Sunday's Child

Coastal Maine: Eagle Lake Carriage Road and Rupununi

Have I mentioned how very EARLY the sun comes up here? Fortunately I can roll out of bed and get great sunrise photos of Frenchman Bay from my hotel room balcony. I passed the parking lot for Eagle Lake Carriage Road twice yesterday though, and from what I could see from the main road, I knew I wanted to shoot there at golden hour. I hiked part way around the lake and back, taking photos. It's so beautiful here!

After that, I hiked partway up to the South Bubble, which is a round granite boulder seemingly perched precariously on a ledge near the summit of one of the mountains in the national park. The trail got a little too steep for me, so I didn't make it all the way up, but it was certainly good exercise. (I will have to take an Aleve tonight...)

I was hoping to take a harbor boat tour today, but they weren't going out for some reason. I made a reservation for tomorrow morning, and instead went to the Wild Gardens of Acadia and walked one of their trails. I was surprised that there wasn't very much blooming at the gardens, since there are wildflowers blooming all over the place elsewhere in the park. It was still a nice walk, and thankfully on a flat path!

I had lunch in Bar Harbor at a restaurant named Rupununi, which is named for a river in South America. It's an American bar and grill though. I had honey mustard chicken, which came with mashed potatoes and green beans in "secret sauce". Very tasty, and after the excitement of the lobster roll yesterday, I was in the mood for something "normal". This restaurant serves either organic or hormone free meat, and specializes in supporting local food sources. They had elk burgers on the menu today!

The cool moose shop was across the street from the restaurant in the village green section of Bar Harbor - I thought it was cute.

Coastal Maine: Cadillac Mountain and Lobster Roll

The sun comes up at 4:48 here, directly outside my hotel room window. The Acadia National Park Visitor's Center, where you're supposed to buy a 7 day park pass prior to enjoying the park, does not open until 9am. I had already been to two different places in the park before the Visitor's Center even opened! I got my park pass, so I'm all legit now.

The first thing I did was take the Park Loop Road around to get a feel for the layout of the park and make a mental note of things I want to go back and see later. Then I went up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain and hiked the little trail at the top.

After that, I bought my park pass and noticed that the tide was going out, according to the chalk board chart at the ranger station. I told the internet (on my phone) I wanted to see tide pools, and it recommended Wonderland Trail, which is a 1.5 mile hike to and from the ocean at Southwest Harbor. I got a few tide pool photos, but nothing really spectacular was visible today.

The big excitement for the day was my first lobster roll at Side Street Cafe in Bar Harbor. The menu advertizes that the lobster you're eating was "swimming this morning." I'm ruined for other lobster now - it was so good!

Coastal Maine: Portland and Boothbay

On Saturday morning, I drove from Boston to Portland, Maine. Spring has just arrived in this area, and everything is green and gorgeous! The lupine and rhododendron are blooming everywhere. So far, I have seen road crossing signs for:

- Deer (normal)
- Goose (okay)
- Moose (well, it IS Maine)
- Elderly Pedestrians (??)

My first stop was Len Libby Chocolatier in Scarborough. I wanted to see Lenny, the life size chocolate moose, and pick up souvenirs for people back home. What a neat place!

Lenny normally stands in a blue-tinted white chocolate "pond" - I guess they're renovating it.

After that, I went up to the Maine Wildlife Park in Grey. They take in wild animals that are injured or too used to people, and rehabilitate them and put them on exhibit for people to see. I was mainly interested because they have moose, and I have always wanted to see one. All of their animal enclosures are great for the animals and bad for photography, but I did get to see several things I've never seen before (porcupine, fisher, moose!), and spent some time trying to get the peacocks to both show their tail plumage AND turn to face the camera.

I still had time to kill before I could check in to my hotel, so I went out to Cape Elizabeth to see the Portland Head Light. It was a perfect afternoon for lighthouse photos!

