Starting in the Basement

I first made these while visiting my father at his farm in Illinois, Prairie Fruits Farms.  When I made those muffins I had goat cheese made at the farm, swiss chard grown on the farm and homemade sundried tomatoes from the farm.  It took me a while to bring myself to make them with store bought ingredients but I needed these muffins today!

We are going to New Hampshire for the weekend for some Bed and Breakfasting, hiking, and of course eating.  I thought these would be a great muffin to bring along as a snack.  I also have chocolate chip cookie dough waiting in the fridge to bake tomorrow before we leave.  Don’t worry, we will not stay too healthy.
Spinach, Goat Cheese and Sun-Dried Tomato Muffins

- I think this recipe came from the cookbook that came with my dad’s new oven.  I just have a photocopy.

• 2 C all-purpose flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper, freshly ground
• 3 1/2 ounce (100g) goats cheese, diced*
• 1/4 C grated parmesan
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 – 1 C buttermilk**
• 2 oz fresh spinach leaves chopped, or 3 oz frozen chopped spinach, thawed, pressed and drained
• 3/4 C finely sliced sun-dried tomato, lightly packed***

Preheat the oven to 420F.

In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients and fold the cheeses through the dry mix until coated.  In another bowl beat the eggs and combine with the buttermilk, spinach and sun-dried tomato.  Tip the mixture into the dry mix and combine without overmixing, adding more buttermilk if necessary.  Spoon into greased muffin pans, fill the cups 3/4 full and cook until well risen and golden on the outside.  About 15 minutes.

* I used Vermont Butter and Cheese fresh goat cheese

** You can substitute milk curdled with lemon juice or vinegar (I like to use apple cider vinegar)

*** I used Trader Joe’s julienned sun-dried tomato.

I cannot think of anything to blog about.  Here are some possible reasons:

1. My life is boring.  I go to work, I come home, I watch TV and I sleep.
2. It is too hot.  I can’t think when it is hot.  I just whine.
3. I am exhausted ALL THE TIME.
4. I am stressed.  And the things that are stressing me out are things that I can’t write about on the blog.
5. I think I have SAD, seasonal affective disorder.  I know this usually strikes people in the winter, but I am weird and get depressed in the summer.

Hopefully some of these things will change soon and I will at least be excited about cooking.  I do have a lot of cooking ideas right now but then number 2 and number 3 keep getting in the way.  Instead we have been eating a lot of salad this summer.  Which I love, but is not that exciting to talk about.

Any summer recipes ideas?

This weekend was all about pies!  I went to the farmer’s market in Brookline on Thursday and found raspberries and blueberries that looked really good, and also ended up tasting good.  All I could think about was pie.  Specifically a mixed berry pie with a thick oatmeal streusel topping.  My inspiration was a pie that a Thanksgiving guest brought from a Somerville bakery called Biscuit.  It was one of the best store bought pies I have had and I have been wanting to replicate it since.

It has been in the 90s in Boston for the past week so I knew pie making was going to be a little tougher.  So I cheated. I knew the butter was going to melt in the pie dough instantly and great a tough, nonflaky dough.  Out came the Crisco!  Shortening makes the dough flakier and easier to handle but I do feel it does not taste the same.  I ended up making two different recipes.  One had equal parts shortening to butter and the other had a couple tablespoons more butter than shortening.  As expected, the half and half dough tasted a little flat.  It was definitely edible and looked ok, but I will not be making it again.  The one with more butter was better but what I would really like to do is learn how to make all butter pie crust that is not impossible to work with!

Here are the recipes from the weekend:

Mixed Berry Pie with Oatmeal Streusel

One recipe for pate brisee (or store bought pie crust)

Filling

• 1/4 cup tapioca
• 1 cup sugar (I would lower this next time with fresh berries, it was a little too sweet)
• 5 cups mixed berries
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Topping

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup oatmeal
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

Roll out chilled dough and place in 9 inch pie pan.  Freeze crust for 30 minutes.  Set oven to 400 F.

