Life

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A Sweet Little Drink From The Devil Sisters

This is a sweet little drink we enjoyed this weekend at a party in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  From the three open bottles of champagne, you can tell that it was pretty popular.  It is a drink that is on the sweet side.  What could be better….a sweet drink to enjoy on a sweet day.  My two friends that grew up in Iowa with me (they are sisters) from Peonies From Heaven had this drink and then made it at the party.  I don’t recall hearing the name of the drink.  I’m sure they didn’t invent it (although I’m sure they would claim that they did if you asked them), but I’ll go ahead and name it in their honor.  Because they have a wild streak and take every opportunity to harass me (I don’t deserve it) along with it being close to Halloween, I’ll name it ‘The Devil Sisters’ Champagne Brew’.  All kidding aside, this champagne brew is delicious.  Make sure to have the following ingredients on hand:

  • Champagne of your choice
  • A bottle of St. Germain elderflower liqueur
  • A bottle of orange bitters
  • Sugar cubes
  • Fresh oranges

The Devil Sister’s Champagne Brew:

Take a champagne flute and fill it about 3/4 full with your favorite chilled champagne.  Then add about half of a shot of the elderflower liqueur into the flute.  Next, drop in one sugar cube that is generously soaked in the orange bitters.  Garnish by dropping in a slice of fresh orange peel.  Enjoy!!

I’ve seen more and more drinks that are being made these days with the elderflower liqueur.  I’ve read that it is an artisanal French liqueur made from hand-picked elderflower blossoms.  The starry white flowers are gathered by 40-50 folks pedaling the Alpen French countryside picking the flowers that is then distilled into this liqueur.  It is blended with a small amount of citrus and natural cane sugar to accentuate the subtle flavor of the elderflowers.  The resulting liqueur is delicate and balanced with fresh floral aromas and flavors and hints of pear, apricot and grapefruit zest.  So if you are looking for a sweet little brew, go ahead and give this one a try….and let me know what this is called if you know its name.  Have you ever used elderflower liqueur in any of your drink specialties?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Twisted Sister

This is a tangled and twisted reminder that all of the clean up work from Hurricane Irene is not completed yet here in Connecticut.  This tree looks like it was pulled like a weed out of the garden….roots and all….and then tossed aside to wilt and die.  Maybe this is Medusa’s head with snakes growing from all sides?  Little by little, trees like this are getting cleared away in our community.  In time, the effects of the hurricane will be just a distant memory.  What does this mass of tree roots look like to you?

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Hats Off To Magar Hatworks

This is a Fascinator made for the Kentucky Derby.  What is a Fascinator, you may be asking?  It is a hat that has gained in popularity since Kate Middleton began wearing these precariously perched feathered creations on her head.  The Fascinator is a particularly ornate accessory that can feature feathers, beads, flowers and other fancy trimmings.  Fascination over the Fascinator is growing in the United States, with Google searches up 50% for this style of hat since January.  Hats–that’s what brought us to Magar Hatworks in Charleston–and we weren’t disappointed.

Leah Magar has been described as a 21ist-century hat maker.  She uses old-fashioned hat making techniques with a fashion-forward vision in creating her quirky, Sunday-best hats.  She uses the technique of blocking to make and stitch hats by hand.  In fact, she has a collection of museum quality hat blocks lined all around her showroom.  Here are a few examples of the many hat blocks she owns.

But my friend and I were at Magar Hatworks to buy some hats.  You see, I am obsessed with hats and when my friend talked about the hat shop, we knew we had to go.  Honestly, even though I love men and women in hats, I only own two hats and they are recent purchases.  The reason?  I believe that I have the biggest head in recorded history.  There were signs of this before I fully realized it myself.  I have an aunt who says that as a new-born baby I was “all head”.  I could never, ever wear a baseball cap without it squeezing off my head.  Sporting ventures like football required the school to special-order head gear.  However, it was call outs from folks in college and then in the work place about the hugeness of my head that made me finally get the measuring tape out and take a reading.  I am proud to communicate that my head is approximately 26 inches in circumference.  It was confirmed by a measurement at Magar Hatworks.  For the most part, that is a very small person’s waist.  After my initial measurement, Leah Magar said in astonishment that she didn’t have a hat form big enough to block out a hat for me.  After she saw my sad eyes and face, she relented.  She knew how bad I wanted a hat.  You know how it is when you want something so bad and you are told that you can’t have it.  She is now making three for me!

