A Great Meal. A Great Struggle

Last night I made Suzanne Michaud’s recipe Braised Chicken with Lemon and Dill.  I met Suzanne in December when she was the chef/teacher at my girlfriend Gail’s home cooking class. I took plenty of great recipes away that night, and now I subscribe to Suzanne’s blog, Comfort Food Stories. This recipe, which arrived in my email box recently, can be found here. Click on the link to get the recipe and see what the finished dish looks like. Yum!

I browned the chicken in a combo of canola oil and butter.

Since my husband Mike is a picky eater, I replaced the dill with fresh chopped parsley for a milder taste. We love the dish, which is flavorful, tender and easy to make. And when Suzanne said it’s quick to make, she really meant it. I’m glad I took her advice and had everything prechopped and ready to be popped into the pan!

I had everything standing by to be popped into the skillet. Fast hands!

These are the sauteed beans for a yummy side dish!

Just a few drops of oil and saute away!

I'm hoping to be up and running soon!

Separately, some of you know that I am in the throes (yes, throes) of transferring my blog to a self-hosted format. Since I am not a programmer, or anything even close, my learning curve has been steep, but I am making progress! I have a domain name (adventuresofamiddleagemom, of course!) and a host; I am pointing unseen programming arrows in the right directions and figuring out how to import my old blog posts into my new site. Last night I wasn’t patient enough and  I ended up with only half of my old posts imported and now have to go back like three steps and start again. <sigh> Has anyone else done this successfully?

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed I can make the transition successfully. In the meantime, if I am not posting as often you know it’s because I’m mentally exhausted from trying to get all my acronyms straight and the unseen arrows pointed properly!

Flower Design Competition Today!

Today was my garden club’s final in-house floral competition for the 2010-2011 club year. As an Intermediate II designer I signed up to create a “Traditional Vertical Design placed on a table on the stage 42″ from the floor; allotted space 24″ deep x 24″ wide.  Background and underlay optional.” Yes. Indeed I did.

As usual, I purchased flowers on Friday afternoon, clipped them and put them to “condition” in my cool basement then I went about the business of having a productive and fun weekend. Sunday afternoon arrived and I brought the flowers up from downstairs and stared at them. And stared at them. And stared at them some more. Not really convinced I know what a traditional vertical design is, I Googled it and studied the results, then I grabbed my trusty “Designing By Types” book that I purchased at our club’s December tea; it inspired my topiary design last month. This month, however, I didn’t see what I needed. That said, I did my best and submitted my design this morning, as required.

Here is my traditional vertical design. I value the constructive criticism I received.

Fast forward to this afternoon and I saw my design earned a blue ribbon. Wow! I really appreciated the judges’ constructive feedback. I received two positives: (1) strong vertical lines. (2) scale and proportion of material good. And I received two constructive criticisms that are well deserved: (1) Proportion of the container to design is too great. (2) needs more transitional material between vase and design. Okay. I can look at my design and see what the judges mean.

Other designs today were lovely. I was able to photograph a few before I had to leave. Take a look!

My friend Cynthia created this Advanced I masterpiece: "Creative Line Design placed on a round black pedestal 42" from the floor with a 14" square top."

Two “designers submitted the following based on these instructions: “Intermediates will do a Parallel Design, Handbook, p. 206, staged on a table 30″ from the floor, allotted space 24″ deep x 24″ wide.  Background and underlay optional.”

 

Our club president Karen did this blue ribbon design.

I can always pick out Fran's designs as they are rich in color, creative and just plain fun to view!

One design I missed photographing was the table centerpiece. My friend Celia designed it. Maybe you can picture it if I try to describe it: From a distance you saw baby birds’ mouths peeping out of a bird’s nest with spring flowers tucked in around. When you looked closely, you saw the “birds” were white calla lilies (with the stems clipped short and tucked in low and tight they looked like little open mouths), a coil of grapevine represented the nest and spring blooming flowers were tucked in along the edges of the “nest.” In all, it was whimsical and clever and very, very spring!

Fernandes II Steakhouse: We’re Still Full!

Yum!

Every table is filled in this huge, three-story restaurant every time we eat there. It attracts mostly large family groups that come for the festive atmosphere and tasty food. We typically call two weeks in advance to get a prime-time table reserved, and although it’s pricey, we definitely think Fernandes II is worth it when we want to celebrate an occasion; last night, we celebrated my son Max’s last night home before heading back to Big Ten College.

Waiters carve and serve BBQ meats tableside.

Fernandes is famous for its rodizio, a fixed price, all-you-can-eat meat fest; waiters carry huge skewers of different kinds of grilled meat and even bigger carving knives tableside and slice portions onto your plate; they just keep coming back with filet, pork, lamb, sausage, sirloin and more until you finally wave them off. My husband Mike and Max ate the meat fest meal last night. Mike looked like he was in a meat coma by the time he had tucked into his last sausage!

