The Winter Situation

Ahhhhh winter. How I hate your stinkin' rottin' frozen guts! As many times as we have sworn to do anything to avoid cold weather it seems like we always end up getting caught in it time and again. This is mainly due to the other thing I hate dealing with which is a thing called Money. Lack of Money equals living in cold weather. Simple as that. If we were bank rolled right now we would be living it up in the Airstream somewhere warm. Warmer than here anyway. Dang it!

Winter on Nantucket is a force to be reckoned with. It does not get down to 30 below or anything.... but it does blow with wet, gray, gale force wind frequently and you do feel as though the rest of the world may be partying it up in Tahiti without you. It gets to feeling melancholy, isolated and other worldly out here come February. So let's hope I discover a trunk of gold doubloons washed up on the beach in January! For now have Christmas to keep us distracted. This is one area where the island does not skimp. They pull out all the stops. Downtown is decked out like you want it to be. Old school with lights, bows and baubles. There are dozens of trees lit and the windows of all the shops are tricked out with decorations, lights and $800 cashmere sweaters. Deeelicious. I snapped a couple of shots late this afternoon on Main St when they had first turned the trees on.




Before we hit town we took Rudy to run his booty off at Tupancy Links which is the equivalent to a dog park on conservation lands here on ACK. It was a beautiful albeit freezing cold afternoon. The ocean was just amazingly icy blue.





I loooove the atmosphere in this black and white shot... look at the light reflecting just below the horizon line on the water. So beautiful!



Rudy had a blast at the park although he did get busted for not listening to orders and running crazy far away to get at a dog named Dinah on the other side of the field. I mean... take a gander at Dinah and you will see why but still.... rule breaker! Click through on these to see the doggie details.





End result of long distance disobedience? The leash! The worst possible dog park punishment.




Here he is watching so hard. Soooo hard. See how his butt is not even touching the ground? Agony. There were two greyhounds peeling the F*ck out all over the field and it was nearly killing him to watch it. Livin' ain't easy Rudy.

Hope you all survived the weekend shopping mania over there on the mainland. Nobody got smashed up at Target!? Yikes!

Your Weekly Dose of Cynicism and Frosting

Gosh I just realized I have been layin' down on the bloggin' job again. Oops! This month has ripped past like a .... like aaaaaah, like something fast as all heck. I can't think of a good comparison right now. Quick like a bunny. There ya go. November of 2010 will go down in history as a money sucking black hole. Our truck broke down and we battled the doofis service department at the Ford dealership here on the island for over a week... I'm not sure they could fix a hot wheels car with a busted wheel. While the truck was in "in for service" (ha! funny concept Ford!) we rode our bikes to work each day. Let me tell you... I guess I am not much of a bike rider any more. It felt so dramatic each time. Painful and dramatic. It was the usual sore butt bones thing that you get when your patootie is not used to sitting on a bike seat but it was also my freakin' legs. Holy crap. I was getting charlie horses and all manner of random shooting pains. And hills? HA! Put me on the lowest gear possible and it'll take me about an hour to go two blocks up a slight grade.... say .35%. Not 35% but POINT 35%. Got it? I just need to call it and get myself a weasel scooter. One of the motorized chairs. What are they called again? I always remember it as weasel and I know that's not correct. Whatever. Mine would be a weasel.

I paid big bucks to have my Nikon lens repaired (after I dropped it) and much like the Ford dealership.... I was dealing with poor customer service. It took this place (Precision Camera in CT) over three weeks to repair my lens and turn it around to ship back when they claim 3 to 4 days turn around time for repairs on their website. Also... no one answers the phone there. Ever. Don't send your camera stuff to this place. They stink.

There was also an incident involving pharmaceuticals that cost way too much and then turned out to be the wrong pills (for me.) I spent the entire month feeling dizzy and like I was about to throw up and it was because of a "generic equivalent" pill for one of my prescriptions. Neat! Some equivalent! But hey guess what? I just had to buy new pills and eat the cost on the old ones because that is how the cookie crumbles folks.

