Perszyk+

This week’s veggies:**

**Not pictured: 1/2 dozen farm fresh eggs and ornamental hot pepper plant

Meal ideas:

The kolrabi went into a bean soup/stew that we made tonight.  I had a bag of mixed beans and lentils in the pantry, so I soaked them overnight to use for tonight’s dinner.  I sauteed up  some onion, celery, bell pepper, and garlic scapes along with the kolrabi and added in vegetable stock for a nice hearty dish.  There are lots of leftovers, so we’ll have to be creative in their use.  I meant to add the epazote to the dish as well, but forgot, so we’ll have to come up with another use.

The salad greens, raddish, sorrel, kohlrabi leaves, and basil will likely end up in a salad.  And, we’ll probably have some omelets with fresh herbs as well.

You’ll notice we skipped weeks 2 and 3, which if you’ve been reading the blog, you know its because we’ve been on vacation.  Some lucky friends of ours got to enjoy our organic veggies in our absence.

The weather was still bad, so we stuck close to home.  We drove into Bar Harbor and did some tourist window shopping and visisted the whale museum.  We stopped for lunch at 2 Cats, which had a lot of vegetarian friendly items.  The food was good, but wouldn’t make our ‘Perszyk-Eats’ map.  However, our first night in Maine, we ate at Miguel’s Mexican Restaurant, which was very tasty, and, came with 1/2 price margarita pitchers, which made Tysen happy on Father’s Day.

Even with the less than desirable weather, we decided to take a hike anyways.  We hooked up RKDy’s backpack chair with an umbrella to keep her dry and headed out.  We don’t have any photos of it, but I work a XXL yellow rain coat that we trimmed the bottom off so I wouldn’t trip on it.  It came in handy during the rain, but was a hazard during our rock-climbing short-cut.  The hike kept us mostly on the carriage road surrounding Eagle Pond.  We had intended to walk a trail along the lake, but with all the rain Maine had been getting, the trail was soaked!  So, along the way, we searched out a short-cut, which we found.  The sign said to Connor’s Nubble, which sounded good to us, and looked to cut off a big chunk of the trail and get us back to our car sooner.  Well, the short-cut was more of a rock-climbing adventure, where we ascended 588 ft.  The climb wasn’t too bad, but a bit tricky since everything was wet and Tysen was carrying RKDy on his back.  We made it to the top and back down again safely, and vowed to do more research on our trails before we head out.

The ultimate destination of our trip was Acadia National Park, Maine.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t so cooperative.  On the first day, we took a driving tour along the Park Loop road, stopping along the coastline to take photos.  For lunch, we stopped at The Jordon Pond House Restaurant for their famous popovers.  Then, we drove to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which was surrounded in fog.  Here are some of our photos from the day.

So, this morning Tysen told me he needed a dessert for work for tomorrow.  I had already been to the grocery store the day before and did not pick up anything special for making a dessert because I didn’t know it was going to be requested.  My challenge was to come up with something using ingredients that we had on hand, which were minimal since we just came back from vacation and did a good job of using up everything before we left.  I had a cinnamon swirl cake mix in the pantry which I’ve been trying to use up for a while now, so I searched the internet for what to do with it.  I came across the simplest cookie recipe I’ve ever seen.

1 box cake mix

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 egg (2 for cinnamon swirl cake mix)

Mix ingredients (add 1/3 of package of cinnamon swirl mix).  Drop spoonfuls of the dough on a baking sheet (roll in remaining cinnamon swirl mix) and bake 8-10 minutes in a 350 deg oven.

Here’s what resulted:

Snickerdoodle Cake Cookies

These cookies are so light and fluffy.  I think I’ll definitely make cookies like these again.  The recipe is adaptable to other cake mixes and could use add-ins.  So, if you are in a pinch and need to make some cookies for an event, I’d recommend these!

Yum!

So, its been a while now since we updated you on our trip progress.  Last Saturday we visited the Ben & Jerry’s original factory and took the factory tour.  We also ate way too much ice cream.  Here’s a photo to tie you over until we get around to sorting through the Acadia, ME and Boston, MA pics.

The original van burned to the ground,

In reference to the sugar coma, whenever we go on vacation, we always indulge in way too many sweets.  So, when the Ben & Jerry’s Factory didn’t sell Chubby Hubby in the ice cream shop, Tysen was on a mission to find it elsewhere.  While in Cape Cod, we stopped at a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop which only sold it in pint form, so we bought a pint and proceeded to eat the entire thing (We couldn’t let it go to waste!).  Some 660 calories each later, we were all sugared up!  The only way we justified this over-indulgence was the fact that we also got 14 grams of protein each.

Some more fun photos from out day visiting Montreal museums.  I am saving a few pictures for a 1080HD wallpaper gallery after the trip is complete.

A stop at the Insectarium was in order after the Biodome.  Tysen had a field day taking photos of all the bugs!

Oh, and butterflies, and spiders, and other creepy-crawlies too.

Another Montreal nature exhibit.  It had a nice layout, but not too many animals.  Here’s a few of the ones we liked:

Every where we went in Canada seemed environmentally conscious, from the notes in the bathrooms reminding you to turn off the water while you brush, to recycling bins accepting plastics, paper, and cans placed all over (including our hotel room in Toronto).  Well, this place just added to the environmentally conscious atmosphere of Canada.  The Biosphere is Montreal’s Environment Museum.  It was designed by Buckminster Fuller for the World Expo in 1967.  A fire in 1976 melted the acrylic window tiles leaving the metal frame work which still stands today.  Exhibits inside the biosphere were all about conservation and included fun family activities.  We’ll definitely have to come back when RKDy is older.