A Few of My Favorite Things...

A few weeks ago I finally took a trip to the Peabody Essex Museum with two great girlfriends and the leisure of an unplanned day! I wish I could say that I've been striving to make museum-going part of my regular routine, but I am shamefully off the circuit for such educational pasttimes! But the novelty of it all really amplified the experience for me, I think - it's been a while since I took a radio-guided tour of an exhibit! We walked through the transplanted Yin Yu Tang merchant's home from the Qing dynasty and entertained ourselves for at least three hours, wandering through its pocketed rooms. I was pleasantly surprised by the layout of the building itself, with an open-air courtyard in the center to catch and collect rain-water and light, with very few windows on the outside walls of the home. Definitely worth the trip!

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There's nothing like taking a trip up north and watching people harvest their own food to recognize how self-sufficient you aren't. My friends in Vermont are actually tapping, boiling, filtering, and bottling their own syrup from three hardy trees in the back yard and have something like five gallons a day coming through right now! This shot was taken at a neighboring syrup farm where vials of syrup from each "harvest" was taken and preserved over the years (some of these date back 30-40 years!) to compare their color. Depending on the time of the season, outside consditions, nutrient level of the trees, etc., the syrups can range from light to dark (or, "fancy" to "dark amber"). Really cool to watch how it's done, but wow... that's a lot of work!

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Despite the cold, it's also been another giant season of birthdays and those depicted here span October to March, and the concoction of many a novelty cake! The first is an enormous single cupcake, done by Lynn for Jason's father's birthday, and the second cake is the Espresso Chiffon Cake with Fudge Frosting picked up from the Smitten Kitchen's adaptation of Alisa Huntsman's Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes cookbook. We also enjoyed a genuine Viennese chocolate cake (an authentic gift from Austrian friends) and others to celebrate some benchmark anniversaries.

I myself have always been more a fan of fruit pies and chocolate mousse than cookies and cakes, but birthday's reliably scream for cake and candles are getting so fun these days, that how can you resist?

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Does anyone else feel like they're a couple of seasons behind? I definitely do, so here's a shot from the fall in Connecticut of apple picking season! Actually, a really fun day to look back on - one of the first times I'd hung out with my new sister-in-law without the guys. I am still eating apples - not this batch, of course - in the chilly rain, waiting for spring...

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