snacktime

On Thursdays after working out I always stop into Wegman's to pick up the three Bs...bananas, bagels and buns. At 8 pm the store is never very crowded so this is the evening I like to browse all the aisles for new products. I always come away having spent big bucks on things I don't need. Last Thursday I was particularly hungry and drawn to snacks. Decadent Green and Black's organic White Chocolate Strawberry Ice Cream made it into my cart, as did the new products Riesling and Sangria sorbets. I chose the olive chips because they were out of my favorite just plain multigrain ones and I chose Sha Sha Co. gingersnaps because they were out of the chocolate snaps. Tazo Sweet Orange teabags to flavor my ice tea with a hint of orange and spearmint and Wegman's Kettle Cooked Sea Salt and Pepper Peanuts.

the rumpus room

Bullet vs Eye raising a rumpus back in "99

The rumpus room - a place for play, parties and noise. When we purchased our house I remember the previous owner telling us that they had converted part of the basement into a rumpus room for their teenage children. For twenty years we lived in this room with it looking much the same way that they had left it. B had been slowly making improvements over the past year or two. In April he ripped out the candy striped carpet to reveal a pretty nice looking tile floor underneath. A little old style - but B and I have always liked that vintage look.


However the tile did not extend into the north end of the room. B painted the bare concrete floor and cleaned and shined up the tile floor.


Then we covered it up with new Berber carpet.


The blue stairs leading down into the basement


also got the new carpet.


The bar area


received a new look. We'll work on that hideous red carpeted bar at a later date.


We left the south end uncarpeted....


and it became our gym.....


complete with fireplace. Too bad the fireplace wasn't in the north end. I truly don't think I'll ever want a cozy fire while I'm exercising.

on the subject of mushrooms

When I was around college age my Uncle Glenn introduced a new edible mushroom to our family. These mushrooms were big and and we didn't fight over our fair share anymore because there was plenty of this mushroom to go around. Looking back now I think this may have been a maitake or hen of the woods mushroom. Glenn is very proud of his find in this photo and my dad is happy because he knows he will be able to eat his fill.

morel salad

When I was a kid we went mushroom hunting in the nearby woods (or timbers as we called them in central Illinois) every spring for morel mushrooms. It was a family affair. Each of us was armed with a paper bag and would walk around scanning the ground for these sponge-like fungus. A lucky day was finding twenty or so. Usually we came home with far less. Mom would bread and fry them and we all fought bitterly to get our fair share. I always strove for more than my fair share. I often had mushroom dreams when I was a child. I would be searching for them and come upon an open field with hundreds of gray and yellow shrooms of all sizes. I often had a similar dream about money. I would be searching for violets or four leaf clovers in a ditch and it would literally be filled with change.....nickels, dimes, quarters and half dollars.

Just to understand how rare these are mushrooms are...they only started to make an appearance in grocery stores just a few years back...maybe ten or so. Every once in a while I treat myself to a few but the taste can never compare to the ones from the timbers of Illinois. On Thursday evening I was in Wegman's and noticed that they looked especially fresh and big. Also they were only $36.99 per pound. I'm almost certain that they usually retail for around $55.00 per pound. I bought $5.00 worth and on Friday I made myself this mushroom salad. I floured them and fried them in olive oil. Then I placed them on a bed of spinach with zesty greens (arugula)and baby romas. A splash of lite rice vinegar completed my salad. It was heaven.

graycliff

High atop a gray limestone cliff on Lake Erie in Derby, NY sits Graycliff Estate.


It was the summer home of Darwin D. and Isabelle Martin. Graycliff was specifically designed for Isabelle by Frank Lloyd Wright who also designed their home in Buffalo, NY. Isabelle had never been as charmed by the home in Buffalo as Darwin had been. Her eyesight was failing and the Buffalo home was too dark for her. She wanted nature and bright sunshine.


So after Darwin retired from the Larkin Company in 1925 he commissioned FLW to build Isabelle a summer home on Lake Erie. Graycliff was built between 1926-1929. Then came the stock market crash. Between that and constantly lending FLW money for all of his other projects, Darwin was a penniless man when a fatal stroke befell him in 1936. Darwin had always been FLW's biggest fan.


The designing of Graycliff was the beginning of FLW's organic architecture phase. He wanted to use materials that were natural to the area and blend the home into nature. The gray cliffs provided the limestone used to build the home. There is a lot of iron in limestone and FLW knew that over time the iron would bleed out and stain the stone thus melding the house into it's environment. This driveway had been crushed red stone when Isabelle summered here.


