Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving.
9 people
14+ lbs turkey, stuffing, gravy, green beans with preserved lemon, candied sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes.
Didn't run out of anything, but didn't have a lot of turkey left over. I might have carved the turkey too thick?

 Inspector General spent the day upstairs

 Served cider and Beaujolais, had this with leftovers the next day.

Eggs on stuffing. Not a new culinary hit. Wasn't bad, just didn't have any toast.

Bringing in the Sheaves

Beautiful Fall morning, did the first round of leave raking. Back, front and side; expect more leaves to fall so didn't do an exemplary job.

 Used my Worx vac/shredder to perform some magic. The leaf pile was condensed and filled the vacuum bag 6 times, one bag I put into the yard compost pile the other five are in the brown leaf bag.

Also raked on the other side of my garage which is our property for just about 2 feet.

Current Blooms:
 Pinched off the faded blooms from the potted mums we bought, we may get another round of blooms if we don't get a hard frost.

 Heaths and Heather

 A rogue Coral Bell

The garlic has sprouted, the chard leaves are at 4 - 6 inches, I'll wait some more to pick them and the latest spinach crop is just sprouting too.

Beers in the Fridge:
 Continuing with the Stouts. The Anchor Brewing Flying Cloud stout was very complex and had 3 distinct tastes at the first, the middle and the finish. Chocolate, coffee, molasses, 7.4 % ABV. The Double Chocolate Stout is reminiscence of Guinness in cans but with chocolate nose and flavors, not too sweet and at 5.2 % ABV is easy to drink. The can has the widget inside so you get an entertaining pour and a creamy head.

The Fall of Summer

Current Blooms:
I just missed getting a photo of a fall bloom from a primula (Primula x pubescens R. Lupp), was too lazy to go in and get the camera.
Was concerned that all my Cyclamen had died, but just yesterday I saw a few starting to send out their leaves. Hoo-ray!
We have mums blooming, but we purchased them already in bud and they are just out for the Fall then will be composted.
Planted garlic last weekend across the back of the garden boxes, 95 cloves this year. Also have spinach growing in the garden and Swiss chard in the 55 gallon drum planter. Not many spinach sprouted and lived so I may have to sow more.
Started reading Down the Garden Path by Beverly Nichols so I should be getting all kinds of ideas for the garden from his book.

Beers in the Fridge:
Bought these 2 Oktoberfest beers at the end of September. I like the Hofbrau better, not sure if it is because we drank at the Hofbrauhaus when we were in Munich. The Eldest is currently in Munich for the weekend. Very Jealous even though she says it is cold there. She visited the oldest continuously operating brewery (since 1040), Weihenstephaner now under Bavarian State Control. It's added to my list of Munich sights to see.

Now that it is cooler I will be picking up some stouts which fall into the Ales category of beer. The other category is Lager and the type of yeast used helps make the determination.
This is the first one of the season, brewed by Wells in England at 5% ABV, could not find bitterness units IBU. It is fairly sweet, but not too much so. Not too heavy, it's nice. Chef thought so too.

I also picked up a Samuel Smith Imperial Stout which is 7% ABV and 35 IBU and plan to get Young's Double Chocolate Stout also made by Wells.
My review of Sammy's Imperial Stout here.

Estate Maintenance:
Repaired the freezer in section B5 of the basement, it was just a bad evaporator fan.
Windows were cleaned on the ground floor. Maggie (the dawg) watched as I did the bay windows of the kitchen nook.

Maypo Failure

Last Sunday we went to brunch at Smoke, a Jazz club at 105th and Broadway. We saw Annette St. John and her trio and had a great brunch.The piano player taught lessons at the same music school our youngest attended for awhile and our friend knows him well.

