T Stands for This, That and also Second on the Second

     Hi everyone. Happy new week and new month to you. Since today is March 2, I will share a second look for  Second on the Second. I will also share my T day post. Both of these link ups are over at  Bleuebard's and Elizabeth's blog.

   So what's new with me? Lately I've been in my February slump. I don't get it every year, but this winter has been long and tough. It's wearing me down for certain. 😒 I spent some of last week starting a bookshelf clean, mainly because I have/had a big pile of books that  were sitting for too long on the floor. I wanted to find some room on my shelves for them. That's when I noticed my shelves were getting disorganized, and the way to fix that was to do a bit of organizing. And OK, I may be weird, but I have fun going through my bookshelves. Grin.

   I also needed a change of scenery last week, so I decided to take a trip out to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont.  I've mentioned this place before, but if you aren't familiar with them, they are the oldest baking flour producer in the US (they were founded in 1790 in Boston). They've changed a lot since 1790, and now they have a great facility in Vermont. They don't make the flour there, but they have a specialty bake-ware store with lots of hard to find ingredients and some interesting baking tools. There's also a restaurant, an actual bakery where they bake for their restaurant and  classrooms where you can take various baking classes. You can buy any of their flours or baking mixes there too. I'm glad I live  close enough (about 2 hours away) for a once or twice a year trip, but glad I don't live just down the road because I could spend a lot of money there. 😏

   I don't think I've ever shared a photo of inside their store before. It was mobbed when I arrived as there was a bus load of people shopping. When they cleared out it was easier to browse, and I even took this next photo.

Here's part of  their bread baking schedule on the wall outside the baking kitchen. 

You can  even buy bread from their daily baking in the store too.

   Earlier in the week I had asked my husband if he wanted to take a ride to  King Arthur Flour with me. I expected he'd say no. But instead, he decided he wanted to go so Friday morning off we went. After I shopped ( and even  my husband bought a couple of things even though he doesn't like to bake,  he does like to occasionally cook), we decided to go  down the road to the Norwich Inn for lunch. 

   The front view of the Inn is much more impressive than the back, but I didn't get a photo.  Here's their website if you want to see the front: Norwich Inn Website.

    They have a great pub area, but when we opened the door to go inside, there was a big sign that said they were not open for lunch. 😦  We got back in the car and drove  back to New Hampshire. We stopped in Lebanon (NH) which is not very far away since Norwich, Vermont and Lebanon, Ne Hampshire are right on the Connecticut River that divides New Hampshire from Vermont.

   Instead of a pub we went to an Italian restaurant called Lui-Lui. We had never eaten there. We split a large pizza that was quite tasty. I would definitely go back if I was in the area.

 I got a kick out of their brick oven as it had  this painted metal tomato top. 

   We each had a beer (a Switchback brew which is a favorite of ours and is made in Burlington, Vermont) with our pizza so here's drink #1 for T day. Plus when we sat down they served us some of these tasty homemade dinner rolls with some olive oil for dipping.

   Drink #2 is actually my link up for Second on the Second. Here's a tea inspired page I made back in March of 2022.

     Here's the original link up for my page: In Like a Lion.

   That's all for me. Wishing everyone a Happy T day and week ahead.

  postscript:

 Here's the recipe for the sour dough muffins I shared last week and which some of you asked for the recipe. The measurements are not in metric, except where I could change them.

 Sour Dough Discard Muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup sourdough discard

1/2 cup sugar (I added a 1/3 cup)

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 Tablespoons of unflavored cooking oil

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup of flour (use the same type that your sourdough is made from) and note below*

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F/190 degrees C. Line a 12 cup standard muffin tin (or grease) or a 6 cup large sized muffin tin.

2. In a bowl, mix by hand the sourdough discard, sugars, eggs, oil and vanilla extract. 

3. Add dry ingredients (baking powder, salt and flour) to the wet ingredients.  Mix well.

4. Add whatever you would like to the muffins-blueberries, raspberries, chocolate chips, etc..  The recipe calls for 1 cup of the addition, but you can add whatever amount you like. I added the zest of 1 orange and also the juice from that orange. I also chopped up some dried dates (I didn't measure the amount) and added them. Gently mix them into the batter.