Here is a view of some of the hats that Leah makes.  The straw hats are there for the end of the Spring/Summer season and the others are for Fall/Winter.  For the colder season, there were hats of felt, wool and cashmere that were all dyed in great colors and adorned with various notions.  I ordered one straw hat and two heavier wool hats for the Winter.  My friend bought two straws and is throwing serious hints to her husband about this wonderful Winter hat she needs as a Christmas present.

I have to believe that old-time hat making like what Leah Magar of Magar Hatworks is doing is a dying occupation.  When my friends and family see me walking around with my hats on, I want them to know it is not so much for the fashion statement but more about the fact that an art like this can’t cease to exist.  What a skill!  Oh, and by the way, if anyone laughs when my big head puts a hat on, I may just have to strap on that big Kentucky Derby Fascinator instead.  That will give them something to laugh about!  When was the last time you wore a hat?

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Our Hotel In Charleston – The Planters Inn

This is our hotel in Charleston.  Since we are still thick in our Charleston, South Carolina vacation review, it is only right that we discuss where we stayed while in the great city.  The Planters Inn, located in Charleston’s historic district, is a gracious Charleston hotel known for elegance and Southern hospitality.  Built in 1844, this beautifully restored inn is situated on Charleston’s open-air City Market, the King Street Antiques District is only a block away and Fort Sumter tours are within a half-mile.

The inn has beautiful four poster beds in each room.  Unlike other hotels, there is no real lobby area in the hotel.  Instead, there is a small desk that is off of a parlor area that is decorated with period pieces that make you feel like you are back in older times.  Here are some pictures of the hotel that illustrate the charm of the Planters Inn.

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Besides its beauty, it was nice staying at the Planters Inn because it was close to everything that we did while in Charleston.  Its proximity to tourist attractions, great restaurants and shopping can’t be beat.  After walking outside in the heat, it wa great to come back to the parlor or your room and just relax.  Even though the inn is in the heart of the city, it was always very quiet and accomodating.  We were glad we stayed at the Planters Inn.  What great things, like the Planters Inn, have you discovered over the Summer?

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South Carolina’s Unbelievable Angel Oak

This is Angel Oak on John’s Island in South Carolina.  When we were ready to make the trek from Charleston to Kiawah, our friends drove their car and we hired a car service.  Our driver begged us to take a few minutes to stop and see this tree.  He said it was one of South Carolina’s best kept secrets and we needed to stop and take a look.

The Angel Oak is a Live Oak (Quercus viginiana) that is a native species found through the South Carolina coastal low country.  Many people think that the name Angel Oak has something to do with angels from heaven, but it just refers to the last name of its previous owners.

Towering over 65 feet high, the Angel Oak has shaded John’s Island, South Carolina, for over 1,400 years.  This means that the oak would have sprouted 1,000 years before Columbus’ arrival in the New World.  Recorded history traces the ownership of the live oak and surrounding land, back to the year 1717, when Abraham Waight received it as part of a small land grant.  The tree stayed in the Waight family for four generations and was then part of a marriage settlement to Justus Angel and Martha Waight Tucker Angel.  In modern times, the Angel Oak has become the focal point of a public park.  Today the live oak has a diameter of spread reaching 160 feet, a circumference of nearly 25 feet and covers 17,100 square feet of ground.  Angel Oak’s largest limb has a circumference of 11.25 feet and a length of 89 feet.  Talk about a large and long arm!

Angel Oak has in the past few years been threatened by proposed development in the area and the destruction of the surrounding woods.  While Angel Oak will not be cut down, many residents of the area believe the surrounding woods help to protect the prized oak from storms and helps allow proper moisture and drainage.  Residents also believe the surrounding woods help filter out harmful pollutants before they reach the Angel Oak tree.

We were very happy to take a little turn off the beaten path and get a chance to see Angel Oak.  Know that the pictures don’t do justice to how large and majestic the oak tree actually is when you see it in person.  It is said to be the oldest living thing east of the Mississippi River.  It sure is a sight worth seeing.  Have you ever seen Angel Oak or heard of it?