Most of the first floor is one giant great room with clear glass windows on both sides so one is able to see right through the house to the lake. After Darwin died Isabelle kept the house but unable to afford the upkeep she only opened the small adjoining Foster house in the summer so the main home set unused and slowly falling apart from 1945-1951.


In 1951 an order of priests purchased the home and used it to house foreign refugees. If you can imagine they enclosed this patio area and built a chapel thus cutting off the lake view from the front of the home. No art glass was used in this home. But there is an interesting 3-D diamond shaped window on the second floor. FLW always had a theme in each house he designed and this home's theme was the diamond shape because that is the shape that the limestone takes when it breaks off the side of the cliff. The letter L also repeats itself throughout the house but mysteriously no one knows why.


In 1997 when the house was scheduled for demolition in order to build new condos in it's place, a group of forward-thinking people got together and formed the Graycliff Conservancy. They were able to stop the demolition at the last minute and raise enough funds to come up with a $20,000 down payment in order to purchase the crumbling home for $450,000.


Over the past twelve years the home has been lovingly restored. Most all the structural and outside work has been completed and now the focus has shifted to the inside.


I visited Graycliff two years ago and then again on Wednesday with my accounting ladies group. I've seen tremendous improvement. I can't wait to see the finished product - a jewel on Lake Erie.

jdrf bakesale

Every year for the past six or so years my firm has raised money to donate to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. One of our partners has a son who has suffered from this disease since he was a baby. We divide into three teams for a light-hearted competition to see which team (tax, audit, admin) can raise the most money. My team, the admin team, holds a bake sale every year along with other fundraising activities. We are the smallest team - only seven of us - yet among us we bake up a storm. Last year we made over $500 on the bake sale alone and we won the competition. This year we made only a little less. We display all our goods on fancy dishes and serving pieces so it ends up being a very upscale-looking bake sale. We set up outside the cafeteria in our building. This year I made gluten-free cookies. Even the sprinkles are gluten-free. Another baker made sugar-free chocolate chip cookies. We try to cover all dietary needs. Some people chastize us for selling sugary treats to raise money for diabetes research, but I don't think we could raise as much selling a healthy treat like carrot stix with fat-free ranch dip.


I boxed my chocolate chip cookies in boxes with fancy labels. These are not gluten-free or sugar-free or butter-free.


I made the Dark Chocolate Pepper Cookies and the Rosemary Cookies again and added another kind - Cream Cheese Walnut Cookies.


I also boxed these.


Carrot Cake Cupcakes


These confetti layers


were turned into this Confetti Cake.
Gee Whiz, I baked for two days. I feel like I should have more to show for it.

measuring up

I've been feeling sort of down and blue this week. This is not a good week to feel that way because it is the week when our yearly self-evaluations are due at work. Or maybe I feel this way because my self-evaluation is due. I hate to evaluate myself and dread filling out the form almost more than anything else I can think of. Unlike Mary Poppins who evaluates herself frequently and comes up "practically perfect in every way", I come up "lacking". How nice it would be just to go merrily along and never have to confront yourself.

show house

The Saturday before Mother's Day Barb, Mike, B and I toured E.B. Green's Wallace Estate. Since 1981 the Junior League of Buffalo has presented a Decorator's Show House every two years. An estate is selected and transformed by area interior decorators, artisans and craftsmen. This year the mansion selected was designed in 1929 by Buffalo architect E.B. Green for David Wallace. This is my fourth or fifth show house tour. This estate is by far the smallest I've toured but still impressive. Here we are walking down LeBrun to the house.


We arrive right at opening time but a line has already formed.


Waiting in line I can't help but think of the old Gothic novels that my dad liked to read. This house looks rather foreboding. No wonder FLW caused such a stir when he designed a prairie house for Darwin Martin.


Front door entrance. Sorry...put your camera away. No photos allowed.


Side door outrance. The thing that impressed me most was the slightly worn, yet vibrantly colored tile floor in the solarium. Clay tiles in shades of turquoise, burnt orange and yellow laid out in an intricate pattern. I told B that this was the tile I wanted for my kitchen. This tile floor was repeated in the breakfast room only this time in shades of aqua, green, yellow gold and black. I also liked the historic Art Nouveau glass tiles in most of the bathrooms.


I also coveted these screens for the eating area of our patio.


While the guys waited on us Barb and I browsed the boutique. I purchased this pottery piece designed specifically for holding beaded necklaces and earrings.

lilac time

B is trying to coax a white carpet of ground cover under this tree but it is taking it's time spreading.


This white carpet needs no coaxing.


