Hey look! A mother in law in a lobster pot!

Remember when I claimed I was back?  Well, that was a lie.  After a few visitors (one pictured above), I promptly left town again for two weeks. I’m planning to sort through the 700+ photos for a few travel related posts, coming soon!

I am done with school for the semester and feeling proud of my work so far this year.  I spent the past few days in New York visiting friends, which was wonderful and delicious and inspiring.  Several things about it also made me appreciate my home all the more.  (Witnessing public urination and a fight in the street were among them.)  I deeply love visiting though.

Whenever I have a day with no plans, I tend to feel useless and detached.  I need a schedule to keep me focused, which is one reason I can’t wait to be a working person.  When I’m busy, I make long lists of  things I’d like to do/see/cook when I eventually have the time, but when I get that time, I get lazy and bored.  I’m working on this.

Since yesterday (the true start of my vacation), I started writing for myself again.  I also made a delicious risotto and caught up on some tv shows.  Today I am hoping to be a bit more ambitious.  One thing detracting from this mission is the amazing Humans of New York blog.  It’s pure magic.  Check it out.

With my free time, I’ve decided to try cooking some lighter dinners for Brian to see if he complains.  Tonight will feature a pancetta and leek quiche and some lightly dressed arugula.  Okay- I’m off to run errands and do laundry and clean the apartment.  Or maybe instead, I’ll just watch tv…  : )

Busy with school work.  Currently working on a draft of my thesis proposal, then presentations, finals, etc. etc.  Be back soon, I hope!

Cooking

• Make at least 3 2 1 new kinds of popsicles in my Zuko (Strawberry Banana Yogurt Popsicle, Cranberry Orange Popsicle)
• Make breads from scratch: challah, ciabatta, bagels
• Make creme brulee from scratch (attempted recently but I can’t get my torch to work yet!)
• Make mayonnaise from scratch
• Make key lime pie from scratch
• Make a loaded cheesecake from scratch (with candy of some sort)
• Make veggie paella from scratch (and finally use my saffron)
• Make at least 3 kinds of macarons from scratch
• Learn how to hard boil and soft boil eggs perfectly (Learned to poach perfectly!  Does that count?)
• Make Christmas cookies to swap this year (I did make the Yule Log this year.)
• Keep buying lots of fresh fruit and vegetables (Used Boston Organics for a while.)

Relationships

• Finish all of the wedding thank you notes
• Send birthday cards to family members on birthdays/holidays (Sort of a fail.  I always call though!)
• Attend at least 3 2 1 foodie/blogger/Yelp/Meet-Up events (Yelpers at Storyville. Boston Brunchers at Baker’s Best.)
• Find a special way to make this first year of marriage totally awesome! (If not totally awesome, definitely pretty great.)

Health/Beauty

• Run a 5k (In training!)
• Lose 25 pounds
• Figure out how to embrace my naturally wavy hair so that it looks nice day-to-day (I tried…)

Miscellaneous

• Go Camping (Went camping in Bear Brook Park, NH)
  
• Go Kayaking (Tried on the cruise but it got cancelled.)
• Go to at least 3 festivals (1. MoS Let’s Talk About Food Festival, 2. ArtBeat Festival, 3. St. Patrick’s Day Festivities in Davis)
• Try for all A’s my first semester of grad school.
• Take lots of pictures
• Combine all of my blogs
  

We had no phones or internet, which was pretty great and I did my best to avoid thinking about school and anything else stressful.  I finished a sort of strange book, played a lot of bingo, and ate some nice meals.  The stage shows were awful and the service was excellent.  Several of our excursions were cancelled due to rain, but the replacements weren’t half bad.

However, as with our last cruise, the traveler in me was a bit disappointed.  I knew I would only have a short time at each port, so I was prepared for the fact that I wouldn’t truly get to experience Honduras or Belize, but this time was worse than I remembered.

Four year ago, the ports were silly and full of shopping, but we meandered right out of there and into a more rugged and real part of Jamaica.  This time, in several of the cities we were boxed into the perfect little shopping areas/fake beaches by security guards. In others we were too isolated from everything else to bother leaving.

We did do a fair amount of driving to get to our excursions, so at least we got to see a bit of something real from the bus windows.  Honduras was especially interesting and Belize was having an election that day so there were people dressed in red and blue all over the place.

Overall, I appreciated the relaxation and the amazing activities like seeing Mayan ruins, zip lining, and meeting a baby monkey.  In the future, I won’t take a cruise o a place that I really want to experience culturally and culinarily, but I would cruise again in the right circumstances.