5. Fill your muffin tins to  the top of each well. Bake for 20-30 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

6. This recipe called for a drizzled frosting, but I chose not to use it. If you'd like to use it, the drizzle icing is made with 1/2 cup powdered sugar and  2 1/2 teaspoons milk. Once made and the muffins have cooled, drizzle over the top of each muffin.

* If using Einkorn or quinoa flour in your sourdough, you will need to change the amount of flour added to the recipe. For einkorn use  1 cup of flour and for quinoa use 1 1/4 cups of  flour.

   

T Stands for Getting Ready for Winter and a Few other Things

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who stops by for T day over at   bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog . 

   November is definitely here. Like many of you have  already said, this time change has been an adjustment, and I'm missing the evening light. In the last week so many leaves have come down and the colors of October are gone.  Since I live among some mighty oaks and they are always the last to fall, I still have a lot of leaves on the trees right around the house, but they are all brown and not prettily colored. 

   I snapped this photo Saturday afternoon while my husband and I were pulling in all the yard items (chairs, garden ornaments, a cold frame from my garden, the pots I plant with annuals on my back deck) into the screen porch. The plastic also went on the screen porch  and now it's all closed up for the winter.

    The bees also have been winterized so hopefully they can get through the long cold months ahead.

   I stuffed the hive with bee fondant so they would have food, and then I wrapped the hive in 2 bee jackets. One slides down over the hive, and the other one covers the back and sides. The second one only covers that area because that is the usual wind direction and it works as an extra windbreak.

    Then I stuff some garbage bags with leaves and shove them underneath the hive so they won't lose any heat or get any winds blowing in from below. I actually reused the partially decomposed oak leaf bags from last year because they are easier to stuff in the space than those with the freshly raked leaves. It's not pretty, but it works.

   Since our temperatures can get down below zero degrees F or -17 degrees C, sometimes for weeks, we also need to put up a physical  windbreak around the bees.  We ran out of time on Saturday, and it rained Sunday, so that is still on the to do list.

  Otherwise I spent some time this past week cleaning up my art space around squeezing in some art. I also took a trip out to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont to pick up a few items I wanted for my Christmas baking. It's about  a 2 hour drive each way, but it's a fairly easy one. It was also a good way to cheer myself up regarding the dark, and the fact that last week was the 3 year anniversary of my Mom's death.

   When I go I usually get a chai tea for the drive home. That's my ticket to T this week.

  I also had a very bad lunch. 😉 They make the best rye flour brownies, so I got one of those to go too.

   That's it for me this week. Wishing everyone a happy T day and start to the new week.

  

T Stands for Celebrating with Drinks

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. It is also T day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog, so I also want to send a hello to everyone who joins in there also.

      Last week was my birthday. It was kind of a weird birthday because it fell on a work day, so my family and I didn't celebrate until this past weekend. However, the good part about that was that my birthday wasn't  a single day event but a birthday week-grin-😏 And just a warning, if you are hungry when you read this, there's cake at the end of my post.

   On my actual birthday I didn't want to sit home, so the dogs and I took a little road trip and drove out to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont.  If you're not familiar with King Arthur flour, they are producers of various baking and cooking flours. They also have a very nice store especially for bakers full of not only flour, but other baking ingredients and also baking supplies.

    Not that I really needed much of anything, but I did manage to pick up a few things. And I discovered I had $25 in baker's points which was a really nice way to make my total even less.👍 I also drove around and took a few photos, and I had lots of time to listen to my audio book. It was a good birthday.

     My first drink photo for T this week is this large tea chai latte I bought at King Arthur's bakery to drink while I was out exploring and also on the drive home.

    For my birthday dinner we had hot fudge sundaes, no meal first.  If we ate dinner first then we wouldn't be hungry for the sundaes. Right?  And since it was my birthday we just went for the sundaes. Grin.  I even  picked up a couple of brownies along with my chai latte at the King Arthur bakery so we could make our hot fudge sundaes brownie hot fudge sundaes. 

    It was a delicious birthday dinner.

     You can see my husband's Coke Zero on the table among the sundae making supplies. That's drink #2.

     I also went out to eat a couple of times last week. Friday some friends and I met up for an early dinner to celebrate both my birthday and one of my friend's birthdays. Friday fell right in the middle of our 2 celebrations. However, I got so busy chatting I forgot to take any photos.  😏 Then this past weekend  my daughter and her husband visited, and  we went out for some Mexican food. The birthday person gets to pick what's for dinner, and I've been craving some Mexican.

