Philadelphia Flower Show

One day I came home from work in a decidedly grumpy mood. I used up all my vacation time having fun in the Summer and Fall, and now there isn't any time for a Spring vacation. I suggested that maybe we should go to New York for a weekend. So Miss J told me that she was planning to take me to the Philadelphia Flower Show for my birthday! What a treat!

The Garden Show was amazing. I visited Philly in the fall, and the conference I attended was at the same convention center. It's huge! I was really glad that we got over there just as it was opening on Saturday. At 9:00 AM it was just a little bit crowed, but by 11:30 it was jammed. We saw examples of every kind of flower possible. We've had an early Spring here, but not so early as to have things blooming like they were at the Flower Show. 

We are making our project list right now for this year's gardening, and we got some interesting ideas at the Show. I am absolutely dying to put in some kind of a rock garden. I saw these home made planters made from Styrofoam and cement that end up looking like that volcanic rock, tufta. They looked spectacular. J isn't as enthralled, but I think I might be able to get her on the bus.

I bought myself a new pair of gloves, a pair of flower snips for arranging, and a "frog"  - a round piece of heavy metal (brass I think) with pins sticking out of it that you can use for flower arrangements. I've already used all three!

Philly was just lovely -- I hope we get to return there some time soon. I've got a couple more posts on our dinners there. The food was only second to the flowers!

Laurie Anderson's 49 Days in the Bardo

Recently I visited Philadelphia for the first time. I went there for a conference (Educause -- a conference about technology and higher education), and while I was there I had the opportunity to see a exhibit. It was Laurie Anderson's 49 Days in the Bardo.

The work was a series of very large panels, maybe 10 feet by 20 feet, I don't know. They just looked huge. They depicted the artists dog who had died as it made its way through the 49 days in the bardo. The bardo is the gap between lives, and 49 days is the customary number that beings are expected to be in the bardo.
I really loved the exhibit. The picture here is pretty representative of the style and also the color. I thought the work was done in pastels or chalk but the explanation said that it was a number of things, including ash.

The exhibit was at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1222 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA. It is scheduled to be there through November 19. I encourage you to try to see it. It was stunning.

The Felgerts Conquer the Canadian Rockies!

Someone wants to go with us!

J and I have just returned from what has to be our most adventuresome adventure yet: an eight day conquest of the Canadian Rockies. Although we originally had hoped that some of our friends would be able to join us, we traveled alone this time. Here's the itinerary:

• Sunday, July 24:  Fly to Seattle. Shuttle to Vancouver, BC and check into the Holiday Inn on Howe Street.
• Monday, July 25: Tour Vancouver
• Tuesday, July 26: More Vancouver, then Via Rail to Jasper
• Wednesday, July 27: Arrive in Jasper, rent the car and overnight at the Tonquin Inn
• Thursday, July 28: Drive to Banff, check into the High Country Inn
• Friday, July 29: Tour Banff
• Saturday, July 30: more Banff
• Sunday, July 31: Drive to Calgary and return the car. Check into the Airport Hilton
• Monday, August 1: Fly home to Rochester.

The hardest part of the planning -- other than the fact that there were a lot of changes of location -- was trying to figure out what to pack. (Other than the cat, that is!) Usually summers in Rochester run in the balmy high 80's -- but we were experiencing a true heat wave. When we read the forecast for Vancouver and Banff, 70 degrees sounded like winter. "Pack the long johns" advised Miss J. As it turned out, we should have gone with fewer fleeces and more shorts. As a result we found ourselves washing out the few short sleeve shirts we had and wishing for cooler weather.

