Congrats Rach!!!!

Congrats to my sister Rachel for finishing the New York City Half Marathon
on Sunday July 27th...

Final Finishing time----2 Hours and 6 Minutes....
Here she is with her medal!!!!

Chauncey Chauncey Chauncey

Last night Denise and I took advantage of the near-perfect weather(after a week of horrible weather) and headed to Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier, our favorite lobster place in Kittery Point, Maine, which is just over the border from Portsmouth.



Chaucey Creek Lobster Pier is a great outdoor spot right on the water. The main attraction of course are the fantastic fresh Maine lobsters that are plucked right out of the tank for you..


Besides the lobsters, which are the maine (haha) attraction, the other great thing about Chauncey Creek is that they allow you to bring your own food and drinks in with you... Many people take full advantage of this bringing their own tablecloths, candles, dishes etc... We have never gone this far but we usually bring a cooler with some drinks and some appetizers.

Last night was no exception, we brought Sea Dog Blueberry Ale and fresh blueberries (a great combination)


We also brought fresh farmers market tomatoes, basil, and balsamic vinegar to start off with...


Following the beer and tomatoes, we moved on the lobsters, corn on the cob and onion rings...


Which of course were delicious...

All in all it was a great night!!!

Home of the Titans!!!

Better late than never..
Nashua North High School is where I will be teaching starting late next month...
I will be teaching 10th grade social studies.

The school is new (completed in 2005) and is very nice...It's also very big.. There are over 2,500 students...


Should be a very interesting year....

Peanut Butter Spaghetti

When I was growing up, my mom did all the cooking in the house. Eating dinner together as a family was an important part of the day and my mom always seemed to have an endless amount of interesting and unique recipes, some of which she has passed on to me and are staples in our house now as well. When I was about 13 or 14 my mom found a recipe for spaghetti with peanut butter and being adventurous, she decided to try it out on us...it didn't go over well and never made it into my mom's repertoire of favorite dishes to make and became a joke amongst my friends as I was the one whose mom makes peanut butter spaghetti. Fast forward 20 or so years and I found myself whipping up peanut butter and spaghetti for lunch today. Asian food is probably my favorite cuisine and Andrew and I have made a few different recipes that call for an Asian peanut butter sauce on noodles. This is mostly inspired by the cold noodle dish we get from Tapei and Tokyo, a favorite dinner spot in Manchester. Anyway, it's rainy and I'm bored today and was looking around the kitchen for something to have for lunch. In the fridge we had baby spinach, carrots, limes, garlic, cilantro (the cilantro in the Aero garden is not ready yet) and in the pantry whole wheat spaghetti, soy sauce and of course...peanut butter. I had ripped out a recipe from a magazine that I thought had the same ingredients and sure enough, it was almost exactly what I needed...minus the chicken and no hot sauce. It turned out good and made lots of leftovers...mmmm peanut butter spaghetti...who knew my mom knew what she was doing all those years ago? First tomato sandwiches and now peanut butter spaghetti..thanks mom!

"Aunty Em, it's a twister!"

Last Friday night we decided to take advantage of some free local entertainment and went down to Veterans Park in Manchester for a production of "The Wizard of Oz" as performed by a group called the New Thalian Players. Each summer they do a new play but this is the first year we have taken advantage of it. We got there early to take in all the facinating "people watching" and make fun of the pre-show entertainment...as well as run into our smoking neighbor who proceeded to smoke during the entire show. The show was great and very similar to the movie but with a few extra songs and lines. Does anyone recall something in the original book or play called "The Jitterbug?"...it was a great addition. About half way through the play we were also treated to an impromptu "light show" courtesy of the storms passing through. Luckily, it never rained. There are 2 more performances this weekend, perhaps if we have nothing to do we will check it out again!

It's Official!!!!

Round 2...

2nd trip to the blueberry farm this past Friday. Unfortuatly we didn't have a lot of time as Andrew had to get to work and it was starting to get really, really hot. Not to mention that we didn't have a lot of cash and I forgot the checkbook (they don't take debit or credit cards) so only 5 lbs this time.

On the menu this week: blueberry pancakes for breakfast this morning, a different blueberry pasta salad and blueberry coffee cake...and hopefully enough for the blueberry beer!

You're gonna need a bigger boat....

Last nite while I was channel flipping I saw that the movie "Jaws" was just about to start. Even though this movie is from 1975 and is 33 years old it is still timeless... Who can resist that scary music they play every time the shark appears...

I even have a very close relative (you know who you are!!!!) who blames this movie as the reason she hasn't stepped foot in to an ocean in years.....

Of course the movie contains this classic line....

Tomato Sandwich????

Ahhh..There's nothing like fresh summertime tomatoes.

It was just around a year ago when Denise and I were playing Scattergories with Joyce (Denise's mom). I'm sure most of you know the game (roll the dice with the letters and fill in the categories with things that start with that letter). Well, the letter T came up and the category was "A kind of sandwich". When we shared our answers Joyce said "Tomato Sandwich"... Denise and I both looked at eachother and started laughing. Who has ever heard of a tomato sandwich??? We told her she couldn't get any points for it...