After checking in to the hotel, I went down to the Portland Waterfront and had dinner at the Flatbread Company. Very tasty flatbread with organic ingredients - I had nitrate free pepperoni and mushrooms on mine!

This morning, I drove up the coast to Boothbay in time to be at the Coastal Maine Botanical gardens right as they opened. There are several acres of manicured gardens around the visitor's center, and many many acres of trails through the surrounding birch-fir forest. The people at the visitor's center made it sound like all of the trails were easy, so I thought nothing of turning off the paved path and taking a trail to the "coastal overlook." I should have been a girl scout - some of the trails are "unimproved" and involved steep descents, exposed rocks and tree roots, and thousands of mosquitoes. I was afraid to take a deep breath for fear of inhaling a bug, but the forest was otherwise serene and beautiful, and I was rewarded with a beautiful view of the water at the end of the trail. Fortunately, though the mosquitoes were swarming around me like a cloud, none of them decided to bite!

I photographed everything I was interested in at the botanical gardens, and then completed the remaining three hour drive to Bar Harbor, where I'll be staying this week. My hotel here has an amazing view of the ocean, and the people here are SUPER friendly, if a little hard to understand. (Go back and re-read this post with the "ar's" pronounced the New England way as "ah's" and you'll see what I mean. I'm staying in "Bah Hahbah", where there are occasional "monstah yahd sales" on Route 1 on Sundays.)

Tomorrow, I will start exploring Acadia National Park! I have my work laptop with me, and free wi-fi at the hotel, so I am able to edit and post photos at the end of each day. Follow the link on the upper right to my SmugMug Galleries to see trip photos.

Menu Plan 6/8 - 6/14

I'm out of town this week and next, so this is more like a "menu report" than a "menu plan", as I spent the weekend packing and just kind of winged it at Whole Foods when I got to Boston. Next week, I'll be on vacation in Maine so I'll convert this space to more of a travel blog than a food blog, but I'll be sure to post some about what I'm eating too. (I believe one is required to eat lobster at least once while in Maine.)

Here's what I'm eating this week:

Breakfast:
- Homemade granola cereal with fresh blackberries, raspberries and sliced strawberries, topped with this awesome maple syrup flavored kefir I found at Whole Foods

Snack:
- Fresh cherries
- Sunflower seeds

Lunch:
- Hard boiled egg (from home)
- Garlic stuffed olives
- White cheddar cheese cubes
- Celery, carrot and yellow bell pepper sticks
- Banana
- Pecan halves and dark chocolate covered almonds

Dinner:
- Eating out at my usual places, but also going to a Thai place one night that I've never been to before

Menu Plan 6/1 - 6/7

Last week, I finally managed to butcher a whole fresh pineapple without needing to mop the kitchen floor afterward, thanks to this tutorial from the Pioneer Woman. Her narrative style kind of drives me bonkers, but when you need step by step (picture) instructions for something, her site really comes in handy.

Kefir is still a hit on the second week, but I'm back to coconut milk this week because I am starting to purge the fridge in preparation for travel, and dairy is on the list of things to go first.

I'm super excited about the chicken and rice this week - this is something I remember with great fondness from my childhood, and I finally feel confident with my cooking skills that I asked my Mom how to make it (rice is tricky!). I made it on Saturday, and it turned out great!

Breakfast:
- Green smoothies

Snack:
- Hard boiled eggs
- Fresh cherries

Lunch:
- Chicken and brown rice
- Strawberries/raspberries/blackberries

Dinner:
- Lentil, tomato and vegetable soup

Menu Plan 5/25 - 5/31

First, the report on kefir: I really like it! It is VERY tangy, almost lemony, and has a fizzy bite to it from being fermented that makes it seem exotic to me. I have been using it as the liquid in my morning smoothies, so the tangy taste is mostly covered by the taste of fruit. Fun discovery!

