This is JoJo at our July 4th party. She didn’t take a nap all day. She just ran from guest to guest to guest. When she went to bed at 11:30 at night, she fell to her side and didn’t wake up until 10:00 the next morning. Partying is really hard work. What have your pets been up to lately?
This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen. It’s the time where we give thanks for another week of living. We give thanks for making it through and for being able to celebrate this fact. How do we celebrate another week of living? We dance. So take a moment and be proud of the fact that you’re here and you’ve made it to another Friday. Not only you, but your family and friends as well. So, to that end, are you alive this Friday? Have you given thanks for this?
Good, now let’s dance.
At our July 4th party, I used an application on my iPad for the first time called Pandora. Basically, Pandora is a music application where you key in the name of a favorite song or artist. The application will then play the song you requested or a song by the artist you selected and then continue to play songs that are similar to your initial request. So if you choose Beyoncé, she starts singing and other songs that follow are similar but by artists like Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey and Brittany Spears. We changed the theme up a few times going from pop to R&B to standards from the likes of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. All we needed to do to keep the great music playing was hook the iPad into a speaker and an electric source and we were set for the day. Pandora did the rest. We highly recommend Pandora for your iPad or iPhone. Even better is that the application itself is FREE. The one thing we did notice is that one song kept playing for several of the songs/artists we selected and people were actually commenting about how much they liked it. The song was from a band called ‘All Time Low’ and is called ‘I Feel Like Dancin’. Since that is what we like to do on the Friday Dance Party, we thought it would be perfect for today’s song. So crank those speakers up and get to groovin’. You’ve made it through another week and you deserve to celebrate. Don’t sprain anything! What cool music applications can you recommend for our iPads and iPhones?
This is the kind of critters I like to see on Glen Road. The stone kind. The kind that doesn’t jump, hiss, run, slither or scurry. They just sit there and do absolutely nothing. Sort of what we did this weekend after our July 4th party. What critter horror stories do you have to share here at Acorns On Glen?
This is our first harvest of green beans from the garden. What should we do with them was the question? I had an answer for that, based on a recent recipe I saw on a cooking channel. Fresh green beans are perfect for a chicken paillard with fresh greens and beans. We had been on such a food overload since our early July 4th party where we ate an incredible amount of food over the span of the event. This recipe was perfect for us in the sense it wasn’t heavy, wasn’t grilled and was quick and easy. It also called for very fresh ingredients, which is always a plus. Even on the 4th of July, I was able to get to a fresh farmer’s market that was open for some of the other ingredients needed that I couldn’t get out of our garden. If you are lucky enough to find a place that sells fresh, organic produce, it is well worth the price. The fresh tastes can’t be beat. This is the perfect Summer go-to recipe and hit the spot for our 4th of July dinner.
Ingredients (serves 4):
Directions:
Steam string beans until al dente, 3 to 4 minutes. Dump them into a bowl and set aside. Slice chicken breast halves in half horizontally; pound lightly, to an even thickness to make 8 paillards. Season paillards with salt and pepper. Top each with 2 sage leaves. Saute in a skillet with olive oil over high heat for 3 minutes. Flip, and top each with more salt, pepper and 2 more sage leaves. Heat until cooked through, about 3 minutes more.
Transfer to a platter.
When all 8 paillards are cooked, heat 1 tablespoon oil in skillet over high heat. Cook pancetta for 2 minutes. Add red onion; cook until soft, about 3 minutes minimum. Make sure to scrape up all of the chicken bits that are attached to the bottom of the pan. They have excellent flavor.
Add red-wine vinegar; stir in green beans. Simmer for about two minutes to let the vinegar cook down a little and to heat up the green beans. Toss with lettuce. Serve over paillards. There is a lot of greens and beans as you can see. You can barely see the chicken under all of this salad.
Simple and quick. We were not in the mood for crazy and difficult. Very tasty and hit the spot. The warm dressing on the slightly wilted lettuces was a nice touch. The pancetta, onion and vinegar had a nice mix of flavor. Believe it or not, the chicken also kept its sage taste which surprised me given that I thought the flavor would be in the olive oil and not the chicken.
This is absolutely a new go-to Summer meal when we need something in a jiffy. When it’s 100 degrees outside, who wants to spend all day cooking in front of a hot stove and oven? Not us, that’s for sure. What is your favorite go-to me meal for the Summer?
This is our second day of recovery from our July 4th celebration held on Saturday. Our party started five or six years ago and was really a small affair. We would invite our immediate family and close friends over for a barbecue. The kids would swim most of the day and the adults would gossip about what was going on over the beverage of their choice. Oh yes, we also ate…and ate…and ate. Each year after that first party, the July 4th celebration just kept getting bigger. We weren’t really increasing our immediate family so that wasn’t the reason for the growth. I guess we were just meeting more friends that we felt we wanted to come over. So this year, it was our biggest party to date. 125 people big. So big that we thought we needed a tent for people to sit under to ward off the sun. That was a good idea as temperatures hit 85 degrees with full sun. The tent that we got was like a circus tent. We were joking that later that night, one of us would be performing a Cirque du Soleil performance at the top of it. Festivities went from 1 in the afternoon until about midnight.
