New Camera

We just got a new camera for the Inn. I've spent the last few days with it tucked in my pocket, snapping silly photos at random times. Here's a few of the one's I've taken this week:








All of these are straight out of camera (mostly because I don't actually have Photoshop) except for a bit of cropping and shrinking. My favorite kind of photography is Food Photography, so expect to see some posts involving biscotti and cookies and omelets and pancakes and waffles and all other sorts of delicious Garden Gables goodies.

Oh! And here's a fun little update: We got in some samples from Dean's Beans Coffee. It's locally roasted, organic, fair-trade certified, and mighty tasty. We're also trying out another local brand, so I'll keep you updated when we decide on a local coffee. Yum!


Much love 'n' Stuff,
~Brande N.

Season's Eatings!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!




And for your enjoyment, a poem:


'TWAS THE NIGHT OF THANKSGIVING

Twas the night of Thanksgiving, but I just couldn't sleep.
I tried counting backwards, I tried counting sheep.
The leftovers beckoned--the dark meat and white,
but I fought the temptation with all of my might.

Tossing and turning with anticipation,
the thought of a snack became infatuation.
So, I raced to the kitchen, flung open the door
and gazed at the fridge, full of goodies galore.

I gobbled up turkey and buttered potatoes,
pickles and carrots, beans and tomatoes.
I felt myself swelling so plump and so round,
till all of a sudden, I rose off the ground.

I crashed through the ceiling, floating into the sky
With a mouthful of pudding and a handful of pie.
But, I managed to yell as I soared past the trees.......
happy eating to all---pass the cranberries, please!

~Author Unknown~

Mom's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Dear Chocolate Chip Cookie,

I have conquered you. You tried so very hard to outwit me, to make me look bad. Well never again cookie! Never again! I’m tempted to think that you arranged all those times the phone rang during the last minutes of cooking. You wanted me to burn you. You wished that I would never bake you as well as John’s mom had. Your facade of tooth-breaking crispness was spite for the fact that it was I was the baker and not her. Well it may be her recipe, but I am the baker here and I will not be beaten by a cookie! And all it took to beat you was a pizza box and 6 ½ minutes of patience. 6 ½ minutes spent sitting on a pizza box, yes, but it was worth it to watch you and learn your secrets. I have mastered you cookie! Now, to prove that I have vanquished you for good....



...I’ll post these terribly delicious-looking photos of you cooking. Yum!



Mmmm.. raw cookie dough.



In deliciousness, second only to cookie dough ice cream.



I'm melting!



Oh what a world!



What a cruel world!



From melty to poofy. These cookies are tricksy.


See the one that stated sliding? Yeah, that's the buttah.


Too. Much. Delicious!


Now don't let them fool you! See the poofiness in the middle? That means they are NOT DONE! But they will be in about 45 seconds. It happens that fast.


Chewy in the middle, crunchy on the outside. Sweet, salty, chocolatey, and completely addictive.


Hello, sweet, delicious victory. I'm going to eat you now.


With Love,
~Brande N.

(My apologies for this absolutely silly post. I had a lot of hot chocolate today.)

Eco-nnouncement

Yesterday’s silly post was a prelude to introducing the fact that The Garden Gables Inn is going green! And not in a superficial, “Jumping into the green market because it’s trendy” sort of way, but for real. We genuinely care about the environment and feel that it is not just optional to make strides to care for it; it’s a responsibility.

From now on I’ll be posting a weekly update on changes we’re making, as well as goals, improvements, and some statistics and facts to show the impact every little change makes. I hope you’ll give us some feedback in the comments section. Have you ever owned a bamboo shower curtain? Tell me how you liked it. Have solar panels at home? How do they work for you? Know a local farmer that has the best eggs this side of the Connecticut River? Tell me about it! I love to get feedback and firsthand experience is priceless.

Thanks in advance for your kindness and input. More updates soon!

With Love,
Brande N.