But finally we were packed, the cat's care instructions explained to a neighbor, and on our way to the airport, thanks to our friend Liz. It was then that the first moral crisis occurred. While we were waiting for our flight, I heard: "Ms Dygert, please approach the podium." When I approached, the Delta representative smiled broadly at me and announced the news that all air travelers hope to hear: I had been upgraded to first class! However, J had not. This was not good. There was no way I was going to be able to enjoy first class while my better half was back in coach. Not if I wanted to *have* a better half when I arrived in Seattle! I gallantly offered the upgrade to her, and she gallantly refused. The Delta representative then had to do some fancy footwork to get me my original seat -- I guess no one has ever refused an upgrade before. I hope the person who got it enjoyed it!

We had originally planned to take a 5:30 shuttle to Vancouver using Quick Shuttle service. That would get us to Vancouver about 9:30. Our flight was supposed to get in to Seattle about 2:30 and I thought it would be just a tad too tight to try to make the 3:30 shuttle. But with the plane arriving a little early, some luck, and quick decision making, we were able to get our luggage, grab some dinner and make the earlier shuttle. Before we knew it, we were across the boarder and checked into our Holiday Inn in downtown Vancouver, one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited. And I have been to some beautiful cities! More about Vancouver in the next post!

Mirbeau Spa Get-Away

This weekend Joanne and I got away for a little pampering to a place I have wanted to visit for a long time, but never could quite afford: Mirbeau Inn and Spa, located in Skaneateles, NY. Recently, LivingSocial offered a pretty good deal for a weeknight stay at the Spa. For $350 we got the room, three course dinner for two, and $100 credit in the spa.

Mirbeau Spa and Inn

We went down on Thursday. Skaneateles is only about an hour and a half from our house, so we timed our visit so we got to Skaneateles at noon. I was hoping for a reprise of our Doug's Fish Fry visit of last summer, but J felt like something a little less fried, so we stopped a the Sherwood Inn. I had a bratwurst, red cabbage and German potato salad. It was good -- but it wasn't our personal favorite: Johnsonville Brats. J had a much more disciplined lunch of a salad with grilled chicken.

After lunch, we made our way to the spa. First up were side-by-side manicures and pedicures. The young ladies who took care of us were really lovely. They took a lot of time -- the mani and the pedi were one hour each.

We then had some time in the hot tub, which was more like a stream than a tub, actually. I'm sorry I didn't take a picture, because it is kind of hard to describe. Off of the resting area, where you wait to be called for your spa treatments, is a little courtyard, beautifully landscaped (like everything else at the spa!) We enjoyed the hot water, and also a cool drink from the bar.

When we returned to our room, we found 6 of the most lovely strawberries, dipped in chocolate. Usually this is kind of a throw away thing -- the concept is better than the actual execution. Not in this case. The chocolate was really wonderful.

Our room was gigantic. We had two king-sized beds with those bed toppers where your body heat makes an impression in the top, so you are lying in a perfect you-shaped cradle. There was a fire place in the room, but given that it was about 95 degrees outside and 95% humidity, we decided to pass on the fire. The bathroom was equally huge, with a multiperson shower (4 people could have showered in there!) and a soaking tub.

View from the Porch

Dinner was on the porch. Our SocialLiving deal got us a three course dinner -- 2 appetizers, 2 entrees, 2 desserts. There were no restrictions on the menu, which was pretty amazing. We selected calamari and tuna poke (raw marinated tuna). The tuna was wonderful, but the calamari was only ho-hum. We both chose steaks for our main course. They are dry-aged on the premises, and mine was really wonderful -- very deep flavor and everything you might want in a steak. We ordered onion straws and sauteed mushrooms as sides, and although I wished later that we had ordered an actual vegetable, the onions and the mushrooms were lovely. Finally, we had desert. My pick was creme brulee, and J went with a pudding. Her pudding was actually more like a very dense, moist cake.

Our dining companions

After dinner, we went for a stroll around the grounds. Everything was beautifully landscaped. I got a couple of ideas for plants I want to add to our own gardens, based on what I saw. We also noticed that someone had arrived in their personal helicopter. The Spa has a landing pad!

We had a very restful evening, and then stopped for breakfast before heading home. Again, the food was great -- house made granola and yogert, fruit, cold cuts in the European style.Well fortified, we headed for home.

