East or west, home is best.

In my last post I mentioned our vacation, and then the blog was quiet.  Well, we're back!  What a great time we had.  This summer we went to New England, beginning with Maine and ending on Cape Cod.  Lobstah, lobstah, lobstah, plus a fair amount of ice cream and some awesome clam chowdah thrown in there.  (It was also fun for us Southerners to imitate that dry, dry New England accent!)

We had so much fun!  My kids are the absolute best to travel with:  they get along well, they're pretty tolerant of LOTS of museums, and they only get hungry every two hours or so.  I had fun posting about our trip to France last year, so I'll probably do a couple of posts about where we stayed.  But I wanted to put a quick post up to share some of our impressions.

First:  I love small museums!  I think we all did...from the Seacoast Science Museum in Odiorne Point State Park, New Hampshire, to the Old State House Museum in Boston, to the Sandwich Glass Museum on Cape Cod, these were little "bites" of information, enough to keep us all interested for an hour or two.  None of them demanded all day, but each one rewarded us with some interesting glimpses into whatever they were trying to teach us.

Then:  History is chock-a-block full of amazing people you have probably never heard of, people like Dr. Joseph Warren, a young doctor and spy killed at Bunker Hill; and Commodore Isaac Hull, brave captain of the U.S.S. Constitution; and Captain Cassin Young, awarded the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross, killed at Guadalcanal, with a destroyer named after him.  So many stories, and if you stand still and listen you will be moved to tears by the incredible bravery and fortitude of these men.  At least, my husband and I were.  I could name so many others...Dawes, Parker, Hancock (okay, you've probably heard of him, but talk about someone who had everything to lose).

And:  We in the Southeast are blessed beyond belief with our beaches.  Not to sound ungrateful or like a rude guest or anything, but all the beaches that we saw were kind of, well, small.  And shelly.  Or seaweedy.  And COLD!!  I grew up heading to the Florida panhandle, mile after endless mile of pure white sugar sand and warm Gulf water.  And Bill went to high school in St. Pete, so he has his own opinions about a proper beach.  We did see the beach on Martha's Vineyard, and it was pretty, and the beach in Ogunquit is huge and flat, but, truly, Florida is special.  I guess you don't know what you have til you see the other possibilities.  (And now we are planning a long weekend to the Gulf!)

More to come, I think.  And I'll say this, too:  Tripadvisor ROCKS.  This is our second trip booking all of our accommodations based on their recommendations, and it was spot-on again.  I'm writing reviews of our lodgings and some restaurants over there as "PeachtreeMom4" if you're interested.

Vacation eating--and good at home, too

We were in Montana a couple of weeks ago.  Can it really be a couple of weeks ago?!  We rented a house and spent our days skiing our legs off.  So at the end of the day, we'd pile in the hot tub and then relax in front of the television.  The last thing I wanted to do was whip up a gourmet meal in the kitchen!  And the second-to-last thing anyone wanted to do was sit in a restaurant to eat anything.  We wanted easy and comforting after a long day on the slopes.

Here's one dinner that I make at home all the time, but hadn't realized how really simple it is.  We had a simply-stocked kitchen, and I had also picked up Bisquick along with our other staples because we like pancakes or biscuits in the morning.  One evening we were hungry for a little taste of home:

Chicken and Dumplings, Vacation-Style

Two or Three Chicken Breasts--boneless or not.  (Pick bone-in for better broth, but boneless for quicker cooking)

Onion if you have one (I didn't)

A couple of celery sticks if you have them (I didn't)

A couple of carrots if you have them (I did)

Two cups of Bisquick

2/3 cup milk

A bag of mixed frozen veggies (the old-fashioned cubed kind)

Trim as much fat as you can from the chicken.  Place the chicken in a pot and cover with water.  Season with salt and pepper and add the fresh veggies if you have them.  You can also add thyme and oregano if you have them.  Heat over medium heat and boil for  little while.  For boneless chicken I always go about twenty minutes.  That might be too long but I am completely paranoid about undercooked chicken.

Remove the chicken from the pot and shred it.  Pour the broth into a bowl and strain it back into your pot.  Make sure you remove your cooked veggies.  These should look gross now anyway.  This is where it is important to have trimmed a bunch of fat off the chicken--it's really hard to defat your broth because you don't want to wait around for it.