Take a look at the photos to see what the rest of us ordered and ate. And yes, some of us, who will remain nameless, ordered dessert too!

I ordered the spicy shrimp; check out my portion of rice in the bowl to the left of my plate!

My sister Cindy ordered a steak; those homemade potato chips are the bomb!

My daughter Tory ordered the garlic, mushroom, spice chicken. Tasty, tasty, tasty!

My brother-in-law Bid ordered steak and lobster tail. Tender and delish, nothing was left on his plate!

My niece Moriah ordered this steak; it comes on a bamboo plank with a lit stove underneath; she cooked her steak just the way she wanted it!

Northern New Jersey: The Happy Gardener

7 bags of garden debris in 8 hours over two days. . .and I've just begun the cleanup.

This afternoon was a great time to get some more spring garden cleanup done. The sun was shining. A slight breeze was blowing. The birds were singing. All was right with my world. I spent four hours raking, pruning and “Preen”ing a few areas of my garden. I also replanted a couple of shrubs that somehow hopped out of the ground when I wasn’t looking and winter was doing its freeze/thaw cycle.

Hey, do you use Preen? It’s a pre-emergent herbicide that prevents weed seeds from germinating. I would rather use corn gluten, which serves the same purpose and is an organic approach to boot, however, try finding corn gluten when you live about 20 minutes from New York City.

Tonight is a special night, my family of four is meeting my sister and her husband for dinner at Fernandes II, a Basque restaurant in Newark (that’s ‘New erk,’ as in Jersey, not ‘New ark’ as in Delaware). I think my niece will be there too with Baby Nathaniel. Good food! Good company! Good time!

It’s Show Time: Filming in My Neighborhood

Would you rent your house out to a film crew?

Do you live in a town where some residents make large sums of money by renting their homes out to production companies that film movies, commercials and the like? Sounds like a great opportunity, right? My town earns a fee every time a production company comes to town.

Our doorbell has been rung four different times by a scout looking for the “perfect” location to film. I never had to make up my mind how I really felt about the whole thing since we never ended up being the “perfect” location; however, I can say that every time this scout rang our bell or left a phone message then stopped by, I invited him in, he made his pitch, took a few photos and then he asked to use our toilet. I showed him where our bathroom was the first time, but the next three times he didn’t need any direction at all. He remembered. After each of his visits I scrubbed the toilet thoroughly and completely. I’m like that. If you know me, you know I speak the truth.

No benefit to loaning my toilet.

Not too long ago the same scout left a phone message asking if he could stop by to look at our house again. I didn’t return call number five. Call me slow but after mulling it over for a while I am convinced our home is just a pit stop and I’m tired of cleaning the toilet thoroughly and completely every time the scout leaves.

Anyway, I digress. I’m sure it is exciting and lucrative if you are the homeowner who is hosting the filming; however, for the rest of us, your neighbors, it’s not much fun at all.

Today I woke up to large white trucks idling in my next-door-neighbor’s driveway; the street choked with out-of-state cars, trucks and vans; a police officer who was supposed to be directing traffic sitting in his car instead; and vehicles parked veryclose to the end of all the driveways in the area. In addition, it was pouring rain.

Some of the crew's vehicles.

Ready, set, ACTION!

Guess what? A production company is filming at my next-door neighbor’s house today. We did not receive notification ahead of time (as our local ordinance states we should and as we typically do) so I was completely unprepared for the mayhem and foolishness a shoot brings to our neighborhood. Even though we are an “experienced neighborhood” (Our across-the-street neighbors have hosted at least five production company shoots over the years they’ve lived in their house.), I still like to be notified ahead of time so I can plan accordingly. For example, we wouldn’t have scheduled the Verizon repairman to come today. The poor repairman who fixed our dead telephone line had zero visibility into and out of our driveway and no help from the cop who was hired to direct traffic (the cop sat in his car out of the rain instead).

Anyway, I stayed away as long as I could, but once I was home again. I noticed a few things:

(1) The spotlight trained on my next-door neighbor’s side window throws off a lot of light; my kitchen is bathed in reflected glory.

No need to turn on the lights in my kitchen today.

(2) The big white truck that’s parked about 6” from one of my large holly trees was idling its engine when I left at 9:30 a.m. and it’s still idling at 5 p.m.; what are the odds that the heat from the truck’s engine will scorch the holly branches next to it?

Will the holly trees be scorched by the heat off the truck's radiator?

(3) Men, working men, talk in really loud voices; it sounds like these guys are in my kitchen, standing next to me.

Gee, I wonder if it’s a two-day shooting schedule?

Chuck the To Do List and Start a Spring Garden Cleanup

Dr. K's fingers flew today. It was a positive sign!

This morning I went to my beloved dentist Dr. K for a checkup. I was fully prepared to be hooked, poked and generally put through my pain paces for a good 30 minutes as he scraped, buffed and polished me back to some semblance of toothy perfection. It didn’t happen that way though. He had two toothy emergencies, so I was in and out in 15 minutes. Half the time!

It was a sign! A positive sign!

When I pulled in our driveway a weak sun was shining. I walked to the rear yard and saw my son Max diligently digging up the two old rose bushes, just as I had requested earlier in the week.

Another sign! Another positive sign!

Felco #5 clippers, a hand rake and leaf bags: My tools of choice!

I looked up at the sun. I felt the breeze on my cheeks. And I knew. I knew what I was supposed to do! I tossed on an old vest and a pair of gardening gloves, grabbed my #5 Felcos and a small hand rake and began to de-leaf the garden beds around where Max was working. My “To Do” List could wait! I seized the good weather day and started my spring cleanup! Yes!!

One hour.

I cleared the leaves from under the spirea. The open spot in front of the downspout is where my new climbing rose will live!

Two hours.

The tree peony is budding up and the worms are jumping! Spring is coming!

Three hours.

The hosta debris around the chiminea was formidable!

Time kept pace with the rhythm of my clippers.

It only took a few minutes to plant some radish, bean and lettuce seeds in the cold frame.

It got colder as the sun disappeared, but I kept going: I clipped dried astilbe stalks, flopped over mum branches, smushed into the ground hosta leaves, and more. I used my trusty hand rake, the one my Dad bought me a million years ago at the dollar store, to tease oak leaves out from around the tree peonies, under the boxwoods, around the spirea. The breeze on my cheeks was colder, much colder, but I kept going. Four bags of yard stuff later I reluctantly stopped.

Inside my little greenhouse, a prostrate rosemary plant somehow mysteriously grew; it's the plant on the right. It's huge. . .and happy in the unheated greenhouse.

I’m kinda stiff, but I have a smile on my face. Spring is coming to Northern New Jersey, my friends! And I can’t wait!!

Rain in Northern New Jersey

It rained last night around here. A lot.

This is a Wayne, N.J. parking lot with a parking deck in the background.

And the wind blew.

This is another parking lot in Wayne, N.J. We still have snow piles and we get flooding rain. Yeesh!

And it rained some more.

Did you get rain?

Here's what I bought at Costco in Wayne, N.J. today! It's the antidote to local flooding.

In a knee jerk reaction to the flooding I bought “Pink Balcony” and “Angelique” begonia tubers, Lily of the Valley pips and “Key West” astilbe tubers. And I felt much better!

On Saturday, I cleaned out my little greenhouse; that “chore” made me very happy. On Sunday I bought  some Burpee brand veggie seeds — French Filet beans, Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce and Italian parsley — as well as some Giant Imperial Mix larkspur seeds because it was raining and I couldn’t clean up the yard.

I made out my list; can you see it peeking out of the catalog?

And I spent a couple of dreamy hours reading and marking up my Territorial Seed catalog. A family owned company, Territorial is my go-to mail order source for veggie “onsies”: I order individual plants (not seeds) of a few different kinds of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants from the company every year with great success. The plants have always arrived safely tucked into a slotted cardboard box. If you, like me, don’t need 6 of each kind of veggie plant you might want to try Territorial.

 

P.S. Territorial doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall.

 

Spring in Northern New Jersey: It’s Coming!

Take a look at the sky from under the pergola; that's a Texas purple wisteria on it.

Today the weather is mild here in Northern New Jersey so I took my Nikon D90 out into the yard to see if I could find signs of spring approaching. And, thankfully, the answer is “yes, I did.” It’s been a very long, snowy, ugly, back breaking winter around here and I want to see the end of it. Now.

Snowdrops and witch hazels pop out at about the same time in my yard!

Don't the snowdrops look ballerinas in their white, white tutus?

The witch hazel looks like a party on a branch!

With the sun warm on my back and my feet snug in waterproof boots I meandered around, listening to the cardinal sing and the breeze blow through the dried hydrangea flower heads. I wish you were here walking with me. It’s heartening to see the buds starting to swell on the dogwood tree

The dogwoods are cautiously optimistic spring is coming.

and climbing hydreangeas,

The climbing hydrangeas are slowly, but surely waking up.

the bulbs fighting their way through the cold, cold soil

Bulbs are some of the first harbingers of Spring!

including the stalwart daffies!

and the first leaves of the chrysanthemum open.

Spring green is an evocative color name, don't you think?

 

Jersey Shore: Family Fun in the Sun

In families there are planners and there are people who just show up. I love my husband Mike’s sisters and their spouses. I love them because they love to plan, vacations in particular. In my family, I am typically the mover and shaker so spending time with my husband’s family gets me a two-fer: spending time with people I like and not having to plot the when/where of what we actually do.

