We will see whether I can upload a photo today. (nope) The above picture was in Manchester, Vermont, in front of a darling independent book shop called Northshore Bookstore. If I lived there I’d have to have an ‘account,’ I think, as some locals ahead of me just said “put it on my account, please!” I bought 4 small books there. Once I’m home I’ll give you the names and links. No time to do links right now!

As I write this I’m in our hotel room in Newport, Rhode Island. My iPad SAYS I have full connectivity on their wi-fi, but we shall see once I try to upload. If there’s no photo you’ll know why.

Today was a day full of nostalgia for me. My DH, Dave, has been very patient as I drove hither and thither around this town since I haven’t been here in about 50 years. I lived here for 2 1/2 years when I was a teenager. I have photos from our wanderings today, but I’m not going to try to upload more than the one above right now. I will have to write up a single post about Newport. We drove by both of the homes I lived in here. Not remembering the street names of one, I just drove with some bit of innate reckoning and found it. It’s a bit rundown so I didn’t take a photo. I thought the people who live there might have been suspicious of some woman out on the street taking a picture of their ramshackle house. I did take one of the other house, though. More on that later.

It’s a beautiful day here, in the 60s and blustery. Big time! Tonight might be our last chance to have lobster – lobstah, as they say it around these parts. I’ve had it just once on the trip. And it was fantastic.

We are at the tail end of our trip now. We will see if I’m able to upload any photos. We are staying at a beautiful B&B in York, Maine that has a wi-fi. Answer: no. No photos. Sorry everyone. This must be an iPad problem or user dumbness!

The last week we have been staying in East Boothbay, a tiny hamlet of a village near Boothbay in Central Maine. The fall leaves are in full color here.  A friend of ours owns an old Colonial home she visits a few times a year and she graciously allowed us to use it! We made dinner there several nights and went out the other nights. Oh, the Maine lobster!!! So fantastic. We had several beautiful days of warm weather, thank goodness. Rain started again today and I drove 5 hours in pouring rain. Not fun.

I had some recipe posts waiting in the wings, so tomorrow I’ll put up one of them since I’ve had so few photos to give you. I’ve missed writing, telling these long-winded stories of mine. 

Sorry, I cannot upload any photos. We were near Woodstock, VT. I had some photos to show some of the flooded trees and root systems affected by the tropical storm last month. We saw areas where the flood waters had to have risen over 20 feet. We saw mobile homes crushed like matchsticks. We saw numerous barns, mostly ancient ones crushed to bits. Trees on both sides of the rivers torn from their roots. Debris everywhere. We have been traversing the country roads on our quest for fall colors, for pretty winding-road scenery, and we have encountered work crews in dozens and dozens of places repairing roads, embankments, guard rails, shoring up the roadsides. We have become used to the orange warning signs telling us “flagman ahead.” or one-lane road ahead.

The trees are just barely starting to change color. My meager few photos of some orangish trees are not memorable. The last 2 nights we have had a freeze, so hopefully we will see more color in coming days. Yesterday we drove to Maine. Where we are staying we won’t have wi-fi, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to blog. We will be here for a week. Our friend who is loaning us her house in East Boothbay, told us to drive to the little corner store, an old fashioned kind of general store, park in the tiny parking lot, sit in the car and use the wi-fi there. It’s free! Every time I’ve tried to upload this post it won’t send because of the photos. It gives me an error message telling me there is a problem with the photos. Sigh. I’ll keep trying.

Well, we have been on the road now for a week. Five days it rained.
Yesterday finally the sun returned. We are happy campers. We have picked up a dear friend of ours from England at the Albany NY airport and have done some leaf peeping. Problem is: we came too early. Very few trees have turned. Yet.

I would have blogged more often but have had problems in most places with sufficient wi-fi connectivity. And am still having difficulty uploading photos. Obviously I need more info on how to upload from an iPad. I’ve downloaded two apps to help me, but no go. I can get a small photo to upload but they’re not big enough for you to hardly see! Here’s as good as I can give you for today. Photo taken today in Woodstock, Vermont on a beautiful country road.

Rain. Mist. Fog. Wet. Drizzle. Precipitation. Mud. Yuck. Drip. Raincoats.

