I took them yesterday when it was kind of rainy outside. I thought it would be neat to post these really cool shots on the blog. Then, I thought that no one would know what the heck am I talking about. Someone out there with a crazy smart brain would ask, “Why is Jay posting pictures of tomatoes and a mushroom?” I’ll tell you why…because they are cool.

Tomatoes

This is a picture of the tomatoes I have growing on the back porch. The reason I took this photo is because I am quite proud of my plant. Also, because I liked the way the drops of water on the red tomato show as kind of orange.

Wild mushroom

This is a very cool picture of a wild mushroom that is growing up near the driveway. I saw this and just couldn’t resist.

For the high resolution versions of these images, please visit the “Misc” category of my photo gallery.

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Lately, you pretty much have to drag me out of my chair to get me to do anything. I have my head stuck staring at this horrible computer screen 24 hours a day. It really is unattractive. Jeff told me that I have to get out more often. I explained to him that it’s not like it used to be.

When I was younger, I had no responsibilities. I was also bored a lot. Now, I am always busy and running a business takes a lot out of me. There is no one else to handle things if something needs to get done. I mean, I have help, but the majority of things rest right on my shoulders. Good thing they are so muscular.

It was good to get out. I decided that we would go up to Applebees in Glastonbury, CT. We drove up there and when we passed by the restaurant, I realized it wasn’t an Applebees, but a Chilis. Jeff told me that he always goes to Chilis and would rather not go there. I really didn’t want to go there either. I made a left from Main Street onto Glastonbury Boulevard. Glastonbury Boulevard is really cool. It is tree lined and there is a lot going on. I basically just wanted to show him the road and then turn around to find somewhere to eat. We drove down the road a little and noticed a Houlihan’s on the left. We pulled in and parked.

Since the restaurant was so close to Somerset Square, I thought it would be nice to show Jeff where people do some shopping. So, we got out of the car and walked.

I gotta tell you, I really love sidewalks. I also have to tell you that it did feel a little foreign to me to be walking. I am so used to driving every little place I need to go that walking felt very out of the ordinary.

Right before we began our walk, I ran back to the car to grab the camera. I could see that Jeff was wondering what the heck I was doing. I mean, what in the world is there to take pictures of during a little 15 minute walk to no where? I explained to him that this is what blogging is all about. I told him that I searched for photos of the different things in different towns a lot before we moved here. I thought people would appreciate it if I posted some of my own. I think he got a kick out of the camera thing because he jumped on board.

Anyway, the photo above is of the tree lines and sidewalk I was talking about earlier.

Before we got to the enterance of Somerset Square, we passed the backside of a few restaurants. I didn’t think the photos would come out so blurry, but because it was getting dark, I guess that’s what happens. The photo are of Max Fish, Max Amore and some other one. Perhaps we will eat at one of these next time. I have heard good things.

We walked a bit more and made it to the enterance of Somerset Square. The lighting of this place was really cool and it felt like I was on vacation. We walked through a little bit and took a picture of Cold Stone Creamery. Jeff told me that I had to get a picture of that.

We did our thing and walked back to Houlihan’s, which I forgot to get a picture of. We went in a sat down to eat. When we did finally eat, I have to tell you, I was really very pleased. I mean, the food was really great. I could believe it. Even Jeff told me that his potato soup was the best he ever had.

I had my usual Guinness. He likes to drink sweeter drinks, and mentioned that he didn’t really like beer. He took a sip of the Guinness and I think he might have changed his mind.

What’s the moral of this long story? Try Guinness, you might like it.

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Guess what? I was in luck. A new shipment of ingredients had arrived from Australia. I quickly ordered the Irish Stout kit and it arrived today. This is just in the nick of time, because I am running really low on my existing batch of regular Stout.

I am pretty excited about this upcoming batch. The ingredients include some extra malt for some reason. It says that it gives the beer a better head retention and something else…I forget. Whatever…if it makes the beer better, I’m on board.

I mixed everything togther tonight and placed the jug downstairs near the boiler. It’s a warmer, constant temperature down there. The brew has to stay between 70 and 80 degrees.

