On a beautifully clear Friday morning I flew from BWI up to Syracuse, NY via LaGuardia. The plane flew over the Bay just north of the Bay Bridge and I got a great view of the Delmarva. I could see the areas where Carol and Michelle's houses were, the visitor's center and nursery buildings at the Arboretum and the cove my house is on. Over Syracuse I was on the wrong side of the plane to see where my parent's currently live, but I could see our old house. The leaves up here are beautiful this year, just past peak (photo coming soon).
Calla (the dog) was very happy to see me and we have been on several long walks with my mom to Green Lakes State Park and along the Erie Canal. We went to the Syracuse Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. This is a great farmer's market, very large and inexpensive. In Santa Fe the farmer's market has a lot of vendors but I've been amazed at how expensive the food there is. Maybe they just don't produce as much in NM since there is less arable land. In Syracuse, all the farmers had harvested the last of the tender crops like lettuce, tomatoes and peppers ahead of the first hard frost so that was certainly one reason why things cost less this time. (In one photo Calla is eating an apple peel)
Sunday afternoon we went over to the University to see an exhibit on Michelangelo. They had a few drawings and sketches he had made and a copy of the Pieta. After viewing the exhibit there was a nice concert of music from his era starting with a viola trio followed by a madrigal singing group. The concert was attended by many students who apparently were required to be there, and they really could have used a lesson on concert etiquette!
Maryann asked for more food descriptions, so since we ate out last night and had a great dinner I'll add a mention of it! We had dinner at Lemongrass, a Thai/French restaurant downtown. We all got different curries, green curry with chicken, a sweet and sour curry with shrimp and mushrooms, and a red curry with crispy duck. The crispy duck was perfectly cooked, moist meat and crispy skin. Just Bob and I got dessert but with 3 spoons. It was fun to see the desserts because they used some techniques we had learned in pastry class! Mine was a chocolate mousse encased in a dark chocolate pyramid. A little tuile boat held vanilla ice cream topped with a chocolate tuile crescent moon. Bob's was layers of thin chocolate cake with a hazlenut filling encased in a rounded mound of dark chocolate. It had a skirt of tuile on top and tuiles shaped like dancer's legs sticking straight up - the dessert was called a Can-Can something or others (so like a can-can dancer). It was accompanied by a scoop of coffee ice cream.
Tonight I'm making green chile stew with some roasted green chiles that I mailed up before I left!
I do have to relate a sad but funny travel tale for this leg of the trip. I decided to check my suitcase at BWI since I knew the planes would be small traveling to Syracuse, and when the check in person asked for my id, I discovered I couldn't find my driver's license! She said not to worry, that she could check my credit card against my reservation and I could get through. I decided that I had probably left my driver's license in the rental car because I had gotten it out to leave the rental car garage, but I couldn't reach the local rental car desk and the security line was really long. So I took my chances and entered the security line. The first security person highlighted the boarding pass and punched some holes in it. They said to go stand behind a desk until another security person came over. That person asked about my missing id and scribbled some more on the boarding pass. Then I was sent through the "suspicious persons" line (my name for it). There was a big black guy ahead of me who caused the metal detector to go off so while he was removing a belt and checking numerous pockets I went through the metal detector, but the woman holding my boarding pass on the other side decided the black guy was giving her attitude and they got into a heated discussion. Fortunately someone else came over and after being patted down I was sent to have my luggage swabbed. The other guy managed to get through and not have his luggage searched. I have renewed sympathy for Jake's mom who once forgot to bring her id for a trip and had to presumably go through all this to get through security!
(I got through to the car rental desk before my flight left and they found my driver's license and are mailing it to NM, meanwhile Jake mailed my passport to Syracuse)
Calla (the dog) was very happy to see me and we have been on several long walks with my mom to Green Lakes State Park and along the Erie Canal. We went to the Syracuse Farmer's Market on Saturday morning. This is a great farmer's market, very large and inexpensive. In Santa Fe the farmer's market has a lot of vendors but I've been amazed at how expensive the food there is. Maybe they just don't produce as much in NM since there is less arable land. In Syracuse, all the farmers had harvested the last of the tender crops like lettuce, tomatoes and peppers ahead of the first hard frost so that was certainly one reason why things cost less this time. (In one photo Calla is eating an apple peel)
Sunday afternoon we went over to the University to see an exhibit on Michelangelo. They had a few drawings and sketches he had made and a copy of the Pieta. After viewing the exhibit there was a nice concert of music from his era starting with a viola trio followed by a madrigal singing group. The concert was attended by many students who apparently were required to be there, and they really could have used a lesson on concert etiquette!
Maryann asked for more food descriptions, so since we ate out last night and had a great dinner I'll add a mention of it! We had dinner at Lemongrass, a Thai/French restaurant downtown. We all got different curries, green curry with chicken, a sweet and sour curry with shrimp and mushrooms, and a red curry with crispy duck. The crispy duck was perfectly cooked, moist meat and crispy skin. Just Bob and I got dessert but with 3 spoons. It was fun to see the desserts because they used some techniques we had learned in pastry class! Mine was a chocolate mousse encased in a dark chocolate pyramid. A little tuile boat held vanilla ice cream topped with a chocolate tuile crescent moon. Bob's was layers of thin chocolate cake with a hazlenut filling encased in a rounded mound of dark chocolate. It had a skirt of tuile on top and tuiles shaped like dancer's legs sticking straight up - the dessert was called a Can-Can something or others (so like a can-can dancer). It was accompanied by a scoop of coffee ice cream.
Tonight I'm making green chile stew with some roasted green chiles that I mailed up before I left!
I do have to relate a sad but funny travel tale for this leg of the trip. I decided to check my suitcase at BWI since I knew the planes would be small traveling to Syracuse, and when the check in person asked for my id, I discovered I couldn't find my driver's license! She said not to worry, that she could check my credit card against my reservation and I could get through. I decided that I had probably left my driver's license in the rental car because I had gotten it out to leave the rental car garage, but I couldn't reach the local rental car desk and the security line was really long. So I took my chances and entered the security line. The first security person highlighted the boarding pass and punched some holes in it. They said to go stand behind a desk until another security person came over. That person asked about my missing id and scribbled some more on the boarding pass. Then I was sent through the "suspicious persons" line (my name for it). There was a big black guy ahead of me who caused the metal detector to go off so while he was removing a belt and checking numerous pockets I went through the metal detector, but the woman holding my boarding pass on the other side decided the black guy was giving her attitude and they got into a heated discussion. Fortunately someone else came over and after being patted down I was sent to have my luggage swabbed. The other guy managed to get through and not have his luggage searched. I have renewed sympathy for Jake's mom who once forgot to bring her id for a trip and had to presumably go through all this to get through security!
(I got through to the car rental desk before my flight left and they found my driver's license and are mailing it to NM, meanwhile Jake mailed my passport to Syracuse)
No comments:
Post a Comment