Last Monday I made some Irish oatmeal. Sometimes I toast the oats first, sometimes I just skip that step and go straight to the boil. Was thinking about Maypo for some reason and thought why not add Royal Crown Maple Finished whisky midway during the boil to add flavor. I mentioned the whiskey here. It does smell very much like Maypo.  Well that did not work out. When the oatmeal was done it didn't really have much of a maple taste. Despite being cooked for awhile, it may not have lost all of its alcohol.

Beers in the Fridge:
 Bought Genesee Cream Ale for some reason, nostalgia? It was not bad at all, was cheap and at 5.2% ABV and 12 IBUs it is easy to drink. I read one review of the beer giving the can an A-plus and the beer a B-minus. I don't much care about the packaging unless it is an overly busy design or the beer had a punny sounding name. I only read the reviews after buying it. It was a impulse buy. Brewed in Rochester, NY. There is a brewery tour, but probably not of the main brewery. See Genesee Brew House

 The Saranac Summer Pils is very good. I like a lot of their beers. I was looking for something to prolong the summer which has now unofficially ended. 5.2% ABV and 28 IBUs. Saranac has a brewery tour in Utica, NY.

 Harpoon is another brewery from which I have had many a nice beer. This one, a Rye IPA is a bit strong for me. I was thinking it would be like drinking a piece of rye bread. Nope I was wrong. It reminded me of Sixpoint Ale's Resin, but is only 6.9%ABV and 70 IBUs compared to Resin's 9.1%ABV and 103 IBUs.

 Harpoon has tours of their Boston Brewery. See FAQs

Bear Mountain 2015

Last weekend I volunteered with the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference NYNJTC , I took a class on Building Stone Crib Walls (Trail U 1005). It was tough work.

The class and work project took place behind the The Bear Mountain Inn, shown above. Rooms go for 216USD per night (AAA/AARP rate)

A closeup of some Bear Mt. Inn stonework.

This was the view from the work project location. It was a beautiful weekend and there were lots of families out enjoying the great weather. This photo was early Saturday morning before the hordes descended. Even with lots of people in the park, it didn't seem over crowded.

This is some of the work done by the experienced volunteers. The Bear Mountain Trails Project will demonstrate all the different kinds of stonework one may come across on trails such as steps, stepping stones across small streams or marshy areas, retaining walls, waterbars, etc..

Another view of their work, a retaining wall.

This is some of the section of wall I was given to build, I didn't get very far. We were given instructions, some handouts detailing terms and proper technique and a lot of hands on training. It was a 2 day commitment and way too much thinking for me to do on my day off. Not to mention that rocks are heavy. I was so tired at the end of each day, I was sorry I had given Gina (the chauffeur, you met her here) the weekend off.

Current Blooms:
These are from the Rain Chain Garden.

Then and Now Photos of the Heathers, planted in 2013.

The Bayberry(right rear above) has died and been replaced with a Red Twig Dogwood. The Erica x watsonii "Truro" (center in below photo with mauve flowers) has exceeded expectations, but the rest of the plants are just fine. So far early spring pruning has worked out well. There is a purple Echinacea to the left that has done so well I may move it and back-fill it with another dwarf heather.

Beers in the Fridge:

Sixpoint Brewery's Resin is a very hoppy and very strong can of Imperial IPA at 9.0 % ABV and 103 IBU (bitterness scale). Not my cup of tea.

Meanwhile the Woodchuck cider is not a beer, but it is very good, sweet yes, but not bad when your in the mood for it. Very subtle raspberry flavor.

Favorite Movies

The NY Times has a list of their 1000 best movies here. I ran across it as I was trying to find movie synopsis from the NY Times TV schedule for some of my favorite movies because some of their quips are a scream.

Here are some of my favorite movies that I just reeled off the top of my head. I could watch these movies anytime. While looking up the dates of the movies, I was reminded of the other movies made by the major actors in the films, I could have made this list so much longer.

