Why Wait?

I'm referring to hot chocolate.  I lamented and shook my head as I listened to countless people talk about the huge snow storm we had last Thursday as the day they should be curling up and drinking hot chocolate or just drinking it period.  I heard this from several TV anchors and many people on FB and IG.  People, why do you need to wait for a cold, snowy day to partake of one of life's greatest and most easily attained pleasures?  Why wait for a storm?  Why not start every day with a huge cup of this nectar of the gods and flood your cells with happiness neurotransmitters, antioxidants and several other health advantages, both physical and mental?

I took a picture of my empty mug the morning of the storm just as I read another's wish for a cup of hot chocolate.   Like I have stated many times here on my blog and to those who know me, I drink hot chocolate every day regardless of the temperature or season or where I am in the world and have for most of my adult life.

Just so you don't think I am exaggerating about drinking hot chocolate wherever I am in the world, here's proof.  I took this picture a few months ago from a hotel room and sent it to Gabe and Pignose so they could see my brilliant solution for having my concoction in any hotel room that doesn't have a microwave or refrigerator.  I found a tiny electric skillet at a kitchen store that weighs next to nothing and I pack it in my suitcase along with my homemade hot chocolate blend, my red teflon whisk, my 3 cup capacity ceramic mug and an old teaspoon.  If there is a refrigerator, I stop at a store and buy some type of cold milk (dairy or nut) and if there is not refrigeration, I buy small boxes of shelf stable milk that do not require it.  I bet this sounds a bit loony but it's no less important or realistic than those who need and enjoy coffee making supplies wherever they go.  Hot chocolate simply fills my tummy and my soul, it's what I prefer to have for breakfast and afterward I go forth with optimism and well being.  Recently while staying at the house of a family member and after I had prepared and taken my hot chocolate in to another room to imbibe while I read my morning mail, this person asked my husband how I drink it every day and stay thin.  He replied that I don't sweeten mine with sugar and I most often use 25 calorie per cup cashew milk as the base.  Good cocoa powder has little fat, 10 to 20 calories per tablespoon and plenty of fiber.  If I use 2 cups of cashew milk and a glug of water (which is so delicious and tastes mild like milk, unlike almond or soy which taste too strong and un-milk like to my taste buds) at 50 calories, 3 slightly heaping tablespoons of cocoa powder at no more than 75 calories total if I'm really generous and no calories in my few teaspoons of stevia type sweetener, that's 125 calories at most (less than a cup of whole milk) and it fills my tummy to capacity and I drink it super hot so I can sip it slowly and make it last until all my morning reading is accomplished.  I feel like I have indulged in something incredibly rich and caloric yet I have not taken any sugar or anything unhealthy into my bod.  I'm asking you again, what are you waiting for?  Don't deny yourself hot chocolate while you wait for the snow bomb cyclone to hit as it did us.

Speaking of that storm, it was glorious!  We had a fully stocked refrigerator and larder, plenty of firewood just in case, thermostats turned up, movies on stand by, books to read, bird feeders filled to capacity so we could watch the hundreds of them flitting outside our windows and feeling satisfied because we were taking care of their needs, art supplies brought into the house from my freezing studio, nowhere we needed to go and a couple new cookie recipes to try to keep the kitchen even warmer and some treats for our bellies.

I made a different version of the peanut butter cup stuffed chocolate cookies I had made in December.  I made a tastier batter and added chocolate chunks along with the PB cup inside.  I also made a cookie called Chocolate Mountains which were also chocolate chocolate chip but with lots of walnuts too.  That's why you see two pictures of what seemingly look like the same cookie but if you look carefully, you will see the nuts in the first one.

 I also roasted several pans of vegetables (potatoes and onions not pictured) and sauteed some delicious wild salmon with a soy-maple syrup-orange marinade.

I worked on a couple mirror abstracts in the category of what I refer to as kindergarten art but find incredibly joy inducing and dark corner brightening and it was just a really comfy cozy cheery and cheer day.  Dan and Dane shared the snow day inside with me.  In the evening we watched two movies; Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and the Harrison Ford version of Sabrina.

(Our garage - my upstairs studio - brrr)

 The day after the storm it turned sunny but super duper cold - like unusually cold.  We've been experiencing a several week stretch of way below normal temperatures.  I love love love snow and winter but sub zero temps are a bit uncomfortable for everyone.

All kitted out to walk a block to the post office - you can't see the ear muffs covering my ears under my hat (thanks Gabe, I love this hat!).  10-15 degrees below zero with the wind chill.

