I Love Food!

I love food!  We love food!  I’ve posted a few meals we’ve made in the past, and we’ve been busy again!  I had a bunch of extra milk a few weeks ago and decided to make it into ricotta cheese.  It was surprisingly easy.  Milk plus vinegar in a stockpot basically equals ricotta.  It smelled divine as it drained (it’s hard to describe, it just smelled so very rich).  I kept the whey to make some whey bread at some point, and I used the ricotta for two very different things.  Half went to make a ricotta-parmesan filling for a roasted-vegetable lasagna with crisped prosciutto, which was delicious but didn’t get photographed. 

The other half had a much more divine destiny.  I folded it gently into sweetened whip cream along with fresh lemon juice and zest and a pinch of salt.  I wanted to fill cannoli shells with my lovely stuff, but we couldn’t find them on short notice, so I made some magic with puff pastry.  I rolled foil into little tubes, sprayed them with nonstick spray, and formed the puff pastry around my home-made cannoli molds and baked them.  Then I made a little tasty strawberry-lemon sauce to drizzle over them once they were filled.  Wow.

Some of our best friends here are Boise State fans, so we had them over to watch the Boise State vs. Oregon State football game two weeks ago.  Mario found this awesome recipe from Tyler Florence for oven-roasted Curry-Lime Glazed Chicken Wings.  They were so awesome!  And to put it right over the top, he whipped up a delicious home-made blue cheese dressing to dip them in.

We’ve decided to try to make General Conference (the semi-annual worldwide broadcasted conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, of which we are members) a special experience for our family, and making a special breakfast for it is part of our plan.  Mario chose crepes, so we did crepes with strawberries and whipped cream in the morning.  We had a bunch of crepes left over and I whipped up some ingredients reminiscent of the crepes we had on our honeymoon in Paris almost 6 years ago, with a few new additions.  These fantastic little beauties had a touch of homemade pesto, shredded parmesan, lemony chicken, and caramelized onions and mushrooms.  TO DIE FOR! 

 

Newport and the Zoo

Our next New England adventure was to Newport, Rhode Island.  Newport was the summer location of choice for the summer mansions of Gilded Age millionaires, such as the Vanderbilts and Astors.  The mansions are still there and many are open to the public.  We visited The Breakers, the Vanderbilt “summer cottage.”  It’s a 70 room Italian Renaissance-style palazzo inspired by 16th century palaces (yes, I got that from a website - I don't know anything about architecture and wouldn't know a palazzo if one hit me on the head).  Yeah, sounds exactly like a “summer cottage” to me!  Photography isn’t allowed in the mansion . . I mean cottage . . .  so it’s hard to describe what it’s like.  There was a whole lot of marble, wallpaper gilded with platinum, and an entire room just for playing cards.  There were secret passages everywhere so the servants could do their jobs and not ever be seen.  I know I hate it when I can see by servants serving me, don't you?  Actually, only the women were never to be seen.  It was perfectly acceptable to see the male servants.  It was an interesting look at ridiculous opulence, and a fun way to spend the morning!  We explored Newport’s waterfront, had some decent seafood, and stopped by Brown University in Providence, RI on our way back to Boston.

The Harvard Law Couples Association took all of us married Harvard Law students and families to the Franklin Park Zoo.  It was Joshua’s third zoo experience, and he had a great time.  The Couples Association handed out little adventure hats to all the kids and it’s still one of his favorite toys even now a few weeks later!

Josh is 14 months now and officially done with footy pajamas (his choice, not mine), as well as bottles and pacifiers (that picture on the right was one of his last nights with his binky) – here’s him in his new big boy PJs.  He looks so ridiculously OLD!!

Plymouth

 

I love Boston!  We are so happy to be back home!  We had a great summer, but we really love being back in Boston.  Mario’s truckin’ along with school and Josh and I are keeping busy with all kinds of stuff.  Mario doesn’t have school on Wednesdays, so we’ve been taking advantage of the opportunity to check some stuff off our huge list of things we have to do here in our last year.  Our first trip was to Plymouth, Massachusetts.  We started at the infamous Plymouth Rock, which after years of abuse (the city has moved it various times, split it in half once and then cemented it back together, and tourists used to be able to chip off pieces as souvenirs) is now about four feet long.  You can see how big it is compared to the leaves in the water and the bricks.  Completely and totally unimpressive.  

After basking in the glory of Plymouth Rock, we headed over to the Mayflower II.  It’s an exact recreation of the original Mayflower and was sailed to Plymouth from England in 1957.  It was very interesting to see exactly how much space they didn’t have on that weeks-long journey.  Most of the passengers weren’t even allowed on the deck for the whole trip. 

We left the Mayflower II and headed over to Wood’s Seafood, a little shack recommended to me on a previous visit by a gas station attendant.  Excellent fish and chips, clam chowder, and onion rings.  AWESOME!!!  There’s something about New England onion rings.  They’re light, crispy, salty, sweet, and not oily at all.  I think it has something to do with cornmeal and milk, but whatever it is they’re really amazing and we eat them every chance we get because you sure can’t get them like this anywhere else I’ve been!

 

Plymouth, in addition to its fame as the landing place of the Pilgrims, is a very cute little town.  We wandered past houses built in the 1600s, trinket shops, seafood shacks, and finally found ourselves at a working grist mill from 1636 that also houses a cute little creamery.  Mario thought he’d get a jump start on Thanksgiving (since we were in the home of the Pilgrims, after all) with a Pumpkin Pie Sundae – ginger snaps, caramel sauce, and pumpkin ice cream – mmmmmmmmm!