Football!

GreenBay vs Giants

It's football time at the manor and there is no bigger game at our house than Green Bay vs Giants.  I have been a Green Bay fan since forever.  My Dear Honey has been a Giants fan since forever.  When our two teams match up on the field it is football time - everything else stops.

For such an excellent game, we needed some excellent snacks so I raided the pantry and came up with some classic football fare - chicken fingers, stuffed potato skins and sausage & olive cheesy biscuits.  

Tonight I wanted to share the stuffed potato skins with you.

You'll need 3 baked potatoes cut lengthwise in quarters, 1 tablespoon butter, 2 links of sausage, 12 slices of a good sharp cheddar cheese, some salt and pepper.

Slice open the casing on the sausages.

Remove the casing and brown the sausage in a frying pan.

As it browns, break it into smaller pieces to crumble it up.

Scoop out most of the potato from the quartered baked potato and toss it in a bowl.

Add a tablespoon of butter.

Mash it up with a fork.

Add in the cooked and crumbled sausages.

Lay out your potato skins on a baking tray.

Spoon the potato and sausage mixture on top of the skins and sprinkle them with salt and pepper.

Cut 12 slices of cheddar cheese about 1/8-inch thick.

Top them with the cheddar cheese slices.

Broil until the the cheese is nicely melted.

My Dear Honey seemed to really enjoy the potato skins, but then he really enjoyed the evening.  His team won.  yay.

We'll get them next time.  In the meantime - Go Pack!!!

Snack Time Again

Fruit and cheese trays are so refreshing and delicious.  This one was the perfect balance to finish off the trilogy of snack trays from New Year's.

Since it was just me and my Dear Honey, I stuck with the things we both really enjoy.  

The cheeses would normally be something hard, something creamy and something stinky.  For the hard, I went with aged Asiago - nice and sharp.  The creamy was (of course) triple cream Brie.  Yummy!  And the compromise on the stinky was Jarlsberg.  

My honey loves blue cheese, but I am not a big fan - I probably just haven't had the right one!  We have an ongoing joke about asparagus because of this very thing.  We were vacationing with friends in the Outer Banks and trying to decide what to have for supper.  Our friend, a really great chef, wanted to know what I thought about asparagus.  We talked about all the ways to prepare it - grilled with balsamic and dipped in lemon butter is my favorite way to cook asparagus.

That evening, he proudly presented his grilled balsamic asparagus with lemon butter - at which point my Dear Honey told him that I don't like asparagus, even though I make it for him.  What!?  Well, I thought he was just talking about recipes and cooking!  It never dawned on me that he was actually planning a menu for the evening.  

Well, years have passed since that vacation and I have avoided asparagus ever since.  But.  A few weeks ago I was at a dinner and the dreaded vegetable was served.  There was no way to get out of it.  It would have to eat a full serving of asparagus.

It was blanched with a light balsamic vinaigrette.  There were 7 spears served to me.  The chef was awaiting my opinion... I tasted.  I chewed.  I swallowed.

I can honestly say it was the best asparagus I have ever had in my entire life.  It was a little crunchy and the dressing was perfectly balanced.  It was yummy!  I would eat it again (without being forced!).  I finally had asparagus that I liked.

I think the same thing will happen with blue cheese.  I just haven't found one I like yet - aside from the blue cheese dressing you eat with Buffalo wings, that is.

So back to the platter...

So there are the 3 cheeses - sort of balanced because Jarlsberg is kind of strong although not nearly as strong as a blue cheese.  And then there's the fruit.  I have red seedless grapes and oranges.

The grapes are sweet, crunchy and green to burgundy.  The oranges are acid, juicy and yellow orange.  So I would normally add a bright red (strawberry, not too juicy, moderately sweet this time of year) or a green (granny smith apple - tart, crisp, put some mint leaves around).  Since it was just us - I doubled up on what we liked a lot and left off the visual pop of color.

We really liked this fruit and cheese tray - and it was so super easy to put together.  It too only about 10 minutes of chopping.  Then I just left it out to let the cheese come up to temperature and it was perfect.

Sometimes simple is best.

Nature's Christmas Tree

The rain was coming down this morning.  By the time I got to the train station, it had let up and droplets were sparkling like diamonds on the branches of the trees and bushes - like nature's own Christmas tree lights.

You have to love Friday's, of course, because it means that tomorrow you can actually sleep until you want to get up.  Sometimes though, you only get to see beautiful things like this in the dark mornings of a cold and rainy winter day.

It reminds me to keep balance in my day and to cherish the little things.

Arf!

Our puppy got a puppy for Christmas. She named him Arf and they are inseparable.  

Our pup tries to teach Arf everything she knows.

• how to play ball - Arf can catch if you throw it right to him, but hasn't learned to throw it back.

• how to stay - Arf is really good at this, but no so good at come

• how to sit - Arf tries hard, but always falls down

The other morning, she took Arf over to the doggie door to get him to come outside with her.  She nudged the door with her nose and stood back to let Arf go ahead.  Arf didn't move an inch, so she showed him again.  Still, nothing from Arf.  

