Hiatus Report - Part 1.1

The other week I posted about the Mrs' and my trip to Grounds for Sculpture for our anniversary. I got a lot of good comments on the photos and decided to post a few more of what I liked.

The Mrs is a Monet fan and some of these sculptures were reminiscent of his work.  The couple and the boats are all part of the sculpture.

She really liked this one with all of the poppy plants on the hill.

Some of the landscaping was sculpture like.  I thought this pathway was cool. 

This was some kind of sea monster in one of the ponds.

This one was set in a thick grove of trees and bamboo.

The above sculpture was surrounded by these silhouettes in the bamboo for a pretty creepy affect. 

This is a sculpture of a table by the lake.

Another neat sculpture - that I talked too for a couple of minutes.

This was kind of a Stone Henge thing.  The Mrs liked the floating lilies.

Hiatus Report - Part 1

Well. I finally made my work deadline and dealt with all of the other scheduling problems over the last few weeks so now I can finally start catching up on my blogging.  Although this weekend (14 - 16 October) we'll be doing the 3 1/2 hour drive to The Boy's College for Family Weekend, so I'll be out of pocket for a few days.  Next week things should be back to "normal".

You know, after The Boy left for college I thought life and schedule would get easier.  I was wrong.  Turns out The Pudge and his schedule is really taking up a lot of my time.  And the Mrs' job has her working a lot of late nights, so I'm sort of a single parent.  Now that I've taken my work deadline out of the equation (I was working a lot of 12 hour days and weekends), things are getting better.

A few good things that happened during this time were the Mrs and my anniversary, my brother's 50th birthday party, Beer Festival on the USS New Jersey and a really good haunted prison.  I fit all of these things into a schedule that includes CCD classes (Catholic Sunday school), guitar lessons, boy scouts and soccer.  And I started going to the gym twice a week (I didn't realize how much I missed that).  I'm really tired.

Anyway, I'll start off with the anniversary dinner and talk about the other things in subsequent posts.  Those of you who watched Top Chef Season 7 may remember that the winning chef, Kevin Sbraga, was a chef at a restaurant called Rats in Hamilton, NJ (just north of Trenton).  I had never heard of the restaurant or the surrounding park - Grounds for Sculpture.  And I've lived in NJ all my life! 

I did some research and made some reservations (2 months in advance for a Sunday dinner).  It was an easy 45 minute drive.  It was an overcast day and we weren't really sure what to expect.  We had a 6:45PM reservation and we arrived at about 4:00PM.  We checked in the restaurant with the hostess and she said that because we had dinner reservations, admission to the grounds was 1/2 price - nice.  She also said 2 hours was enough time to tour the grounds and we were welcome to buy a drink and take it with us - nice again.  So while the Mrs waited at the entrance to the grounds, I purchased our tickets and got us each a glass of Bordeaux Blend Chateau La Grange Clinet 2006 - and it was excellent.  I didn't tell her I was getting us drinks and she was pleasantly surprised.

Here's what we saw:

This was part of the courtyard entrance to the restaurant. That's a sculpture.

Here is what we saw at the entrance to the pathways on the grounds. This was cool.

The gardens and sculptures (some 240 works) were beautiful. They ranged from the classical sculptures...

To the weird.  I looked at this one for a couple of minutes.  I couldn't look away.

Here's me with a pile of scrap metal.  I didn't say I liked them all.

This is the back end of the restaurant. 

The Mrs took over a hundred pictures (that's why she's not in many and they look so good).  I just wanted to give you a taste of the grounds. 

Dinner was good but not as good as I had expected.  The restaurant itself looks like the interior of a rustic, French peasant house with eclectic artwork everywhere.  We were seated in a 2nd story loft area where we could look down on the lower dining room and had a view of the foggy pond at the rear (see picture above).  We started with appetizers of Traditional Onion Soup off the menu for the Mrs and an Heirloom Tomato Terrine (special) for me. Both were good. They also had a choice of several breads. I had an herb bread that was excellent and I don't recall what the Mrs had, but she liked it. My entree was a Halibut brandade cannelloni, local spinach, saffron - vanilla shellfish broth, Maya shrimp complement (menu), which was very good. The Mrs had the Magret duck breast miso grilled local eggplant, duck confit summer roll, plum sauce (menu). It was way too rare for her (or my) taste and the plum sauce was meh.   For dessert, we split a very decadent bread pudding (special) that we both enjoyed a lot.  Total bill with 2 drinks each and tip was about $130 - not too bad.