Here's the plan for this week (I'm a little off routine because my air conditioner at the house is on the fritz, but I'm trying to work around it):

Breakfast:
- Green smoothies with kefir

Lunch:
- Slow cooker BBQ pork ribs
- Steamed carrot pennies and sugar snap peas
- Raspberries, blackberries and fresh pineapple chunks

Dinner:
- Ground beef pita pizzas

Menu Plan 5/18 - 5/24

Having just read this article by Michael Pollan, I'm going to try something new this week: kefir. I'll drink a little plain to see how it tastes, but the main plan is to use it in smoothies. I'll report back. :-)

Breakfast:
- Green smoothies

Morning Snack:
- Hard boiled eggs
- Clementines

Lunch:
- Creamy chicken and vegetable soup
- Sliced avocados
- Fresh berries

Dinner:
- Egg taquitos (one egg, scrambled, divided into two corn tortillas, topped with shredded cheese and salsa, rolled up)

Menu Plan 5/11 - 5/17

Breakfast:
- Granola Cereal with milk and fresh berries
(I'm taking a break from smoothies this week, but don't worry, they'll be back!)

Lunch:
- Slow Cooker Chili with Beans, served over brown rice, topped with shredded Tilamook cheddar and sour cream
- Clementines

Dinner:
- Blackened salmon tacos with corn/tomato/avocado salsa on corn tortillas

Menu Plan 5/3 - 5/10

The chicken with honey beer sauce turned out great! Now I have leftover beer in the fridge though...

The important discovery for the week is that I do not hate green beans. In fact, I actually like them, if they are not leathery in texture (which was the majority of my previous green bean experience). I bought a package of organic french-style green beans, already trimmed, and steamed them. I was fussing with the chicken at the same time, so I let them go a few minutes too long, but I'm going to try them again this week and go for a crisper finish. Hooray for adding a new vegetable to the repertoire!

Also under the heading of "vegetable news," collard greens are fine in smoothies (unlike the mustard greens which were so memorable... ). I don't count this as adding a new vegetable to the repertoire since I wouldn't eat collards in their un-smoothified state, but it's nice to have another type of green to select from for smoothie purposes.

I noticed I have been extra hungry lately, so I'm going to include snacks in the menu plan and see how that goes.

Breakfast:
- Green smoothies
- Hard boiled egg

Mid morning snack (or second breakfast, for all the LOTR fans):
- Hard boiled egg
- Clementine

Lunch:
- Almond stuffed chicken (I'm going to discover the correct amount of time to bake this in a casserole dish instead of doing it on the stove top)
- Green beans
- Whole Wheat Cheddar Dill Scones

Mid afternoon snack:
- Sunflower seeds or macadamia nuts
- Clementine

Dinner:
- Nachos with seasoned grass-fed ground beef, shredded cheddar, diced tomatoes, diced avocado, sour cream

Menu Plan 4/27 - 5/3

The spelt banana bread from last week turned out great! I am a banana bread hater - I thought the only way it could taste was sickly sweet and uncomfortably moist. This recipe has just the right amount of sweetness, and the banana taste is not overwhelming. If you turn it out of the pan after 10 minutes and leave it to cool upside down on a wire rack, the moisture doesn't all sink to the bottom to form a gross wet layer. I substituted pecans for the walnuts and dried cranberries for the raisins. Really tasty when warmed for a few seconds in the microwave and spread with a thick layer of cream cheese. I stored mine sliced, wrapped in plastic wrap, and in a sealed tupperware container in the fridge - it even travelled well to Boston with me and lasted all week.

Here's the plan for this week:
Breakfast:
- Green smoothies (homemade coconut milk, greens, banana, frozen OJ concentrate, frozen dark sweet cherries, almond butter)

Lunch:
- Chicken with honey beer sauce
- Steamed green beans
- Fresh raspberries and blackberries

Dinner:
- Pita Pizzas (Whole wheat pita bread, slow cooker pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella and fontina, seasoned grass fed ground beef)