Mix sugar, tapioca and lemon juice together in a large bowl.   Add the berries and mix.  Let sit 45 minutes at room temperature.

Mix brown sugar, oatmeal, salt and flour in a small bowl.  Add cubed butter and mix together with fingers until a coarse crumb is formed.  Store in refrigerator until ready to use.

Assemble pie.  Pile berries in pie crust and press topping onto the top of the berries.  The topping will be pretty thick.  Bake for 55 minutes or until filling is bubbly.  Cover with foil if the top is getting too brown.  Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Nectarine Raspberry Pie

Recipe for double crust pie crust or store bought crust

• 8 nectarines, peeled and cut into one inch pieces
• 1 cup raspberries
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter (I forgot the butter but I think it needed it)
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 425 F.  Roll out one round of pie dough and place in a 9 inch pie pan with overhang.  Combine all ingredients in a large bowl except butter.  Pour fruit into prepared crust, mounding in the middle.  Dot butter over filling.  Roll out second round of pie dough and place on top of fruit.  Pinch edges together and slice an x in the top to let out steam.  Whisk together egg and milk and brush on the top of crust.  Bake for 20 minutes at 425.  Lower temp to 350 for 30 to 40 minutes until top browns and filling is bubbling over. You may want to put a cookie sheet under the pie to catch drips.

Lately I have been stressed. In the past 5 years I have experienced many different kinds of stress. Law school stress, moving stress, relationship stress, unemployment stress. This is a pretty new one. Work stress.

One would not generally describe where I work to be a high stress environment. We are a non-profit and focus a lot on mentoring, teaching and outreach. I only have a few of my own cases and I go to court one day a week. Lately even this has been too much for me. I feel like everything I do is wrong (which is not something you are supposed to admit in my field) and when I go to court I feel like I am on the edge. On the edge of making the wrong decisions and being booted out as a fraud. Looking around me I am not convinced everybody else does not feel the same way but they are all faking confidence. Do not show fear or hide your fear with anger seems to be the lawyer way.

This does not work for me. I want to be good at what I am doing. I want to always make the right decision. I want people to listen to me when I do have confidence in a decision! And I never want to get to the point where I am angry.

Maybe I am in the wrong field.

I think this is all part of starting a new career. Maybe the unknown is what keeps it interesting. But there are many days when all I want to do is go back to lab where there are calculated results and very few surprises.

Check out my new page, Reading in the Basement!  Here I will keep track of all the books I read, even the embarrassing stupid ones that I hide while I ride the T.  I will add some mini-reviews to some but if you are wondering what I thought of a particular one go ahead and ask.

Edit:  I forgot to link to the page.  There is also a link on the right column.

I am taking a break from all the Costa Rica boring talk to talk about books!  I am trying to have a better attitude in the morning by being grateful about things in my life.  My walk to work yesterday went like this:

“I really do not want to go to work.  I have too many problems that I do not know how to solve and I just want to go home and make coffeecake”

“Why are you complaining?  Today is going to be a great day and here are the reasons why.”

“You got so into your book on the way to work you almost missed your stop.  You like the people you work with.  When work is over you get to read more of your great book on the T.  After work you are going to make it to step class at the gym which will make you feel great and less guilty about all the crap you ate this weekend.  After the gym you can go to the library and get more books!  After dinner you can read your book.”

As you can see, most of the excitement in my day revolves around books.   If I do not have a good book to read, everything is a little bit more gray.

Here are some books I’ve read recently.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (P.S.)
was a long and intense read.  It is not only about dogs which is what I thought it was when Oprah first started talking about it.  I am still not sure if I liked the book but I still think about it, so I guess that is something.

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel
 Jeannette Walls also wrote The Glass Castle which is about her life growing up as her family wanders the country.  This book, Half-Broke Horses, is about her grandmother who was a tough rancher and an overall tough lady.  Pretty good and inspiring book.