Here, I took some pics…

It’s pretty hard to take pictures in the dark. I had to turn on the flash, which I hate to do.

This was going to be my favorite shot, but it came out a little blurry. I tried to clean it up in Photoshop.

Here is that familiar jug we have all gotten used to by this point.

I really hope this batch comes out good because I have been waiting for it for a long time.

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We have been seeing quite a few Shaw’s grocery stores around in various towns. I haven’t really wanted to go in any of them because I prefer those jumbo super-stores. I like a wide variety. Well, today was different. Laura needed to deposit a check and her bank is in East Hampton, so Shaw’s was the store of choice.

We parked in the parking lot and began walking into the store. I turned to Laura an told her I really liked what I saw. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood and the store looked great. We shopped around for a little while, when I turned to say something to Laura. She kind of had a weird look on her face and hadn’t been putting any groceries in the cart for some time. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that the place had crazy high prices. I started to look around and I quickly agreed. Things were way out of whack. I understand that food prices are going up, but this was a little up, up and away. We did what we had to do and left.

After leaving the store, I stopped on the side of the road to grab some photos of Lake Pocotopaug in East Hampton. It looks like a really cool lake and it might be good for the canoe I want to get.

Pretty cool, huh?

After mentioning the canoe idea, I have been informed that this wouldn’t be the best place to go. Apparently the Connecticut River offers some sort of a canoe rental. I will let you know what we find.

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I really like Pottery Barn, not for its fame from a certain “Friends” episode, but for its quality furniture. I need some office furniture, so we went to browse. We didn’t buy anything, but checked some stuff out for another day. I would say we need a bunch of things. Besides the office furniture, we need a bedroom set, coffee table and end tables, to say the least. One day it’ll all be complete. For now, we will focus on one item at a time.

After we left Pottery Barn, we had some time to spare. We wandered over to Williams-Sonoma to check out their kitchen stuff. This is another really good store, but expensive. Actually, I’m not sure if it’s expensive when you really compare quality. A few minutes in there and we were ready to go. I would say that the Promenade Shops at Evergreen Walk is a very nice place. It felt like we were down South on a vacation.

A few minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Manchester. My brother has been raving about this place for a few weeks. He just loves the bread.

We all sat down and ordered. A few minutes later, the waitress brought over the bread, which was very good indeed. After that, we ate and ate and ate (the main courses). It was sinful. When we were almost done, the waitress asked if we needed anything and my brother mentioned that I wanted more bread. I said, “No I don’t” kind of embarassed. She offered to bring me a loaf to bring home and I accepted. Just a bit later, the nice and very kind waitress brought me three loaves of bread to bring home. Wasn’t that nice of her?

Every time we go someplace, I ask Laura to remind me to take a picture of whatever we are doing. Every time, I forget and she never mentions anything. When I sit down to write about it, I end up not having any photos. With that being the case, today’s photo is of the bag we brough the leftovers home in. In this business, you need to be creative.

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I remember a few weeks ago when the realtor was showing us houses in this area, she said, “Ooh, and they are building a brand new Whole Foods here. It should be open in a few days. We are all VERY excited.” Laura and I were sitting there like, “Uh huh. What in the heck is Whole Foods?” Of course we nodded because we knew our realtor wouldn’t lead us astray.

So, what is Whole Foods? Here is a clip from their website: “Our motto — Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet — emphasizes that our vision reaches far beyond just being a food retailer. Our success in fulfilling our vision is measured by customer satisfaction, Team Member excellence and happiness, return on capital investment, improvement in the state of the environment, and local and larger community support.” Let me just tell you, they live up to their motto.

A few days ago, Laura informed me that we should make a visit to this new grocery store. We still don’t have natural gas (next Monday), so we have to eat items that can be cooked in the microwave or cold, such as our famous wraps or sandwiches. You really should try them. I was pretty excited because Whole Foods is located in Glastonbury and if you have never visited, Glastonbury is my kind of town…well off.

