Really, I do. I need something or someone to kick start me back to blogging on a more regular basis. Every time I sit down to compose the entry on the Panama Canal I end up staring at my brand new HD computer screen. No words come. I end up playing one of my “hidden object” games instead and zone out for an hour or so. What is wrong with me? Summertime blues? Sheer laziness? Maybe a little of both. To quote one of the blogs I read every now and then, her excuse for not blogging was that “I guess I am living the life instead of blogging about it.” That about sums it up for me, but mine is pretty boring.

My camera is gathering dust. I did go to the Botanical Gardens a week or so ago and what you see in this entry is the result of that visit. But there wasn’t much to aim the camera at and I threw away all but a few of the photos that I did take. I am in a rut there too.

Yesterday I read a book. One whole book in one whole day. (It was a light read.)

Let’s see ... what else have I done?

Last week Rick and I went to a “gala” reception at the Lincoln Center in New York City. We got dressed up, had a nice dinner and then went to the event. A lovely night! Going in to the city is always exciting and fun. Such energy in those sidewalks filled with people!

At home we’ve been enjoying the pool which is now above 80 degrees and very comfortable. It’s not even the weather that is making me lazy as the days have been sunny and warm. Delightful. Our last rain/thunderstorm was a week ago.

The fireflies are far and few between now but the cicadas have started up ever so slowly. In fact, as I type there are two going out there now. Ah, the sound of summer.

We have at least three bats in our winnowed-down bat population. They swoop and dip over our heads when we take our nighttime swims. It’s good to see them.

The turkeys bring their cute little babies around almost every day—the end result of all that turkey sex in my front yard this spring. Sometimes just one of the hens with her brood will show up, while other times it looks more like a turkey day care center and all ten or so of the babies.

I also went with neighbor Kim this week to see a litter of six week old Irish Terrier puppies that they will getting a new puppy from. The breeder was halfway out on Long Island and I have to tell you that it’s a nasty drive! Yikes, I won’t be going out there again anytime soon. The traffic! The puppies were adorable though and it was nice to breathe in puppy breath and talk dogs again.

We also had a six o’clock a.m. visitor yesterday. We were still asleep when Alex started barking downstairs. It is not his norm to bark for no reason, so I got out of bed and looked out the front window. Nothing. Rick got up and took a look around too but he also didn’t see anything. After laying there for a fitful twenty minutes more I got up and went down to feed the dogs and cats. I looked out on the back deck and saw that one of the planter boxes that was on our deck railing had been knocked down and the poor petunias were out of their pots, the nearly indestructible Squirrel Buster Plus bird feeder pulled around in an abnormal position, the iron hanger it was on slightly bent. Okay, a bear for sure. A pretty brazen one too to come onto our high deck. It’s only happened twice before in our five years here that we’ve had bears on the deck. It’s not a good feeling. I have to say that I am more than impressed with this bird feeder. Not only do the squirrels not bother it but it held up to the bear mauling with not a scratch!

So, I go to feed the cats and eBay is nowhere to be found. I call her, searching high and low but I can’t find her. She is always ready to to eat so I figure something must be wrong. Finally I hear a tiny mew coming from the laundry room. When I pull out the washer, there she is. She ventures out very tentatively into the kitchen. She peeks around the corner into the sun room and out to the deck where the bear was with her eyes wide and her tail all puffed up. Aha! She saw the bear too and it scared her so badly she was hiding from it. Poor kitty! So, the bird feeder comes in at night and when I am not at home.

One of my daily routines is to water all the outside plants before taking a shower, check on the pool temperature and add chlorine every other day. I slip on a pair of shorts and t-shirt and head out with the watering can. It’s a nice way to start the day, especially with the weather we’ve been having. I don’t even mind if the humidity is high that time of the day. Bella usually helps me with this particular job. Every other day or so I’ll tip all the water out of her wading pool and refresh it. She loves this! The minute I start adding fresh water she’s in there wading around, scooping up mouthfuls of the cold water straight from the well.  I’ve also gotten into the habit of letting one of the dogs come with me out in the front as a special treat for them. No leash, just hanging out with mom while she waters. I check on the progress of the figs daily and I have to say I can’t wait until we can eat them.

You never know what you might see while watering. The little clearwing hummingbird moths have started hovering around as I water. I just love them! While I was watering the deck flowers the other day I found this moth clinging to the petunias. Isn’t it pretty? I have never seen this particular kind of moth before so I looked him up. I think it’s some kind of Sphinx moth—possibly a Virginia (hog) Creeper Sphinx Moth. No matter what it’s name is, it’s beautiful.

