Nourish

Last night there was nourishment for my mind, my heart, and my belly. It was an easy dinner shared with a newer friend. Time was given for touching base, sharing laughs, and eating a meal designed to comfort.

Fresh Corn in Basil Butter

Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Fresh Herbs

Mac and Cheese with Gorganzola

Peanut butter and Raspberry Cheesecakes

Genius!

You should know what my favorite foods are. They aren't fancy because my taste buds are at the same level as my students. (Whose mean age is 4 years old.) And truthfully, I've really come a long way since moving out of my parents house 14 years ago. Now I eat chinese and mexican. Impressive, right? But back to my favorite comfort foods. Ready for this? Pizza and macaroni and cheese. You know the desert island question about what you would bring? I have four things on my list: 1. An endless supply of either pizza or macaroni and cheese. 2. Ice cold drinking water. 3. My blankie from childhood. 4. An endless supply of yarn to knit with.

Recently, I found a new twist on pizza that I had to try. Pizza cupcakes. Awesome idea, right? Perfectly portioned, lunch box friendly, and cute as can be! Let me show you how easy this is.

Step 1.

Open a bag of pizza dough. I'd like to pretend that I made pizza dough earlier today, but truthfully I came home from work and spent some quality time on facebook.

Step 2. Rip pizza dough into hunks. (That's the technical term, by the way.)

Step 3. Grease a cupcake pan.
Step 4. Press hunks of dough into each cup. And a tablespoon or two of your favorite pasta sauce, a favorite topping or two, (I chose shredded chicken today because I ate school lunch today and felt like I needed some actual protein in my life) and sprinkle with mozzarella cheese and slide into a 425 degree oven for roughly ten to twelve minutes.

Step 5. Remove from oven and let cool for a minute or two, if you can wait. In my opinion it is worth the wait so that you don't burn your tongue. Not that I know that from experience. Pop onto a plate and dig in. Good right? In my opinion, genius!

The Vineyard

In addition to a degree in theatre (that I don't actually use in my real life), I also graduated from college with a wonderful group of guy friends. To be honest, I didn't expect our friendship to very long-they are boys after all. Right after graduation, they all moved to New York and I stayed in Boston. But, a couple of years later when I finally packed up and moved to Brooklyn, they were there waiting for me. I lived in an apartment with four of them for a summer and quickly realized that these were going to be lifelong friends. Since that time, most of us have left the city and many of them have gotten married, but we still manage to squeak out some time together. Usually it's in small groups of three or four with an occasional wedding thrown in, but last weekend a large (but not complete) group of us met up on Martha's Vineyard. I could only manage to squeeze 36 hours of Vineyard time into my schedule, but I was able to make the most of my time there.

Of course there were games. These boys love games. Games that involve frisbees, bocce balls, wiffle balls, bean bags, uno cards, chess pieces. Every game imaginable. I am not a game player, I prefer to watch and take pictures.

My friend Dan's wife orchestrated an amazing meal that included some of the most amazing appetizers. Martha Stewart and Ina Garten have some serious competition in Stacey. That coupled with some vodka infused with cucumber or blueberry cocktails, ahhhmazing.

These donuts. I can't stop thinking about these donuts. Some time after dinner a couple of the boys hopped on their bikes and headed into town. A few minutes later, they showed up with three bags of warm goodness. Goodness isn't even the right word, they were better than good. It took some serious self-restraint to keep myself from devouring all of them. There is a bakery in town that makes donuts and apple fritters at night and sells them right from the fryer and out of their back door. Isn't that awesome? Don't you wish they lived next door to you?

One of the boys bought Sky Lanterns. Have you ever seen these? They are so beautiful. You light them and they just float up into the night sky. It's almost magical. Plus, for some reason, I love the photo of the three of them working together to get it lit. I was sad to leave, it was a bit too short of a visit, but I do feel like a squeezed a lot into a little amount of time.

Avoidance

I am trying to avoid the grocery store. For a couple of reasons. One of which is that lately I seem to be making impulse buys while I am there. Which is really not a good thing. The other is that I am currently going through a bit of a food crisis. I've recently finished reading Jonathan Safron Foer's book, Eating Animals and it really struck me. There wasn't any new information in it, much of it I had seen in Michel Moore's documentary and in Food,Inc, and in the movie about eating endless amounts of McDonalds. But reading about it, in black and white, at this time in my life really resonated with me. Since leaving Brooklyn, I live in a much slower world. A world where I have time to make bread and cheese and maple syrup from scratch. And I live in a place where there are multiple farms within five miles of my home and farmers markets that occur almost every day of the week. All of this time should allow me the ability to make better choices. While I am sorting this all out in my head, I am avoiding the grocery store like the plague, which allows me to avoid making concrete decisions. (AKA-procrastination) Last night I opened up my pantry doors to find very little to actually eat for dinner, but I managed to pull together a can of tomatoes and some cheese and some flour to make a pizza. While I flounder about where I should be getting my food from, I am thinking that I will consume homemade pizza three times a day.

A Better Day

At the end of a harder day of teaching in NYC, I used to look at my assistant teacher and tell her that tomorrow would be a better day. It was in part to boost our spirits and in part to convince her to come back the next day. Working in special ed has its very defeating days and it is on those days that you need reminding of the remarkably successful days. Yesterday was one of the first defeating days of my crafting career. As I drifted off to sleep last night, I silently reminded myself that tomorrow would be a better day.

Today has lived up to that mantra. I just needed

to regroup. And it hasn't exactly been exciting, but it has been just what I needed. A trip to the local farm for some fresh fruits and veggies. Since having company here over the 4th, I have been eating like crap. Today, I took full advantage of using my fresh ingredients and spent a couple of hours cooking. I love how I feel when I am prepping meals and really investing in the food that I am putting in to my body. Especially after sustaining on french fries and fried food this last week. While cooking, I caught up on my favorite Sunday morning news shows and listened to a favorite political podcast. And after this, I look forward to sitting on the porch reading Maine Magazine. Have you read this magazine? It is gorgeous. Stunning really. It is filled amazing photographs of the Maine I want to live in.

July Fourth, A Staycation

The Fourth of July brought a visit from some very good friends. I went to college with him and quickly fell in love with her when they began dating in Brooklyn. They are such easy guests and I love having company who are interested in participating in all sorts of seacoast activities.

We started the weekend off with some lemonade with strawberry infused vodka. Yum! This will definitely be my drink of choice this summer.

We took a long walk through local marshland behind our science center. Although it was hot, it was my first time there and I couldn't get over how amazing it was! Such a little local treasure that is filled with so much beauty. If I wake up motivated this summer, I am definitely going to go there for a walks.
We took a tour of the Red Hook Brewery. Although the tour was less than fun, free beer is always a plus.
We loaded up on fried seafood at a local lobster pound. A little too much fried food if you ask me, but certainly worth the suffering.
Dinner provided us with views of the creek and all the beauty that surrounds my home. Made me appreciate my adopted home once again.
The culminating event was an amazing fireworks display downtown. We struggled to find parking and thought we might not get to see anything at all. At the last minute, we ended up hopping over a guardrail and sitting on a concrete dam. It was an absolute perfect spot! I literally felt like the fireworks display was just for us and we were able to avoid the crowd and have some distance from the loud booming.

All-in-all, an exhausting couple of days, but I feel filled-up.