Weekend Mini Break

Relaxation, pretty leaves, and hiking were the goal for this past weekend. With the Berkshire's all booked up with people from around the world wanting to get a taste of fall in New England, we decided to head to a less populated place this time of year - The Ocean. Fortunately for us, Maine has the best of all worlds - ocean, leaves, hiking, and small town quaintness.

The weekend was perfect.



We spent one day hiking. Look, that's part of the Beehive. There were rungs cause it went right up. And I wasn't scurred. Not even once. Look at me, I'm growing. Or the Andes made most other mountains seem trivial. Undetermined.




This is one of the views from the top, plus our feet. There's little in this world that can beat leaves and ocean.



A view from the bottom of what we'd just climbed. We took The Beehive up and The Bowl back down.




Yup, those are his feet in the water. They were numb for the next half hour. I let my feet touch the water too, but I definitely didn't hang out. I might have gone running up the beach.



After a lot of hiking we had some delicious tea, soup and popovers with home made jam. Second day was spent wandering around town, in and out of shops. I loved this clock. Around mid afternoon it was time to head back to the city.

We'll definitely be back. There's more trails to hike, leaves to see and ocean to enjoy.



Happy Fall!

Oodles of Apples

Yesterday, being a typical fall day in New England, boy, friends and I decided to venture out in search of apples. The orchard we ended up with was a "buy a bag" orchard. $20 for half a bushel, and half a bushel we got.

Now the quandry: what to do with all the apples.
















So far, the following has been proposed/thought of:
Apple Crumb Pie
Apple Butter
Apple Sauce
Apple Tartarin with Pomegranate
Apple Strudel

But half a bushel is a lot of apples. Does anyone have recipes to share? Hopefully ones that don't go bad easily? or are easy to distribute?


Btw. Girl at Bolton Farm Stand's apple pastry window sucks at the customer service thing. We stand in line for 40 minutes. I only want one or two cider donuts. The rest of our crew is getting assorted various pastry so we get in the 5 or less donut line. Three customers from glory and no more individual donuts are being served. We didn't want to cut the other line or wait another 40 minutes so banked on sympathy. None was had. No individual donuts. And she couldn't sell donuts from that line. Fine. I'll just take my cider. Talk was had of a visit to another farm stand to get me a donut. Instead, my friends got a puppy. And puppy always trumps donut.