You can find the rest of my cruise pictures and our full itinerary on Flickr.

I should have pictures from the cruise up in the next few days!

Update 3/14: This article is stirring up a fair amount of controversy regarding free meals and reviewer credibility.

(I'll be back next week with photos and updates!)

On Sunday I had the opportunity to attend my first Boston Brunchers event!  Apparently, it was a bit non-traditional.  Normally, there is a pretty typical brunch set-up where everyone orders a dish and eats it.

On Sunday, we got a special treat!  I and eleven of my fellow food bloggers visited Baker’s Best Catering, in Needham, MA. Not only did we get a tour of their gorgeous new kitchen, but we were treated to glorious bite-sized treats along the way and an over-the-top buffet at the end.

We were greeted by itty bitty tangy bloody mary shots with poached shrimp, pickled green beans, and a celery salt rim. These were the only item on the menu that I wasn’t a big fan of, mostly because I don’t enjoy shrimp.  I did, however, absolutely love every other bite sized “Eye Opener,” as the menu called these appetizers.

The tuna tartare in a miso sesame cup with sriracha aioli, wasabi greens, and soy pearls was complex and fantastic, but the “everything” bagel with gravlax, red onions, lemon pearls, creme fraiche, and frisee on a bagel chip was even better.  (It took me back to the bar mitzvah brunches of my youth…)  My favorite of all the bite-sized appetizers was the sweet potato corned beef hash in a maple brown sugar bacon cup. A bacon cup! I’m not even on the bacon bandwagon, but the perfectly balanced crispy, sweet, salty, smooth bite was unforgettable.  As if all of those items weren’t enough to get us started, there was a basket of warm, fresh-baked goodies on the table waiting for us.  Muffins and biscuits and scones- Oh my!

After the tour (and the many delicious bites), we got down to the true brunch business.  We started with an amuse bouche of a bite sized waffle sandwich with one tiny perfect quail egg, turkey sausage, tomato jelly, and a sliver of camembert.  Boy, did I feel fancy eating that!  I didn’t want to ruin this lovely dish by eating it, but I managed somehow.

Then, we moved on to the buffet!  There was enourmously thick challah french toast with the topping options of fresh berries, bananas foster, and cider maple syrup.  I had all three, but the caramel-y bananas foster was my favorite.

There were also three kinds of mini quiche (they were killing it with the mini food!), a blood orange salad, and beet ravioli.  The ravioli were definitely the dark horse of the menu- they turned out to be one of the most creative dishes of the day!  Delicate slices of beet sandwiched a creamy blue cheese filling.  I love beets and this dish really brought out the best of them, especially when they were paired with the light, punchy, citrus adorned salad.  Is your mouth watering yet?

So I guess this whole Baker’s Brunch thing was a good idea!  I hope I get to attend more events in the future and meet more awesome food bloggers!

Disclaimer: All food provided by Bakers Best was complimentary. This post reflects my personal opinions and I was not compensated in any way, aside from the delicious food!

I’d really like to start doing Meatless Mondays in our home.  I don’t think it would be terribly hard to do and I’ve been trying to make less of an impact with our food purchases lately.  This seems like another step in the right direction.  The big wrench in the plan is that I’m at school from 8am-8pm on Mondays, so this will have to start as a solo mission.  I can bring B into the fold over the summer, I suppose.  Our local Farmer’s Market opens in May and I can’t wait!

I constantly struggle to prepare food that is healthy, budget-friendly and earth-friendly, all with the limited time that life allows.  Some crazy weeks, I’m just happy if B and I can sit down to dinner together at home 3 nights a week- even if it’s Chinese take-out or hot dogs and Kraft mac and cheese.

Pinterest has a wealth of ideas on the subject.  Perhaps over my break in April I can put together a bunch of freezer meals…  Hey!  Have you seen my Pinterest page yet?  I’ve been using it to organize and bookmark all of my favorite recipes and, well, there are a lot of them!!  Check it out!

Despite this, I did have the chance to meet my darling new nephew this weekend. He is one and a half weeks old.

I think my photo taking/editing skills have improved a bit since the last nephew. (I am up to four at this point!)

I’m excited about this coming weekend because I’m taking part in my first Boston Brunchers event! I’m a little nervous about meeting a bunch of new people off the internet but they all love blogging and brunch, so there are good odds that they will be pretty cool! I’ll let you know how it goes!