Overall this was a great experience.  The Mrs really enjoyed it (I scored major points - I think) and she wants to definitely go again.  Maybe in the Spring.  The dinner itself was good but not what I would consider Top Chef caliber, but the service was exceptional. In all fairness to Kevin Sbraga, he left the restaurant about a year ago and there is a new chef running it.  Chef Sbraga is suppose to be opening a new restaurant in center city Philadelphia sometime this fall, so I hope to check that out. 

More "Hiatus" posts to come - maybe.

How Does Their Garden Grow?

This is the 2nd part of How Does My Garden Grow? I walked the farm the other night and tried to take some shots of the more unusual things I see up there. Also, the row designations go up to "DD" and 6 deep. Rough estimate is 175 plots. When I walk the farm at dusk, I see dozens of rabbits on the perimeter and in the gardens without fences (the sacrificial gardens as I like to call them).

Here's the guy that uses a lot of PVC pipe and roof gutters (although it's hard to see either in this picture). He also plants stuff in some kind of plastic bags and has netting all over the place. His garden looks pretty good.

This garden has the best (and most plentiful) cantaloupes around. I bet he has 50 in all.

A lot of marigold growers at the farm. These are some of the better ones (for Chicky).
This is a nice size pumpkin for mid-July. I'm curious to see how much bigger it gets.
There is one corner of the farm that has gardens that are not plowed under at the end of the year. So they have a lot of nice perennials - like these - whatever they are.
People bring all sorts of stuff to the farm. Keep in mind, with the exception of about 12 plots that are un-touched, everyone starts with a 25' X 25' plowed dirt plot and a marker stake with your name and plot number. Everything else is brought from home. I doubt this scarecrow works. There was a bird on it earlier in the week. Maybe it scares the deer.
This is the edge of another perennial garden. I don't know what they are, but there's a lot of them.

Scarecrows and bamboo. Some people don't seem to know when to stop.
A lot of sunflowers this year. They seem to be extra big too. One guy was carting off a sunflower head that was bigger than a football. He said it collapsed under its own weight and he was taking it home so his wife could get the seeds. Wish I had a camera for that because it was the biggest one I'd ever seen. This guy is 2 plots down from me. He has the biggest and most tomato-ladened plants on the farm. And not a ripe one to be had. Our tomatoes seem to be the only ones ripening.
My crumby camera skills really don't do justice to this farm. I see something new every time I walk it. I would love to be one of the retired guys that always seem to be here so I can work on my plot a lot more than once or twice a week. I actually think they're all hiding from their wives.

How Does My Garden Grow?

Notice I say "My Garden" because the Mrs pretty much has left it to me to tend to. She did pick out most of the plants for this year. Mostly from a school fundraiser. She bought 72 tomato plants and we ended up planting around 50. So we're up to our necks right now in tomatoes.

We set up the garden during the first week we were permitted (I think it was around the 2nd week of April). The town plows the entire garden under that week, so it's a good idea to get set up because the weeds grow with a vengeance here. About 3 weeks in, the Mrs noticed a lot of sunflowers popping up in gardens that hadn't been set up yet. So she poached them. Legal and moral issues aside, they're only flowers and (as you can see) everyone gets to see them. Some are at least 8 feet tall.

In the foreground, we have cucumbers, hot peppers, one eggplant and some other stuff I'm not sure of. In the center are three pumpkin plants that aren't doing to well. We were late planting them, but some people have huge vines with basketball size pumpkins on them all ready. In the background are whats left of the strawberries, some jalapenos that I planted and some asparagus that didn't do well at all. I'm sure there's some tricks to the asparagus - I just don't know what they ae. This is the 3rd season for the strawberries. I take them out at the end of the season, pot them and put them in our backyard (covered with leaves). They keep coming back.

Here's a close-up of the ill-gotten sunflowers.

Here's the loan egg plant that I hope to use for Intuitive Eggplant's Smackdown.

My Jalapenos. They're doing pretty good.

