At one point I noticed a giant hive in a tree in the backyard of the house (to the front is the lake, to the back woods and even a little stream). It seems that when they were last up, this hive did not exist. Put another way, it seemed likely that the hive was either created entirely in the two weeks since their last visit, or a very small version of it quadrupled (or whatever) in that same time period.

I have never seen a hive this large in my life. Not once. Well, now I have. But before that.

Brutus the Puppy

My coworker C. and her boyfriend R. recently adopted themselves a puppy. Brutus is his name. After the cards and dinner, L. and I stopped by their place to see Brutus in his natural habitat (C. brought him into the office earlier that week but he had been sleeping). He is quite a good poser, and runner.
Crazy dog!

Cards and Deja Vu Decisions

Last week, after work, L. and I went over to St. Stephen's Green for beer, cards and dinner. After much internal debate, I decided to get the chicken cheesesteak.
The meal arrived and I immediately realized that I had ordered this dish in the past, and had not liked it at all...and yet I totally blocked that experience out when choosing this time around (I tried to find the post that must have accompanied my last foray with the St. Stephen's chicken cheese steak, but it may not actually exist). I ate it and, no surprise, I still didn't like it. The dish would be far superior if they actually cooked the chicken together with the exotic mushrooms and brie cheese, but they don't do this, no, they put one element on top of the next but you don't actually get a good mix of the different flavors in the majority of your bites. The whole thing needs salt.
L. also whooped me something fierce in Rummy.

Cactus Flower

When S. arrived from California last month he came bearing cacti. Last week this little cactus flowered. Pretty.

Lovely Evening on a New Deck

On Monday I went over to Ak's to check out her new digs and enjoy her roof top deck. The photograph below is not her deck, but a deck across the way that I admired for its large collection of plants and cherry tomatoes...see the floor of the deck, just littered with the little guys.
It was a gorgeous day, warm but definitely fitting into the late summer/early fall part of the season. The clouds were also in top form.


The previous 'room owner' of Ak's new room left behind a few pairs of shoes and it is because of this that I now own a pair of brown leather calf length boots. I had every intention of going home early after a drink with Ak, but, alas, instead we went from wine to jollyrancher flavored vodka drinks, which you can see in this series of photographs.
Note the boot slipper boot patterning.

It was a lovely night. Thanks to AK, and her new roommate A. for the company, drinks and shoes.

Another Walk

After work last Tuesday, or Monday, or some day, I took another 3+ walk around.
I passed a Rita's at one point, and had myself a mango/cherry moment of water ice bliss.
Saw where Billie Holiday lived when in town...though the sentence that explains this fact seems very poorly worded to me.
These guys have been popping up all around Philly. Cool, in a solar trash compacting sort of way.

Mother Music

Except not for your average mother.

I am really digging this today. Canadians, who knew? Other Canadians probably.

Not The Cream

If SAIC had a literary journal, and if that literary journal used the criteria that most top law schools use for choosing their staff (grades, writing competition), well, I would never be a member of that journal. Or maybe everyone would, as SAIC's grading was pass/fail, and I passed everything with flying colors ;)

Cooking The Hell Out of A Pork Shoulder

Last Saturday I decided that a grocery trip had to be taken, and that I would make a pork shoulder, which would feed me for the rest of the week. First, my plan went, I would go to my handy Shop-Rite in south Philly to buy some essentials before going to Whole Foods for the meat. Once at Shop-Rite I had a moment where I seriously considered buying the 8 pound pork shoulder for $8 before remembering Barbara Kingsolver and her husband's well written arguments against factory farming and ended up sticking to essentials (canned olives, for example, are essential in my life). When I got to Whole Foods I asked for a 8 pound shoulder and learned that the cost of my conscience would be nearly $25, so I went with a smaller size, which only cost my conscience $15....either way, man, that's way more money that the factory. I then made one of the most tasty of pork shoulders yet. I made a sauce of cherry tomatoes, cider vinegar, brown sugar, garlic, cumin, coriander, mushrooms and a few other things (salt and pepper among them), smothered the shoulder in said sauce (after stabbing it all over and poking fresh rosemary in those gaping wounds) and then cooked the beast for six hours. Three hours in I plopped a good number of roughly chopped mushrooms into the sauce that pooled at the bottom of the dutch oven.
I also sliced some thin potatoes and mixed them with olive oil, half a red onion, half a green pepper, a few cherry tomatoes and about 1/4th of a cup of grated Mt Vikos Kasseri cheese ($18.99 a pound at whole foods, but I found a little remnant pece for $3), olive oil, salt and ground pepper. Baked that up as well. I'm not going to lie, I didn't time the potatoes right and they turned out not to be entirely cooked when I was ready to eat them, but they look good. S., my roommate, also made potatoes at the same time so that, at one point, our oven had two pyrex dishes of potatoes cooking within it...I commented that it was like a potato show down, which made S. laugh...except that, in the end, his potatoes won (I tried them, they were better than mine, sigh).
While my potatoes may have been an epic potato FAIL, the pork and mushrooms were really, really good. S. could back me up on this, if I let him know I had a blog and asked him to comment, which I have not. So, for dinner I had my not perfect potatoes, my sublime pork and some of the salad S. had prepared to go with his own potatoes. Seriously, the mushrooms soaked up all the flavors of the sauce in this marvelous way, and the rosemary distributed throughout the, admittedly small, shoulder really embedded itself into the meat (embedded is not the right word, nor is embraced, but it starts with 'em' and I can't think of it at the moment) in a way that informed the sauce, which had not a singular rosemary note. Success! Raging success! It's a shame I don't measure out these things I do so that I can exactly replicate them, but I know the basic principles for success and that must count for something. Right?
And it's true, the pork fed me through today. While it wasn't as large a cut, which meant that I didn't turn any of it into my version of pulled pork, it did have a better texture and consistency. Pork shoulder, by its very nature, is a fatty piece of the pig but, compared to what I would have bought at Shop-Rite, the Whole Foods cut was pretty lean. The leanness translated into more actual eating without compromising the whole point of slow cooking the thing (to let the fat soak into the meat for extra tender tastiness).

Late Night Snackaroo

Last Wednesday I returned home from work and S. asked me if I wanted to have a beer. I said yes. That one beer started an evening that went far into the night and ended with many, many more beers...and a rotating cast of deck-characters. First, Ak and L. came over...then Ak's new roommate stopped by...then our next door neighbors swung by. I created a small plate of what had lying around in an effort to curb our silliness. The plate included hard salami, provolone cheese, cucumbers and sliced tomato. And cheese.
I served it like this.

Corn Salad c/o Myself

At some point last week, or the week before that? Last week, probably. I boiled up the remaining corn from our barbeque (having suffered long and hard in my vegetable drawer) and added chopped red onion, one green pepper and one red pepper. To that I added salt and the juice of one lime. Simple as simple can be, and exceptionally palate pleasing.

Poached Eggs, Hash Browns and Sausage Patties c/o Blue Plate

Before getting on the road in earnest I stopped at the Blue Plate Diner for breakfast. I ordered two poached eggs with hash browns, sausage patties and toast. They didn't have the option of sausage links, but these patties were actually better than most. The whole thing was cheap and delicious and I was glad that I stopped.