     While we waited for dinner we all had a margarita except my son-in-law who had a beer. You can see  my daughter's  and my margarita in the photo. I just had a glass of water with my burrito.

     And of course when we came home we had to have a birthday cake.

      I like to make my own birthday cake so I can get exactly what I want. Plus as many of you know, I like to bake. Since I needed to make the cake on Friday so it would be ready for Saturday and  because I had plans for Friday afternoon, I decided to buy a chocolate cake mix and a white frosting mix at the King Arthur store when I went there. Their mixes are a little bit pricey but taste like homemade. The cake was definitely quicker to make than an actual homemade cake, but I'm not convinced the frosting is. I still needed to add 2 1/2 sticks of butter and a bit of liquid to the mix. However, I didn't have to measure out the sugar, and their mix makes a really nice frosting.

    I also bought some actual chocolate sprinkles/jimmies at King Arthur to decorate the cake with.  In this photo you can see someone had a bottle of water on the table. I can't tell if it was my husband or my son-in-law from the angle of this photo.

    It was a great birthday week for me. Sorry if I made you hungry. Wishing everyone a happy T day and week ahead. 

T Stands for Sweets

 Hi everyone. And happy T day to all of the lovely people who visit from Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's       blog. 

     I know I say this most months, but I can't believe it is already the end of April. Of course since we had that big snowstorm at my house early in the month, and since that snow took a week to melt,  it made the start of April not feel like April. Plus we've had a lot of cool weather besides that snow. We've even still had first thing in the morning temperatures below freezing a few days just last week.

    A few Mondays ago Massachusetts and Maine celebrated the Patriots Day holiday. Since my daughter now works in Massachusetts, she had the day off. We decided to meet at a location fairly equidistant between us to have lunch and do a bit of shopping. We  met in Lebanon, New Hampshire, which is right on the Vermont border and just a short drive to King Arthur Flour.

      The only 2 things I wanted at King Arthur was some of their cocoa blend (I bought) and their caster sugar (they were out of), but I noticed their store now has a lot of their mixes. I've tried a few before, and they were good. I had been craving an old fashioned yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and I decided that maybe if I tried a box of their chocolate buttercream (frosting) it might make less work when I went to make the cake.

    

  Last week I ended up making the cake.  I still had to add 2 sticks of butter and a bit of water to the frosting mix, and I still had to pull out my mixer to make this buttercream. I will admit it was the most yummy chocolate frosting from a box or jar I'd ever had. Not 100% easier than making homemade chocolate frosting, but definitely quicker. 

I had already eaten half my slice when I remembered  to take a photo. And you can see my first drink for T, which is a glass of skim milk. 

     The cake was homemade; I used a recipe from America's Test Kitchen The Perfect Cake cookbook. I'd use this recipe again as it was moist and very tender. If anyone wants the recipe let me know and I'll post it next week for T.

King Arthur Flour not only has a store, but they have a bakery on the premises. Of course after we shopped we had to have a little treat. My daughter had a chocolate croissant and a box of water. She said the croissant was delicious . I had one of their rye-sea salt brownies, which I had had last time I visited back in the fall, along with a large cup of hot chai tea. I really want to find their exact recipe for these brownies because they are really delicious.  I have their brownie recipe in their cookbook, but I'm not sure how much rye flour I would need to substitute. Anyone have any idea?

It's a good thing I've been doing so much yard work lately because April hasn't exactly been a low calorie month-grin.

That's my  post for T this week. I hope you have a great T day and week ahead.

T Stands for Sweet Treats

 Hi everyone. It is T day again, and I hope everyone's had a lovely week since last time we met with our drinks and chatter. Last week was busy for me, and add to that we had some gorgeous late summer weather. It was so nice I took a few long leisurely walks and did a lot of outside pre-winter clean up. But no raking, as most of the leaves haven't come down yet.

A few weeks back I took a road trip out to King Arthur flour to get my fall and winter baking specialty supplies. For those of you who aren't familiar with King Arthur, they are one of the oldest flour manufacturers in the US. (Maybe even the oldest.) Their main offices are  in Norwich, Vermont, which is just  over the border from western New Hampshire. There they offer baking classes and have a really nice baking specialty store. I was out of the "seed crunchies" that I add to my pizza dough. and I also wanted a couple of bags of specialty flour that I can't regularly  in the grocery store. Plus, it's fun to see what kind of baking supplies and equipment they have on the shelves. I will say their prices have gone up since last November when I last visited, but then where haven't prices gone up?