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Charleston Introduces Us To The Firefly Half and Half

This is our new drink of the Summer discovered on vacation in Charleston, South Carolina.  It is a Firefly Half and Half and it is the second installment of our Charleston, South Carolina vacation review.  It’s discovery must have been fate.  It all started when my other adult vacationing friends ordered up some late-morning Bloody Marys.  Being someone who does not like hard alcohol or tomato juice, the idea of drinking a Bloody Mary was just not going to happen.  So I asked the bartender at the restaurant where we were eating to suggest something for me to sip on and she came up with the Firefly Half and Half.  It contains some Southern classics–Sweet Tea (infused with vodka), lemonade, a lemon slice and some ice.  As you can see by this picture, my Firefly Half and Half was much better than the Bloody Mary as mine is half gone and the other drink only just sipped.

Our discovery starts with some Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka.  It was first created in a small still on Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina, before becoming the world’s first hand-crafted sweet tea flavored vodka.  Keeping true to its Southern roots, Firefly is distilled four times, infused with tea grown on a plantation five miles from the distillery and blended with real Louisiana sugar cane.  It tastes just like real sweet tea, but with an even sweeter kick.  It is available nationally, but finding something made close to Charleston just seemed a little more special than say finding it in Iowa or Connecticut.

For those of you who want to cut down on the sugar cane, Firefly also makes it in a skinny version using the natural sweetner stevia.  It’s the same great taste, but less sugar.  The choice is up to you.

You really can’t mess up this recipe for the perfect Half and Half.  Here it is:

Firefly Half and Half

  • 3 oz. Firefly Sweet Tea Flavored Vodka
  • 3 oz. Lemonade
  • One Lemon Twist
  • Mix over ice in a highball glass

You will also hear this drink called an Arnold Palmer or a John Daly.

An Arnold Palmer is a beverage consisting of half iced tea and half lemonade named for pro-golfer Arnold Palmer.   It is often called a Half and Half.  A John Daly is an alcoholic mixed drink, named after pro-golfer John Daly.  It is simply an Arnold Palmer with vodka.  A John Daly could also be made by combining vodka with lemonade and sweet tea.  Anyway you order it, as a Half and Half, as an Arnold Palmer or as a John Daly, just add Firefly to the beginning and a bartender seems to know what you are talking about….at least in South Carolina anyway.  However, no one that I talk to seems to know why this alcoholic beverage and its non-alcoholic cousin are named after golfers.  I can imagine the correlation, but I will wait to write about it until I can find facts and not just my evil conjecture.

By the end of our vacation, the adults had made a batch to take to the beach on a daily basis.  Name something better than vodka iced sweet tea to drink on a hot beach!  I also must give credit for the lead-in photo of my Firefly Half and Half to my 16-year-old traveling companion.  Since I was on my second (o.k., maybe third, but I was on vacation) drink, I was a little shaky with the camera and so my friend stepped up to the plate with a great shot.  Give the Firefly Sweet Tea vodka a try.  It is actually the perfect drink for your Labor Day festivities and a farewell to Summer…but I’m sure it will be great in Winter too.  Is there such a thing as an out-of-season cocktail?  Have you ever sipped on any of the Firefly vodka products?

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Our Charleston, South Carolina Vacation Review Begins!

This is a big welcome to Acorns On Glen’s “Charleston, South Carolina Vacation Review” festivities!  Yes, we are back from our vacation to Charleston and the beach on Kiawa Island and we are ready to show you some of the highlights of our trip.  First off, we were in South Carolina when news of Hurricane Irene started.  We did fly back to Connecticut before the hurricane hit land and we were impacted on Glen Road when it hit Connecticut on Saturday evening.  Most of our town is still without electricity as of today, but everyone we know is safe and sound (just a little cranky at this point).  To all of you that were impacted by this storm, we hope that you and your families are doing well.

I will start off with a confession.  I wasn’t expecting much of this vacation.  I had done some research on Charleston and learned that during August, Charleston is:

  1. Hot
  2. Really hot
  3. Super humid
  4. All of the above

Not sure that this is really a good match with a person who:

  1. Is experiencing male menopause, including hot flashes
  2. Doesn’t really enjoy the beach
  3. Has not had a tan since the ’80s
  4. Has thick, coarse hair that does not do well in humidity
  5. All of the above

Let me tell you this.  I have learned in my life that when expectations are low, you usually have one of the best times of your life.  An example, when Les Miserables was a hot play on Broadway, I bought tickets.  I was so excited to see this show.  All of my friends that knew I was going called me and told me that I was in for a treat.  It would be the best show I ever saw in my life.  My expectations were super high.  I went to the show and, guess what, I left at intermission.  I mean, come on, how long can that revolution go on?  Shoot your guns and die.  Get it over already!