Finally, she started hopping in and out of the door in the hope that Arf would finally get it.  No such luck.

By this time, I was laughing so hard I was crying.  

She went outside for a few minutes and rushed back in and went straight up to Arf with her favorite football toy.  She dropped it at his feet.  "Arf!"  The ball hit Arf and rolled back to her.  

Success!!!!  He plays!!!!

She and Arf spent the next hour playing football while I watched, laughed and encouraged them both.  

Good boy, Arf!

Winter Flower Boxes

There are 20 flower boxes on the carriage house that need filling each season, so I'm always on the lookout for inspiration.  Luckily my walk to the office takes me past several apartment buildings where there are often great seasonal displays compliments of the great floral designers in Manhattan.

This particular building has both the large sidewalk planters as well as the smaller window boxes all decked out.  The thing I like about them is that they keep the year-round evergreen perennial bushes and just highlight the season's change with a simple addition of red berries, pinecones and a few fresh pine tree branches (to cover up where the pansies will go in spring).

The window box version doesn't have any bushes - it's way too small for that - so they add more pine branches and use bigger pinecones to tie the whole thing together.

We certainly have pine branches and pinecones growing on the property that we can use to decorate the window boxes, but we don't have any berry bushes that grow large enough berries to use in displays.  We have smaller red berries and holly bushes, but if I took those for decorating it would really cut down on the winter food supply for the birds.

Maybe this spring I'll find a pyracantha, callicarpa bodinieri or a nice viburnum that wants to come home with me.  I'll have to see which species fits with the history of the manor.  And we'll need to know if it would be a healthful additional to the food supply for all of the critters that eat everything we plant.

Plus, it will take a few years for it to get established enough to be able to harvest any berries for decoration.  And I'll have to learn how to prune it - which I always think of as amputating the limbs off of the plant.  I know, it's good for the plant and helps it grow strong.  But it still makes me cringe.  A lot.

At least if we grow the plants here, they won't be imprisoned...

I ask you - what could these plants have possibly done to deserve a life behind bars?

Which Came First?

These are the chickens that lay my eggs.  Well, my eggs and other folks' eggs - I don't eat all of the eggs and they're not my chickens.  They are Sophie and Craig's chickens - a local farm.

On Saturday when I arrived 15 minutes after the market opened there were no more eggs to be had.  They were sold out.  Why!?

The thing about chickens is that they don't consistently lay eggs at the same rate every single day of the year.  Apparently in the winter, their egg production slows down.  Which means there are not as many eggs to go around.   I just learned that this past weekend.  

Who knew!?  Aside from Sophie and Craig, of course.

Sure, I could have gone to the grocery store and bought some eggs that came from - well, who really knows where they came from or how long they'd been sitting there.  But I didn't do that.

I know these chickens.  I know the farmers who raise these chickens and the children who play with them.  These are nice clean healthy chickens and they eat good organic food and get to run around outside all day - if they want to - or stay inside all day - if they want to.  

Besides, they're really pretty chickens and their eggs come is all sorts of colors.  Opening up a carton of their eggs is having Easter all year long.

Their eggs make me happy.

I feel like the father in 'A Christmas Story' whose Thanksgiving turkey was eaten by the neighbors dogs.  No breakfast omelets, no pumpkin bread, no cakes, no meatloaf, no egg salad sandwiches!  

I plan to be 5 minutes early this Saturday.

I Can't Believe I Never Noticed That

This Monday started out like any other Monday.  Rush - rush - rush!  Grab everything, take care of the dog, warm up the truck, run back in and grab what I forgot to grab the first time, hop in the truck and get to the train on time.  Whew!

Mondays are the most hurried day of the week for me.  The ride to work is spent - well, working.  Once I get in, there are back-to-back appointments all day long.  It's a push to get out of the office on time, to get to the bus, to get to the train on time.  To get some work done one the train so when I get home I can spend a little time with my Dear Honey and pup before I go and do some more work and be ready for Tuesday.  Whew!

Preparation and focus are key.

So I was walking down Broadway like I do everyday.  Texting.  Thinking about what I needed to get done tonight.  And I glanced over at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Devine like I do everyday.  Replying to email.  Thinking about what was coming up for tomorrow.

And I stopped.  What the???  Is there really a pyramid on top of the cathedral?  Seriously?

Yup.

Maybe in this year of 2012 Mayan doomsday my mind has been thinking about the Mayan culture and their stepped pyramids, so this time when I glanced at the rose window my eyes moved upwards to pause on the pyramid?

Pyramids...masons...church...Illuminati...conspiracy...Nicolas Cage!  A mystery - I love it!  Well, curiosity got the better of me on this so I had to look it up.  I know that the cathedral has been under construction since 1892.  Was a pyramid really part of the final design?

Nope.  Apparently it is the unfinished gable end of the nave roof.  So there you have it.  No Illuminati/Mayan conspiracy here.  Just a house under construction.

*That's* something I can relate to!  Now where did I put my blackberry...