Didn’t think we’d be in so many days of inclement weather. Hard to see the trees, those few that are turning. No photos at all. Raining way too much to jump out of the car to snap even one. Having to stay focused on the nearly all 2-lane roads we are driving. Stressful is what it is. The forecast is for 3 more days of solid rain. We have had 2 days of rain out of the last 3. We are in Northern Vermont now. Did visit the Ben and Jerry’s factory today. They don’t produce ice cream on Sundays, but we did sample their version of vanilla and Oreos, which was very good. They told us that they’re completely sold out of the Schw***ty Balls flavor, the one that’s caused so much controversy. Some states have banned it. Also stopped at the Cabot Creamery. Didn’t take a tour but ended up watching a tour bus get stuck across the 2-lane road. Everyone was very patient. Waiting.

Meanwhile, tonight we are in a BnB that doesn’t have TV. Back to my book, Caleb’s Crossing, while we listen to the steady drip of rain outside.

Actually yesterday was a beautiful day. Mostly anyway. The above photo was taken from a unique location – at a home on a hilltop above the east side of the lake. At Castle in the Clouds, a home built in about 1912 by a wealthy shoe manufacturer. A gorgeous place. More photos of that later.

There’s the same view as my last post taken from our hotel in Meredith, one of the pretty villages dotting the edge of the lake. Just sunshine instead of rain. You can see that the leaves aren’t really changing here yet.

I wanted to come here because I visited this gorgeous lake when I was about 15, when I attended a church summer camp. It’s just as beautiful as I remembered.

Not a lot of scenery today with clouds and showers that kept us from enjoying anything except trying to drive safely on unfamiliar roads and in an unfamiliar rental car with very slushy power steering. The rain began during the night. We are staying at a nice hotel resort on Lake Winnipesaukee, a moderately-sized lake with many inlets and bays. Our 2-day stay here is a splurge with a lake view. We hope the weather will improve tomorrow.

We enjoyed fried clam strips and haddock for dinner. Just delicious. I’m off to the lobby to grab a nice cuppa tea and curl up on the comfy sofa in the room.

Usually, when we have a gathering of friends at our house, I research new recipes to try. I’m fairly fearless about that, actually. There might be a few things I wouldn’t tackle without trying it first, but normally I’m game to try new combinations and new recipes anytime! But this particular time I didn’t. I used tried-and-true recipes with just one exception, the dessert. So, what did I make for this dinner? Thought you’d never ask . . .

First, I made an old standby, Layered Hummus and Eggplant, tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette. I sent my DH out that afternoon on a mission to go buy some sangak bread. I didn’t take another photo of the sangak – it’s an Iranian thin, stretchy and chewy yeast bread, kind of like super-thin pita but it comes out of the oven about 3 feet long, hot, steamy and I couldn’t believe it, Dave didn’t even snack on it on the way home. It made a great vehicle for digging into this appetizer.

Then, we had pork chops. Oh my goodness, did we have pork chops. I’d ordered them from a local meat market, and I KNOW I told them 1 1/4” thick. When I opened the package two days later just before our meal, I discovered they were cut 2” thick. Oh my goodness! Each single pork chop was about a pound (with bones). What to do? I didn’t think it would be very nice to cut the pork off the bones to have smaller pieces. I couldn’t cut them in half because I don’t have a saw capable of that. I just had to go with it – I informed Dave that these were going to need longer on the grill. I seasoned them with smoked paprika, salt, pepper and a bit of grapeseed oil patted on last, according to the recipe from Aaron McCargo on the Food Network. When my friend Darci had told me about the recipe, she’d made it with pork chops. I’d made it with some leftover pork roast that I cut thick, sort of like pork chops.

The chops are reddish from the smoked paprika that I rubbed on both sides. Makes the grilled sides look gosh-darned purrrty! And tasty.

Making the lemon shallot chutney was easy. I doubled the recipe this time and added segments from one orange in addition to the lemons (just because I had an orange that needed using). When I’d gone out to the garden to clip the fresh tarragon and chives, I spotted the lavender blooms and decided to throw in a few of those too. Why not, I said?

The chutney/relish was served separately so people could scoop as much as they wanted onto the pork chops. There was just a smidgen left.

‘Tis the season for tomatoes, so I decided to serve the marinated tomatoes that I’ve not made even once so far this summer. DH bought some beautiful heirlooms, and I had a big chunk of Italian parsley, and the vinaigrette that goes over it is easy to put together.