Her Fearful Symmetry: A Novel
Audrey Niffenegger wrote The Time Traveler’s Wife.  This book is very different but still has some other-wordly parts.  It was nowhere near as addicting as The Time Traveler’s Wife but still worth reading.  Especially if you like ghosts…

The Imperfectionists: A Novel
I had to actually double check to make sure I read this book because I don’t remember it!  This book is about a newspaper in Rome that is going downhill.  Each chapter describes a different writer at the newspaper.  Cool concept but sort of subdued.  I did not really care about any of the people and obviously the book did not stick with me!

And the book that I could not stop reading on the T was When You Reach Me
which is technically a young adult book but it was so good!  Thanks bro for the recommendation.  It mixes a little science fiction with just plain cuteness.  I loved it.

My pile is getting very low so if anybody has any summer suggestions please send them along!  Need.  More.  Books!

Manuel Antonio National Park has a few beaches inside that all the guide books promised were worth hanging around at.  The books were right.  There were no facilities or people renting you chairs and surfing lessons.  We first walked down to a small beach that was a little wavy for swimming but still beautiful.We saw that water and then the heat rash all over my body and decided it was time to get in that water!  It was seriously hot that day.  We went to the bigger beach, found a place in the shade and jumped in the water!

The water was amazing but I have always been a little scared of the ocean.  There was a pretty large undertow there so I was scared to go out very far but it still felt nice.  We sat there all afternoon (in the shade) and ate bananas, mangos and plantain chips.  Oh the lime and salt plantain chips!  So delicious.  At one point a woman came up to us with her camera like she was about to take a picture of us.  I couldn’t figure out what we were doing that was  so interesting until I looked back and saw a raccoon trying to steal our mango!  This crazy tourist was just going to let the raccoon attack so she could get her picture.  Luckily we saved the mango and chased off the vermin (the raccoon and the tourist).

The tide started to come in pretty quickly and after watching a few other couples get ALL their stuff soaked we decided to get out of there.  On our way out we saw this sign:

Right after we saw that sign I heard things fall from the trees.  We looked up and saw monkeys everywhere!  We were surrounded…and they were throwing what I can only assume was shit at us.  After trying to snap a picture we ran out of the park.

At the park exit we ran into some men with boats.  They were trying to get us to pay them for a ride out of the park because the tide had come in making the exit a little wet.  Like the naive tourists we are we got in and paid our dollar to get across while the guys behind us walked over in the pool…which turned out to be only calf deep.  Oops!  Another scam.

A few colones shorter we went back to the safety of our beautiful hotel pool, a few fruity cocktails and the sunset.

The next day was our last full day in Costa Rica and we had to get back to San Jose.  Our shuttle didn’t leave until 1pm so we decided to walk down to the beach from the hotel.  It was supposed to be about a 10 minute walk but quite steep.  We made it down and walked along the beach soaking up a little more heat and sun.  When we were putting our shoes back on to go up the hill we saw a young woman running out of the ocean yelling “help!”  Not what you want to hear at the ocean.  She sobbed while explaining that her husband had been swept up in the undertow and he had not come back up.  If any of you know me, I am not cool, calm or collected in moments like this.  Frenchie went running towards the water which was freaking me out and I started trying to communicate to a hotel dude on the beach that we needed help.  Somehow my amazing Spanish was not quite getting the message across and luckily there were others around to explain the situation in Spanish.  Meanwhile Frenchie was using his keen eyes to look for the “body” and there were two other guys swimming around looking as well.  At this point the wife has completely lost it and is mumbling about her husband while sobbing on the sand.  My heart broke into a tiny million pieces for her.  So scary!

Finally we spotted somebody swimming out past the breaking waves and making his way towards the shore.  The wife ran up to the beach and Frenchie went to her and showed her that he was still swimming.  As the two helpers started pulling the husband out of the water the wife asked Frenchie, “is that my husband?”

Frenchie says, “you tell me! I have never met your husband”

“I don’t have my glasses, I can’t see!”

“Well, two people went in and three are coming out, that is probably your husband.”

Such a smartass!