 Tomorrow we are told that the temps will be back to normal levels and even above later in the week, like high 40s and even low 50s in Boston.  Whatever.  I've got all my winter projects calendared and this coming week I will paint a stair runner - a before and after is forthcoming!

 New abstract I completed recently hanging in the third floor stairway - it's a "potager" of color!

One more thing - when I was a child, I used to lie on the floor and imagine Beatrix Potter - like mice living in the walls and I envisioned a little door that I could open and look inside at their little table and chairs for eating, beds, couch and TV - you get the picture.  I spent hours in this little mouse world.   Well, when Dan and I were in the Canary Islands recently, we were at an outdoor market and one vendor had a table full of little mouse doors - I guess I'm not the only one who dreamt (or dreams) of baseboard mice dwellings.  Unfortunately, we do have mice in our old house walls and occasionally they get stuck and die and then the most unpleasant odor emits through the wall for days and days.  :(

To end this post - here's what I wore on my legs today to church - as well as a burgundy colored wool pencil skirt and a fitted plum/burgundy sweater jacket.  And a parka, gloves, hat, scarf and a fat wool throw to cover my legs as I drove to and from church  - it was minus two not factoring in the wind chill.  And it was gorgeous and sunny with cloudless blue skies - lovely!

March Madness

 We recently returned from the islands of St. Martin and St. Bart's (Barthelemy) in the Caribbean and they might be my new favorite islands.  We split the week and stayed half on one and half on the other.  St. Martin is also known as St. Maarten as roughly one half belongs to the French Republic and the other to the Netherlands.  We stayed at a hotel resort on the Dutch side called Belmond La Samanna - it was gorgeous!  The picture above is our ascent from St. Martin.  Below, is St. Bart's.

I'll report more on that trip in a minute because we're going to talk about these sugar cookie bars you see below.  My friend Danielle gave me the recipe after I sampled them at church during her RS lesson the Sunday before last.  I couldn't specify exactly what I had bitten in to other than it was fantastic - the cakey part was a bit sandy and buttery like a cookie yet dense and moist like cake and the buttercream was thick and vanilla perfection.  I asked her after her lesson what yellow cake recipe she used as it was not like anything I had ever made and she said that it was a sugar cookie type dough made in to a sheet cake.  Not like when you put chocolate chip dough in a 9 x 13 pan and called them blondies though.  She sent me the recipe (she found it on a food blog) and I made it immediately.  The dough is a little bit wetter than cookie dough and I did make one change to it that I'll note below.

Here's the recipe:  Sugar Cookie Bars
1 cup softened butter (unsalted)
1 cup of vegetable oil - here is where I made a change - I don't love oil in cake so I melted butter instead - I've done this every time oil is called for in a cake and it's always turned out great and yes, you beat the softened sticks with melted sticks - your choice though.
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
1 T vanilla
2 eggs
4 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt (I made it 1 tsp as all the butter I used was unsalted)
1 t cream of tartar
1 t baking soda

Beat butters, sugars, and vanilla until creamy.  Beat in eggs.  Add all the dry stuff at once and beat until well mixed.  Spread into a greased 9x13 cake pan.  The dough was sticky so I wet my hands a bit to smooth it out or you could do this with greased parchment paper by pressing.  Bake at 350 for 20 to 30 minutes - start checking at 20 and remove when pale golden as you would sugar cookies.  Don't over bake.  Don't even attempt to frost until the cake is absolutely cool.

Buttercream

1 cup salted butter softened
5 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk or cream (I used heavy cream - I love the taste)

Frost and then sprinkle on colored sugar or any other sprinkles/jimmies you desire.  These are rich so cut them small for serving.  

It was a rainy, raw Saturday just after the sunny island trip when I made the sugar cookie bars so I kept baking and made the intensely peanut butter swirled brownies you see below as well.  This is Smitten Kitchen's recipe.  Here is the LINK
Make both of these recipes - they freeze well - even the frosted bars.  That's what I did with both after baking them and then having Dan and myself sample for quality control.

I also made some super easy and healthy pancakes for breakfast this week - I rarely make pancakes but this recipe that I found in a magazine sounded really intriguing and from beginning to on-the-plate ready-to-eat was like 5 minutes.  These pancakes are a bit more crepe like in texture than regular flour/leaven pancakes but the flavor is totally pancakey and does not taste like the ingredients - you'll see what I mean.  The recipe is a single serve and makes two plate sized or several dollar sized.  I made two large ones and ate one one day and ate the other the next day (which I rolled up with cheddar cheese inside and ate as a savory - yummy!)  Here's the super easy recipe and for those who care, it's also gluten free.