•  Charade (1963) Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn. Enjoyable theme music, lots of funny lines, witty dialog and suspense.  TCM says "everything you'd expect from a Hitchcock film except the famous director's name above the credits" Directed by Stanley Donen.
• The Fifth Element (1997) Bruce Willis, Chris Tucker. Sci-Fi Shoot-em-up. Chris Tucker is a hoot, Bruce has tons of funny lines too.  Spoiler Alert: Bruce saves the day.
• The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947) Cary Grant, Shirley Temple, Myrna Loy. The Uncle did it. One of the better bits of dialog is listed here.
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) Humphrey Bogart as Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. Lots of big stars.
• The Big Sleep (1946) Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall. Bogart as private eye Phillip Marlow created by Raymond Chandler. There was a 1978 remake with Robert Mitchum playing Phillip Marlow, as the NY Times might say in their TV Schedule "miss it"
• The Princess Bride (1987) Directed by Rob Reiner. Tons of memorable quotes. Inconceivable!
• Houseboat (1958) Cary Grant, Sophia Loren. Cary is rude to Sophia, Sophia slaps Cary, Sophia becomes nanny to Cary's kids, they live on a tiny houseboat, everyone gets the wrong impression, and then surprisingly they fall in love.
• Hot Fuzz (2007) Simon Pegg, Nick Frost. Just now noticed that Bill Baily is in the movie. FYI a Comedy. This one came up while I visiting my mom.
• The Last Samurai (2003) Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe, Billy Connely. Tom plays a Civil war hero who travels to Japan to train soldiers, gets captured by a band of Samurai and eventually is accepted because of his warrior spirit.
• The Third Man (1949) Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, zither music, gritty post-war Vienna and a chase through the sewers. Shot on location, the Ferris wheel is still there and you can go on a Third Man tour that include a tour of the sewer and a visit to the museum. I'll have to add that to the list of things to do in my Vienna post.

August Doldrums

Things have been pretty humdrum since coming back from our adventure. Though compared to some other real adventurers, our trip was just a walk in the park. I just finished reading Death in the Sahara by Michael Asher, a French expedition's attempt in the late 1800s to cross the Sahara ends in the death of almost all the expedition team. They were surveying for a railroad that was to go from Algiers to Timbucktoo and were harassed by Tuaregs there and back. Now I am reading The River of Doubt by Candice Millard, recounting Teddy Roosevelt's South American tour and exploration of an uncharted river. Teddy would have poo-pooed our Peruvian Trip, his only instructions to the man in charge of putting together his South American tour was that he refused to be the "thousandth American to visit Cuzco".

Current Blooms:

 Dwarf Coreopsis in one of the troughs

Another Coreopsis, this one at the edge of the Peony Garden, not a dwarf, but shorter than the yellow specimen we have in another garden.

 Japanese Sedum in a trough with Mountain Rock

 Thyme and Dwarf Campanula (white flowers) in a hollowed out rock

Beers in the Fridge:

 Nice and crisp, can't decipher the aroma, once rinsed sweat sox? Great on a summers evening reading the paper.

 Wasn't planning on buying a Peruvian beer, but earlier in the summer the store on my way home just happened to have a case of Cusquena blocking the aisle and I felt obliged to partake. The bottle caps have a drawing of Machu Picchu and the bottle has interlocking Inca stonework on it. It is not bad, just a tad sweet for me.  The Hofbrau Original is very good and reminds me of our trip to Munich.
Also have Sweet Action on hand, currently my favorite summer brew.

What I took on my Summer Vacation:

 Most of these items went in my North Face large duffel. There is a Bill Bryson book there, but I didn't actually take any of his. I took Travel with my Aunt by Graham Green, Monsieur Pamplemousse by Michael Bond and 2 books by Georges Simenon. I pretty much used every item of clothing except the bathing suit. I also packed a pair of approach shoes which took up some space. It was neither as hot nor as cold as I had expected it to have been, but I was prepared for both.
In my day pack I took the first aid kit, our medications, gadget wires and chargers, snacks which I took too many of, a point and shoot, my iphone and the rain jacket.