For those of you that I’ve talked to over the past week, I apologize for re-hashing all this boring, trivial stuff about my life again. Ho hum. Which brings me to another topic of conversation. I have no idea who is reading this blog anymore other than family members and a few close friends and those of you that comment from time to time (thank you Debra, Maggie & Joyce!). I get numerous “junk” comments every single day that I have to delete which is very disheartening. You should read some of them! They always include a link to whatever website selling some garbage. I am so very tired of them. It’s long been in my mind to make this blog private and if Rick can figure out how to do that without too much trouble on the part of anyone then we will do so. If you still want to read all you will have to do is sign up to be a member. You don’t have to comment, you can still continue to read as you’ve always done. The only change will be that not all those crazies out there will be able to read things about my private life anymore. Because this blog really is about my daily life. But, that’s all in the future and hopefully we can make it happen.

Okay, so I’ve sat here long enough this morning filling this entry up with boring tidbits, neglecting my watering duties which are calling me, so I will close this entry now. If you are still awake after reading this, bless you. Hopefully this will kick start me to finish my vacation blogging. Check back in a day or so to find out!

I’ve been meaning to post for days now, yet I haven’t. Maybe that’s because not much is going on.

I can’t really talk about the weather since it is behaving itself and as I type it’s a balmy 44 degrees (F) out there this morning at not quite 8 o’clock! Not the single digits; not even below freezing! We’ve had a few flurries of snow but no real snow now for well over a week. I think the spell over our winter-enchanted piece of Earth has broken. The snow is slowly melting but it’s still treacherous to walk on. Maybe today it will be warm enough to slush up that icy crust.

Should I talk about my bra fitting a week ago at Intimacy on Madison Avenue in the city? No, you probably don’t want to hear about that.

Or should I tell you about my bird rescues? Bird Rescue #1: a blue jay rescued from the mouth of Bella that didn’t turn out very well, or Bird Rescue #2: a junco that flew into our sliding glass door that did turn out well.

Maybe my topic of conversation should be about our Colorado cabin and #1: the beleaguered Board of Directors of the Homeowners Association and all the problems associated with that mess. Or #2: the neighbor who lives back behind us and can’t access his property until mid-June because of a very deep snow drift that occurs on the road that goes through our property asking if we’d let them cut another road on our property to go around said drift or build huge ugly snow fences on our property that won’t help anyway. No, you probably don’t want to hear about that either. (We said no to both proposals, by the way.)

I suppose I could talk about why I am dusting off the old Rosetta Stone Spanish software and brushing up on my español. PANAMA (and quite possibly Nicaragua {Granada} too) in May. How’s that for an exotic travel destination? Rick has business and I am tagging along. There are other wives going too, so it should be really fun. I am hoping to see a rain forest environment and people say that a visit to the Panama Canal is a must.

Plus, we’ve been thinking about places to retire (six months in the States/six months “somewhere” else) and this is one place that was on our “maybe” list. This will give us a chance to see what it’s like. There is quite a large ex-pat retiree community in both countries.

So, see? Not much!

Sunrise this morning.

We had a little bit of snow overnight. Not much, just enough to cover the surface of everything—more of a what they call a “nuisance snow.” Meaning it’s not enough to really snow blow or plow.

I took the shovel, put on my “whewe is that wascaly wabbit”*** hat and scraped it mostly clean of snow. Of course, our tire tracks where we drove in and out taking Rick to the train (he’s in the city today) are frozen in place and won’t come up. It’s 18 degrees out there at 10:30 a.m.  It’s not supposed to be above freezing until maybe Friday and with the wind blowing the wind chills are well into the teens.

It’s nice to have a little of the white stuff finally. I needed to run a few errands today and took my camera with me because I noticed on the way home from the train station that Monksville Reservoir was looking very cool. Literally! Icing over with spots of new snow. I parked and walked along the road to get these shots. God it was cold! Brrrrrrr.

As an added benefit of getting out and walking I came across these three swans resting on the ice.

Here’s a closer look. Too bad I didn’t have the telephoto lens with me.

I was intrigued by the swirls and patterns of the half frozen surface.

