Finally! A Decent Alternative to Cocktail Sauce

Our late December trappings, as photographed by Noam.

In the course of spending the last five days delightfully: eating, drinking, talking, eating and drinking with my mother, father, sister, and brother-in-law, I stumbled across a really great recipe. One of our planned holiday treats was Dolan Brothers Shellfish Company oysters, freshly shucked by my dad. As I was waiting for them at the farmer's market last Saturday, I flipped through a cookbook sitting on the counter. I don't know the name of the book or the author, or even the woman who selected those supremely chewy and flavorful bivalves for me, but she said the book had been given to her by the woman from Trinity Farm Dairy. It is as follows:

1 shallot, finely chopped

juice of 2 lemons
1 1/2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
freshly ground black pepper to taste
Mix it all together. Put a dab on your oyster. Happy new year!

Summer Retrospective

Yes, it's November. No better time for a toasty warm summer vacation update!

July found me in Belgrade, ME on Great Pond with these dudes. Can you guess which one is a native Iowan?

Why look at a lake when you can look at a phone??? Also I would like to note that I was not drinking two glasses of ... soda at once. I don't know how that second one got there.

Ahh, sunset: Lobster roll anticipatory bliss:


Back home, this is the first big batch of tomatoes from the garden, awaiting John's loving transformation into marinara:


You may recall that it was a blisteringly, swelteringly hot summer. My solution? Head south, to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to Worthington State Forest, which was closed (although not evacuated ... hmmm) our second night there due to proximity to a forest fire. Out of the frying pan.

Jen hiking up Mt. Minsi in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area:


View of Mt. Tammany, the trails to which were closed due to the aforementioned fire. Note the haze. Yikes:


And the mighty Delaware, which we drank a couple of beers and swam across. Yet another example of how alcohol consumption reinforces good decision-making. We survived though.

Mansfield Drive-In & Hopeville Pond

John fashioned a delightful little weekend earlier this summer: the Friday night double feature at the Mansfield Drive-In, camping at nearby Salt Rock State Park (not at all worth a visit, but OK if you need a place to crash when you're a little zonked from over three hours of movie watching beginning at 10 p.m.), and then tooling around Western Connecticut and cooling off in Hopeville Pond, pictured above.

I can't say enough about how great drive-in movie theaters are, and how fearful I am that they will disappear altogether. Prior to finding this one in Connecticut, the last time I had gone to the drive-in was with my dad and sister, and I couldn't have been more than 10. So going back to the drive-in had that great youth-summer-nostalgia thing going. What I couldn't have appreciated then, though, was the fact that sitting in your car, watching a first-run feature at a drive-in movie theater, you can really do pretty much whatever you want. You can eat whatever you can bring, drink whatever you can find, and ... lots of other things. All we had was pizza and beer. But the folks around us were very creative. It generated such a strong sensation of summer and freedom. I beseech you, go to the drive-in, before the summer is over!

Memorial Day on Deer Isle, Maine

The fabulous Jess, who makes relaxation an art form:

Inside Oceanville Baptist Church:

Lupines, and the Stonington Opera House:


Sunset on Cat Cove:

Catch Up Post

Here is a quick post to get you up to speed on the last few months. I know, I know, this is not how blogging is supposed to work, but I got a bit caught up in playing Scrabble on Facebook I was extremely busy with other, more important, satisfying and fulfilling things.

I spent a blustery March weekend in cozy Milwaukee with my mother. We basically ate and drank our way through the weekend, which is a good thing to do in Milwaukee. Here is just one sample, cherry pie at Alterra Coffee, which is in a spiffily converted water pumping station. I miss that about the Midwest ... they don't do too much of that neat-o adaptive reuse out here on the East Coast.

In April the dear old VA sent me to Seattle. They must have had a good reason ... I can't recall now what. But the upshot was that I got to meet 3-week-old Harriet, and be present for both her first walk (pictured below), and her very patient mother's first post-conception beer (not pictured).

Bridget B-W, New Mother and Hostess extraordinaire.

Mom visited me in May, just in time for the blooming Mountain Laurel and a neat-o concert by the New Haven Chamber Orchestra.

OK, we're up to Memorial Day. Stay tuned for summer fun!*

*In about 3 months, when you've totally forgotten about summer.

National Poetry Month

In honor of April being National Poetry Month I have tried to read a poem every day. I haven't, but I've read a lot more poems in the past month than ever before in my life. So that's something, right? Here are two of my favorites so far:

Lust for Life

The elephants ate each other then they dreamed
of eating elephants till their captors came
to feed them. Then they died. My meth lab
tends to explode. I move to a new one
like a hermit crab. I give the gift of gab.

The truth gets me hard. Song selection
is key. The idiot Swedes do a number on me.
They invent refrigeration and sleep in shifts.
I'm tired of being compared to Britney Spears.
She's so pretty. I'm covered in petroglyphs.

That sorcerer bewitched my penis!
I'm speed and space, an Aztec princess.
The truth makes me hurl, the truth's a mistake.
John Milton jumps out of my birthday cake.

The psyched Mohican oils the beaver.
Fruit Stripe gum soon loses flavor.
Everything's flammable. Everything's flash.
Postmen like doctors and doctors like cash.

By Michael Robbins, in the April 12, 2010 New Yorker.

Good Night

It is late
I stand
In front of your desk
Saying something inane
You fiddle with papers
Not looking at anything
Work is over yet
We stay

I smile
You are, after all, very cute

We leave the building
Casually
Like it doesn't matter

There is a beautiful moon
We say Good Night

I unhurriedly stroll to my car
Humming some 1950s love song

I speed-limit home
to
Walk my dog
Give fresh water to the birdbaths
Eat my dinner
Choose my clothes for tomorrow
Set the coffee timer
Slide between my bamboo sheets
And dream
Of you

By Nikki Giovanni in Bicycles: Love Poems, Harper Perennial, 2010

Compounce Ridge Trail

Ahem, so I don't remember what I was going to say about this hike, because it happened in like March, and it is now July. Apparently we took a wrong turn, because it had far less prettiness and way more abandoned cars than the New England Hiking Guide said.

I guess nothing is that pretty in New England in March. Some abandoned cars, for your enjoyment: