Good Morning Snowflakes!

This morning I woke up to snowflakes outside my window. It was a bit startling at first, but it made me think a number of things.

First: "Oh no! It's actually winter now!"

Then I moved on to "Well at least mother nature waited until November. Thanks a bunch!"

Next I decided it was time to break out the winter hat, which I of course look ridiculous in.

And finally, I thought, "I'd better get the rest of my fall pictures on line so I can move on to snow pictures"

So here we are...fall pictures.

Last week Joe and I were able to go for a walk around Jordon Pond. It was a gorgeous day and I luckily had the morning off, so we took full advantage.














It's been nice to finally get to spend some time together now that the summer season has settled down. The gallery is just about closed and I'm really appreciating the time to relax and get some much needed things done. I'm not sure that I'm ready for all that winter brings, but I'm certainly glad for the time it's given back to me. Hopefully I won't let the early darkness slow me down and turn me into the sloth that I can sometimes become.

I Once Had A Pumpkin Farm...

Not really...but last night Joe and I carved our pumpkins! Joe was done rather quickly, while I followed my typical behavior and took way longer than necessary. I just can't help myself! I love to carve pumpkins! And this year I didn't get two to carve, so I had to be extra thoughtful with my one. I even pulled out some sculpting tools to use since we couldn't find our pumpkin carving knives. I think they both turned out great! I'll have to take some pictures when we light them with candles on Saturday.

Smashed and Mashed

The cider is officially fermenting.

We chopped, smashed, squeezed, juiced and canned. And now the hard earned juice from few pounds of apples are fermenting with yeast and sugar. I'm still not sold on the idea, but I suppose I have at least a month or two of fermentation time to get comfortable with the idea.

In other news, we got pumpkins on Sunday! Unfortunately we didn't get to go to a pumpkin patch (the rain really ruined this year's crop, so the "you pick" places were pretty much empty), but we got them from a really great market just off the island. We've driven past so many times and never stopped before, but I'm certainly glad we did this time. Not only did we get some really good pumpkins, but we went through their haunted house (not bad for a small scale operation), got some excellent cider, and chatted with the adorable man who runs the market. You could tell he was doing exactly what he wanted with his life, his joy was infectious! (the excellent weather didn't hurt either) Plus he made excellent mulled cider!

Anyway...I'm hoping to carve our pumpkins tonight since Halloween is fast approaching. Not sure what I'm going to do yet...should be interesting!

Stick it in!

This past weekend Joe and I took a little road trip with our friends Michael and Kallie down to Connecticut for the UConn football game. It was great to get away for the weekend and not have to worry about anything! The car ride was a bit long, but we had Kallie and Michael's dog Austin to keep us entertained. He's absolutely adorable, and we learned on the way home that he really loves pumpkin flavor. Joe found out the hard way, having to guard his pumpkin blizzard from sneak attacks!

We had a great time checking out the UConn campus and finally seeing a football game for the first time in the past year. It's a completely different atmosphere down there, but it was a lot of fun. I've never done the official tailgate thing and I enjoyed the "back of a pickup and under a tent" feel. I also had a fun time learning their chants and cheers and such. There was no cowbell, but their red zone chant was pretty priceless! "Stick it in! Stick it in! Stick it in!" Wonder who came up with that one?!?!

Their stadium is obviously a fraction of what Joe and I are used to, but the backdrop of orange and yellow trees more than made up for anything else we might have missed. I was really lax with my picture taking, but here's a couple of the ones I did manage to snap.

Lost and Found

Having two cameras is rather confusing. You wouldn't think so (I mean it's only two!), but it is. At least it is for me anyway. I try to keep my point and shoot nearby for those spontaneous photo ops and only take my slr when I've got particular things in mind. The system itself works, but I always manage to forget when I have photos on one or the other camera.

The point of my story is this: I found some pictures from probably a month ago on my slr. Joe and I had taken a drive down to Gouldsboro to visit the Bartlett Winery. I've been trying to get over there ever since we moved here and finally found an afternoon. The wine was delicious and the weather was rather pleasant, so we decided to extended our merry little jaunt and drive around Schoodic Point while we were in the neighborhood. Neither of us had been there before and I must say I was rather impressed with the views. The majority of the drive is along the water and the sun was intermittently hiding behind a small group of clouds, providing a sparkling reflection on the water below. Needless to say, I snapped some pictures which were completely forgotten until now.

