The Apple Orchard

This is just a quickie to show yous how we made out at a local apple orchard today. We got up early so we could have breakfast at this little diner we discovered last year when we were too early and the orchard wasn't open yet. The food was fabulous that visit.. I had a belgium waffle that was about 5 inches of fluffiness, my eggs were cooked perfectly (no slime!) and their homemade breakfast sausage links were better than any I had had before. Hubbs' breakfast was equally as good - although I can't quite remember what he had other than their homemade latkes, which he loved. This year, however, the diner is under new management and that's a crying shame. My eggs were cooking in that fake butter/oil stuff - so they had a very chemically taste to them (and there was slime to boot! ugh!) they don't have the previous owner's sausage and the waffle was uhmm.. 3 burnt pancakes. It seems our lil waitress "forgot" to tell me that the waffle iron was on the fritz so she just subbed pancakes, because "what's the difference?" Yeah. Hubbs ordered an scramble that included eggs (plus their shells.. bonus!) dried out corned beef and something that was suppose to be melted cheese but well.. it looked kinda like.. uhhh.. a body fluid. Needless to say, we both sent back our food, paid for our drinks and left. We ended up across the street at the local Dunkin' Donuts for coffee and a danish. Woo. But, thankfully, the horrible start of the day did not continue on with us. The orchard was busy but not so packed that we felt we had to rush. We tasted a bunch of different varieties and both chose a small bag of an eating apple - he got Macouns and I got Honeygolds. I also bought a 1/2 peck of Jonagolds to bake with. Two other fabulous finds were more Italian plums and some beautiful looking (and tasting!) Concord grapes.. I have plans for those grapes.. thanks to Ilva. ;) After the orchard we stopped in at a new grocery store in a little town we travelled through and picked up a few items and some delicious artisan bread.. oh yeah baby. The rest of the day was/is quiet and relaxing.. he's out fishing and I'm, well.. I'm on here boring the crap outta yas about my apple excursion. hee! Oh well.. at least we'll have a post or two comin' up using some of those apples and those grapes! Hope everyone is having a great weekend =) xoxo

I managed to get out of this house yesterday. It was probably a not so smart thing to do, but my back was starting to really kill me from all the laying and half-sitting with my feet up for close to 10 days straight. My friend Mindy and I were talking about taking a small shopping trip and we had scheduled it for yesterday. I had cancelled it the Friday before.. but ended up calling her Saturday night to see if she still had the day open. Thank gawd she did. Although I paid for it last night (I was miserable) I think I would have went insane had I spent one more day in this house. Today I am going to work, whether I feel like it or not (and no, I do not feel like it - at all), as we have not won the lottery (news flash!) and the bills are piling up due to my taking a week off, unpaid. Unfortunately (fortunately?) there was no way I was going to be able to do much walking without trying to ease the pain first, so since I wasn't driving, I took my pain meds before I went. Advice? Don't go shopping on a Sunday during the hours that local churches let out. If you must go at these times, DO NOT attempt this while higher than a kite. Mindy loves the Trader Joe's, which shocked me, as I had never heard of it before starting to read these food blogs. So hearing a close friend who I've known for many, many years say she loves it, well, I was kinda blown away. How did she know about it all these years and I didn't? hehe Some of you might remember, Hubbs and I took a trip there a few months ago and I wasn't really all that impressed at all. I kinda chalked it up to the possibility that our local Trader Joe's was pretty small with not that great of a selection of things not found in my regular grocery store. But after Mindy talked it up so much I thought maybe it was because we pretty much breezed in and out and I didn't look hard enough.. so I agreed to go. Eh? Same opinion for me. She's been going for a while, so she's tried more Trader Joe brand products and she knows what's good and what's not. I ended up only purchasing a few items (honey, a block of some cheese I'd never heard of, gelato and a locally grown organic sour cream). Thankfully she had a long list of items she needed because it took me close to an hour to decide on those 4 items while living the highly hazy life of a pseudo-crack addict. The only thing I tried last night was the gelato and lemme tell you this.. I am kicking myself in the ass for choosing Trader Joe brand for my first taste of gelato. What a fool I am. This stuff was not creamy in the least and tasted more like ice milk. I know right now my tasters are way off due to the drugs I'm on and I haven't ate much of anything in 10 days because nothing at all sounds good, but seriously.. I doubt using my illness as an excuse is the true reason why it tasted like crap. blechhh. We still had some time to kill so I asked her if she wanted to witness the glory of Miles Farm Market and she did. So off we went. Now get this. Miles wasn't even fun to me. I was too disoriented to make a list in my mind of what I'd like to purchase, let alone battle all the little old ladies and little old men. They were pushing me! I about put one lil old man in a head lock but I couldn't figure out how to get my arm back around his neck as the thought was so fleeting.. you see, before I could figure out how to do some serious damage to this 90 year old devil-man, I had spotted olives. Oh! Olives! So I went to the olive table and then stood there because I was bedazzled at the selection. Kids? Their selection is pretty damn good, but I've never had a problem figuring out how to spoon a few of each variety into a lil plastic tub before. The rest of the time spent there was pretty much the same thing. I did find out, however, that my most favorite Italian bread is only made seeded there and I can no longer have seeds. Again, if I could think straight I should have still bought a couple loaves (I don't get out there that often) and just pulled the seeded top off of the slices. I'm such a loon. I purchased a few fruits/vegetables and a bar of Sharffen Berger Mocha chocolate. That was it for me.. oh, and the olives that Mindy helped me find a lid for and placed in our cart. You'd think this would be enough of an adventure for this high lil dork, but noooo.. on the way home she asked me where it was that I got my good italian meats and I squealed "Alesci's"! and then I wouldn't shut up about their proscuitto - so she took me there as well. I kinda stood near the walls while she investigated the store. I got my ham and a loaf of their "so-so" italian and then said to her that I really thought it would be wise for me to get my ass home. hehe Hubbs was still packing up the truck for his trip to Arkansas and I did my best to act upset that he was leaving, but in all honesty? All I could focus on was a hot bath and napping. Poor guy. I'm so grateful he understood the state I was in and didn't take it personally. Because I am truly upset he's gone again. Did someone mention a hot bath? To not repeat yesterday's haze, I've decided to not take pain meds today so I can be semi-productive at work. A hot bath seems to be the only other temporary fix. So without further ado.. Calgon! Take me away!

