Accomplishments

I’m feeling pretty self-satisfied this weekend, mostly because I did three things:

1. I mowed the lawn. For the first time ever. I haven’t had a lawn since I lived with my parents, and luckily I also had a brother, and that’s what brothers do. But in this new place, without Scott here yet, I managed to figure it out. Yay me. (Very lucky for me, the lawnmower that the landlord provided has an electric starter, because I already know I can’t pull start an engine to save my life.)

2. I innovated. I like to make my coffee at home in the morning and bring it to work with me. Now that I’m biking to the office, I wasn’t sure what to do. I can’t hold my travel mug. I tried to get up earlier and have my coffee at home but then I got to work and wanted to drink coffee while I was checking email. (There is a coffee maker, but I’m a coffee snob and like to drink my own brew.) So, instead, I fashioned my own cup holder for the basket of my bike. I knew I needed to keep the cup upright, and I figure some sort of shock absorption would be good. So I carved a big divot in a sponge and rigged a couple of bungee cords to do this:
(top view)

(side view)

I’ll see how it works on Monday!

3. Baking. Kathy and Vance are having some people over tonight for their Grizzly marathon. They’re showing Grizzly Man and The Grizzly Project. Grizzly Man is legendary with them. When they went to see it in the theater without knowing much about it, Vance thought it was a mock-umentary, and laughed his way through it. Anyway, we are having bear-themed food, and I decided to make Cub-cakes.

Get it?

Cub-cakes.

It’s a yellow cake cupcake, with strawberry buttercream frosting, chopped up trail mix, and a Teddy Graham.

 

Local produce fix

I spent nearly a decade living in Western Massachusetts where there were tons of farms and farm stands, and I didn’t really take advantage of them. It’s nice to be back in an area like that, now that I am learning what to do with vegetables. At the end of my moving day, Kathy asked me whether there was anywhere I wanted to go before she dropped me at home (me being without a car for the week), and I said no, too tired. But she decided on the best possible stop over on the way back - her favorite produce stand. It turned out to be a fantastic idea. I got a bunch of local produce, including beets, the tomatoes that are famous in this area, and peaches (from Georgia, but they smelled so good when I walked past that I couldn’t resist).

Some of the things I made this week (sorry, I only have a picture of one):

• Beet salad with goat cheese, crumbled bacon, balsamic vinegar and oil.
• Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches
• Peach blueberry crisp (the only dish I couldn’t figure out a use for bacon in.)

I missed this week’s Farmers Market in the center of town, but will go next week and see what I can find there.

Today I’m doing some shopping with Kathy, including finally buying a food processor with a gift card I got from my coworkers. This will open up a whole world of recipes…

 

Pizza on the beach

I’m having a pretty exciting week here in my new place, and everyday I’m discovering some gem in this town. I will start posting some of that soon, but didn’t want to leave out one of the good food episodes we had during the vacation in Martha’s Vineyard last week.

On our yearly beach vacation, we usually set aside a couple of nights to get dinner out, and then assign people different nights to be responsible for shopping and cooking for the whole house (usually about 8-10 of us). I felt some added pressure (since I’ve been food blogging and all can’t talk about anything but cooking lately) that I was going to have to do something special. I decided on homemade pizza and teamed up with Heather to become Team Tuesday.

Heather had a brilliant idea of trying to do grilled pizzas, and we found instructions on the web. Many of these sites make it sound really complicated, and we expected we were going to need a few pairs of hands, three spatulas and tongs to make this happen. We decided to try a test pizza, and stay ready to use the oven if need be. All of our concerns were unfounded - this was so easy to do, and it made fantastic pizza.

For the dough - I didn’t want to spend half the day waiting for dough to rise, so I bought 5 16oz. pizza doughs at the Stop and Shop. For each pizza, we used half of one of these. On a floured surface, or floured hands, roll or stretch out the dough. Back in my freshman year of college, I worked at the campus pizza place, and learned a little about this part. The key is to use the tops of your hands and knuckles (not your fingertips, which will easily poke through) to gently stretch the dough. Primarily pull from around the edges, and the middle will pull itself thin on its own.

We heated the gas grill to medium-high and sprayed it with an olive oil spray before the first pizza, but then didn’t add any more, so I’m not sure whether that is really necessary on a well-seasoned grill. We put the dough down, and without getting burned, pulled the edges out a little more. We constantly checked it until it was crisp and brown on the bottom, and then flipped it over. It took one spatula and a couple fingers to do it easily.

Toppings: Once we flipped it, we worked quickly to add sauce, cheese and toppings. Then we closed the lid to circulate the heat to melt the toppings while the bottom cooked. You can’t load too much on these pizzas, and you have to precook all the toppings, since they’ll only be on the grill for 5 minutes or so.

We had a range of toppings available and took special requests, including:

• Buffalo chicken and blue cheese (my favorite)
• Shrimp and roasted garlic
• Combinations of pepperoni, sausage, onions, mushrooms, eggplant, red peppers

One warning on making these pizzas - I would not make these for a large group again. Because we could only do one pizza at a time, after we finished four of them, we let everyone start eating, and we kept cooking. So we ended up spending a good two hours at the grill and were finally able to join everyone (already stuffed) at the end. While we were outside, we heard some chanting from inside, and when we came in, we were treated to an original cheer, led by Brittnie, called “Pizza on the Beach.” It was the awesomest response that a cook could get. I didn’t save the lyrics, but maybe someone from the group could post them in comments?