We will spend a week AT the Jersey Shore, not BE the Jersey Shore.

Next up for this branch of the family? My sister-in-law Betsy and her husband, Uncle Phil, are scouting houses so we can all spend a week at the Jersey shore together. No. Not that “Jersey Shore.” I can assure you that our family get-together in August will not resemble what happens to the cast of the “Jersey Shore,” well not exactly anyway. I mean, we are a lot tamer as fifty-somethings than we were back in the day.

Okay.

Okay.

Captain Underpants will likely make an appearance again this summer.

Yes. Our family DOES have a Captain Underpants. He will remain nameless.

Sure.

Sure.

But we won’t be out all night drinking and partying. We will start our evenings with dinner at 7 and likely be tucked into bed by midnight, 1 a.m. at the latest.

Dancing?

We have moved beyond this. . .I THINK.

Yes, there will be dancing, just probably not on tabletops.

Except for our older kids.

Yeah. They just might pick up where my husband Mike and his sisters left off.

Family tradition and all.

Market Restaurant in Montclair, NJ: Yum!

The view from our booth toward the front door of Market.

My girlfriend Gail and I recently ditched our regular evening lives and went to dinner at “Market,” a Montclair, NJ restaurant; it was a first visit for both of us. Since it’s BYOB, we brought a tasty pinot grigio in a screw-cap bottle (Kris, about $12 around here); it’s so convenient you can take it to a concert in the park, fireworks on the beach, anywhere without carrying a corkscrew too!

A selection of dishes made with local, fresh, organic ingredients.

Gail and I ordered five different items from the menu. I know. I know.  It sounds like a lot of food, but we don’t go out together all that often and we like a variety of foods on the table. And it’s not like my daughter won’t eat the leftovers when they arrive home (She’s been known to wait up to see what we’ve “left her.”). We ordered a number of appetizers, an entrée and a “plate.” Market encourages diners to choose “plates” from its hand-written menu; it’s a way to try a number of different dishes, albeit in smaller portions; the ingredients are local, organically grown and fresh.

To begin, our young and well-informed Market waitress slid a lovely old fashioned wooden cutting board of flatbread crackers and pesto onto the table so we had a bit to snack on while we examined the menu offerings and chatted up a storm. We liked the crunchy flatbreads and savory pesto and we appreciated that our waitress gave us time to relax into the restaurant’s atmosphere.

Isn't it beautiful?

Gail started with one of the night’s specials and a fav of hers: crab cake. Gail is an expert on crab cake. Ask her. She’s typically very modest, but when it comes to her palate and crab cake, she admits it’s an area of great expertise. Gail said the crab cake was very, very good, one of the best she’s tasted. She practically hummed she was so pleased with it! I don’t care for crab, but I can say the plate was beautifully presented with the crab stacked with the cubed mango and avocado. No leftovers on that plate.

I started with the chipolte cheddar mac & cheese. I didn’t taste the chipolte in it, nor did the shot of carrot-lime soup rev it up enough for me; I mean it was tasty, but not as yummy as what I have eaten at Southern Belle, another Montclair eatery. Leftovers on that plate.

The ketchup is homemade too and boy is it yummy!

By now the rest of the dishes had arrived tableside. I dove into the American Waygu Beef Sliders. Once my tongue tasted the horseradish-caviar crème fraiche smeared on the tiny bun I knew it was a winner. Gail agreed. The sweet potato fries served on the side were crunchy and flavorful; I think they are better than the sweet potato fries offered at Toast, another Montclair restaurant. That is high praise from me. Leftovers on that plate, but only because we ordered enough food for 3 people.

The harcot verts were a choice from that night’s tasting menu.  Can you say lemon-dill béarnaise sauce? How about frizzled prosciutto? And almonds too! They were cooked just right. The accompaniments were perfect and the whole dish was beautifully presented. I practically grabbed the beans out of Gail’s mouth. No leftovers on that plate!

Another tasty and beautifully presented dish.

At that point I eyed the Wild Mushroom Risotto. It too was beautifully presented: The kale bundled on top was crunchy and fun to eat. I smeared a bit of the pesto onto the risotto and it added a nice zip to my mouth. Gail, a frequenter of Osteria Giotto in Montclair, said she preferred Giotto’s; I liked Market’s combo of the tiny arugula salad, pesto and risotto.

We had a great meal in an old-fashioned atmosphere with high-quality, well-presented dishes. Would we return? You bet!

Isn't the flower pot clever? Water was refilled tableside using a green watering can!

P.S. My apologies for the lack of sharpness of the photos; I had my little camera and I didn’t do a great job photographing the food that night.