My favorite things

Fair-traded coffees with loc’ly made cookies
Organic veggies and cage-free roast chicken
Plastic free products sustainably made
These are a few of my favorite things

Reading “green” bloggers and making “green” changes
Recycled, upcycled, handmade, carbon neutral,
Avoiding synthetics, enjoying real foods
These are a few of my favorite things

Shopping at Co-Ops with totes made of cotton
Smelling the roses, enjoying the sunshine
Loving the earth cuz it’s one of a kind
These are a few of my favorite things

When the smog chokes,
When the trash heaps,
When I’m feeling sad…
I simply pursue all my favorite things
And then I don’t feel so bad!

Musings from a snowglobe...

When Dan and I first realized that we'd be moving to the Berkshires one of the first things I looked up was the climate. You see, I grew up on the buckle of the snowbelt in Upstate NY. Here are a few pictures of rather typical winters in my hometown:










I've shown pictures like these to Non-Upstate New Yorkers in the past and their reactions have always been some mix of bulging eyes, gasps, disbelief and exclamations of "How did you get into your house!" It's very entertaining. I feel like one of those people who handles snakes and after awhile becomes immune to the venom. Snow just doesn't affect me.

That is unless it’s really, really pretty. Like yesterday. I was poking around upstairs and I happened to look outside just in time to glimpse the first flakes falling. At first it was a gentle, light, powdery snow, and then in a matter of seconds it was the equivalent of a frozen torrential downpour. Thick curtains of snow just poured and poured and started forming little white puddles on dried leaves and in the spaces between blades of grass.

And while I wasn’t affected by the quantity of snow that started falling or even the suddenness with which it came, I was affected by the rays of golden mid-afternoon sunlight that were beaming and pouring through the clouds illuminating every little snowflake and turning it into a tiny piece of glitter. Boy, was that pretty. I just sat on the bed in whichever room I was in and just watched it for a minute, mesmerized. I felt like I was sitting inside a snowglobe, watching these beautiful, sparkling little jewels fall around me.

And while I've never been a snow person, I feel like maybe I could be here. If the snow is always this beautiful, what could there be not to like? Coats and mittens and hats keep out the cold, snow tires keep us safe as we travel, and hot chocolate warms us up should we find ourselves chilled.

I think it's going to be a pleasant winter. But just to be sure of that, I'm going to go look up snow-tubing parks. No sense being locked in my snowglobe all winter, right?

With Love,
~Brande N.

Work Related Side Effects

Dan and I were sitting at Fin Sushi in Lenox tonight, having dinner. It was of course fantastic and wonderful but so very filling. When we finished eating he looked at me and said with a groan, "We need to stop doing this." Which was in reference to the fact that this was the second night in a row that we had eaten out and had HUGE meals. (The night before had been his birthday dinner at the Route 7 Grill in Great Barrington.)

My response was, "But you see hun, we have to eat at all of these restaurants so that we can give our guests accurate reviews. It's work, really."

To which he replied, while imitating a large and Santa Clause like belly:
"Yeah, but if we keep doing this it won't be long before I'm suffering from some work-related side effects."



Oh, the hazards of Innkeeping. Such a hard life. :-)

A Secret, Shhh!

This week revealed to me a secret that I only wish I had known before becoming an Innkeeper.

It’s not a secret that for nearly all Inns, the busy season is summer. The weather is beautiful; theatre, art, and music abound; swimming pools beckon; and all manner of outdoor fun is in its prime.

Winter is the ugly stepsister of Summer. No one wants to travel on icy, snowy roads; it’s cold outside; the kids have school; and influenza is lurking in the shadows, waiting for you to let down your guard and catch just the slightest chill so it can pounce on you like some vicious jungle cat and spend the next 4 weeks eating you alive (graphic, I know, but influenza is mean like that).

Reasons like that are why Dan and I spent the last 5 days with only one guest in house. The first three were spent with a nice young couple, and the next two with a couple of ladies enjoying a bit of time away from family and home. And while these folks may have had to brave the risk of vicious viruses and damp, chilly, yucky weather, they certainly didn’t have any issues with getting a reservation to any of the restaurants in town. Nor did they have to worry about any loud, boisterous guests in the room next door. There was no fear of having their TVs too loud or any guilt for parking in the best spots in our lot.