The surface of the water wasn’t the only thing that was half frozen. The other thing would be me! As I was standing there taking these photos a big gust of frigid wind came along and lifted my hat right off my head! I watched as it rolled and tumbled across the road, only to disappear from view as it went down the slope to the other side of the reservoir. My head was really cold now! I waited for the traffic to clear then dashed across the road and scrambled over the guard rail. I found my hat no worse for the wear lying in the weeds. At least it didn’t keep tumbling until it reached the water’s edge! I dusted off the snow and wasted no time in putting it back on my now freezing head.

When I got back to the car I realized I didn’t have my lens cap so I retraced my steps to where I thought I might have lost it. I didn’t find it. I’m bummed. I am forever losing or misplacing lens caps. I need to buy a dozen or so! But I just now realized as I was typing this that I only retraced my steps to where the swans where and not to where I picked up my hat. Maybe I’ll have to go back and see it I can find it there! (but not today! I think I’ll wait for the warm-up at week’s end.)

I took another detour on the way home along East Shore road where I knew I could take a few photos of the weeping rocks. All the rock faces here in New Jersey “weep.” There is so much ground moisture here. The weeping rocks freeze into falls of icicles.

Am I making you cold yet? After all this silly outdoor photography without gloves on I was ready to come home and stoke up the fire in the wood stove! No more outside business for me today. I am going to get some knitting done right after I finish this entry: by the fire!

****What? you don’t know what I meant by a “whewe is that wascally wabbit” hat?  Why an Elmer Fudd hat of course!

It’s my go-to hat for dog walking, shoveling and at-home activities. I change hats when going out somewhere. It is a Calvin Klein though if you think that makes if a tad more fashionable!

Ever since fellow blogger, Lettuce Eating, visited New York City (she lives in London) and told me how she went on this food tour, I’ve been longing to do it. What better excuse to finally just “do it” than hosting a visitor over the weekend last week? Anne-Lise (the daughter of our dear friends in France) took a few days out from her busy college schedule in Quebec to come and stay with us. Since we had not seen her since she was 8 years old it was nice to “meet” the wonderful grown woman she has become at age 22! Where did the years go?

We drove in to the city and left early in case the traffic was all snarled up, which if course it wasn’t and we arrived at the closest parking garage to our meeting point in the Village in just over one hour. Amazing! It still seems unreal to me that we live that close to NYC and that Rick is brave enough to drive in Manhattan!

We met in front of Murray’s Cheese.

Here is the only photo I took while inside. It was really crowded, so kind of hard to get photos of all the luscious cheeses and other cool things they had to offer. You can buy these “gift” boxes!

Our first tasting stop was Joe’s Pizza. Did you happen to notice that pizza pie at the beginning of the post? Hmm ... how could you not? I hope it made you hungry because it was certainly delicious! I thought we would each get just a bite of pizza, but we had one whole slice to ourselves. Our guide, Barri, gave us the background history on Joe’s and how they make their sauce. No big list of topping ingredients here. Just your basic tomato sauce and cheese on top of a wonderfully thin crust. Photos of a younger Joe posing with famous people covered the walls. As we left the store we actually got to see “Joe” standing outside talking to someone. Hey, a “celebrity” sighting!

Next we sampled rice balls (or arancini) from Faicco’s Italian Specialty Food Shop (Previously Faicco’s Pork Store) which is right next door to Murray’s Cheese. That’s our guide passing them out. We ate on the street because the shop is just too small to fit us all in at the same time.

Even though they took the pork out of the name, the pig remains on the sign. *oink, oink*

Just look at this line up of wonderful food shops: Amy’s Bread, The Lobster Place (we just peeked in here—so much wonderful looking fresh fish!), Murray’s Cheese Shop and Faicco’s all in a row! Bread, fish, cheese and pork. The only thing missing is a butcher shop for beef.

Our guide told us a lot about the the area and different buildings. I even learned something new about how to tell how old a brick house was by they way the bricks are laid. She pointed out places along the way where a film or television series had been shot. We saw the outside of the house where contestants from the Next Network Food Star were housed a few years ago, the church garden where most of the garden scenes from the movie Doubt were filmed, and the outside of the building that was supposed to be where they lived on Friends. I never watched the show so I didn’t have a clue.

It’s quiet and lovely and at times hard to believe you are still in the city. And, from what we understand, extremely pricey to live here now. No more starving poets and artists. You pretty much have to have “made it” to live in the Village today.

After the rice balls we headed to Home (American Gourmet Comfort food). In this tiny little restaurant we got to sit down and eat in their little courtyard garden in back. By this time it had started to drizzle so the chef rolled out the awnings for us.