We had both yellow and red tomatoes. Ample salt and pepper goes all over it, the parsley, then the vinaigrette is drizzled over it. You marinate it for an hour or two, then let it sit out at room temp for an hour before serving.

A friend gave me a butternut squash she’d grown in her garden. What fun! I’d planned on making my roasted sweet potato black bean salad with jalapeno dressing, that’s been a favorite for several years. So I thought, why not use the butternut squash instead of the sweet potato. I don’t know that it was quite as good (it wasn’t as sweet, I’ll say that), but it was good.

I used the same technique as the original salad, roasting the butternut squash in the oven along with the red onion. Then it was tossed with the drained and rinsed black beans and lastly, the lime juice jalapeno vinaigrette.

The dessert I made, a sticky chocolate sponge pudding will be “up” on my blog sometime soon. If you simply cannot wait, here’s the pdf for it.

Was it good? Oh my goodness, yes. I’d make it again any day. And in fact, I tried this recipe a few days before, gave away most of it, then made it again for this dinner party.

The full story/recipe won’t show up here on my blog until October. I’m way ahead on stories for my blog, so you’ll just have to be patient.

Isn’t that just the cutest tub you’ve ever seen? We’re still not done with the bathroom remodels . . . Well, 2 1/2 baths are done but the master is not finished. But it’s close . . . like about a week maybe. I took photos from my iPad and am going to upload this post from it to see how another blog posting program called BlogPress (iPad version) works. any of you savvy types out there do email me if you see problems.

There’s a shot of the master. Floors are still raw wood so far – to be stained dark and polyurethane sealed later this week.

That’s my sink. Nothing has been moved into any space yet. That’s a candle and a fancy bar of soap sitting on the counter waiting.

No showers taken in this. . . yet.

There’s a peek into the guest bedroom where we’ve been storing clothes and junk for the last several months. It’s a mess is all I can tell you. Not a pretty sight. The two twin beds are piled high. Bags on the floor. Numerous boxes stacked wherever there is space.

Do you know about Hatch chiles? I didn’t, really, until some years ago when I visited Santa Fe, New Mexico, and learned about this unique variety of chiles, grown only in the hills and plains in New Mexico, from an area in and around the town of Hatch. It’s a hybrid, developed in 1912 by a local farmer who combined some of his favorite chiles and created the Hatch. They’ve become a huge success, a favored chile by most everyone who lives in New Mexico. Santa Fe even has an annual chile fest over Labor Day weekend that’s all about the Hatch chile. People drive from all around, to buy them – when the chileheads have big roasting baskets so you buy them already roasted. They’re a mild chile, about 1,000 to 2,500 on the scale. Less hot on the scoville scale than a jalapeno chile which is about 5,000 scoville units.

You have an opportunity, if you live in L.A. or Orange County, to buy some fresh or roasted Hatch chiles. This is a first – I’ve never been able to buy Hatch chiles here in California. Freida’s Produce has hooked up with Ralph’s grocery stores to sponsor some chile-roasting events this month.

If I’ve read the information correctly, you have to buy 10 pounds or 30 pounds of Hatch chiles (raw) and they’ll roast them at no charge. Or you can buy a smaller quantity, but then you’ll need to roast them yourself. People from Freida’s will be available at these events to discuss the chiles, recipes and helpful hints about handling and preparation. We’re going to go to the local one closest to us, so I’ll tell you all about it.

This Saturday, August 13, 2011, 10-4 or until they run out: Ralphs Costa Mesa, 380 E. 17th St. and Ralphs La Canada, 521 W. Foothill Blvd.

Next Saturday, August 20th, 2011, 10-4 or until they run out: Ralphs Los Angeles, 11727 Olympic Blvd and Ralphs Huntington Beach, 5241 Warner

And the following Saturday, August 27th, 10-4 or until they run out: Ralphs Tustin, 13321 Jamboree Rd and Ralphs Pasadena, 3601 E Foothill Blvd

New Mexico had a tough growing season this year, so prices are probably up (according to some info I read online). This venture won’t be cheap, but so far I have two friends who will share the bounty with me. It should be fun watching them being roasted.

Here’s a link to Freida’s Hatch site, with info and recipes.