Market Day!

So we took a break from the fence on Saturday to go to the West Side Market - as we were driving there, we realized that we've never been there during the summer before! We always go in the fall and winter, so we were looking forward to seeing what it was like in the nice weather. I thought maybe some of the vendors would move outside instead of being in the buildings, but I was wrong. I guess if I had thought about it, I would have realized there really is no room outside. There was some kind of small craft festival across the street, but we didn't get to check it out as everyone and their brother had the same idea as we did, apparently. That was pretty much the only difference that we noticed about the Market.. 50 gazillion people go in the summer. It was packed! Needless to say.. we didn't walk around all day as we normally do. We hit our favorite stands and I visited a Mediterranean store that I've always wanted to go into. I'm glad I did, it was awesome for items that I've read so much about but have never seen offered in any grocery store I shop in. Alas, I didn't buy anything new and exciting this trip, but now I know where I need to go when I do need something that falls into that category. I did find a great deal on 2 pounds of Israeli couscous and I snagged up 2 bars of Green & Blacks chocolate! Well here, look! We also hit that spice stand I've talked about and I stocked up on a few staples. From the bottom left I've got garlic powder, on top of that is spanish paprika. On the bottom right is vietnamese cinnamon, above the cinnamon is onion powder. The two stacked on top are celery salt and hot curry. Did you hear that, Kev? Hot. Curry. teeee! I couldn't pass up one of the very many bakers who have kiosks at the market because she had some fresh, right out of the oven, french and italian bread. I promised Hubbs I'd make french bread pizzas this week, so I'm glad our pizza will be made from this heavenly smelling bread. I tried the italian last night and it was superb. We passed the little kiosk that offers a huge variety of stuffed olives that we always purchase from and bought a pound of these lil salty snackers. I believe we got some salmon mousse stuffed, sun-dried tomato stuffed, prosciutto stuffed, pesto/cream cheese stuffed and marinated portobello stuffed olives this time. Yum! Oh, and I can't forget.. the little red, round items sitting on top of the loaves of bread? Those are called "pizza bagels" and I'm addicted. I can not go to the market without ordering one to nibble while I'm there and a 1/2 dozen to bring home to freeze. There really is nothing special about these "bagels" they are just dough that's been baked with tomato sauce, onions, some herbs and melted cheese. But they melt in your mouth and the dough is so soft and chewy. *swoon* Finally we hit the produce section of the market and this was the section you could barely move through with all the people, so we had to make it quick. I bought my mom a few black plums and a couple super sweet cantelopes along with the garlic and mangos pictured. All in all it was very different from what we are use to, as we were in and out in a little over an hour.. but it was a great experience to see the variety of cultures. If there's one thing that sticks in my mind the most, it's not the great food being offered, but the colors. Spectacular colors everywhere. In people's clothes, the color of the many fruits and vegetables, the beautiful blue of the sky and the luscious green of the grass. It was a beautiful day for the market, for sure. =)