Believe us when we tell you that 125 people can eat. We had food on the barbecue grill outside and lots of good old Italian food on the inside.
We will try now to the best of our ability to document all the food that we enjoyed. I am sure we forgot a lot, but here’s a good try:
Now the dessert. Our Brooklyn Italian Grandmother put out the call for all Brooklyn and Staten Island bound guests to hit their best Italian pastry shops. You can imagine the results. We had so many pastries, cookies and cakes that we actually took many of the leftovers to the homeless shelter the next day. There was no way we could eat all of the desserts that entered our house on Glen Road. Here are some cupcakes (which are always a favorite):
Each year, I also ask one of my best friends to make her famous flag cake which is from Ina Garten. She always obliges. The flag cake sort of ties it all up here…you know, a symbol of why we are celebrating.
So Happy 4th of July to all of you from all of us here on Glen Road. We also want to take this opportunity to thank all of our women and men in the armed services who risk their lives to protect all of us. We appreciate your dedication. By the way, if you are looking for us, we are still recovering from the big party. Our beverage of choice was not lemonade, so that fact, coupled with the number of hours that we partied have made all of us Glen Road old people tired. Thank God we have to go back to work tomorrow. At our age, work is much easier than partying. What are you doing today to celebrate the 4th of July?
This is our new way out wicker. There are a lot of second-hand stores in our area of Connecticut. Many are pretty high-end, with beautiful antique furniture, china, crystal of all shapes and sizes and outdoor furniture. Granted, there is a lot of junk in some of these stores but if you keep an eye out on the merchandise, you can find some good deals. That’s the case with our new funky wicker set. Who knew you could find real wicker in turquoise?
So when we saw the furniture we knew we had to have it. We bought the pillows and cushions to match at a local home store shop and we were ready to go. The set fit perfectly at the South end of the pool where it resides now. It’s a perfect way to relax after a long day at work and enjoy a glass of wine or dinner. We know that we will be spending a lot of hours here this Summer. Do you know a special drink that is colored turquoise to match our wicker set that we can drink all Summer?
This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen. It’s the time where we give thanks for making it through another week and for being alive and present here on Earth. How do we celebrate another week of living? We dance. So, are you alive this Friday? Are you and your family safe and sound? Take a few seconds now to be in the moment and realize what a great life you truly have. Did you give thanks for that?
Good, now let’s dance.
We’re getting ready here on Glen Road for a big 4th of July party. 125 people are coming and we just keep inviting more people. It’s crazy. Everything is set for a good time. Plenty of food-the BBQ kind outside on the grill and the Italian kind inside the house. The pool is heated to a warm temperature. Since it is forecasted to be 90 degrees outside, it is important that the pool be kept at a constant 80 degrees, right? Speaking of the temperature, we have had a large tent put up in our back yard so anyone not wanting the sun beating down on them can sit under it. The tent itself could host a circus. At night, it has lights in it so the party can go on late into the night. Oh, and did I mention the booze? Needless to say, there are bottles everywhere. All the makings of a great 4th of July! Now all we need is the music. Music is always a tough one because at a party like we are having, you need to please people from 5 to 90 years old. However, this song will absolutely be played because it is one of our favorites this month. It’s Mumford & Sons ‘The Cave’. It’s one of those songs that is a cross between several genres of music. Great strings. The best part of it, we have absolutely no idea what the lyrics mean. Internet surfing says everything from a song about recovering from addiction, getting over depression to getting over a failed relationship. Sounds great for a party, right? Whatever it means, its our dance number for this week. So turn the speakers up and celebrate another week of living. Happy 4th of July and enjoy your dance. You deserve it. What are your plans for the 4th of July?
This is a very good sign. Earlier in the Spring, we planted two miniature citrus trees with plans to put them on the patio during the Summer and hopefully harvest some fruit. I think we might get our wish! After planting the shipped trees, there was about a month where it appeared there was little, if any, growth. Then all of a sudden and at about the same time, both trees erupted in a mass of blooms. There was a little bit of fragrance from the blooms, but not too much. Towards the end of June, the trees were placed outside where they receive several hours of direct sun. The blooms stayed intact for about a solid month and now many of the blooms have turned into baby fruit. Above is a picture of the Meyer Lemon tree and below is a picture of the Calamondin Orange tree. Both are packing some serious baby fruit!
So we’ve already talked about marmalade making with any oranges the Calamondin tree produces (with the help of regular oranges to make up any shortfall), but this is my vote for the Meyer lemons. It is one of my new favorite Summer drink recipes. Don’t worry if you don’t have Meyer lemons because regular lemons work just as well.
Meyer Lemon Drop
Ingredients:
Directions:
Tint sugar with powdered yellow food color, if desired. Place sugar in a saucer. Moisten the rim of a martini glass with a lemon slice. Dip rim in sugar. In a cocktail shaker, combine vodka, Cointreau, lemon juice, and superfine sugar with ice; shake well. Strain into prepared glass. Make another, and another and then fall over.