Normally I would simply post them and pretend it wasn't so long ago, but I realize that it's now fall and the lack of orange or red leaves would give my tardiness away. --actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure I'm going to post the pictures that have trees in them, so this explanation is pretty much moot, but I don't feel like deleting it.

So there you have it. A long explanation to accompany a solitary photo.

Caramel Apple Deliciousness!

Monday night I decided to get going on a long list of apple recipes I wanted to try with our freshly picked apples (all 15 or so pounds of them!). I decided not to dance around with apple crisp or anything simple like that and dive right in with a Caramel Apple Cheesecake.

Did I mention I love cheesecake?

It's been so long since I've had any and I can't say I've ever attempted to bake my own (except one of those no-bake box versions which come out tasting more like pudding than actual cheesecake). The recipe I was using wasn't exactly the best, but apart from a few mishaps -like buying the wrong size can of evaporated milk because the recipe just said "1 can" instead of specifying small and not large; or like saying I should cook the cheesecake for 40 minutes but not supplying me with a method of being sure it was cooked through since my oven is probably not the same as Miss Suzy Homemakers- the thing turned out pretty darn good.

Now when I say "good" I mean it tasted fantastic. Absolutely fabulous. What did not turn out as, however, is pretty. I snapped a few pictures with the intent of proudly displaying them, but Joe and I decided that it looked a bit more like a lumpy fruit cake than a delicious cheesecake, so I decided to pass on the home photos and show you this:



What it could/should have looked like. At least this pictures gives you some idea of how yummy it tastes instead of leaving you wondering if its edible (and in case you're wondering, the picture came from here, which is not where I got the recipe, but maybe this one is easier to follow.)

As if that wasn't enough to quench my thirst for questionably difficult baking, Joe has decided to make his own hard apple cider this fall. Yes...I know what you're thinking. Can he really do that without a giant press and all sorts of chemicals and such? Well wouldn't you know that with the abundant resources the internet provides, Joe has found a feasible recipe and ordered the necessary yeast. Yikes! This should be interesting. I suppose it helps that we usually make a good cooking team (we did make some really delicious egg rolls together the other night), but I'm a bit nervous about this one. Maybe I shouldn't have bought him that home brewing kit after all??

Fall Foliage

Isn't fall amazing! Views like these make it much easier to deal with the snow that is supposed to be coming already...as in tonight.

Golden Delicious!

Yesterday Joe and I finally had the time to go apple picking! I was getting a bit nervous that'd we'd never get the chance to go and that we'd miss the season completely (like we did with strawberries and raspberries) but I'm so glad we waited until now. The apples were perfect! They were all perfectly ripe and the trees were absolutely loaded! Some of the branches were resting on the ground from the weight of all the apples they were holding. I'm guessing the rain helped the harvest and maybe we weren't the only ones who didn't make it out at the beginning of the season because there were definitely a lot more apples left on the trees than there were when we went picking last year. A few of the trees had even dropped what looked like an entire tree's worth of apples on the ground and still managed to have full branches!

It was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon and I'm now spending my time looking up delicious recipes to try. Of course we wound up with a rather large number of apples, so I'm excited to get the chance to try out lots of new recipes with them!

Last of the Catch Up

Here's some pictures from even further back...my trip to DC. I hadn't been since an eighth grade field trip, so I of course had to take all of the required, cliche photos. It was a blast getting to hang out with my old roommates and I'm glad we got to spend the weekend together. We had lots of silly fun and managed to stay out of too much trouble. I do miss my girls!

Over A Month Ago...

Here's some overdue pictures from Cassie's visit. I'm way behind in posting these, but she came to visit during the busiest month of the summer and I'm content in using that as my excuse.

We had great weather - about the only real summer weather we got - and took advantage by going for a hike. Somehow we managed to get lost and wound up walking an extra hour or so. Thankfully you can never really get lost in Acadia, it's just not big enough. We just managed to get off of the trail we had intended to take and wound up on a carriage road. Either way it was a gorgeous day and none of us minded.

We also went up to top of Cadillac for the sunset which Joe and I hadn't been able to do all summer. It was gorgeous, as usual, and all three of us enjoyed a beautiful display of colors. I also was able to play around with my camera and I managed to some pretty nice pictures.