Put your shredded chicken into the pot with the broth.  Add more water (or canned broth if you have it) to cover the chicken and a little more.  Toss the frozen veggies in, too.  Bring this to a boil.  While it's heating, mix the Bisquick and milk.  When the broth is boiling, drop small biscuit-size pieces of dough on the broth.  You'll end up covering the entire surface of the broth with the dumpling dough.  Cook uncovered for 10 minutes, and cover the pan and cook for 10 minutes more.  

That's it.  Not fast, but easy, hands-off, and really tasty and warm.  The frozen veggies let the mom in me feel okay about the endless chicken fingers, hot dogs and hot chocolate we were consuming during the day. 

I didn't think about a picture of dinner when I made it, sorry, but the picture up there sums up part of our apres-ski routine every night.  I think they were watching Idol or something.

This post links back to my friend Mary's blog at Homegrown Learners, and her "Wednesdays What's for Dinner."  She is such an innovative mom, full of great ideas for homeschooling and being a mom in general.  Of course, she's also a really nice person, too.  Hopefully I'll have a French Fridays with Dorie post again, but for now my quick recipe here will have to do!

Taking a moment

I've been quiet the past couple of weeks because we have been so crazy at home, and then this week because we've been on vacation.  Here.  Staying Here.  We have been going 90 miles an hour, even on vacation, until this morning.  It is -13 outside and we are tired.  And since we are on vacation no one can make us do anything but sit around and drink coffee and just enjoy the view.  Well, I'm sure the kids will be after me for pancakes in a little while but right now they are snuggled together in bed watching cartoons.  (Yet another vacation treat--we don't have televisions in our bedrooms at home.)

So here are at least ten things I'm grateful for this week:

1.  My wonderful traveling companions.  We have so much fun together when we go places.  It always makes me want to go more.  My guys are flexible and adventurous.  Who could ask for more?
2.  The special terror of watching my children race down a mountain, so far ahead of me that they are just specks at the bottom.
3.  Ski school, which allows my sweet husband and me to have date "days" while on vacation, instead of date nights.  The kids love it, too, because their instructors take them all over the mountain on the blacks that I hate!
4.  24 degrees with seven inches of fresh powder, no wind, and blue blue skies.  We had one day like this and count ourselves lucky.  It was the kind of day you might get once in every two or three trips.  Truly special.
5.  The owners of this beautiful home we rented for the week.  They have been gracious and welcoming from thousands of miles away.  This lovely house really has felt like a friend's home we borrowed for the week--very comfortable and relaxing.
6.  The majestic scenery at Big Sky.  We have been several places out west skiing, and I've seen mountains all over the world.  This is truly, truly amazing.  One peak, Lone Mountain, rules over the base area, and the entire bowl is ski-able (by crazies, not me).  We are eager to see it in the summer!
7.  Long tables in the cafeteria area, which allowed us to enjoy lunch one day with some "lifties."  It was fun to get a little inside scoop on the life of the young people who make this place run.
8.  Long rides up the ski lifts, which are a great time to chat with my husband or kids.
9.  No lift lines!  Even on that perfect President's Day, we only waited three or four minutes on the busiest lifts. 
10.  The opportunity to be lifted out of our (now really crazy) busy day-to-day life and enjoy time together.

What a great week.  I'll post some more pictures, hopefully, but right now I can't find that cable that connects the camera to the computer!  (That one up there is from Bill's phone.)

I think I've had this before...

Back for another French Fridays with Dorie post, finally!  Last week's recipe was the delicious Almond-Orange Tart.  If you could see my calendar right now you'd understand why we didn't get around to it.

This week was easier, and my post will be quick.  We are headed to Montana in about eight hours.  A whole week of great big sky.  Frankly, I'm not feeling like the short ribs are going to get done for next week, either, but I'm scanning the recipe so I can take it with me.  Anyway...

This week was Green Beans with Pancetta.  Or, as my children called them, Green Beans with Bacon.  I think I've had this before, Dorie!  My grandmother always always always put some pork in to cook with her green beans.  There were only two differences between hers and this week's recipe:  first, either we had undercooked beans this week or she completely overcooked hers; and second, she just put her pork (fatback or bacon) on top of the beans while they cooked all day, while we sauteed crispy bits of pancetta.  Oh, and a splash of olive oil.  But the flavor combo of pork and green beans is unmistakable and universally yummy.