We are considering heading back to the west and living out of a mine shaft, panning for gold, eating opossum and squirrel, and drinking whiskey til we go blind or die from injuries incurred from this life style. It could be the stuff of legend. And way cheaper than trying to live like real people. Being real people seems to kind of suck. It's way over rated anyway.

So yeah... Whatever. Life goes on. Baking goes on. With no transportation and no camera lens I don't have too much in the way of photos to share. The old 50 mm just does not cut it for everyday shooting. Want to see more stuff I baked? Sure. Why not?

More whoopie pies... man are they popular. People are way into the whoopie. They are pretty fun to make so I guess I am into them too.



I had to make this super funny birthday cake.... a friends kid is in Peter Pan (the play) out here on island this month and his birthday happened to fall on opening night. She asked me if I could make a cake that looked like the "Poison Cake" in the play so here it is folks.... A green funky poison cake (no actual poison involved... it's just visually poisonous.)



Billy said it reminded him of a poison tree frog...



And just because they were super huge and ridiculous here are some gluten free cakes I made. I called them Cake Bombs because, well, look at them. They were about the size of a grapefruit and filled with two flavors of rich butter cream. Cake Bombs.



Ok! Off to work! Tonight is the Thanksgiving baking throw down. Everything goes out tomorrow because we are closed on the holiday so the eggs, sugar and flour will be flyin' tonight. Have a great holiday peeps and I'll be back for the weekend!

Winter!

God Gawd it descended upon us just today. 40 mph wind, 42 degrees outside, rain and it's generally miserable as all Hell. What. Ev. Er. What can be done? You must bake things. That's what can be done. I direct you to Smitten Kitchen (as I have done so many times in the past) and I have probably even linked to this very cake recipe before. So that should really be telling you something. Make the stinkin' cake already.



My Mom sent us a boat load of canned stuff this fall.... Thanks Mom! And in the mix were peaches canned in honey with cloves. We busted in to them to eat with the cake tonight. Sick! I tell ya! Sick!



Other than cake news... we are still getting settled in. Today we managed to clear out most of the random boxes that were loitering around the living room and kitchen. Rudy is still pouting. He always hates it for the first few weeks when we move. At least he has finally started to emerge from the depths of his cave bed. For the past two days you could not even see him he was so deep in there.





We are down to 4 days a week at the bakery so it leaves us with plenty of time to get projects done... Billy will be painting of course and I have a bunch of stuff I want to accomplish this winter. Art projects, recipe testing and plotting for the future. The biggest project of all will be not gaining 30 pounds over the course of the Nantucket winter. Not sure yet how I will tackle THAT one. So far I am not exactly headed in the right direction (glancing sideways at the giant cake on the kitchen counter.)

Still Moving....

Well, kinda. We are moved in and the old place is cleaned out but it's that whole thing where we are sitting here all sore and tired in a pile of boxes wondering where the Hell to put stuff now. Words of advice.... if you can help it, don't move from one upstairs apartment to another upstairs apartment. Toooo many staaaairs y'all. I was trying to be all bad ass yesterday carrying heavy boxes and bins up to the new place. Billy kept saying... "That's too heavy! Let me get it!" and I was all "HA! I can carry this with my pinkie finger!" Right up until the moment that my knees lit up like someone had poured gasoline on them and then flicked a Zippo open mid shin. Busted. Up. Knees. This my fine friends is one of those "I'm getting OLD" moments. I CAN still carry the heavy shit upstairs.... but I SHOULDN'T carry it upstairs (apparently, according to my stupid knees.) So yeah, I'm still dealing with that, pain.

Otherwise the new digs are great. Clean. Warm. Big. Real Bed. Bath tub. Big Improvement. We are like straight up George and Louise Jefferson up in here.

I have no photos for you. Well, I do.... they are irrelevant to this post about moving. They are of Billy's croissants. I'm postin' them. Because they matter and I want to. FYI Billy is mastering from scratch real croissants people. Who does that, right? Billy does. And he knocks that shit right out the park. Check it....






Can you smell the butter? Because you actually may be able to. Take a deep sniff and let your mind get all doped out on the idea of the perfect flaky, crisp croissant. Yes! Look out Pierre Hermes! Billy's hot on your French pastry tail!

Cheers all.... catch you in a day or so once we get more settled.