I heard that the Spa will be doing another LivingSocial offering sometime soon. We will definitely buy another deal and return to the Spa. It was one of the nicest places that we have visited!

Looking Forward To Vij's Restaurant

J and I have decided that this year's vacation is going to be a train trip in the Canadian Rockies. (Of course I say "decided" like it means "decided". Our plans are aways evolving, and anything is possible!) If we make it to Vancouver, BC, I would very much like to visit Vij's Restaurant. I saw some recipes on line from there, and was inspired to buy one of their cookbooks.

Tonight I made a chickpea curry  -- Chickpeas in Star Anise and Date Masala--  and marinated lamb chops in coarse Dijon mustard before I grilled it. I had originally intended to make the Fenugreek  Curry that Vij's crafted for the lamb. But I mistakenly bought fenugreek seed, not leaves, so I decided that I would wait until another day.

That's a date, not a piece of meat, in the masala. 

The chickpeas were wonderful. I had never used black cardamom. It gave the chickpeas a wonderful, smoky flavor. Maybe you don't have all the called for spices in your cupboard -- well get out there and buy them! And maybe you've never had dates in your chickpeas? I never had. But take my word for it -- the dish was wonderful. I will definitely make this again!

Washing the chard is easy, if you know how!

I served swiss chard with the lamb and chickpeas. Here's a tip for washing greens: I fill the sink very full with cold water and throw in the greens. Then, after letting them lit, I pull them out before draining the water. Be sure to wash the sink because it will have a lot of dirt in it! Lather, rinse, repeat -- well, don't lather.

After the greens were nice and clean, I cut off the tough stems. Then I saute some garlic in my biggest frying fpan, give the greens a rough chop, and throw them in. Add a little water, then cover them tight. In about 10 minutes, they will be ready.

Chickpeas in Star Anise and Date Masala 

Published in the New York Times here.

3 15-ounce cans chickpeas (or 1½ cups dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and cooked)

2 black cardamom pods

1⁄3cup neutral cooking oil, like canola

1 medium-large Spanish onion, peeled and chopped

6 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

2½ tablespoons tomato paste

9 dried dates, pitted and chopped

4 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground cayenne, or to taste

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

2 whole star anise, or 1⁄3 teaspoon ground.

1. Drain the chickpeas and set aside in a nonreactive bowl.

2. With a knife, lightly crack the cardamom pods. Peel the shell to release the seeds and collect them in a small bowl. Discard the shells. With a rolling pin or a mortar and pestle, crush the seeds (you can leave them whole if you don’t mind biting into them) and set aside.

3. In a medium pot set over medium-high heat, heat the oil until it begins to shimmer. Add the onions and sauté for 8 to 10 minutes, until they have softened and started to brown. Stir in the garlic and sauté for a minute or so, until it, too, has softened. Reduce heat to medium and stir in the tomato paste. Add the cardamom and all remaining ingredients and sauté for 2 or 3 minutes.

4. Add the chickpeas and ½ cup or more of water, enough to make them less than dry. Heat the mixture, stirring occasionally to incorporate the flavors, and keep warm until serving. Serves 6. Adapted from Vij’s Restaurant, Vancouver, British Columbia
.

St. Rocco's Festival

St. Rocco

If you like to go to festivals, the Rochester area is the place to be. This weekend, Laurie, Pat, Liz, J, and I made the journey out to the St. Rocco's Festival near Holley, NY. There we bumped into friends and family of Pat's. You may not have heard of St. Rocco -- I hadn't. St. Rocco is invoked against cholera, epidemics, knee problems, plague, skin diseases. He is the Patron Saint of bachelors, diseased cattle, dogs, falsely accused people, invalids, Istanbul, surgeons, tile-makers, gravediggers, second-hand dealers, pilgrims and apothecaries. He is typically shown displaying the plague sore on his leg, and with a dog who has a loaf of bread in his mouth.That's because when St. Rocco was stricken ill with plague (which he contracted while nursing the sick), he withdrew to the forest where he lived in a hut. A dog miraculously appeared and fed him bread, and healed him by licking the Saint's wounds. Personally, I think that the dog is the saint in the story, but that's just me.