Just a couple of pics: 

The pancetta crisping in the pan, and...

the green beans joining them.  The verdict was thumbs up all around.  I really like this quick change to green beans, and we'll definitely add this to our repertoire.  Even if it's just lowly 'Murrcan bacon and not (pinky finger extended) pancetta.

Finally, my sweet friend Mary is a much more faithful blogger than I.  Every Wednesday she's posting a recipe for a great family dinner, usually something simple, quick, and well-loved by the kiddos.  Check her out! 

A bientot and bon voyage to us.  I'll hopefully get to post more next week since we'll be away from the day-to-day craziness.

What we saw, Part 2: Roman Holiday

Since my kids and husband love all things Rome, we decided to spend part of our vacation in the Provence region.  France has an amazing variety of Roman ruins and, since we didn't want to spend our whole vacation in Paris this was an easy choice.  The hard part was deciding how to limit ourselves.  On the map these little towns look close together and it is very tempting to say, "Oh, we'll go here, and then hop over here and then end the day in this little town."  Somehow it takes twice as long to get everywhere as you think!

Wisely, we centered our Provencal time around Nimes because of the huge amount of Roman "stuff" there.  It turns out that was good because Nimes was all we had time for!  I said in our last post that we got a late start leaving Lyon.  Poor M--he hadn't been feeling good but shortly after we left Lyon we had to stop.  He was sick!  M gets the trooper award for the whole trip because, in spite of a stomach bug that hit him hard this first day and then came and went for the rest of the week, he hung in there and still had a great time.

Our first *planned* stop was just a quick meal, where J had his first crocque monsieur:

Then off to Pont du Gard, which we hit in the late afternoon:

This was our first Roman ruin of the trip, an amazing aquaduct that still stands proudly over the river Gard.  (I had been here on previous trips but DH had never seen it.)  The PdG was an aquaduct built to provide water to a nearby town.  There are so many cool things about it: 

It's huge! 

No mortar!  Each block cut to fit.

Three hundred year old grafitti left by stonemason apprentices!

It is even hard to defend.  Engineering advances like this couldn't be made if your soldiers were always worried about sabotage and you had to constantly worry about enemies poisoning the water.  This is an indication of the relative peace and prosperity of the area during the time of Roman rule.  If people are so worried about the next attack, or even their next meal, useful buildings like this don't get built.

Then we sped off to Nimes, about 20 miles away.  Note to self:  Do not follow Mapquest directions in France. 

After some lucky driving and about 90 more minutes in the car (!) we made it to our hotel, the already-described-and-delightful Hotel des Tuileries.  We dropped our bags and M (poor baby, still sick but just wanting to sleep) and headed across the street to La Palette Gourmande and quite possibly our best meal of the trip.  I wish I had taken pictures...Veronique was delightful and we are STILL talking about the scalloped potatoes!  All five of us had the three-course Beaujolais Nouveau meal (no beaujolais for the kids!) and I was so happy that we all had real French food, like salade saucisson (mixed green salad with a sausage baked into bread), those scalloped potatoes and lots of sliced baguettes!

After a good night's sleep we were ready to explore Nimes, an ancient city that long ago outgrew the bounds of its original walls.  First was the Arena, the best-preserved Roman coliseum in the world and still in use today!  We took the audio tour which was excellent.  As you can see all the kids paid close attention:

The top of the Arena gives some lovely views of the city, which has a real Provencal vibe with its wide tree-lined boulevards.  It was a damp, cold, windy day, but you can see the clouds threatening here, too:

We strolled down this street, stopping occasionally to confirm our status as tourists:

And then we arrived at the Maison Caree, a very well-preserved Roman building.  The amazing thing here is that all four walls are intact.  Below you can see two of the walls.

I'll note that Nimes is small enough that we never even considered getting our car and driving anywhere.  We walked everywhere.

After lunch the threatening skies followed through, and opened up.  Our very smart hotel had umbrellas, though, and so we set off to see the Tour Magne, about a 15-minute walk.  This is another structure that had no purpose but just to be built and look cool, one more thing that only a peaceful and prosperous society builds.  (I'm pointing this out because it is such a contrast to the extreme squalor and poverty of the Middle Ages.)  It rained and rained and rained, but we walked and walked and walked, and the kids laughed it off for the most part. 