Our tasting here was none other than comfort food at its best: Mac & Cheese. This was not your average Mac & Cheese though ... yum. Go ahead, take a bite. You know you want to.

We visited the Cornelia Street Café which has club space downstairs in the basement for aspiring poets, musicians, and storytellers. It’s like a cave down there and very reminiscent of the old beatnik days. The stage is tiny. Our guide told us that Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick had their first date here. You can tell how narrow it is by looking at us all standing around. When we resurfaced, it was pouring rain! oh dear. Some people came prepared but others did not.

Our guide herded us back over to Faicco’s to the shelter of their large awnings as the rain continued to pour from the sky. While she went in search of some rain ponchos for those that were not prepared for the rain, we all got a chance to go inside the “pork store.” Those are huge “logs” of provolone cheese hanging from the ceiling!

Our next stop was another sit-down tasting which got us out of the rain. By this time I was so full I could barely put another bite of anything into my mouth. They say that the tasting tour is “enough for people to eat so lunch is not usually necessary afterwards.” Hah! That’s a slight understatement. Soy and Sake (Asian inspired Vegetarian Restaurant) was something completely different. We were presented with a beautiful little Bento box full of goodies: BBQ pork (really tofu but tasted a lot like the real thing), fried rice, a dumpling and some delicious fried seaweed.

The other nice thing was the chance to order a glass of wine or sake if we wanted to. (Cost not included in the tour price.) Rick was intrigued by something on the menu called Sake2me described as a “sparkling drink infused with all-natural Asian flavors.” He chose the pear flavor. Stupid me, since I don’t really care for sake I didn’t order one but had white wine instead. His Sake2me was absolutely delicious: light and so refreshing! My wine paled in comparison. I’ve since tried to find it around here but right now it looks like no one is carrying it. I highly recommend trying to find it! Where are Rowan & Martin when you need them?

Back out on the sidewalk again it had (thankfully) mostly stopped raining. Well, at least it wasn’t pouring. The dessert course was up next at Milk & Cookies where we ate huge still-warm-from-the-oven oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I ate half of mine and saved the rest for later.

But wait! We aren’t done yet! We still have the cheese and olive platter over at Murray’s Cheese Shop and last but not least, cannolis at Rocco’s Pastry Shop which have been voted the best cannolis in NY! Rocco’s is only a few doors down from Murray’s, Amy’s etc., and across the street. Good thing I don’t live in this neighborhood.

Whew! Are you full yet? Did you have enough to eat our would you like some lunch now?

Which one was my favorite you might ask? Well…a close tie between the pizza and mac & cheese. Least fav were the rice balls I think. They were good, but heavy.

Now that we’ve been on this tour there are so many restaurants we passed by and heard about that I want to go back to. Like Fish where for $8.00 you can get a half dozen oysters on the half shell with a glass of beer or wine. Uhm ... do I need to point this out — bargain!! And, I am certain that is exactly what they hope the people on the tour will do: come back and patronize their establishments. Works for me!

I’ll leave you with a somewhat hazy view of Manhattan taken from the Jersey side of the Hudson from Weehawken just as we got out of the Lincoln Tunnel. (Jersey really does have the best view of Manhattan—forget the Empire State Building!)

There are a few other food tours that we’d now like to take after having been on this one. The one to Chelsea Market and the one in Chinatown sound the best. It was so interesting to taste the food and get a lesson on history and architecture all at the same time. I highly recommend the experience next time you happen to visit the Big Apple!

Here is the link to the tour we went on. Other tours are listed on the page as well.

P.S. Be sure to click on all the provided links to visit each restaurant’s/shop’s web site. If there is no link there isn’t a web site!
P.P.S. If you have no clue what I am talking about in my reference to Rowan & Martin you are probably too young to be reading this blog.

Rick and me in the pantry on the Chopped set.

Our trip to go into the city for our CHOPPED experience was planned perfectly for the day before our big snow storm. I love driving in to the city over the GW bridge. (That’s what the George Washington bridge is commonly called around here.) Built in 1931, it’s a beautiful bridge. It’s a double-decker bridge and carries a huge number of vehicles across the mighty Hudson with no less than 14 lanes of traffic. I like being on top for the view, but then you have to share the road with all the trucks since they are not allowed on the lower deck.

Even more beautiful with it’s lacy trusses, is the Queensboro Bridge. It was completed in 1909. Very grand.