Well, today was the day. We drove over to the store and started walking to the entrance. One of our all time most favorite stores in the world is Wegmans. We were wondering if this one would be better or worse. When we got inside, I asked a woman from the florist section if they have plastic bag recycling. I have had a pile in my back seat for a few weeks now. She walked me over to the recycling area. I put the bags in the bin and from that point on, we were in heaven. You should see the place. Ok, you know the organic section at regular supermarkets? Well, this whole store is like that. Up and down every single isle is the highest quality food you have ever seen. We were looking for Folgers coffee and they didn’t have it…too regular. We had to buy a different (twice as expensive) brand. I will say that the shopping experience unexpectedly cost much more than anticipated, but it is kind of worth it. I don’t think we will be doing all our food shopping there, but as far as fun and healthy food shopping goes, this is the place. What a niche.

When we were done putting all our items in our cart, we wandered over to the check out register. The first question the girl asked us was how many bags we had, meaning reusable bags. Man, what a trip. Just the way she assumed that we had them told me I was among my kind of folk. Unfortunately, we only had one bag. As it turned out, that was all we needed because we stuffed it to the gills.

Oh, before I forget, Whole Foods has a realy good micro brew area. I was looking through it when I said that we should leave the isle before I buy something. Just as we turned around and started to leave, something sucked me back to the beer like it was a huge magnet and I had an iron plate in my chest. I bought “Fuel Cafe Coffee Flavored Stout” by Lakefront Brewery. I am drinking it right now and it tastes a lot like Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout, but without that bite. It’s much smoother and very good.

After we left the food store, we drove over to Home Depot for a few things. Then, we traveled back to the hometown to drop something off at the post office. What a pleasant day. Over and out.

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According to the Wikipedia page, elephant garlic isn’t really a garlic at all. It’s “actually a variant of the species to which the garden leek belongs.” I will tell you this, I do love it. It has a much more mellow flavor than regular garlic and it is so much easier to work with. It is more expensive and less potent, but the flavor is great.

As I was cooking the Collard Greens, I tasted them and told Laura that they weren’t that great this time. She told me about her friend that uses sugar while cooking hers. Oh yeah, I forgot the honey. Here is what I use to make my Collard Greens:

- Olive oil
- Garlic
- White onion
- Mushrooms
- Collard greens
- Spices
- Honey

Use you imagination if you want to make this stuff. For the spices, I use a cracked pepper/sea salt mixture.

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Millbrook is a nice little town in Dutchess County. It has some farms and a nice little main street. I’m sure many people would like it if you brought them there. Believe it or not, I actually know someone who grew up in Millbrook. It must’ve been fun.

Anyway, The first thing we did was to cruise down Main Street. We parked the car and walked down to a little park at the end of the road. Paul would know the name of it. I’m sure he’ll write a comment for me.

I gotta say, it is a very nice park indeed. We walked up the zigzag sidewalk and then back down. Of course, I had to stop to take a few pictures.

There was a nice bridge over a small pond. The pond waterfall wasn’t running though. I am going to write someone a letter about that.

I call this the “chair of thought.” I sat in the chair of thought for about 30 seconds…just long enough for Laura to take this photo of me. I wanted everyone to know exactly how smart I can really look.

After we were done with the park, we walked up and down the main street again to check out all the little shops. I think the town is quite content with itself. Everyone looked very satisfied. That’s a good feeling if you live in a little town. We found a good restaurant to eat in, but they weren’t ready to serve until noon, so we decided to go to the Trevor Zoo at the Millbrook School. This has been on our agenda for some time and we figured it would be a great thing to do before eating lunch.

On the way to the zoo, I pulled over to look at a horse. Then, I thought to myself that a picture of the nearby farm would be a good thing to show my loyal readers. That would be the picture above.

As we drove down the road, I realized that we were coming upon the Millbrook School itself. I had no idea that it was a fancy private school. I was picturing those plastic slides like they have in the backs of some nursery schools. Um, not so much. After we parked the car, we took a stroll up the road because I saw some purple flowers I wanted to take a picture of.