The Tour Magne is on a hill over the Fontaine Gardens.  Here are some of the stairs up to the Tower--can you see the waterfall?!

So we went up those steps and many, many more to the top of the hill to find, um, the Tower.  This is what we saw:

But we couldn't figure out how to get in.  So we looked around, said "great" and started back downhill.  That's when we saw much more than we'd bargained for.  The gardens were built in the 17th century, around a series of canals that held water to supply the booming silk fabric business that was Nimes at the time.  I was standing here, thinking, "Wow, for once they didn't do something symmetrical, what's up with that?" when I saw a plaque that describes the Atheneum this garden was built around.  The Atheneum is this curved section to the right.

It's not a Roman bath but something they used more ceremonially, and they are extremely rare.  So, cool!  It also meant that I stood there and looked around and saw the best ruin of the afternoon, the Temple of Diana.  This was a really tumble-down building, but wide open and we could walk all around it to the extent that we wanted to get wet.  DH and P got really wet.  Creeping around this old building in the pouring rain is something we talk about a lot.

Up early the next morning to do a crazy drive:  Nimes to Paris via Chambord.  DH and I had never seen the heart of France, and we both thought it would be fun to at least see it at 60 miles per hour.  Turns out it was good to give M a down day, as he continued to recover and eat very carefully. 

One thing that is very cool about driving across France is how quickly the landscape changes.  What we saw:  deserts, hills, snow-covered alps, deep evergreen forests, plains with rich black dirt waiting to be tilled, volcanoes (extinct, I hope!), sheep, cows, farms farms farms, rivers, leafless forests (it IS November!), little half-timbered villages, and finally, this:

Chambord, one of the great Loire valley chateaux.  Built by Francis I, this was his hunting lodge.  It also contains a famous double-helix staircase designed by Leonardo da Vinci.  It took six years to build!  The double-helix enables two people to ascend and descend without seeing each other.  The entire chateau is stone inside and out, and on a damp November day it was COLD.  The chateau was interesting, but there wasn't really much to the tour other than a bunch of empty rooms.  We would loved to have felt a more human touch, to understand how such a huge place would run, where they prepared meals, where they ate, even where the horses lived!  We made a quick stop here, only about 1 1/2 hours, and then headed north to Paris.

Driving into Paris on a Sunday evening is a slow affair, and another note to self:  Don't print out the Mapquest directions in miles when the car and road signs are in kilometres.  Also, apparently lots of Parisiens leave the city for the weekend, only to pile back in when the weekend is over.  The roads were very, very crowded.

Finally, our first glimpse of this most Parisian of sights:

More soon!  A bientot!

Summer Vacation in November

We didn't have a summer vacay this year, at least not one that counted. We had to attend a family wedding in July. It was in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the week, required putting all six of us on an airplane, and significant time away from work and home. But, trust me, it was no vacation.

We were lucky and blessed to send our kids to camp during June, and some moron decreed that school begins in early August here in Georgia, so we never got a summer week away. This isn't whining, just a way of explaining that our trip isn't special, just extremely postponed. The fun thing is, now we get to plan our vacation!

More background: my husband does his business in China, and we've been planning all year for the six of us to head over there. We both believe it's terribly important for the kids to see what their daddy does and we thought, "Why not? We have great, easy-going kids, so let's just try it."

Now, have you ever tried to do something but had a roadblock in front of you at every turn? That was this trip. Nothing seemed to go right. We had all but decided to cancel it, and one day my DH emailed me an announcement from a trade show in Lyon, France. In November. Leading up to Thanksgiving. This one fell into our laps--we immediately gave up our China plans and turned to France!

Some history: I have for some inexplicable reason been obsessed with all things French for as long as I can remember. I took three years in high school, saving most of my money from my part-time jobs to pay for a trip to France my senior year. My distinct recollection of my first visit to Paris was of "coming home" because I had studied the city and the culture so much. I minored in French in college, taking classes all four years and always getting an "A." My Georgia Tech engineer's GPA owes a lot to my humanities in French, and M. Brown!! I was lucky enough to study under a professor who got me an internship in France between my junior and senior years of high school (Thanks, Dr. Antolovich!!), three months when I got to actually pretend I was "francoise." My sweet husband proposed to me on the Eiffel Tower--yes, ladies, there really ARE men who plan such things! Hold out for one.