So here’s hoping we get to harvest our lemons and oranges by the end of the Summer. We don’t want our marmalade jars and vodka to be lonely if the fruit doesn’t make it, do we? That’s the one thing with gardening…fruit today doesn’t always mean fruit tomorrow. A bad storm or a big bug can ruin your plans (and crop) in an instant. However, if they do make it and you see us walking slightly unsteady with lemon-scented breath, you know why. Do you have any lemon or orange recipes that you can share with us here at Acorns On Glen?
This is an old friend. It is our Clematis Bonanza vine which was one of the very first plants that we planted when we moved to Glen Road. That first Spring and Fall seem so far away. One of the reasons we bought the house was the big yard and many gardens that were dispersed around the property. Some gardens were nicely planted and others were vast mud holes. I knew that I could revive my gardening skills put away when I moved out of my childhood home in Iowa at age eighteen and make the gardens plush with vines, plants and flowers. Little did I remember that taking mud to plush meant a lot of blood, sweat and tears. That first year I lost almost as many plantings as ones that grew. Eventually, I realized that to make a dent in the mud, I would need to envision what I wanted in a certain area, research what grew in our area of Connecticut that looked like my vision and then utilize that particular plant in my garden. In other words, just because something was pretty didn’t mean that it was going to survive the hot Summers and freezing Winters that Connecticut has to offer. From my studies, I found the Clematis as the perfect flowering vine to cover my backyard fence. It did not prove me wrong and flowered there for the last five years.
Then I thought we had destroyed it. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we did some construction to our home over the Winter and Spring here on Glen Road in an area that was heavily planted. We worked very hard with some landscapers to relocate many plants that we knew we could use after the renovation. However, we were told that the Clematis would most likely not make the move so we just left it where it was. I figured it would be driven over, built upon and then destroyed and we would need to start fresh with new plants. To my surprise this Spring, a large section of it rose from the ground and attached itself to the new fence that we had installed around the backyard, two feet from where the old fence once stood. It did what it had done for the past five years. It was amazing given the amount of construction work that went on in the area where it grew and prospered. When I noticed it this Spring, I got a wide smile on my face and laughed. It was if it was saying to me ‘ha ha ha, you can’t kill me off that easy’. I’m so glad that we didn’t.
Clematis is a genus of about 300 species within the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. Their garden hybrids have been popular among gardeners beginning with Clematis jackmanii, a garden standby since 1862. More hybrid cultivars are being produced constantly. They are mainly of Chinese and Japanese origin. Our Clematis Bonanza was introduced at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2006. This free-flowering Clematis blooms from midsummer into September. We have let Bonanza, with its purple-blue blooms up to 3 inches wide, grow along our backyard fence with much success. It is a hardy and vigorous vine and generally shunned by deer. This is always a good thing for our deer-ravaged part of Connecticut. Our only concern at this point is around the amount of sun the Clematis is receiving each day. Most Clematis prefer the full sun with some shade around its roots. Our new construction shades the Clematis for most of the day. We will need to keep an eye on it to make sure it can survive with only a few hours of direct sunlight.
So hats off to you Clematis Bonanza and your ability to survive against even the hardest of times. We are so glad you did. Here’s hoping you have enough sunlight so that we can bring you some new brothers and sisters in the Fall to help you fill in that backyard fence. What are your favorite ‘children’ living in your garden?
This is what I found on the granite posts that support our espalier apple trees. What the hell is it? A larvae of some sort with some fur or hair sticking out on the bottom. When I saw this on the post, I almost threw up. Again, what don’t I like? What’s my least favorite part of living in the woods of Connecticut? Yes, the critters. It can be as big as a beaver or as small as a hairy larvae, but the site of something like this from nature sets me free. I don’t really know when my critter fears began. As a kid I was always one with nature. I caught frogs and toads, tried to catch fish with my hands, used to watch the pheasant and quail fly around in the fields behind my house. Something changed and all I know now is that there is no joy…there is just a rush of heat through my body as my natural instincts instruct me to run for safety. It’s the weirdest thing.
The larvae has to be related to the caterpillar I found on the other side of the post. As a young kid, I would have grabbed the caterpillar, rubbed its furry little body and maybe put it into a jar with air holes poked into the top to watch it turn into a moth or a butterfly. Now, I attach the telescopic lens to my camera and zoom in from across the yard to get the picture.
Here’s what I’m hoping. Maybe the larvae and caterpillar have something to do with the luna moth that was stuck to the side of the house for so many days last month. Maybe the luna gracefully flew to the granite post to leave one more generation of its beautiful family and this is what I found. With my critter luck, I know that this caterpillar probably produced the larvae and out will come some hideous moth with fangs, a large wasp with a six-inch stinger or some strain of garden eating worm. Let’s pray for the luna moth!
So rest assured that I will be hitting the internet this afternoon trying to figure out what is stuck to the espalier posts. I may even go to the book store and buy a moth/butterfly book to see if I can figure out what is growing in the back. I pray it is not something hideous so I won’t have to go out there and knock it off the post. That would mean the neighbors would get to see another round of me screaming and running around like a crazy person. If you know what this is, please leave me a comment. In other words…..What is it?
Acorns On Glen 