Now, I didn’t know what to expect with this zoo. I even went as far as telling Laura that I didn’t want to go because I feared it would be just some pig in someone’s backyard. She expressed to me how important it was for us to go, so I agreed. This is the second time that I was wrong about someplace and she was right. The first time was Block Island. Boy was I wrong about that one. You know, it really hurts a guy’s ego to be wrong twice in a relationship. Good thing it was only twice.

As we walked up, we saw a nice waterfall and a bridge. It was the entrance to Trevor Zoo. Oh, how neat. It looked much bigger than I thought it would. After we went in, we saw how many animals they had.

They had birds and turkeys…

…and they even had this big bird that wouldn’t put its wings down. I guess he was getting some sun. We also saw rabbits and lemurs, a deer and a bunch of other stuff. There weren’t many people there, so it was really pleasurable. That, mixed with the nice weather was really making this a day after all.

This is just a great last shot I took of the Millbrook School from the Trevor Zoo. Obviously, I am on the other side of the pond.

After we left the zoo, we headed back into town for that lunch I was telling you about. We ate a nice meal and headed out to our next destination…the Millbrook Vineyards & Winery. At this point, it was about 1:30PM, so we were spreading things out nicely.

We rolled up to the winery with some wine tasting in mind. Good thing in was a Thursday in April, because there were only a few people there.

We paid $14 for the both of us to taste seven wines. We also got to keep the wine glasses we drank out of. To follow our tradition, we bought a bottle of wine before we left. I guess that’s what people do. I think we got a Cabernet. I am not such a huge fan of that type of wine, but Laura seemed interested, so again, I agreed. I know, I know…yes, I am a catch.

I thought I would throw those last three shots in there. I had to do something while we were waiting for the tasting guy. Besides, I was trying to show off my “angles” to my lady.

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I was making a nice vegetarian recipe the other night that called for Collard Greens. Honestly, I didn’t even know what they were. I went to the store and asked the produce guy where they were and he pointed me towards a big pile of leaves that looked kind of like Spinach. I brought them home and cooked them up in the food I was making. Since the recipe only called for about a cup, we really didn’t get a chance to taste what these Collard Greens were all about.

Last night, I told Laura that we needed to find a Collard Green recipe, because we had a bunch left over. I looked up on the internet what people generally do with them and most of the results were the same…steam them or cook them. I decided to do it my way.

I put some olive oil in a pan and cut up about six cloves of garlic. I know, I know…don’t worry, I am not around anyone today. I also put some onions in the mix and simmered them up. After those items were softened up a bit, I de-stemmed the Collard Greens and stacked the leaves on top of each other. Then, I rolled them up like a big cigar and cut them in slices. I added them to the pot and cooked them up for a few minutes.

Neither Laura nor I had any idea what they were going to taste like. I just knew we needed to get rid of them. Well, after we both tasted them, we both agreed that they were just awesome. I couldn’t believe how good they were. I have some left over for tonight and am very psyched about it.

After dinner, I decided to look up the nutritional benefits of Collard Greens. Come to find out, they are some sort of (another) wonder food. According to the website, I should feel like Superman today. I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I won’t in the future.

My unsolicited advice to you is to go grab yourself some Collard Greens. You might just add a new food to your variety of recipes.

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During our visit, we started talking about food. We mentioned that our local supermarket doesn’t have the greatest produce in the world…well, not in the middle of Winter anyway. Even in the Summer, there is something to be desired. Our neighbor started talking about the Phillies Bridge Farm Project CSA up near New Paltz. She said they have great produce and that people can buy “shares” of the season’s crop. She also mentioned that they have a great website that offers all sorts of good information on their program.

I gave the website a once over last night and found a very interesting program. Local people (who eat a lot of produce) are able to buy shares of each crop. The benefits of this must be weighed with the risks. People pay the farmers upfront, so the farmers are protected throughout the season. If it’s a great season, there is tons of food to go around. If the season is terrible, people don’t get all that much food. I think it’s a pretty fun thing to do overall.

Wherever we end up, I am definitely going to look for a similar program to this one. I really enjoy getting involved in stuff like this.

Peace out.

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