Lots of Pretty and Delicious with Recipes!

 I'm always amazed at how quickly gardens grow especially when you look at pictures from a month prior and think how pretty everything is and then you compare the difference in a few weeks and the absolute lushness - it's brand new to me every year no matter how long I've been a gardener.  For example, look at June below; the long border, and then a few weeks later below that.

 And two more - June, then late July

 And again - June, then late July

And then these lovely combos below:

 Tonight Dan and I took a walk and we could smell those Casa Blanca lilies you see above from across the street and down aways - exquisite!

 Color right outside the kitchen door above and below:

More combos below:

 Chartreuse aralia and fuschia sunpatiens

 Stone wall and moss

 Lily and orange million bells

 Heuchera with Creeping Jenny

And sister combo Leslie and me - she came to Boston on business a couple weeks ago and took us out to dinner - thank you Leslie!

And finally - lobster bacon combo - lunch at the Pilot House in Kennebunkport ME a couple days ago - so delicious!

Now for two really really good recipes that are also super super easy!  The first is a spectacularly flavored chicken dish where I had the recipe on my phone, the ingredients in the fridge and garden, I'm on my way home from the Kingston house and I call Dan and tell him to preheat the oven and throw these ingredients together in this order.  I get home 1/2 hour later, the house smells so incredible and 1 hour later dinner is on the table - 5 minutes to prepare, 1 1/2 hours to roast and a one pot dinner is on the table - you have to try this!  I could eat this once a week and the leftovers the second day were even better if that's possible.  The recipe is chef Jamie Oliver's and it's called Crazy Genius One-Pot Chicken.  Here is what you do:

 Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large oven proof pot place 4 chicken leg quarters with skin on.  Throw on a huge handful of fresh basil, stems and all - just rip them up a bit and throw them in - no chopping necessary.  Throw on 2 large handfuls of whole cherry tomatoes or 4-5 medium tomatoes cut in quarters.  Then toss in a bulb's worth of whole peeled garlic - just separate the cloves.  Then pour in one can of drained and rinsed white cannelini beans, 2 handfuls of unpeeled tiny potatoes, 2 tsp chili powder or a large pinch of red pepper flakes (we used chili powder), drizzle some olive oil over it all and place in the oven, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hours.  You won't believe the flavor of roasted basil!  Here is a picture of Dan's cooked dish below - I took the pic after we had already dished ours up so it's not as pretty.  Enjoy!

Now for the best Apricot jam (my favorite jam flavor) you will ever eat and so easy!  This is a recipe from Provence and there's a secret to it.  Here goes:

5 pounds of apricots - rinse, halve and pit - no peeling!  Save 12-15 of the pits - this is critical!  Now, crack each pit open with a nut cracker to reveal the almond like nut inside - set those aside and throw all the other pits and shells away.
In a large, heavy bottomed pot toss in the apricots, the nuts and 3 3/4 cups of sugar.  Turn heat up to medium and then stand at the stove stirring constantly for about 45 minutes to one hour while you read a book standing up (or sitting if you can pull up a tall stool).  That's what I did and it was fun.  The sugar will dissolve and the apricots will melt into a puree.  Do not let mixture ever burn or stick to bottom of pot.  It will thicken dramatically.  Once it does, transfer the jam into a large bowl and let it sit over night.  I covered it with plastic once it was cool.  24 hours later put the jam back into a pot and heat it until it is hot and starts to bubble (this takes just minutes), it will remain really thick.  Pour or spoon hot jam in to half pint jars and process 10 minutes in boiling water.  The nuts soften and break up as you cook the jam and their flavor is delicious when you get a bite of one but they do not alter the flavor of the apricots but they do enhance it somehow.  You will notice there is no pectin or lemon juice added to this recipe.  In the 2 pics below you can see the apricot nut meats.

 It gets really thick!  Now, pour it into a bowl as you see below and give it a 24 hour rest on the counter.

 Reheat until it starts to bubble and then pour in to jars and process 10 minutes.

I made raspberry jam from my Kingston harvest the same day I processed the apricot.

A couple more pretty things - I bought two sun dresses at the St. Remy market and they hit a couple inches above my knee and I wanted them a little longer so as I have been doing a lot to dresses that I prefer to be longer, I embellish the hems with trimming and give them a customized look.  Here is what I did to a red one you see me wearing below and then the green one on the ironing board.

They both look so cute and the lengths are perfect!  Joanne's has tons of great trimmings.

You know I have 7 stock tanks in our yard that we grow veggies in right?  Well, here is another use (wheel turning in my head) for one that we found at the coolest nursery in Kennebunk - Snug Harbor Farm - such a wonderful nursery and little animal farm that specializes in topiary (of herbs and annuals) and succulents - I adore both.  Here are some examples of their nursery stock:

 You can see the lavender and rosemary topiary on the left side above.

 Look at what they have done to Coleus!

 I highly recommend a field trip for you New Englanders to this nursery/farm in Kennebunk ME!

And lastly, just for fun, I opened up one of the the blue bird houses in my long border after the bird family had vacated to see what their apartment looked like.  Pretty cool huh?

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!