good saturday

Yesterday was a pretty perfect day. Much of it was spent in our very own neighborhood, Charles Village.

It began with us rising early to go to a neighborhood breakfast place we've heard is really good called Pete's Grille. It's 3 blocks down the street and every time we go past it, there is usually a line out the door. The place itself only has a counter with about 15 seats, which makes it cozy, and since we got up early, we didn't have to wait. I got chocolate chip pancakes and bacon and Tim got a western omelette with home fries. Apparently, the swimmer Michael Phelps used to load up on food before a big competition at Pete's Grille. Anyway, it's a nice little dive with good prices and good food.

When we finished breakfast, we walked a block toward our apartment and stopped at the Waverly Farmer's Market, where we bought some lovely pansies to plant on our balcony.

After walking two blocks back home, we dropped the flowers off and departed to another neighborhood spot, The Book Thing, which is a warehouse full of free books. We had one of the best book-picking days there; we even needed a box to carry them all home.

And to put to rest any suspicions (if you're looking closely enough at these books), no, we are not expecting a baby; it's just fun to read about!

To finish the day off, we went to hit some golf balls at the driving range and stopped on the way home at a baseball diamond to hit and field some balls.

I love that so much fun (minus the driving range sadly) can be had in our little neighborhood.

adventures in moonshine-making

Tim started making beer before he was legally old enough to drink. Ever since he graduated college, though, the beer-making has come to a halt. On a whim a month ago in upstate NY, he stopped at a beer-making supplies store and bought the requisite ingredients for an Irish red ale. He mixed the ingredients on the stove with water, put it in a big concrete bucket to ferment for a couple weeks, and bottled it up this past Wednesday. After sitting in the dark in bottles for a week, it will be ready to drink. Actually, he'll have to wait until Easter to drink it because we both gave up all drinks besides tap water for Lent.

Anyway, the hardest part of this process was collecting enough bottles for the amount of beer he made. We had about 4 around the house, which clearly was not enough. A co-worker collected some for me from a party she attended. And the best part is that Tim went out on Wednesday night (the night before recycling is picked up in our neighborhood) and scavenged for the remaining 30 or so non-twist off bottles needed. He probably looked pretty creepy rummaging in the alleys through people's stuff, but he succeeded! He, of course, sterilized all the bottles with bleach, so it's not that gross (although, yes, I think it is a little gross, too).

Here are some photos of the process:

before going out to collect bottles from other people's recycling bins...

part of his loot. look how proud he looks.

sterilizing the bottles

draining the beer into another bucket to get rid of the dead yeast on the bottom

sealion is interested

the finished product

whole foods isn't that expensive

I love reading boring things like about how people grocery shop, so here's my contribution to the genre. ahaha.

Tim and I went to Whole Foods the other night to grocery shop. We had never been before because we thought it was really expensive. However, we were pleasantly surprised. Armed with a few coupons in hand, we only spent $60 for a lot of stuff (much of which was organic, which is nice) that will get us through the next 2 weeks (eating things like burritos, stir fry, caesar salad, barley and sausage soup, mashed cauliflower and pasta fagioli). Although some things like cheese and tomatoes were really expensive there, milk, beans, cereal, olive oil and greek yogurt were really affordable.

The atmosphere is also nice because it seems more calm than the average grocery store. In a regular grocery store, I feel frantic and rushed and just want to get out asap. But in Whole Foods, we took our time and read the ingredients and all.

Another nice thing about Whole Foods is that they have a lot of loose foods (is that what you call them?) that you can buy by the pound like barley, quinoa, lentils, nuts, etc.

Anyway, sorry to bore those few of you who read, but I'm just happy to find another grocery store we love as much as Wegmans!

sunburned

'Twas the exciting first-sunburn-of-the-season day today. We spent some hours out in the sun playing tennis with some friends. Three weekends in a row of tennis-worthy weather=happiness and good exercise.

weary from work

My job is often emotionally distressing and I've been feeling a bit burned out as of late. To combat these blues, Tim and I are planning a short get-away in April to Chincoteague Island, Virginia. We've never been there before, but it's apparently beautiful and quiet and has wild ponies and the ocean.

We're staying as Miss Molly's Inn, which has bikes we can use to ride around the island, which is swell.

We plan to relax, enjoy the scenery and not think about work!

This is the porch at the Inn where we can rock and watch the water.

croutons

I've discovered how to make croutons. I had never really thought about making them myself because I figured it was too hard and buying them in a bag is easy. But a caesar salad is so much better with homemade croutons, especially when the croutons end up a tiny bit on the soft side so they soak up the dressing.

All you do is cut a french baguette into cubes, melt a few tablespoons of butter in a pan to which you mix in one tsp each of garlic powder, paprika and pepper, and add the cubes of bread to butter/seasoning mixture, stirring until they get brown and to the right amount of crispiness (or anti-crispiness as I like it). Set them aside to cool and add them to your salad.

I've also discovered a recipe for making caesar dressing, and it's so good. You can't buy a dressing that tastes as good as this recipe in a store. Find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/caesar-salad-dressing-recipe/index.html

Needless to say we've been having a lot of caesar salad lately and I still haven't gotten tired of it.