Bed & Breakfast getaway

A few months ago, I found a deal on Living Social that sounded absolutely wonderful. It was a 2-night stay at Wakefield Inn in New Hampshire. During the stay we would get to take a cooking course and get some massages. On the last weekend of April, we hopped into the car and ventured a few hours north to our destination.

The Inn was nice, as was our room.  The sheets on the bed were super soft and comfy.  Even so, I didn't sleep particularly well there, but that was ok because there were other aspects that made the trip wonderful.

Some of the drive to show you the countryside.

On the first night, we were on our own for dinner, so we drove to Wolfeboro, about 25 minutes away.

drive to Wolfeboro

We walked around the town looking for a restaurant that had been recommended by our B&B owner. It had just been renovated, and we walked by it a few times as it didn't have the name outside of the building yet. We eventually found the place, and the food was really good. So if you are ever in Wolfeboro, check out Garwoods.

Town of Wolfeboro

There was a wait for dinner so we strolled around town and found a lovely park overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee (2nd place for best lake name, behind Lake Titicaca  -- according to Kyle).

Not sure if you can make out Santa's Hut there in red. St. Nick's summer home?

The next day was our big day at the Inn. We started out with a breakfast that was a little too gourmet for me, but Kyle loved the Cheddar Apple bake. Luckily, there was plenty of other food for me. After breakfast we headed out to visit the chickens and enjoy the beautiful scenery. The chickens saw us coming and came racing across the lawn to see if we had any food for them. Sadly they were out of luck.

In mid-morning we took our cooking class. I have to say that I really learned a lot, and it was a ton of fun for me. I think even Kyle enjoyed the time. We prepped some bread for dinner, made a pretty amazing carrot soup, and baked a chocolate torte. We also prepped our fish in parchment for lunch and made some polenta (really good, similar to grits, but better in my opinion).

A mother and daughter along with a young couple, Jeff and Laura, were our cooking partners.

Prepping flounder in our parchment paper.

Showing the final fold of the parchment paper. Then all you do is bake for 15 min. Easy.

You might all know these, but in case you don't, I thought I would share the top 3 tips from our class.

3. You can freeze fresh ginger. I knew this and already do it, but no one else knew it, so it seems worth passing on. I use ginger all the time, so it is a great saver.

2. When grating ginger, you don't have to peel it. I didn't know this and am really excited to save myself time moving forward.

1. We have been using our peeler incorrectly. I don't know about you guys, but I usually run my peeler down the length of, say, a carrot and then pick it up, bring it back to the top and run it back down. Don't do that. Run it down the carrot and immediately back up. Go back and forth. No need to pick up the peeler at all. To me this was the most obvious thing once I thought about it, but I found it funny that not a single person there did it that way. I have been asking friends since we got home and no one else goes back and forth either.

After class was over, we got to eat the food we prepared!

Then Kyle and I were off to our room for our massages. As usual we thoroughly enjoyed them and highly recommend that people get massages more often.

Before dinner we headed back into Wolfeboro to visit a kitchen store that our chef recommended. We also picked up some spices she highly recommended that come from this area: Victoria Gourmet.

Our dinner was prepared by the rest of the guests that were staying at the inn They made a Swiss Chard bake, some duck and lamb and a lovely dessert. We all sat a large table together enjoying each other's company.

In the morning we enjoyed one last breakfast of puff pancakes (you can get the recipe here). We had a fresh berry mixture on top. It was pretty awesome. Then we said our goodbyes to the chickens, took some photos of the enormous back window from the dinning area overlooking the back yard, and headed out.

This was the largest single pane window I have ever seen in a house.

Our weekend didn't end there, but I will write about our final day in the next entry.

Cape Cod in the Spring

The last time we visited Cape Cod was in November with Kyle's parents. Back then it was really cold and slightly windy. So, we thought it would be nice to visit when the weather was at least a little better. While it was still a little cold (enough to keep the crowds away), the weather was much better than it was in November. We still didn't get to walk around any towns along the Cape, as traffic to get there was horrible and we didn't arrive at the Cape until late in the day. However, we drove along route 6A through some of the cute little towns so that we could at least see some of the area a little better.

Short hike around the visitor center area.

Our main goal for the afternoon was to walk along the beach so we could enjoy some more ocean time before our July departure. We headed to the Great Island Trail located along the peninsula around Wellfleet Harbor. 


View Larger Map

See the snail path?

This terrain seemed so out of place.  We're right on the ocean here, but looks like an inland mountain path.  The picture is poor as the light was fading.

We walked about 8 miles in sand that day.  It was a beautiful location, and almost nobody else was there.  There was, however, also some element of sadness. During our trek we found 3 dead dolphins and 1 dead seal lion. It was heart breaking. We assume they got stranded on the beach by a storm that had just gone through the area. I sure hope to never see anything like that again.

Random

I just wanted to share a few photos. They are not the best as the lighting was horrible and the camera was my phone...

Kyle and I had been planning for months to attend a comedy show at the Wilbur Theater in Boston. Sadly, Kyle ended up having to miss the show because he had to go to Alaska for work. Luckily, I managed to get a fellow volleyball player to go with me. I loved the inside of the Wilbur Theater, which was built in 1914. Here are a few images of the inside:

 Our seats were the front row of the mezzanine.

This is a cake I made for a movie night with some girlfriends. We were obviously watching Pride and Prejudice. It was our second night of viewing the 6 hour PBS version. I rushed this and it didn't turn out as well as I had wanted, but it was still fun to have.

Happy Easter

Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter. Here are some cookies I made today. I saw these designs online and decided I had to give them a shot. I tried making cookies with minimal sugar so these have splenda over sugar and ricotta rather than butter. They are pretty good, but they bubbled up during the baking process. If someone has a relatively health cut-out cookie recipe, please send it my way.

This one is my design. I was out of all colors at this point except the orange so the egg matches the beak.

not sure if it is obvious that this little guy is a lamb.

Newport, RI

Last weekend we spent Friday driving through Rhode Island. We did a quick stop at the Roger Williams park in Providence and decided to keep going to Newport. The Roger Williams Park area just didn't make us want to spend much time there. Newport, on the other hand, was an adorable town. Full of restaurants and shops. I wish I would have taken a picture of the scenic downtown, but we just drove through it.  In brief, Newport is home to many very large mansions that the wealthy folks of the late 19th and early 20th centuies used as vacation homes when it got too hot in the summers down in New York.

You can see the bridge, in the background, that we had to take to get to Newport.

We spent the afternoon walking along the Cliff Walk, looking at ocean on one side, with the the local mansions on the other side.  Apparently you can pay to walk through the mansions, but neither of us was up for that.  It was pretty pricey. Opulence, for sure.

This is a Chinese Tea House that you could only get to through one of the mansions.  Not entirely sure of the purpose of the Tea House, but I imagine that the ultra-rich wanted to have an authentic place to take their afternoon tea.  The parlor in the mansion wasn't good enough.

After the Cliff Walk, we headed to Third and Second beaches. It was a little cold at this point, but we enjoyed picking up a few shells for our collection. The beaches are surrounded by a wildlife refuge, and we saw two deer having dinner in the fields.

To finish off the evening, we headed back into the downtown portion of Newport for dinner. We ate at Cafe Zelda (Kyle was psyched, even though he failed to find the Master Sword there) and topped it off with some chocolate toffee crunch from a local candy store. The rest of the shops were already closed for the evening, but it would be a fun town to browse through.