It’s the same with our trip to Charleston.  One of my best friends (love her) and her husband (who I’m crazy about as well) take their kids (love them too; an all around super-duper family) down to Charleston and then a drive over to Kiawah Island (about 30 miles east of Charleston) for some beach time.  She knew that we had not had any vacation this year and knew that we didn’t have any plans and so she graciously offered for us to travel down to SC and be a part of their vacation.  She also knew that our saying “yes” was dicey because of the points listed above.  After a lot of persuasion from my dear friend, we said yes.  I set expectations low in my mind….thinking it was better to get away to a place that you probably wouldn’t like versus not going away at all.  In my experience, low expectations usually produce the best times of your life and this was the case here.  What a week of great fun!  To anyone that is ever on the fence about going to Charleston, I have to tell you to just pack your bags and get down there.  From history, architecture, GREAT food, nice people and a great opportunity to relax, Charleston has it all.

For me, Charleston will always be remembered for great food.  Because the landscape is marshy and swampy, they refer to their cooking as low country.  The food that they produce is down home, comfort food and I believe that it is similar to the food I grew up with in Iowa, where the cooks in Charleston work very hard to take the ingredients that they have and work to develop the best taste that they can with the simple ingredients that are present.  So to give you an example of this, I thought I would start our vacation review festivities with a recipe for Pimento Cheese.  To make this Southern classic, I turned to Matt Lee and Ted Lee, two brothers that have brought Southern cooking to life with their cookbooks.  I turned to their first cookbook, ‘The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook’, to help me make my Pimento Cheese.  This cookbook by the Lee Brothers is fantastic for a would-be Southerner like me.  It won the James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year Award for Food of the Americas in 2007 and is as fun to read the stories as it is to read the great Southern recipes.  It is my newest addition to my vast cookbook collection.  Halfway through my visit to Charleston, I saw it in a shop window and looked it up on Amazon.com that night and knew that my new-found lust for Charleston made this a must for my collection.  So let’s have the Lee Brothers take it over and let’s make this Southern classic, Pimento Cheese.

The Lee Brothers say that there was a time when you could eat pimento cheese sandwiches at lunch counters throughout the South.  Today, you are more likely to find this orange spread of sharp cheddar and mild pepper served as a dip, on crackers, in someone’s home during cocktail hour.  That’s how we enjoyed our dish of Pimento Cheese over the weekend.

Traditional recipes for Pimento Cheese call for canned pimentos, but this recipe broils a fresh red bell pepper, removes the blackened skin and then cuts the pepper into small dice before mixing it with the cheeses.  The Lee Brothers do admit that some of their Charleston friends roll their eyes that the recipe uses red pepper versus pimentos, but they believe it is a simple route to a more vibrant and sophisticated (and less chemical tasting) pepper flavor.  If you are a die-hard pimento lover, you can feel free to replace the pepper with 3 1/2 ounces of pimentos, but make sure that you dice them finely so that they get distributed throughout the spread.

Ingredients:

For the spreadable Pimento Cheese:

  • 1 red bell pepper
  • 8 ounces finely grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese
  • 2 ounces softened cream cheese, cut into pieces
  • 3 tablespoons mayonnaise (I made the Lee Brothers homemade Lemony Mayonnaise and used it in the recipe….see the recipe below)
  • 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
  • Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

Directions:

Turn on the broiler.  Place the pepper on its side on a dry cookie sheet and slide it under the broiler until the skin blackens on the side facing up.  With tongs, turn the pepper so that an unblackened side faces up and repeat until the skin is blackened on all sides.  Place the pepper in a small bowl, cover it with plastic wrap and let it steam for 5 minutes as it cools down.  Uncover the bowl.  When the pepper is cool enough to handle, transfer it to a cutting board, reserving any liquid in the bowl.  Remove the blackened skin with your fingers and discard.  Using a paring knife, cut the pepper in half, remove and discard the stem and the seeds and chop the pepper into 1/4-inch dice.  You should have about a 1/2 cup.

After chopping, you have to admit that these peppers do a pretty good job impersonating pimentos.  The choice is yours, but I have to think the Lee Brothers know how to make some good Pimento Cheese.  You be the judge and do what you need to do.