Fast forward to yesterday when i was at the Manchester Farmer's Market. There was a table with the most irresistable tomatoes ever. I was standing there marveling and salivating over these beauties when this little old lady standing next to me said, "I'll take a pound...I've been waiting all year for the summer tomatoes so I can have a tomato sandwich"... I turned to her and said "What exactly is a tomato sandwich?" to which she replied "just sliced tomatoes, good bread, and some mayonnaise".

Hmm...Maybe these people are on to something...
The wonders of the internet led me to this picture..
It looks so simple..Perhaps since we are just getting into the tomato season it'll be something to try...

"Violet, you're turning violet, Violet!"

Ahhh...blueberries...finally, my favorite time of year. On Saturday we went to Durochers farm in Litchfield NH to pick blueberries. It's a bit early as you can see from this picture,

some of the berries are still very green but we got a nice amount after picking for about a half an hour...8 lbs!

Not bad...the surprising fact is that today is Tuesday and they are almost gone! You would think they would last for weeks, and have some to freeze but instead we are ready to go back and pick some more...luckily they are only going to get better and better and I am sure we will be back at least 2 more times.

So how did 8 lbs of blueberries disappear so quickly? Well, snacking of course...plus blueberries and yogurt for breakfast every morning, I made blueberry muffins last night (not that great...does anyone have a good recipe?), chicken pasta salad with blueberries (and fresh basil and chives from our Aerogarden!)

for dinner tonight and salad with blueberries both last night and tonight.

One of my favorite things to do is to pop a few frozen blueberries in a Seadog Bluepaw (blueberry wheat ale)...keeps the beer cold and the blueberry flavor is awesome, unfortunately we don't have any of the beer here...I guess our next trip back we will have to pick some up!

5 Foot Diet

Our friends, Ingrid and Josh are challenging themselves with the 100 mile diet this summer....basically only eating anything grown, raised, etc...within 100 miles of their Rhode Island home. While Andrew and I certainly enjoy the local farmer's market and picking our own fruit and veggies, this would not be something I think we could accomplish...check out their blog for more cool info about the challenge! We could however only use herbs grown within 5 feet of our kitchen! Check out our new Aerogarden!!!



A wedding present from my parents, we can grow herbs indoors, with no sunlight and very little maintenance. For us, this is great. We love cooking with fresh herbs ( I am obsessed with anything basil) and our attempts to grow in the past on our porch never lasted more than 2 or 3 weeks, based on the fact that our porch gets little sunlight and what I believe to be the toxic fumes of every neighbor next to and below us smoking...Right now we have 2 types of basil, parsley, mint, chives, cilantro and oregano...some are growing like wild already (the basil) and some have barely sprouted but in a few short weeks, we will be harvesting enough herbs to last us the rest of the year!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

This post is about a week late...better late than never...
Last week on our way home from Denise's parents house in Ballston Spa we took the scenic route home and made a stop at Jiminy Peak for a little afternoon fun.
Jiminy Peak is located in the Berkshires near Pittsfield, Massachusetts and is a place that I went numerous times as a child (mostly during camp to go on the alpine slide) but also to ski a few times over the years...
We went with the intention of going on the alpine slide but when we got there we found out that in addition to the alpine slide (which we did go on) they also have this new contraption called a Mountain Coaster....
It is basically what it sounds like, a mini roller coaster that goes down the side of a mountain...
At first glance Denise decided that she wasn't going to go on it...
Especially after reading this sign....

Finally I convinced her to go, and she did so reluctantly.....


Surprisingly enough, we got off she said "LET'S GO AGAIN" (which we did)...
Here is Denise on her way up the hill....

We're not in St John anymore....

I've got a good book, suntan lotion, water and some snacks and I am heading out to one of the beaches on the 17 miles of coastline in NH. If I close my eyes really hard, I might convince myself I am on one of my favorite beaches in St John. I shouldn't really complain...I do feel lucky being so close to the beach, 45 minutes and a stop at Dunkin Donuts for an iced tea and I will be there. The concept is the same...water, sand, sun but I think I have been spoiled...blame Andrew, he turned me into a beach snob...let's hope the weather holds up...




Hmmm....which one is NH and which is St John?????

The Cure for Insomnia...

Bob Ross...the Joy of Painting.

If you don't know who this is, you probably never watched public access tv in the middle of the night while growing up, or like both Andrew and I, in college. I'm not sure what channel we found this on, but we watched once a few months ago and set it in our favorites to tape in the DVR. Now there are about 20 episodes of "The Best of the Joy of Painting" to choose from. "Happy trees that need a friend, little critters peaking out of the forest and streams and water that seem to "appear" out of nowhere"...all part of the Bob Ross experience. I recently found that it is the perfect thing to help me sleep. Maybe it is his soothing voice, maybe it is because it is literally watching paint dry but this works for me every time...

ahhhh...I'm sleepy already...