Who needs cake?

In celebration of Matt's birthday yesterday I made birthday bread instead of cake. I suppose it's marginally healthier with no sugar and only 30g of butter but he isn't a big sweets and cake fan anyway.

Birthday bread consisted of jalapeno pesto (jalapenos, parsley, almonds, olive oil) and cheddar cheese swirled and spiraled into bread. It looked prettier in my mind than it did in reality but it still tasted amazing. Next time I need to make a chunkier pesto so it isn't so wet and more jalapenos! The pesto did make for a better distribution than just cut up jalapenos though.

It has been (and will be for the next month) pretty busy round here with various trips but I'll catch up with life and stop posting food pictures when I can!!

Mmmmm, Food...

I haven't posted any recipes recently so I thought I'd just do a picture gallery of a few of the recent(ish) things I've made (in no particular order). If you want to know more then let me know!

Chocolate hazelnut tart, cranberry and stilton bread and meringue

Jalapeño and cheddar bread

Leek, potato and stilton pie with homemade rough puff pastry

White chocolate and raspberry bread - doesn't look the best but tasted amazing

Fresh sea urchin from Fin - yum!

Profiteroles with maple syrup cream inside

My first gingerbread house (i didn't bake the g-bread though)

Fruit bread with lemon icing and a walnut plaited loaf

Tiramisu cookies

My first Christmas cake

Christmas pudding

Three of the 13 eggplants we grew on the balcony

Apple and cheddar stuffed bread

Hot cross buns for Easter

Rhubarb crumble with foraged wild rhubarb and fried dandelion flowers

I have two loaves of foccacia rising right now - made with my new KitchenAid stand mixer. I hope they taste as good as these did!

Weather Forecasts

I read an interesting article on the BBC website today about the history of weather forecasting on the BBC and I thought some of you out there in blog land might enjoy it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25665340

Exciting Times...

It's been a very busy December, with one rather large surprise that came my way on Friday 13th December.

I was returning from a big conference in San Francisco on the 13th December. I was pretty excited to be headed home for a couple of days before going back to England for Christmas, plus I had gotten upgraded on my flight from Chicago to Albany. It was only a 90 minute flight but I'll take being slightly more comfortable and free wine.

Matt picked me up at the airport and we headed home. As we got to our front door he told me to shut my eyes. This might sound bad but my first thought was "I wonder what he has broken inside"! This is what I was greeted with once I got inside and opened my eyes..

Quite the surprise!

It's official, we're engaged!

Just after the proposal - I wasn't looking my best after flying all day but who cares!

It turns out it's really not easy to take good pictures of a ring - here is a close up of the ring on my parents Christmas tree - it's a sapphire, in a white gold setting with three diamonds inlaid on each side. It's beautiful.

My beautiful ring

Friday 13th wasn't unlucky for us - we're getting married!!

Overlook Mountain

Minimal words needed… we went down to Woodstock, NY for the day and hiked up Overlook Mountain. It was a beautiful sunny day and very busy, but fun none the less. It was an easy hike up to a fire tower and old abandoned hotel.

Norman Rockwell and Lake George

1) Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA

My parents and I went to Western Massachusetts for the day, which is easy to do from here. Shopping at the outlets in the morning followed by a trip to the Norman Rockwell museum in the afternoon. We had been to an exhibition before (I can't remember where) so it was quite nice to see a lot of the original paintings that even I recognized. As an extra bonus, they had a Disney Snow White exhibition which was great (you couldn't take pictures though) as there were a lot of the original sketches with notes and corrections - they were very particular about getting things right!

Autumn in the Berkshires

A Rockwell painting of Historic Stockbridge - where we stopped for hot chocolate!

2) Lake George Boat Ride

We spent a beautiful Autumn day on a boat ride in Lake George. The boat headed North from Lake George Village but didn't quite make it as far as Hague (where I did my swim) before turning around. It was nice to just sit on the boat (although the piano playing singer was slightly irritating), enjoy the sun and see all the lovely houses on the shore of Lake George. The road is slightly off the shore for the most part so you don't get the great view that you do on the Lake. I did get a little sun burnt though, I should know better.

Lake George

Islands in the Sun

Testing out the Macro!

Mohonk Mountain House in the Summer

In September, after I got back from Nebraska my parents came to visit. We decided it would be fun to go down to the Catskills and have brunch at the Mohonk Mountain House again (see the post from February here). Lots of pictures coming up.

We spent the morning walking around the gardens. They had a crayon theme so each zone was made up of all kinds of flowers with the same colors. We also spent quite a long time watching (and trying to photograph) all the hummingbirds flying around! Quite different to the winter.

Crayons in the garden

Hummingbird in action

After the gardens we head up along the Eagle cliff trail above the house and along the lake. It was nice and quiet up there as most people were walking along the trail on the other side of the lake up to the tower. It was such nice weather and views it was a perfect day to be outside.

The lake

We then headed in for brunch, which was great. I tried not to eat too much but the breakfast food and deserts were so delicious! Post food, we headed up to the tower. My parents walked up the trail and Matt and I went through the "labyrinth". It was closed when we were there in February (now we know why) so we wanted to try it. It was described as a rock scramble with bridges and ladders to get up to the tower. They weren't wrong. There was lots of climbing over and under rocks, jumping and squeezing through and between boulders. It was fun!

Starting the trail

Sometimes it was easier to just jump!

Follow the arrows

One of the many ladders

After the first section you could climb some stairs up to the trail or continue on to "the crevice". We of course decided to carry on not knowing that the hardest part was to come. It was hard to photograph as it really was a tight squeeze but it consisted on squeezing through a crevice, shimmy-ing vertically upward and then climbing up a vertical (but slightly leaning left) very narrow ladder. I enjoyed it and we both made it through without any bumps and scrapes!

This was the hardest climb!

If you look closely you can see the ladder about 2/3rds up

We met my parents at the top (they had already been up the tower) as the scramble path was pretty slow going. It was worth the beautiful view from the top and of the mountain house on the way back down.

Once down, we headed to the Barn museum which was filled with old artifacts from the house. Lots of old carriages and furniture that had all been used at the house through the years. It was actually quite interesting.

Old signs in the museum

That was followed by tea and cookies. A cold drink would have been better as it was warm out but we went with tradition and had some nice herbal tea before driving back up to Albany. I am so glad we got to visit the house in the summer as well as the winter, both were beautiful in their own way.