A skinny white guy comes stumbling out of the ocean and that is when the help finally arrives.  This is also when some other beachgoer local tells me that two people died the week before in this spot.  Awesome.  Time to go.

We huffed ourselves back up to the hotel and went straight to the pool.  Nothing has ever felt so good!  We were seriously hot at this point and a little emotionally drained.

It was sad to say goodbye to that pool but we had to get back to San Jose to catch our flight the next day.  We chose another hotel recommended to us near the airport.  It was a beautiful bed and breakfast with an amazing garden (and 3 giant dogs) called Pura Vida Hotel.

One more post to come…

After a spending a day in the clouds we decided to take it easy for the evening.  Our hotel had such a beautiful view we decided to start happy hour a little early and watch the sunset.  

After a few drinks we decided to head to a restaurant outside the hotel that I had read about in the guide.  Monteverde is a tiny town so pretty much all the restaurants are in the guide.  Sofia’s was Fodor’s choice.  The food was nuevo latin style and was really good!  Plus there was tres leches cake for dessert so I was in heaven.

The next morning we were being picked up at 8:30 to head to our next destination…the beach!  After a stop to switch vans in Jaco, which was a sort of trashy looking beach town, we made it to our hotel, La Mariposa, around 12:30.  It was a beautiful hotel with an even more beautiful pool and view.

Here is the view from our room.

The first day we went down to the town beach and had lunch and walked around.  There were a lot of locals bugging us to buy crap, rent chairs, drink here etc.  It was kind of annoying.  We pretty quickly went back to the hotel and went to the pool.  The pool was awesome.

Here I am, walking in…

Swimming in…

Swimming around…

and the view from the pool was beautiful

Overall, it was an amazing pool.  Our friends had recommended this hotel to us, I think mostly based on the coolness of the pool.  And boy, were they right.

After watching the sunset by the pool we had dinner at the hotel and called it a night.  The heat was sort of exhausting there so we were kind of boring.

The next morning we had breakfast on the patio overlooking the ocean and planned our day.  Manuel Antonio National Park was right down the road so we took the hotel shuttle to the park.  Once again we had tons of people bothering us to be our guide, sell us water (not a bad idea) and other crap.  We decided to skip the guide this time because we were a little guided out.  That turned out to be a fine choice because there were so many guides along the trail that we could just look where they were looking to see the animals.  Also, the park is full of animals so you didn’t need to look very hard to see anything.

The first animal we saw was a sloth chilling in a tree.

Then a crazy rodent crossed our path which looked a little like a miniature ROUS.

More sloths

Isn’t he cute???!?!

Coming soon…our trip to the beach and the last day of vacation.  Stay tuned.

The morning after our super relaxation evening at the hot springs we were off bright and early for the jeep-boat-jeep ride from Arenal to Monteverde.  Because of Lake Arenal this was the quickest way to get between these two locations.  The road to Monteverde was pretty rough so I am glad we minimized the time spent bouncing up and down in a shock-less van.

Turns out the jeep-boat-jeep tour did not involve any jeeps.  So disappointing!  It did involve the same tourist vans that were everywhere else.  It was a very rainy and gray morning so no volcano view but it was still a nice ride.

I want my vacation home on one of these green hills.

We arrived at the Hotel Belmar in Monteverde around 11:30am and checked out the view while we waited for our room to be ready.  That little gazebo was a jacuzzi which Frenchie refused to go in.  It turns out that was a good choice because we later saw the bartender sneaking in the back door with a scorpion he had found in the jacuzzi!!

The room was super cool and had a beautiful view itself.  I asked for the cheapest room but they upgraded us to the main chalet because there were so few guests.  This hotel had the lowest concentration of Americans, probably because it had more of a European feel and one of the employees was French.

After we were settled in we asked the front desk how far it was to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve.  She said it was 3 kilometers away and about a 45 minute walk.  It was a lot cooler in the mountains and at that point it was not raining so we decided to hoof it.  There was a guided nature walk starting at 1:30 and since we were heading  off around 12:15 we thought we had tons of time.  I was hungry and getting cranky so about 10 minutes down the road we hit a hippy section with art galleries, a food coop and a cafe called Stella’s Cafe.  I had read about this one in the guide so we decided to check it out.  Stella’s had some cool savory and sweet pastries which may or may have been traditional but were yummy!  As we were paying, we asked the cafe man how far of a walk to the cloud forest.  He said it was 3 kilometers but if we see a school bus going up the road we could flag it down and jump on.

It was a little suspicious that it was 3 kilometers from the hotel and from this cafe when the hotel and cafe were about 1 kilometer apart, but we did not have many options at that point.  So we were off again, with about a half an hour to make the nature walk.  We were walking quickly and soon it began to rain. After 20 minutes we saw some signs.  ”Monteverde Cloud Forest, 3 kilometers.”  Ahh!  We were in a vortex of 3 kilometers!  Somehow it also did not occur to us that the entire “3K” would be uphill because we were going to a CLOUD  forest.    Let’s just say we burned off those pastries that day!

We arrived super soaked and too late for the nature walk but as we were beginning to find out you could get yourself a guide anywhere for anything at anytime as long as you paid them enough so Juan Carlos was called to give us our personal tour.  As soon as we met he tried to lower our expectations and kept saying that the forest was so dense we probably would not see anything.  I already did not like him.

He immediately showed us a Quetzal nest and we both the male and the female which was very cool.

We also saw some monkeys and lots of cool looking trees.

We also found these dorks below.  I am going to blame Juan Carlos for this pathetic picture.  We really were having fun even though it looks like we would rather be jumping off that viewpoint…

On our way out of the forest we missed the bus again and were not too excited about walking back down the hill in the dark.  Luckily, an awesome Californian father and daughter duo overheard our problem and offered us a ride back to the hotel!  See, Americans can be nice.

After zipping through the forest we asked the driver to take us into La Fortuna instead of bumping back up the road.  We decided to have lunch at a Soda, which is a small Costa Rican restaurant with typical food.  Since we were in a tourist town there was still a cheeseburger on the menu but the chicken special with a mora (blackberry) juice was quite delicious.  We were not exactly sure what to do next but the Fodor’s guide suggested the La Fortuna waterfall as a top “pick.”  One of the tour sellers told us we had three options to get there, ride a horse, take a taxi or walk.  It was about 5 kilometers he said.  Frenchie told everybody who asked that I do not like horses which is totally not true!  I actually love all animals (except that stupid scorpion) but I prefer to just look at horses and not ride on them.  Plus a lot of the horses there looked really unhealthy and I just thought it would be sad.

Thank goodness we decided to go with the taxi because it was hot and 5 K was probably not really 5K and we saw one woman who decided to walk and she looked hot and pissed.

Once we got to the park it was about a 10 minute walk down a lot of stairs to see the waterfall.  The guide said swimming was an option once we got down there but I didn’t feel like changing into my swimsuit in the middle of the jungle so we just waded around.  It was very relaxing and beautiful and besides all the tarzan-like trees around, kind of reminded me of Oregon creeks and brought back lots of memories of Lee Falls.  Don’t worry, I did not jump off this one.

Fish!
After hoofing it back up to the park entrance we decided to share a taxi with a super sweet Atlantian (?) couple.  We then wandered around La Fortuna until it was time to go to the most awesome hot springs ever.

I did not take any pictures of the hot springs but here is the rundown.

• Amazing natural mineral hot springs with waterfalls you can sit under.
• A swim up bar with the worlds worst nachos (I am pretty sure about this)
• Amazing cooler pools with a light rain falling and stars out.
• Some douche stealing one of our towels which had a $20 deposit and me sweet talking the towel dude into a free towel.
• Dipping into a hidden pool in the back of the garden and discovering a couple gettin’ it on and promptly returning to the more well-lit area of the garden.

Just to make you even more jealous, here is the internet’s pictures of this beautiful place.

I could have spent all day here, although during the day it might have been a little warm…