On top of that, being the only guest gives you the opportunity to ask for a personalized breakfast. Now, don’t get me wrong, we have an amazing breakfast to start with. But there’s something great about being able to say, “You know, I don’t really like granola and I’m just not feeling like an omelet today. Can you make me oatmeal instead?” And Dan and I can say, “Sure, why not?” because we’ve got time now to whip that up. With all 17 rooms filled, that’s quite a bit more difficult. It lets Dan and I get a bit creative and the guest gets to eat a breakfast that is exactly what they wanted.

Not to mention the fact that room rates are lowest during the winter. And if you can manage to avoid weekends and come on a weekday, they’re even lower.

I’ve learned now that every day comes with a handful of lessons. And every week comes with a car and several suitcases full of them. This week, the lesson is: when going on vacation, it’s worth the oatmeal to risk the influenza.


With Love,
~Brande N.

A Lesson on Pancakes

I learned a lesson today. Whipped cream on hot chocolate chip pancakes melts very quickly. Who’da thunk it? And better yet, melted whipped cream likes to try really hard to slide towards the bacon as you’re carrying the plate to your hungry guest. The last time I checked, whipped cream on bacon was not an ideal breakfast dish. Although, the woman the pancakes were going to was pregnant… so maybe that would have been great. I should have asked. That could have been the new Garden Gables specialty breakfast dish. Chocolate Chip Pancakes with Crumbled Bacon and Whipped Cream.

Just kidding! (Unless you like that sorta thing…)

With Love,
~Brande N.

An introduction, of a sort.

I read blogs. A Lot. It’s an addiction. If you were to peek into my Yahoo account and view my bookmarks, you’d see an entire folder called “Blogs”. You’d see that that folder contains about 25 different blogs, and you’d see that I read every one of them every single day. Some of them I even several times a day in desperate, grasping hope of an update. Like I said, it’s an addiction.

I read a lot of books too. And the ones that always grab me are the ones that throw me headfirst into the action. “Johnny lept from the bow of the ship, terrified of what might await him in the murky waters below…” Those are my kinda books. And while I won’t be jumping off the bows of any ships as an Innkeeper (hopefully), there are times in this new job when I feel like I am.

I think that’s sort of the way I like things though. When I first learned how to waitress it was because our best waitress called in sick just before lunch. My boss looked at me and said, “So Brande, you’re going to be my waitress today.” I was thrown headfirst into the lunch hour, stunned and utterly clueless, left to take orders, bus tables, deliver sodas, and make more mistakes than I care to think about. But I learned. And because of those struggles, I became a darn good waitress.

So while I have no experience of any kind in Inn Management, I know the struggles and silly mistakes I will inevitably make will be good for me. It’s sort of like going to the dentist. It usually hurts and I always want to go take a nap afterwards, but it’s good for me. And it’s gonna make me a darn good Innkeeper.


So here’s to making mistakes, learning from them, and, above all else, keeping an online record of every last one of them. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of stories to tell. So stick with me, keep reading, and let’s have some fun, shall we?


With love,
-Brande N.

November brings change here too...

We were lucky to have Joe deMoncada stay on as Inn Manager when my sister and I bought The Garden Gables Inn in the Spring of 2006. Joe had been at the Inn for many years prior, when the Mekinda's owned it, and he and his partner Cindy Kaplan were great people to work alongside. When Joe and Cindy decided to embark on new endeavors at the end of the summer, we hired our nephew Matt. He quickly became acclimated to the Inn and we were gratified to hear so many accolades about Matt from our guests. Unfortunately, Matt could not make the commitment to stay on indefinitely so we began the search for a new Inn Manager.

I screened and interviewed many candidates - it was amazing to see so many extremely talented people from different backgrounds interested in coming to live and work at the Inn! I ended up offering the position to a young couple - Dan and Brande Neyhard. They just moved down from Oswego, NY and we are thrilled to have them here. Among other things, they have a great wealth of knowledge about organic and natural foods so look for some enhancements to our menus.

Although the rush of apple picking season is over, I am still insanely busy at the apple orchard (overseeing production of cider, Johnny Mash, etc.) when I am not at the Inn. We've been wanting to do a blog from the Inn and now that Brande and Dan are here they are eager to do it. It think you'll find Brande and Dan's exploration of the Berkshires interesting as well as their experiences in living and working at the Inn.
We hope to see you soon... John Vittori