Thanksgiving

There was no turkey. I'll put that out there right now! Seeing as I don't eat land meat cooking a whole turkey for one would have been a little ridiculous. We still had sooo much food though. The day started with a nice lie in and a trip to the gym (I'm still sore from bench presses). Then the cooking fest began.

trying to get into the northeast thanksgiving spirit we started with steamed clams in a white wine sauce with fresh french bread. This was my first time for clams that weren't in a sauce with linguine and they turned out really good but extremely filling.

The main course was where things got a little different. I had planned on making duck for Matt and tuna steak for me, but the local butcher didn't have any duck. I searched the Meat House (yes I went to somewhere called the Meat House) and found kangaroo steak. Marsupial it would be! We each had our steak with a pomegranate apple sauce, green and white asparagus, rainbow chard and mashed sweet potatoes with goats cheese. The tuna and sauce was delicious and the kangaroo got good reviews too. Why not try it if you can find it?!

It might not look like a lot of food, but we were stuffed and still had lots left over - in fact there are still mashed sweet potatoes in the fridge. We didn't even make the desert we had planned. That will be tonight hopefully.

On Saturday we braved the 60F and sunny weather to get a Christmas tree. Yes, I know it isn't (quite) December yet but firstly, everyone seems to get one the weekend after Thanksgiving and secondly, what with going to England at Christmas we wanted plenty of time to enjoy our tree! After considerable debate about size and type of tree we settled on a 6ft Fraser fir, which fit perfectly into my little car.

All the tree toppers we found just didn't cut it so we ended up with a peacock on top of our tree! The cat is enjoying the tree perhaps more than us, it is just so delicious and all that shiny tinsel and those baubles are perfect play size.

Now just to finish the Christmas shopping.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

I made my favourite muffins this weekend in honour of thanksgiving on Thursday - although they certainly won't last till then! These are the same ones I made for my defense for those of you lucky (?) enough to get one. I'm not a big fan of canned pumpkin but these are just so delicious.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (195 grams) all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup (200 grams) light brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup (180 ml) solid packed, canned pumpkin puree

1 cup (175 grams) semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C).

2) Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.
3) In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, ground spices, and salt.

4) In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract.

5) Alternately add the flour mixture and pumpkin puree, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.

6) Fold in the chocolate chips.

7) Fill the muffin cups evenly with the batter.

8) Bake for about 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of one muffin comes out clean.

9) Try not to eat them all right out of the oven!!

 

Hondas and Hawks

First piece of news from a couple of weekends ago... I bought a car!! Hurrah, I've finally entered the 21st century. With the cold weather and the dark evenings, it was getting quite unpleasant to ride my bike, although I do feel a little guilty that I'm driving instead of biking. Anyway, I got a 2010 Honda fit. It is only 2 years old with 12400 miles so lets call it nearly new. It has been great so far, despite the ridiculous drama getting cashiers checks from the bank to pay the down payment!

No shoes!

So, this weekend we went up to Saratoga Springs which is about 30 miles north of Albany. For the first time Matt didn't have to drive!! There a is great main street with lots of local shops (and some not so local - hello Eddie Bauer shop with 25 % off whole store) so some Christmas shopping was done. A nice beer and appetizers at Irish Times was followed by a stroll through the park.

This is where things got interesting. Matt spots a huge bird swooping down across the park and flying to a tree with something in its feet. At this point, all the squirrels were frantically squealing but no one else seemed to be paying attention. Being the amateur ornithologist Matt is, we tip toed over to the tree to get a closer look. It was a red tailed hawk having a delicious evening snack of a chipmunk. It was completely oblivious to us right below it. Okay so it was kind of gross watching it rip up the chipmunk but we watched for a while. It even dropped a little bit which we took home for the cat to play with (yuck)!!


Not the best picture as it was getting dark, but this guy (or girl) was big!

 

Chipmunk tail for the cat :-)

Bennington, VT

This past Sunday we decided to get out of the house and go somewhere new. Bennington, Vermont is less than an hour northeast of here so we figured, why not! It was a nice drive, even without most of the leaves on the trees! And for the first time we drove across the Hudson in Albany.

 Stop one was downtown where we got maple walnut and rum truffles from the little chocolate shop and followed it up with lunch at the local brewery. The beer was delicious and so was the food. I had a veggie burger, which may sound boring, but it had tabbouleh and hummus on it which just tasted so good! Matt said his sauerkraut with the brats he got was the best he had ever had, so not too shabby.

It was pretty quiet downtown and a lot of things were shut, party because it's not tourist season anymore and because it was Sunday so we went over to the Bennington monument. The giant obelisk seems so out of place in this little town surrounded by the green mountains! It was erected to commemorate the battle of Bennington in 1777 where they beat the British. The best part was it covered in lady birds!

We ventured East out of town and stopped where the Long/Appalachian trial crossed over the road. We followed the trail a little, but we weren't really planning on a full hike - but we will definitely be back next summer.

Saturday was fun too - should have a post about that adventure soon.

Snowtober: Denver vs Albany

The past two weeks have consisted of work and snow. I went to the WCRP open science conference in Denver last week which was great in numerous ways. Not only did I get to speak to a lot of work people and get some great ideas for my current research (and my previous research actually) but I saw a lot of people that I hadn't seen in a very long time (including my undergraduate dissertation advisor). It also reminder me of how much I missed Colorado. Sunday and Monday were beautiful clear blue skies and 80F days. Tuesday and Wednesday it snowed! Here are the pre and post snow pictures of the state capital building that I had a great view of from my 21st floor hotel room:

I was fortunate to leave Denver on Friday - post Denver snow and pre northeast snow. The first snow for Albany was actually on the Thursday but the "big" storm (big for October) was overnight Saturday into Sunday. We got about 4 inches of snow and were lucky not to lose any power (unlike so many people in the NE). It was the most snow the Matt had seen (apart from a ski trip to Colorado)! We took the cat in the snow and I think she quite liked it - she definitely enjoyed watching it fall from the window. It hadn't been snowing too long when we took these pictures on Saturday:

We had a nice walk to the diner on Sunday for brunch (the roads were fine to drive but it was fun to walk). I had pancakes with nutella and bananas and it was so good. On Monday I came home to a lovely surprise package (thanks parents) and a cat who was just hanging out with her tongue out. All in all, a great two weeks of work and snow!!