The final product.

(All photos by Kristen Beam.)

 

Orienting

More than a few times in the past, I’ve picked up and moved somewhere new on my own to start school or a job. Now I can’t imagine how I did that without the amazing help I’ve gotten this time from Kathy and Vance. I highly recommend to anyone who wants to move somewhere, find a Kathy and Vance. They are not only the most knowledgeable people about this area, they are unfailingly generous and fun to boot.

On top of that, they are both amazing cooks. And the day I arrived, Kathy had some dough rising on the stove waiting to be baked. It was Chocolate Babka. She got the recipe from here.

It tasted perfect, soft chewy dough with dark chocolate chunks. She also left half a loaf with me in the house, so I’ve had more of it for breakfast every day.

 

Catching up

I’m back on land, and settling into my new digs in Virginia. Everything seems great here so far, with the exception of an unwanted tenant in the attic. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s nocturnal and likes to run around a lot at night over my bedroom. Oh yeah, and it totally freaks me out. Last night, I grabbed a pillow and blanket and slept on the floor in the guest room. If all goes well, it will be captured and taken away soon so I can start sleeping in my bed again.

I’ll catch up with some posting in the next couple of days, including the following exciting posts:

• Pizza on the beach
• Chocolate Babka (made by Kathy, eaten by me)
• My new local produce fix

And finally, a quick shout out to my big brother, Scotty, who lurks here, and turned 37 on Monday. Love ya, bro, and even more important, I’m still younger than you.

 

We made it.

Three cheers to the Captain, who busted his hump to get us all the way to Martha’s Vineyard today. Bad weather set us back a day - we spent yesterday near Newport, RI instead of Cuttyhunk. He also did it single handed, since I was pretty much out of it with the seasickness. What I’ve learned in five weeks is that once I’m sick, even with Dramamine, the only thing I can do is lie flat with a blanket over my head. Every once in a while I peek out to make sure Scott hasn’t been swept over board. It’s the least I can do.

And this is my last day on the boat for a while. After my week on the Vineyard, I’m going to drive south to move us into our new place, and let Scott take his time getting back. I think this is a win-win situation for both of us. I’m excited about daily showers, grocery stores, and getting to know our new town. I’m even excited to get back to work. Scott is going to enjoy boating without an itinerary for a bit.

I will probably not blog from the Vineyard vacation, and then will take a couple days to get into the new house and get internet set up, so this is it for me for a bit. Don’t forget to check back in a couple of weeks!

 

Four days, four states

It’s funny when we’re traveling so slowly to realize that we’re hitting a state per day. Two days ago we were in Connecticut, then we anchored for Tuesday night at Fishers Island (part of NY), and today we made it to Point Judith (Galilee, Rhode Island). Tomorrow, our plan to is to anchor at Cuttyhunk Island (Town of Gosnold, MA) before our final stretch on Friday to Martha’s Vineyard.

We are positively racing… at no more than 6 miles per hour.

To celebrate our progress, while we were ashore today, Scott picked up a couple of lobsters from a stand. He’ll be cooking them tonight! I’m sure there will be pictures.

 

Yeah, yeah, we’re still here…

We’re having a pretty frustrating couple of days here. Only 90 miles from the Vineyard, but we’ve been stuck in the same anchorage area for a couple of days. When the current is favorable, there are storms or fog. When those clear up, the current is against us. We’ve already made a couple of false starts today, only to re-anchor when the fog got thicker.

Our goal is to make it to Fishers Island today, but that’s been our goal for a couple of days.

The one bright spot of the last couple of days has been a really nice visit with some long lost relatives of Scott’s. Why don’t you just go over to his blog and read about a little bit of happiness, while we stew here and wait for the fog to lift?

 

Iron Chef: Striped Bass Battle

Scott passed the baton with his post about the striped bass he caught. Like last time, we split the harvest and each took one big fillet to cook up. Scott grilled his on the propane grill, and I did a panko breaded fillet, like last time. The final platter:

In this battle, the judgment clearly went to the Captain. While we did the same general preparations that we did for the bluefish last week, the bass is a much tastier fish, and it held up well to the grilling. It was firm and flavorful. The fried fish, on the other hand, was not as crispy as the first time I made it, and I didn’t season it well enough before breading it. I’m sure we will have a rematch soon.

I did also pair the fish with a soup that I was planning to make before Scott caught the fish. It was split pea with Spam soup. It’s something that I don’t think I’ll ever make on land, but really wasn’t bad.

 

Feeling REALLY unwelcome in Norwalk

Not too long ago, Scott yelled from the cockpit, “Bring your camera!” and we saw this moving in our direction…

Then this:

And then the thunderstorm started. So, like any normal person, I climbed into bed to hide. A few minutes later, I heard the outboard motor running, and I head out to the cockpit, where Scott is driving around very slowly in this harbor so we don’t hit any moored boats. Because the winds picked up so much that we were dragging our two anchors around the little harbor.

The scariest storm I’ve been through on the boat, but it passed over quickly. Just checked the radar on two different weather websites, and that looks to be it for the night.

And now, we have this: