This past weekend, Cub's grandparents took her way out on Long Island to the Annual Bluegrass festival. My girl likes loves two kinds of music. She is very particular. It's Classical or it's Bluegrass. Funny, I guess the bluegrass music has something to do with her Texan grandfather. It's very cute.
Anyway, this afforded me the luxury of a solo trip to visit my grandparents. They still live in the same house we all grew-up in, my mother included. Long Island was a place I spent my most of my life trying to run away from. In my teens, everything I wanted to do was in the city (30 min. away). In my twenties, I wanted to live in the mountains upstate, so that is where I went for my higher education. Then I travelled around a lot. In the 90's, I lived in Portland, Oregon for three years. At thirty, I came home to the New York area. I lived in Manhattan for eight years, before getting pregnant with my daughter and moving to Staten Island. I never thought I would live here, but it's okay for now. I still have dreams of a more rural landscape and a slower pace. We'll see.
One thing I love to do when I visit my old home, is go to H Mart, the Asian supermarket. There are so many goodies there. I always buy tea, rice, snacks, frozen dumplings and edamame. Usually, some kind of little present for her. This time around it was a large soup spoon.
While cruising down the treat aisle, I found this vision of Japanese cuteness. Who can resist a chocolate mushroom? Not me!
This is what the shopping center looked like as I was leaving H Mart. It may look like just a shopping center to most, but it holds so many memories for me: shopping at Woolworth's (now H Mart) with my mother for Christmas presents for the family. Getting fitted for shoes at Buster Brown. Later years, playing spin-the-bottle behind Grand Union (H Mart!).
This is another one of the many reasons I love that H Mart! Hello Kitty vending machines outside. Yippee!
Now that the cool nights have set it, I'm back to my bread baking, finally. This was the honey-oat recipe I wrote about before. It's very tasty. I had a tough time getting one of the loaves out of the pan. Can you tell which one?
Last night, I learned that it's helpful to read the reviews written by folks who have already made what you are about to. This dough definitely needed more time to rise than was written. So that info was veeeeery helpful! I also substituted one cup of the wheat flour for one cup of spelt flour. I started the bread around 9pm, when the house was quiet. I started reading this very interesting book that I found at the library yesterday, in between the stages of making the loaves. To me, it was the perfect evening.
Any nice evenings to share lately?
2 comments:
I don't really have an exceptional evening to share but I love that you go exploring in H Mart. It is such an adventure to visit various markets like the Asian or the Middle East market if for no other reason but to see things you have never seen before. We have a fabric store that sells Indian fabrics for saris and I love visiting just to see the beautiful colors.
Waw, never thought that somebody would have had an idea to make chocolate covered mushrooms. That sounds pretty good if only I weren't allergic to mushrooms. Yea I can agree with the strange notion that this summer was a good one. I was planning on calling you tomorrow to see if you were busy in the evening and see if you wanted to go to the second to last summer concert with me. Their having it at silver lakes park. Well on any note, I'll be giving you a ring tomorrow. Have a good night chick. (if I'm actually calling you a chick than it must be okay for you to think that ville valo, lead singer of HIM is a cutie haha) But yes he is very good looking.
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