My Garden

I used my Flip Video to make a little video about my garden. Warning: my panning skills aren't great so take your motion sickness meds before viewing! :-)

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!

Linwood Gardens

 Have you ever gone to a new place and wondered how it could be that you have never gone there before? That's exactly how I felt when J and I visited the Linwood Gardens on Saturday. Linwood Gardens is located in Pavilion, NY and is a short drive from Rochester.

The Linwood Gardens are located on a former country home created by William Henry Gratwick II, of Buffalo, in 1901. In 1933, WH Gratwick III moved his family to the estate and set up the Rare Plants Nursery. The Japanese Tree Peony became a feature of the nursery and the gardens. Oh, how I would have loved to visit that Nursery! We only have one tree peony in our garden. That would be the plant I spent $50 on, and every year I hold my breath to see if it will come back. But after spending a beautiful summer afternoon with these beauties, I asked J to consider taking out one of our roses (that has never done very well, anyway) and replacing it with a tree peony. I think she may have thought I was kidding, but I was serious. 

View from the Italian Garden

Now the Gardens are open a few weeks of the year, and for $10 (or $15 for two), you can wander through the Gardens and enjoy what must be some of the most spectacular flowers ever. When we were finished walking through the gardens, we enjoyed a cookie and some lemonade while we listened to a group of recorder players. It was about as perfect of a day as I could imagine. 

"Carry a Poem in Your Pocket" Day

Today is "Carry a Poem in Your Pocket" day. A very, very long time ago, I gave my first love a poem to carry in his pocket.

Parting   By Emily Dickinson My Life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me, So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.

Biscuits

My dad is an expert biscuit maker, and we had them frequently when I was growing up. Later next month I'm going to see him, and will get the REAL recipe! But until then, this will have to do! The key thing is to handle the dough as little as possible to make a tender biscuit with the maximum rise. Using the food processor to do the mixing of the flour and butter seems to avoid activating the gluten in the flour. And that's a very good thing when you are making biscuits!

Biscuits

Makes 10

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the board
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, very cold
3/4 cup buttermilk

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
2. Put the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times until the are well combined.
3.Cut the butter into several pieces -- say 12 -- and add them to the flour mixture. Process until the flour resembles coarse meal and the butter is completely mixed in.
4.Pour the flour mixture into a bowl, and add the buttermilk. Stir with a fork, and the dough will come together.
5.Turn the dough out to a floured counter, and, handling the dough as little as possible, knead it a few times until the buttermilk is totally incorporated.
6.Gently pat the dough into a round about 1/2" thick.
7.Using a biscuit cutter, cut the biscuits. Take care not to twist the cutter when you are cutting the biscuits as doing so will inhibit the biscuits from rising.
8.Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.

Why I Love Steampunk

Steampunk, a design style that based on how Victorians would have visualized the technology we have today, is one of my most favorite design styles. It is all about brass fittings, glass, gears, and  articulated arms.  And it has been, since I was a little kid! One of my earliest favorite toys was "Mr Machine." I got one for Christmas when I was about 5 years old. When you wound it up, you could see all the gears moving as it moved across the floor. I loved it! It also came with a little wrench, so I took him all apart. Of course, it was beyond my ability to put him back together. So Mr Machine went into a paper sack, and then, without my knowing, my mother threw him away! Tragedy!

My family was kind of Steampunk, as well. For example, we had lots of strange machinery. My father was an engineer, and he could make anything, if he had enough parts. So we had an old Teletype machine, and in the early 1980's, dad turned it into a printer for the microcomputer that he built. Dad used to say about the Teletype machine, "It looks bad, it sounds bad, and it smells bad." We also had an old organ (that was in Eastlake style) that he had connected to an old Electrolux vacuum), so that it was a pipe organ. The vacuum clearner was kind of loud, but the organ was louder!

My father also had a large collection of antique telegraph keys. Recently he started to slim down his belongings, and he sent me one of them. It is really a beautiful thing. So you can see, there was no chance that I was going to escape a love for Steampunk style.

As I grew up, I developed a love for Thomas Mann jewelery. Thomas Mann is a designer from New Orleans, and he describes his style as "techno-romantic." It is all gears and brass and rivits. Here's a sample of his work from his website.

I also love skeleton watches. I have kind of a love-hate relationship with watches, mostly because they seem to break on me all the time. I can't keep one running. Now I only wear one when I am traveling and need to check what time it is so I know when the torture (flying) will stop or when I need to get to the gate or if I have time to go to the bathroom (again!). Unfortunately, they don't seem to make skeleton watches for women.

Anyway, all these diverse loves and attractions have made me a sucker for all things steam punk!

Kickstarter Project: The Manual

I love Kickstarter, a site for crowdfunding creative projects. Here's a project I have recently supported: The Manual. According to The Manual's creators, "The Manual is a new, beautifully crafted journal that takes a fresh look, in print, at design on the web. Published three times a year—with the first due this summer—each issue will have six substantial, beautifully illustrated feature articles, along with several additional pages of rich material."

Take a look at their video, and checkout Kickstarter.