Unfortunately, after the proposal, life got in the way. We've had four kids, two houses, two dogs, a cat, a pool, a pony and countless cars since then. If someone had told me fifteen years ago that I'd just now be going back to Paris, I would have been convinced they were lying!!

Anyway, we've bought our plane tickets and are just starting our itinerary. Lyon, naturally, to meet my sweet DH and take in the sights in France's "second city." Then, south to Nimes or possibly Montpellier, then a leisurely drive back north to Paris to spend a few days. My biggest concern right now is where to get turkey in Paris on Thursday! I'll post more as we plan our vacation. Meanwhile, if you've been recently, espeically with the kids, please let me know what you loved! My boys are obsessed with all things Roman, but what else can we do? Thanks!

Lovely for Friday

School Notes

A quick post...today my first social/cultural paper is due.  The topic is a cultural immersion experience.  I fell into mine by taking a great tour while we were in Caneel Bay.  It was great to hear about island life and history by someone who had experienced it first-hand.  Thanks, Chris!

I also have to be both client and counselor (not at the same time!) today for videotapes in our skills class.  My problem has been more in being the client!  I talk a lot and tend to inundate my poor classmates with a sea of words.  I guess it is one way to get used to different clients, but I hate feeling like I'm just "too much."  Every time I think I have some little problem but then the more I talk it just grows.  Today I'll concentrate on using very short sentences.  (Like that one.)

Being the counselor is actually easier in many ways, and one of my natural skills is empathic listening.  Of course, I have to peel all the other natural "skills" I have, like interrupting and advice-giving, but I just spend a good deal of time biting my tongue and nodding.  It works, and not interrupting is gradually getting easier. 

A really wonderful vacation spot

I mentioned a couple of times that we've come back from vacation. I feel absolutely obligated to mention WHERE we went: The Tyler Place in Highgate Springs, Vermont. The Tyler family has been running this terrific spot for more than 70 years.

The kids are busy the whole week with their programs in the morning and evening, freeing up my husband and me to participate in activities, or to just take it easy and enjoy time together. The food is nothing short of spectacular, and all of us guests (about 65 families) spend a fair amount of time marveling at the Tylers' warm, genuine hospitality.

I hesitate to even mention them because it feels like an exclusive club, as if there is some special magic I might mess up! But this is just one of our family's favorite places in the whole world, and so if my mentioning TP makes someone else interested in them, that is a good thing.

Re-entry fatigue

I noted yesterday that we had gotten back from vacation. This first weekday back might be the toughest for me, especially since we had such a great time. I'd gotten attached to my kids being fully occupied in the mornings and evenings, attached to my new friends who shared breakfast, lunch and dinner with my husband and me each day, attached to the beautiful Vermont weather and no computer and no television. Such a complete removal makes you rethink your priorities...and it feels disappointing to come back home and slide right back in to my same old life, complete with television and laundry and STUFF. So I'm trying to pull back a little, at least be conscious of my attitudes as I go back to real, day-to-day life.

Being so removed from civilization meant we missed some really big events, like the fierce weather in Iowa, the floods and tornadoes. As we continue to suffer our drought here in Georgia the idea of too much water seems almost blasphemous. But there those poor people are, making the best of things as they watch their homes and crops and soil wash down the Mississippi.

And of course Tim Russert's death. I was lucky to see him as the keynote speaker at an actuarial conference several years ago. I came home and told my husband, "What a neat guy. He seems like the most normal, happy person I've ever seen." And all the coverage of his life seems to bear that out, too. As trite as it feels to say, my heart goes out to his wife, son and most of all his dad at this unbearable time for them.

Back to my real life. I think I gained at least eight pounds this past week in spite of daily bike rides and swims, so I'm going to try to work in a couple of fifteen minute walks along with my daily morning workout. We'll see. Surely these pounds aren't permanent.

One last note...my little travails with extra weight and extra laundry aren't meant to compete in scope or scale with the Iowa flooding, or even with one family's losing their center. These are just random thoughts as I try out this blogging thing.