But I’m certain you don’t want to hear about the bridges, so I’ll get on with CHOPPED.

Walking up to the studio I saw a man dressed in a suit standing outside. I whispered to Rick “That looks like him, Ted Allen.” And it was. We walked right by him. I was trying hard not to stare so I just cast a furtive glance his way. He looked exactly like he does on TV. Kind of short, slight of build. Also standing around outside on break was one of the contestant chefs. Once inside the building, sitting right there in a chair texting on his phone was one of the judges, Geoffrey Zakarian. At this point I was feeling a little bit star-struck! Geoffrey Zakarian is quite handsome in person!

We had arrived during lunch break (2:30 p.m.) which was good and bad. Good because we got a private tour of the whole set; bad because we only got to see a small portion of the actual filming.

They take over Jerry’s entire studio, bringing a cast and crew of over 70 people with them. Poor Jerry has to rent out a studio across town if he has any commercials to do himself, and he’s relegated to a tiny shared office space. On the way down to Jerry’s office we passed the makeup and wardrobe room and Ted Allen’s dressing room.

So, let the tour begin! And what better place to start than the judge’s table (sans judges of course). I had to be respectful what I snapped photos of, I’m sure you understand.

The cooking area.

And just look at all the cameras and lights, both on the floor and in the ceiling!

Looking back toward the cooking and pantry section from the judge’s table.

We saw the rooms where they do the little interviews with the contestant chefs which they show throughout the show as insertions. We talked to two of the chefs and asked them how it was going. One said “well at least I made it through the appetizer course and I’m still here!” She looked and sounded familiar with her heavy accent. Hmm… The other chef looked very familiar too, like we had seen him already on the show. I told him I didn’t know how they made anything out of the basket ingredients. He shook his head, smiled and said “it isn’t easy!” We wished them luck and continued on our little tour.

Down in the area where the buffet lunch was set up was Alex Guarnaschelli chatting with some people. She looks exactly like she does on television too.

Also down here is where they photograph the food and the “chopped” plate. Ever wonder why the chefs have to make four plates of food for three judges? Here is the reason: one must be made for the shot.

Lunch break was over and we walked right through the set as they were starting back up again. All the judges were seated at their table and we saw the third and final celebrity chef judge, Marc Murphy.  We walked back to Jerry’s office to give them time to get rolling again. I was telling him how two of the contestant chefs looked so familiar to us, so he checked the filming schedule and sure enough they were filming “Winners Week” where previous winners are invited back to compete against each other. I knew I had seen them before and not too long ago either! I’m not sure exactly when the segment we saw will air, but the following day they were doing “Halloween,” so I’m assuming it’s some time in the fall.

After spending some time with Rick and Jerry talking shop (Phantom cameras), we walked up to the control room to watch. The judges were discussing the chef’s dishes and what they liked or didn’t like about them. This was pretty interesting because the cameras were rolling as each judge just talked. They said the same thing about 15 different ways. How many ways of saying the chicken was too salty can you come up with? You’d be surprised! Obviously here is where the magic of editing takes place in choosing which clip with which phrasing goes into the final cut. After they all had their say (again and again) they took another break. They did a lot of that!

It was very interesting being up in the control room with all the monitors showing all the camera angles. Each monitor had the name of the person behind that particular camera and the director would be constantly telling them what to do. Zoom in here, get a close-up of the chefs all waiting to be chopped, show me the plate, etc. How he kept track of everything was pretty impressive.

It takes somewhere around 17 hours to tape an entire show, and since we were only there for a few hours we didn’t get to see a lot. We did however see the next chef get CHOPPED! Sorry, I can’t divulge any names! I wish we had seen the actual cooking part, but we didn’t. With any luck we’ll be invited back again in the fall when they are taping again.

And here is Rick pretending he’s being chopped by the door the chefs walk by after they are CHOPPED. On the show the door slides shut as the chef who’s been chopped walks by it. Someone must be on the other side of the door sliding it shut because it’s not an automatic door!

As we were leaving they were on break (again) and Ted Allen was just outside the door. Rick was brave and just stuck out his hand and introduced himself (and me too of course). So, I got to shake Ted Allen’s hand and chat for a few minutes until they were called back in to continue with their taping.

All in all, a very fun day! I have so much more appreciation for what we watch on television as the final product! If you haven’t ever watched the show I encourage you to do so. Maybe I’ve piqued your interest just a little bit?

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