Monday, October 11, 2010

OMG

I can't even believe I am here. On this blog. I can't believe they let me in. "They" meaning the password gremlins that live inside the Internets caves and deep, dark hollows. I mean... I completely abandoned ship like 3 months ago, right? And I am totally talking to myself right now, right? Because I know that nobody else is out there pickin' up what I am puttin' down. Well, I'm doin' it anyway. I may as well hold a conversation with me, myself and I for awhile and see if anyone comes back around.

How can I sum up the three months I have been absent in writing here? How about this... It sucked worse than anything has ever sucked before (for me personally) but somehow I survived it. It's not worth droning on about.... I had a job, it was not nice. We had an apartment which was also.... not nice. I worked 6 days a week in the dead of night and struggled to sleep for 4 hours a day through the heat and loud noise of a summer spent living above The 'Sconset Market. And now it's October. Let's pick up right here and now shall we?

For anyone who lost track... we are living out on Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts. The Airstream is in storage back in Illinois. Rudy is alive and well. Billy is Billy as always. I am a hot mess similar to a spilled pot of spaghetti on a white dining room rug. So nothing there has changed. We had planned to come out to Nantucket for the summer and then peel out for parts unknown again come September but that plan has changed. This is mostly due to lack of funding for random acts of traveling. These are seriously hard times for a couple of bums like us with a bug up their ass to move every 6 months. The other reasons for staying here are butter, flour and sugar. I continue to bake and surprisingly enough Billy is baking now too. We managed to pin down jobs at a brand new bakery right downtown which is cute as heck. It's called The Petticoat Row Bakery and is open year round which is not typical for Nantucket. Most everything shuts down in the off season here. The bakery was opened by the Re-Main Foundation which is striving to revitalize downtown Nantucket for the year round community. There are around 10,000 islanders in the winter here and in the summer the population shoots up to around 50,000. Quite a difference, no? Re-Main thinks that these 10,000 souls left to languish out here during the long cold months of a New England winter should still at least be able to get a fresh baguette or a cupcake with a coconut butter cream frosting or a gluten free brownie for pete's sake! So Billy and I are among the folks workin' to keep the dream alive. So far so good. Here are some images from our nights spent in the Petticoat kitchen.


Starry Little Blueberry Pies....



What I am now calling King Kong Cookies... they started as Thomas Keller's version of Nutter Butters and have transitioned into cookies monstrosities filled with peanut butter cream, chocolate butter cream and fresh banana butter cream. They should really be illegal.


This is the bakery.....



Billy's gorgeous and delicious baguettes...


A chocolate linzer tart....


Billy's hand painted cupcakes....



Kinda makes you slobber a little bit and wish you had a cookie to cram in your face right now right? Yah, me too.

We are still living above the market out in the village but will be moving in closer to town near the end of this month. Our winter rental has an art studio ( a full on real one) for Billy to work in so he will no longer be crammed in to a creepy corner or painting in the middle of the living room as he has had to do in the past. I can't say what this winter will hold for us.... the bakery is brand new and they really have no idea what to anticipate for the dead of winter. We have not spent a winter out her in almost ten years. It's an experience. I am going to do my best to photograph the island and some of our friends here to share on the blog.

Today we took a long walk out at Sanford Farm. Rudy loooooves it out there. So do I actually. Here are some images from the walk.









I imposed a sort of a vintage-y feeling to all these images because that was the way I was seeing things today. I guess it is the colors of fall that lead my mind in that direction.

When we made it up to the old barn and Ram's Pasture, Billy grabbed an old school jump shot of Rudy and I because the time and place were just right for one....




I am just glad I still have the jump in me. One of these times I'll probably throw out my back or break my hip or some shit trying to do it. And it will all be recorded on the camera.... so we have that to look forward to.



5 comments:

Tracey said...

Ah, there you are! Great to see you back on blog planet. We used to live in a place that went quiet over winter. It was GREAT. You kinda reclaim it.

Karen/Small Earth Vintage said...

Yay! You're back. Loving these photos and so happy things are looking up a bit. Our oven is still broken. I need me some of those King Kong cookies. And a baguette. Billy's cupcakes are beautiful!

Andy and I like to travel up north to some of the more touristy towns for thrifting and good eating, but we only go in the off-season. A big Huzzah to Re-Main for getting that bakery open for the year-rounders.

Bethany said...

Hiya! SO happy to see I still have a few peeps on board here. Thanks for your comments ladies.

Tracey.... you make me long for Airstreaming. I miss it! I want to come to the UK and do it there!

Karen.... if I knew how to fix an oven I would come fix it for you at this point. It makes me feel panicky just thinking about it. ;) I would so love to send you a box of King Kongs. I just had a kid following me around the grocery store today whose Mom let him eat one last night. She told him I made the cookie and after that every time I turned around he was standing there grinning at me. We left and went out to the parking lot and he was screaming "Make me another cookie!" as we walked away. He was like 4 or 5 years old. Too funny.

Pete said...

Excellent - the Crazy Lady is back! We've missed you.

Get yourselves back into your Airstream and out on the road!

Bethany said...

Peter... Billy just got a little bit too much satisfaction out of the fact that someone else in the world thinks of me as "The Crazy Lady."