Three Ingredient Blender Pancakes
1 cup of cottage cheese
2 eggs
1 cups of old fashioned rolled oats

Put all in blender and whip until liquid.  Pour batter onto a hot greased skillet - flip when bubbles form (the bubbles are barely visible unlike regular pancake batter due to lack of leavening).  They cook quickly.   I ate the warm one with butter and real maple syrup and the next day I used the cold one as a wrap for a cheese sandwich.  Delicious sweet or savory - high in protein and fiber, no sugar, GF, scrumptious.  

Now back to the island adventure.  

Okay, now back to the Caribbean.  Above is the view right outside our patio doors.  That huge shell in the bottom right is where we washed our feet off.  Below is the gorgeous resort and beach.  The whole place had a very European feel - as did the island itself.  Most of the inhabitants on either side of the island speak French as their native language.

This is the path to the beach if you go out our front door instead of the back patio doors.

The little cove at the end of our beach below.

This beach above is Grand Case beach.  Next time we visit this island, who knows when, we are going to stay on this one at a hotel called Le Petit Hotel (only ten rooms, I've already planned it out - ha!) - it looks adorable and this beach is really fun to walk and play on (and the water is calm and warm too) and on the other side of the small hotels that line it are some of the best French restaurants on the planet.  And fabulous shops.  When we came upon this beach and the street that runs parallel to it, it was early evening and dozens of vendors were setting up food and artisanal merchandise tables and the street became jam packed with people.  We found out they set up this food and merchandise market the first 12 Tuesdays of every year - I'm glad we got to experience it.  We also ate a paper cone of the best french fries I have ever eaten (and I'm not a french fry person) and they had tubs of homemade mayonnaise and pink fry sauce - to die for!  Three Belgian guys worked that booth with one cutting potatoes, one frying and one waiting on hungry customers like us - and the smell was divine!  Can you see that tub of pink sauce on the table below?  I could drink it.

While we were doing some of this above, this was happening at home in New Hampshire in the two photos below.  We haven't had much of a winter but March has brought the real snow this year.

After three days in St. Martin, we boarded a tiny plane and took the 10 minute journey to St. Bart's.  That was a really fun flight - because it's so short, the plane flies not far above the water so the views are spectacular.  

There were just six of us on the wee flight.  Dan took the back where he had lots of leg room.

There was a Bucket Regatta going on for the next day in St. Bart's and here are a few of them doing practice races in the photo above as seen from my window.

We stayed at another really lovely hotel - this one called Le Sereno.  This beach is big for water sports as it's a bit windy and there are big sea turtles all over - our first morning there we took the clear bottomed kayak out after breakfast and rowed not far and they were swimming and surfacing all around us - I love turtles!

Above is the little gate and lane that leads to our room.

Below is a street in the red-roofed town of Gustavia - the capital.  St. Bart's is flawless.  And so beautiful - hilly and verdant.  It looks like the whole island enjoys a high standard of living as we saw no poverty, no humble or run down houses or towns.  Many of the roads are lined with stone walls.  And because it's small and hilly, where ever you drive you have fantastic views of the sea.  This island also has several beaches that are called natural beaches where there are no commercial buildings allowed or even restrooms on them - they are undeveloped and superb and protected.  They are wonderful for swimming and surfing and utterly pristine because they aren't marred by development and the country plans to keep them that way.

Above and below are a couple of those natural beaches I just talked about.  There were many wild goats grazing in the hills surrounding the beaches.

This one below is called Saline Beach.  All the beaches have a sign saying no nudity allowed but one guy apparently couldn't read - I was taking a walk and he was off a ways by himself lying face up completely naked.

Below is one of the wind surfers we were watching from our beach chairs at Le Sereno.  This guy (can you spot him?) was out there for hours - quite the stamina to do that I would guess.

Back at home I have had just two weeks to catch up on things, like clean, bake, paint, appointments, meetings, catching up with my kids, rental property issues, church work etc.  Here below is the only painting I was able to work on.  It's an abstract modeled on the late Alma Thomas's style and an excuse to paint something pink - I really really love pink and it even looked nice drying on the rug in my studio.  

It's currently hanging in the hall outside of the laundry room.  I removed an old Wyeth poster that used to be in that frame and I need to replace the brown matting for another color as soon as we get home from our next (and last) adventure.   After this last diversion, it will be the beginning of much anticipated yard work and gardening for me, oh glorious flowers, in our little heavenly spot in New England for months!  I can't wait!

But first, lots and lots of sticks and branches to pick up that have littered the property through out the winter.   

 The tulips are popping up!

Sayonara!