Place the grated cheddar in a medium bowl and add the cream cheese pieces, the mayonnaise (homemade version coming up), the diced red pepper and its liquid and the red pepper flakes, distributing them evenly over the cheese.  With a rubber spatula, blend the ingredients together until the spread is thoroughly mixed, about 3 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.  Note that Pimento Cheese keeps in the refrigerator for 1 week.

Are you adventurous?  Here is the homemade Lemony Mayonnaise that I used in my Pimento Cheese recipe.  This takes less than 5 minutes to make.  Give it a try.

For the Lemony Mayonnaise:

Ingredients:

  • 2 large egg yolks
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1 lemon)
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon vinegar (white, white wine, champagne, red wine or sherry…I used red wine)
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

Directions:

In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the lemon juice.  Add the oils in a thin stream, whisking constantly to emulsify.  When the mayonnaise is thick and consistent, add the vinegar, salt and pepper and whisk vigorously to incorporate.  Store in the refrigerator up to 2 days.

This is my new favorite dinner party appetizer dip.  If you are really trying to get back to your Southern roots, spread this Pimento Cheese on some white sandwich bread and enjoy a sandwich for lunch.  Thanks so much to the Lee Brothers for this delicious recipe and please buy their great cookbook.  This is just the start of our Charleston, SC vacation review.  Come back to enjoy more of this jewel of a city.  We have more stories….from hats to our hotel to restaurant fun.  Come back and visit us, y’all.  Have you ever visited Charleston, SC and what did you think?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – A Real Barn Burner

This is a picture of a barn in our neighborhood taken when the temperature was 94 degrees.  A real barn burner, get it?  OK, so some bad Summer humor.  This was another little “find” that we ran across on one of our evening walks over the weekend.  Next time we will have to see what is inside.  Probably equipment of some sort, but let’s hope for something more exotic like a cow or a pig.  Who knows?  How are you coping with the heat this Summer?

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Crafting and Orange Marmalade

This is a jar of my newly labeled orange marmalade.  After making my first-ever batch of orange marmalade, I decided that the finished jars looked a little plain.  I decided that they needed labels.  For many people, making and affixing labels to their canned goods would be a simple and rather artistic chore.  Not me, because this falls in the area of crafts and I am not very good at crafts.  I have tried.

There was one year when I made a real cranberry wreath from a ‘Martha Stewart Living’ magazine article I had read.  It jumped out at me from the pages of the magazine.  I had to have this bright red beauty on my front door for the holidays.  For days, I took real cranberries, inserted toothpicks into each one and then pushed the cranberry spikes into a foam wreath form that I had bought and spray painted red.  It looked pretty, but Martha did not tell me that for those of us who lived in California at the time, that real cranberries would quickly rot in the high temperatures that Californian’s enjoy at Christmas.  Within a week, my wreath had a bad smell and the squishy and wrinkled cranberries were falling off their toothpicks onto my front porch floor.  As well, pushing sharp-edged toothpicks into hundreds of cranberries messed my fingers up for a good week or two.  It was painful every time I jammed my two sensitive fingers into my computer keyboard after being mini-stabbed by toothpicks a hundred times or so.

Then there are the times I decide to make hand-made Christmas cards to impress my friends and family (and make them green with envy).  The last time this urge hit me was when a friend of mine convinced me to buy some stamps, card stock and ink from her new ‘Stamping Up’ business.  I bought like $700 of stuff that guaranteed me beautiful hand-made gems.  My stamps were three penguins with Santa hats and scarves on and each one held a candy cane and a string of Christmas lights.  Each one was stamped in black on white card stock and special markers had been purchased to color those penguins in with various colors.  Sounds easy, right?  Not for me.  After I realized that the date to mail the cards was two days away and I was only half done with the number of cards I needed to send, there were two all-nighters needed to finish.  There is nothing worse than coloring your festive penguins at 4 AM in the morning.  This was the last time I sent cards out.  Too much work!

Being wiser with age, I found a website that produces gorgeous writing papers and envelopes called Felix Doolittle.  This company makes canning labels available in the Summer months.  Perfect for me!  Even better, they had a label with oranges on it and I had them add ‘Acorns On Glen’ across the top.  My blog’s first product although they are not for sale so probably not a product at all.  The best part of getting the labels?  I decided that it made me crafty for the first time in my life without having a breakdown or a mess on my hands.  I like this new way of crafting.  I might have to keep it up.  What things have you accomplished in the crafts department?