Overdue Post 4: a day with the boys

Thursday, I had my continuing-ed testing in Concord. I came home to find that Matt had taken the boys for the day. So we played some games, made mac n'cheese for lunch, and took them to Livingston Park for the afternoon.

And what's a trip to Dorr's Pond without stopping for ice cream at the Puritan?

Overdue Post 3: Walking in Massabesic

Last Sunday, Matt and I took a walk around Lake Massabesic. Despite the heat, it was a gorgeous day, and we really enjoyed exploring the trails and discovering all of the plants that grow in the area. I was surprised to find that there were wild blueberries growing along all the paths which hadn't been completely stripped of berries by animals or other walkers. We were also surprised by how big around the lake is. We walked for two hours and really only made it about 1/3 of the way around and back.

Overdue Posts 2: Diocesan Tent Revival

Overdue posts

A few weeks ago, we met up with the Ciccarellos, who were camping at Greenfield State Park with the parish family program. We arrived just in time for mass. It was kind of neat to walk into a campground and find many members of Ste. Maries sitting in rows, with an altar and a cross and people ready to play music. Fr. Don arrived a little after we did.

Green field also has several owls in the park. We managed to catch a few pictures of a young one who was curious about the gathering.

After mass, we went back to the Cic's campsite, where Tommy put all his brothers to work stretching dough and he fried up enough to treat everyone there.

Next year, I think we'll actually camp. It was great to hang around the fire with the Cics and St Germains. Thanks, Tommy, for inviting us!

Day Trip

A few weeks ago, we took a trip to Maine with Nate and Kathy. We went to the Stonewall Kitchen store, climbed rocks at York Beach, and had dinner at the Weathervane. Fun day!

Fourth of July Desserts

For the barbeque, we made lemon macarons filled with seedless raspberry jam, and chocolate covered strawberry rice krispie treats. The macarons were okay; the cookie itself didn't actually turn out very lemony, so if I make these again I'll definitely tweak the recipe a bit with some additions of zest and perhaps lemon extract. But I had enough challenges in making these. I was incredibly clutzy for some reason. I dropped a glass from the kitchen shelf directly onto a pyrex bowl, which then exploded all over the kitchen. And then when I was piping the cookies, a breeze came through the open window and blew the parchment over onto itself. Then finally, I left the shells out to dry while we went food shopping, and it took way longed than I thought it would. They dried out too much, and the first batch cracked and collapsed.

But I tried spritzing the rest of the trays with a little water, and rest turned out nice enough to fill.

Matt made the rice krispie treats with strawberry flavored marshmallows. He's pretty much perfected the rice kispie treat recipe and technique at this point. Almost double the marshmallows, slow heat to melt them, and then press them into the pan with your hand inside a sandwich baggie sprayed with Pam.

We popped them in the oven for three minutes to melt the chocolate, and then swirled the chocolate with the back of a spoon.