Here's a shot of a good portion of the farm. We have a corner plot (A1) and, although I've never really paid attention, I'll bet I'll bet it goes down to Z1. I'll have to pay attention the next time I walk around (there's markers at every plot).

Oh, I forgot, here is probably the biggest cucumber we ever grew.

Part of my routine when I visit the farm is to pick and weed our garden, hit it with a bunch of water, then go for a walk around the entire farm. This is for exercise, to let the water soak in (I water again after my walk) and to see what's doing in other people's gardens. I'm nosey that way. This woman's flower garden is probably the best on the farm. She's there practically every day.

A lot of people grow sunflowers (all the better for the Mrs to pilfer next year).

Last year there were probably 3 dozen plots that went unplanted. That is, people signed up, paid their fee and did nothing to the plot. The woman that runs the farm is really cracking down on this because she has a wait list of around 50 people. This year I noticed only around 1 dozen plots unattended to. There's a lot growing up here. Some people have interesting and unusual planting techniques. One Asian guy uses a lot of PVC pipe and roof gutters for planting. I'll have to get some pictures of some of the other plots for a later post.

Tonight I'm going to attempt a vodka cream sauce and pasta with some of our tomatoes. Then I have to get up to the farm for watering. With this heat and lack of rain (a huge storm hit about 2 miles south of us last night and we didn't get a drop) I have to go up every couple of days.

Garden Update

Well, stuff is starting to come up and we have pretty much finished transferring starter seeds from their pots to their beds. The boy and I went up Thursday to weed and fertilize. We've had a ton of rain this month and some intermittent sun, so things are doing good. I haven't seen any evidence of deer - yet. There is evidence of animals eating our bean plants and I've found (and blocked) 3 holes in the fence. I think they're ground hogs (or maybe rabbits) and they seem to only like the beans. The next door neighbors garden doesn't have any holes or evidence of animals. They're veteran farmers here and they must know what not to plant. I'll have to ask them the next time I see them.

The corn seems to be doing pretty good. Someone told me you have to have a bunch of rows of corn so that you get germination. The neighbors next to us have corn but it's only half as high and about 10 feet away. We'll see.

The tomatoes are doing good. Some flowers but no fruit that I could see.


I think these are some kind of peas with nice purple flowers.

Dim Sum Sunday - How Does Your Garden Grow?

How does my garden grow? Well. that's hard to say right now. We just started it this past Saturday and it's not my garden, it's the wife's. In our town we have an old farmstead that's about 200 years old and was made a public park (I think its a Green Acres protected tract of land). As such (and because it use to be a farm) the town started a program a few years ago where they would let residents tend gardens on 25' X 25' plots. This year it was really hard to get a plot what with the economy and all (we were #42 on the waiting list). As luck would have it (and my decision is still out on whether this was lucky or not) my neighbor has 3 lots in the park (because he's a founding gardener) and he graciously let us have one.

So the Mrs., the boy , the pudge and I spent most of Saturday tilling the soil, putting up a deer fence, putting down anti-weed plastic and actually planting some tomatoes. The Mrs. has grand plans and many pots of starter seeds going in the driveway that will add to this garden. When we'll have time to do this is any one's guess (the calendar this week is a horror).

Anyway, here's what it looks like so far.

This is the farm house.

As for making a Dim Sum Sunday entry, I had to buy stuff from the local Produce Junction. And I had to go simple because of the soccer/baseball Sunday schedule. I love Cucumber Salad and can remember a couple of variations that my mom use to make. I decided to go with my mom's basic recipe but with the addition of some fresh dill.

Here are the pre-sliced ingredients. Cucumber, onion, parsley and dill.

To the cucumbers, onions dill and parley, I added white vinegar, kosher salt, black pepper, sugar and garlic powder. Mix it all up. adjust the spices and put in the fridge during the soccer/baseball games.

The Mrs. actually barbecued while we were at the games. She did up some new potatoes (that I pre-prepared with olive oil, salt, pepper, dill and crushed garlic in a Ziploc) and some store bought chicken shish kabobs. It all actually came out pretty good.

The Mrs. tells me we are growing cucumbers so I may revisit the cucumber salad with another of my mom's recipes (sour cream this time) assuming the deer and our schedule don't get them first.