This little tree was about three times this size before nearly being destroyed by the infamous October Storm.

coffee memories

I called my mom one night last week and it happened to be on a Bunco night which she was hosting in her home. I thought that she wouldn't want to talk but she seemed eager to let her friend take her place at the table so that she could chat with me. I think she has grown weary of Bunco. She has been in this same Bunco club almost as long as I can remember. Most of the original members are long gone. My mother herself has threatened to leave the club for the past ten or fifteen years. Her threats have fallen on deaf ears (my sisters and mine) since we know that as long as her fingers can curl around the dice and her arm is strong enough to pick them up that she will continue to play Bunco. With ringing bells and whooping ladies in the background we talked for nearly half an hour. I asked her what she was going to serve for refreshments. "Already served it." she said. "What was it?" I asked. "Chicken salad sandwiches and homemade sweet pickles" she told me.

Well, Sherman, set the wayback machine to 1961. I am walking the several blocks home from school. When I open my front door the air is fragrant with the aroma of coffee and chicken salad. Earlier that day my mother has hosted one of the the several women's groups that she belongs to. There are leftover chicken salad sandwiches for me to eat. And joy of joys, there is an open carton of half and half in the refrigerator. I stand at the open fridge door and sneak a gulp of the rich liquid directly from the carton. I have always had a fondness for real butter, real whipped cream and half and half. My parents both drank their coffee black, so only when my mother hosted one of these events did we have half and half in the house. Over the next few days the carton would be mysteriously drained.

My mom made this chicken salad by boiling chicken and then taking all the tender meat from the bones and grinding it up in her metal grinder that attached to the kitchen table with a big screw. She also made ham salad this way. The pickles or whatever else went in the salad were put into the grinder also and spurted out the little holes into a bowl on the table. I do believe she still has this grinder and still uses it to this day.

Fast foward to 1968. I come home from school to the same delightful chicken salad smell. My mother is hosting Bunco. She needs a substitute for someone who is not able to make it that evening. I am recruited. I almost felt like a full-time member throughout high school for I subbed many times and not just when my mother was hosting. But later that evening the coffee smells would waft up and combine with the chicken salad. I didn't even drink coffee. I think I just associate those smells with my mom being vibrate and happy and entertaining. I have always liked being in the midst of entertaining - kind of hovering on the sidelines. Viewing without actually participating very much.



Setting the wayback even further, I recall sitting with my grandma at Woolworth's lunch counter. She would order coffee and she knew to order cream even though she didn't use it. She ordered it because it was her treat to me. I would drink it from the little glass cream server that lunch counters used back in those days. I loved the miniature glass bottle almost as much as I loved the cream it contained. I found one of these little bottles at a garage sale a few years back and I just had to own it. This morning I served myself coffee with cream . I used my Buffalo China cup which very well may have been the same brand of China that my Grandma was served coffee in so many years ago. Today I poured my half and half into my coffee cup instead of drinking it straight from the bottle.

fiddleheads and mini bells

Saturday evening I looked in the fridge and pulled out this produce. What to do with it? I took a cue from Mexicorn which I love but didn't have. So I made my own. I sauteed the mini bells and added them to frozen corn, a little leftover brown rice and cumin. The fiddle head ferns are only available for a few weeks very year in the spring. They require nothing more than steaming in the microwave, a pinch of salt, a splash of lemon juice.


B grilled these organic grass-fed beef filet mignons which I served up with chimichurri sauce.

2nd friday off

Yesterday was my second Friday off. Three day weekends are just heavenly. I started out my morning with a dentist appointment....not heavenly but not so terrible. My last six month check-up revealed that I had to have bonding on two teeth replaced and I had a cavity that needed to be filled. I haven't had a cavity in years, so what's up with that? I guess I need to pull out the floss a bit more often. So I've had dentist appointments the last two Fridays in a row. Glad that's over.


Next I made a trip to Wegman's for some grocery shopping and a trip to the library to donate a kizillion books. I'm on a house dejunking spree. Over the last couple of weeks I've taken 16 bags of stuff to Amvets and The Salvation Army.


On my way home I saw a garage sale sign so decided to stop. The pink flowering trees lined the street at a house near the garage sale house. Ellicott Creek flows lazily along on the other side of the street. This sale was like a sale I used to dream about. It had tons and tons of stuff. Some of my favorite things like dishes and fancy linens. But lately in my new more minamalist state I have been able to avoid buying stuff - old or new. I was walking away from the sale empty-handed when one of the people holding the sale pleaded with me "Can't you find anything you want?" So I bought this little lustreware creamer and sugar dish that had caught my eye and was only $3.


I'm glad I did. It nourished my soul to see it sitting on the table next to my flowers.