Fried Dough

The number one attraction for us was the food: shells, meatball subs, eggplant parmigiana, pizza, Italian sausage, hots, french fries and fried dough were offered. I had shells and eggplant. My egg plant was wonderful. That's a dish that is generally too much work for me to want to make it at home, so it is great to get it out. The fried dough was the clear winner, and I went back for seconds!

Liz knows when to quit!

Besides the food, there were games of chance, of course. At this festival, they offered both roulette, and the pull-open tickets. Lizzie hasn't met a game of chance that she doesn't love, I think, and she made quite a killing on the roulette wheel. She wasn't saying how much she actually won, but I think the roulette wheelman's expression in this picture says it all, don't you????

Boccie Ball

We didn't play in the boccie ball tournament -- but only because we didn't know about it in advance. St. Rocco's sports five "permanent" boccie ball lanes, and the tournament was in full steam while we were there. Maybe next year, eh, G's????? I didn't see any female teams -- I think we should shake things up a bit, don't you???

"These little town blues...."

Produce for sale

St. Rocco's also had a "DJ" and he was spinning an eclectic mix that included tunes like "Achey Breaky Heart" and "Twist and Shout". When the G's heard "New York, New York" -- obligatory at any celebration held in the Empire State -- they couldn't hold back. The festival season isn't over yet -- we still have the Clothesline Festival next week -- but it is definitely winding down. Soon it will be winter again and we will all be holed up in our nests, looking forward to Super Bowl weekend. But for now, it's still summer  (at least until the 21st!) and we are having fun!

Staycation With Liz and Pat

Our friend Liz suggested we join her for a "stay-cation" trip down to Skaneateles, NY. Skaneateles, about an hour and a half from Rochester, is a resort town on a really beautiful lake. Most of the little towns in western New York State have had quite a hard time of it -- there just isn't any industry to keep them going. But because Skaneateles is on what must be the most beautiful of the finger lakes, it is actually doing quite well.

Our first stop was at Doug's Fish Fry for lunch. We all had the fried haddock -- which was very lightly battered and fried crisp and delish. (My stomach is actually growling as I write this. It was that good! I might just hop back in the car and have it for dinner!) We are fussy about our fish fries here in in Rochester, and Doug's definitely measured up. It was served with hand cut french fries. I liked them, but this wasn't the universal opinion. They just weren't crispy enough for 3 of the 4 of us. The cole slaw was a big hit, however. Cole slaw is one of those things that you tend to just ignore. It's never the star of the show, for sure. But this was cole slaw like no other, with enough onion and celery and a very light dressing.

After lunch, we strolled around and poked our noses into the shops. Nothing was really irresitable, but we did find a chocolate shop. The heath bar-esque thing I had was good.

After our stroll, we ambled over to the dock and boarded the good ship Judge Ben Wiles for a sightseeing cruise. Skaneateles has some pretty spectacular "camps" as they call lakeside mansions here. There was one place that they told us cost $20 million. And, oh by the way, they were adding on to it. It looked like there was going to be quite the sizable addition, based on the construction we saw.

 There wasn't a lot of boat traffic, which was nice. The lake had a very serene feel to it. This is definitely a place I would recommend to you, if you are in the area. I hope we will get back there again soon.

Quick Trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake

Niagara-on-the-Lake, located on Lake Ontario, is the home to the Shaw Festival. I've wanted to go for a long time, so this year we were able to find a date when we were a)both available and b)the plays were running were ones we wanted to see. So Friday, Miss J and I tossed a few things in a bad and drove up.

Zee's Restaurant The porch was the nicest part.

