Lately

I apologize in advance if this post is a bit mundane. WordPress unfortunately had a “hiccup” and did not save the post that I just spent a near hour writing. I was giving it one last read before I hit publish, when “poof!,” it disappeared. 😦

So let’s try this again…

This weekend was spent relaxing, exploring, and doing a bit of recipe experimenting. After a long and exhausting week of work, Jacob and I enjoyed a nice home date where we mulled mead, watched a movie, and were in bed by 11:00. My kind of night!

We were supposed to spend Saturday camping in the beautiful Green Mountains in Vermont, enjoying the classic New England fall foliage. Although, due to a rainy forecast, we decided to postpone our trip, hoping that the leaves stay at peak conditions for a few days longer. Despite our disappointment, Saturday ended up rounding out to be a nice day.  Having recently scored a deal on Groupon for tickets to a Cranberry Bog tour, we decided to set out and learn about the harvest of cranberries. Excited,  I whipped up a batch of pumpkin granola (using sugar instead of artificial sweeteners and adding almonds, I give this recipe a seven. It still needs a bit of tweaking.) and we hit the road!  Well, to our extreme disappointment, the tour, or lack of, was a total flop and we ended up leaving completely frustrated. The only thing that I learned about cranberries that day was thanks to Wikipedia, not my tour guide. If you want to hear more about that experience, you can read more here.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day and the harvest was really interesting to watch. Plus, I scored a bag of fresh cranberries out of the deal that I am anxiously awaiting to turn into something delicious! Have you ever had a fresh cranberry on its own? They aren’t the tastiest little guys!               On Sunday we experienced our first Byzantine Catholic Liturgy, enjoyed a cup of caramel, cinnamon, steamed apple cider from a new coffee shop just around the corner from our apartment, took a three hour too long nap, devoured a pot of Moroccan stew, played a game of Scrabble, and indulged in some browned butter, salted, chocolate chip cookies. Yum!