And yes I could have mail ordered my supplies, but sometimes it is just more fun to go shopping.😀

I usually leave fairly early in the morning as it is a bit of a road trip, and this time I had some pretty foliage to enjoy as well as listening to my book. When it was time to drive home it was time for lunch, so I hit the cafe they have. You can buy salads and sandwiches, and they also have (of course) a bakery. Everything is made on site, so it's fun to see what they have out to drool over. 

I decided to skip the salad or sandwich and instead bought a big brownie. The other treats looked yummy, but the brownie looked less messy to eat while I drove. (I had some other stops to make on the way home and wanted to start driving back.)  Plus this brownie was made with rye flour, and I wanted to see how it tasted. (By the way it was delicious. I've made rye flour chocolate chip cookies and now I need to figure out the ratios of rye to white flour for brownies.)

I also got myself a large chai latte tea to go, and that's my ticket to T day this week over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

This past Sunday was my husband's birthday, and I made him a birthday cake.

Awhile back  I picked up this 2 pack of a King Arthur flour cake mix at the store. It still had one mix left in the box. It's a bit less work than making a homemade cake, but I wanted to use it before the package ended forgotten in the cabinet and out of date. I do think this mix tastes much more like a homemade cake than some of the other big brand name cake mixes you can buy. 

My husband's favorite cake is a Boston Cream Pie, which if you're not familiar with this dessert, is really not a pie. It's a vanilla cake (often a sponge), filled with creme patisserie and covered in a chocolate glaze.

I did make my own creme patisserie and chocolate glaze. The filling wasn't oozing out until my husband cut the cake (because I made the recipe for an  8 inch cake and mine was only 6 so there was a lot of cream-but why not enjoy it?), and yes my chocolate glaze, although nice and shiny, wasn't smooth. I'll use the excuse that since it was a dark day my lighting wasn't good  enough in the kitchen to see the waves in the glaze-smile. Oh well. It tasted yummy and that's what really matters.

I hope I didn't make anyone drool as much as I am looking at all the photos of the sweets in this post. 

Have a happy T day and week ahead.

T Stands for Shopping

 Hi everyone. It is time for T, when we share our drink related posts over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. And in my case, my post  probably has a bit of babbling too. (hee-hee)

Last week on one of our sunny days, I decided to take a drive over to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont. It's a bit of a drive, just under 2 hours from my house, so I don't go very often. I figured since I wanted to start my holiday baking  I'd stock up on a few items I knew I needed and that were hard to get at local markets.

It was also a gorgeous day for a drive, chilly but sunny. I could enjoy the sun through my car's sunroof and listen to my book. These short December days are making me long for sunshine, and since my house is dark a lot of the time during this season, the car is a great place to get some sun therapy. 

 I left  early. When I arrived at King Arthur the parking lot was pretty empty, but when I finished shopping, it was pretty full. What I didn't know until I arrived was that this particular day was King Arthur's friends and family holiday discount day. All your purchases were 20% off.  Wahoo! That made the drive even more worth it. ❤

I snapped a few photos when I first arrived, but then I got wrapped up in my shopping list so I failed a bit on the photo taking end.

Outside their main entrance they had some festive decorations.

And in the windows to their bakery, they had some festive gingerbread.

King Arthur used to have that cool logo:

Now, like so many places, they've redone it and have a more streamline crown.

I didn't get a lot of store photos, but it is a baker's paradise. They carry all of their mixes and a wide variety of other items that change over the course of the year. 

And of course you can buy their flour(s), which is what they are known for.

I managed to fill a bag (or 2) with  a few items. After I put those in my car I went back inside to their bakery/cafe. At their cafe they sell a few breakfast and lunch items, as well as a full range of bakery items of whatever the bakers have on their daily schedule. It was just about lunch time, so I grabbed a small salad to go. They also had this yummy gingerbread bundt cake, and I bought a slice that was big enough I decided to bring it home and split it with the hubby for dessert after dinner. And for the road home, I picked up a hot chai tea, which is my link to T this week.

That's my post for T this week. Happy T day and I hope you have a great rest of your week.