We had dinner at a place that I had heard good things from from our friends Laurie and Pat. Zee's is located across the street from the Shaw Festival Theatre, but in our opinion, that was about all it had going for it. I would say the food was only "meh" and the service was really poor.

We started off with Caesar Salads. I don't really go for a Caesar salad very often, but there wasn't anything else on the starters  that looked interesting. The salads were ok, although a little odd. the lettuce was cut into thin ribbons, and there were two rounds of fried pancetta. As far as I could taste, no cheese.

When we turned our attention to the main course,  J didn't see anything on the main menu that appealed to her -- a very rare thing, as she is easy to please. She asked if they could turn an appetizer into a main dish. They said yes -- and then gave her a pile of shrimp on a dinner plate. No garnish, no side dish.

My choice was diver scallops on creamy polenta with puree of fresh peas. I got four, slightly over-cooked scallops on a very tasty polenta. The pea puree was the narrowest sripe of green around the polenta.

Throughout our service was very lackluster. The waiter would zip by our table from time to time to check on us, but wouldn't actually stop to hear what we needed. We decided to skip the desert and get an ice cream cone somewhere else. We stopped at the first place we came to: Cows. And oh baby, was it worth the points! I had something called Ooey gooey I think -- it was wonderful homemade tasting vanilla ice cream with maybe peanut butter cups or something like them in them. Really wonderful ice cream.

That evening we saw One Touch of Venus at the Royal George. The Royal George is described as being plain on the outside, but an Edwardian Jewel box on the inside. If Edwardian Jewel box is code for "tiny little seats intended for tiny Edwardian butts," it was. The play was light and amusing, with music by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ogden Nash Book by Ogden Nash and S.J. Perelman.

Saturday we had breakfast at our hotel -- the Hilton Garden Inn, about 10 minutes from the center of Niagara-on-the-lake. The night before I had had a nice glass of Cabernet, and I was keen to buy a couple of bottles. We drove out to Inniskillen Winery. When I saw that the bottle was about $40, a couple of bottles became one. Actually, I realized when I got home that I bought something different than what I had enjoyed the previous night. I bought Legacy Cabernet Franc, not Cabernet Savingnon.  Here's what they say bout the Carbernet Franc:

The 2007 vintage in Niagara is one of the best in recent years. The long dry hot summer helped the grapes develop the required flavours. The abundant sunshine provided flexibility to allow extended hang time to achieve optimal fruit ripeness. Look for 2007 wines from Niagara to show more body, structure and flavour.

Black currant and floral aromas combine with cedar, tobacco and vanilla on the expressive nose. Black currant, ripe raspberry and tobacco flavours are dominant on the approachable palate that displays silky tannins leading into a long finish of blackberry, spice and tobacco.

I'm looking foward to trying it!

On Saturday we strolled about the town a while, and then had a light lunch in an open-air cafe.  It was a really beautiful day, and J enjoyed her Chicken Caesar, and I my Brie and Ham on Croissant. (I'll eat anything on a Croisant and be happy with it!). The town was full of people, and flowers were absolutely beautiful. J's hip was bothering her a little bit so we only walked around a little while until we made our way to the Festival Theatre to see Oscar Wilde's "The Idea Husband." 

This was one of the best plays I have seen in a very long time. First of all, the play itself was hilarious -- Wilde is famous for his wit, of course. But there is such a lack of wittiness in the present time -- what passes for humor is just pale compared to what Wilde turns out. The costumes were scrumptious. I trolled about on the internet to see if I could find a picture to share with you, but unfortunately there was nothing. I highly recommend the play to you so you can see for yourself! The drive home was more or less uneventful. I think it took us about an hour to cross at the Lewiston Bridge. It wasn't as backup up as the last time we crossed there. (That had been on Canadian Thanksgiving and I think we were 2 hours getting accross.) But we didn't get home until 8 pm. But what a great time! I'm looking forward to doing it again next year!