Apologies!

Dan and I got back from New York on Sunday afternoon and before I even took off my coat, it was back to work! There's been a flurry of decorating, prepping, planning, calling, and brainstorming for our big New Year's Eve Package and I'm having trouble finding time to drop a line here on the blog. So rather than give you a half-dazed late night groggy post or a rushed, gotta-get-done-because-the-cookies-are-baking-and-if-they-bake-any-longer-than-6-and-a-half-minutes-they-turn-into-frisbees post, I decided to take a little break until Thursday, and leave you with the following thoughts:

---A person checks into a hotel for the first time in his life, and goes up to his room. Five minutes later he calls the desk and say, "You've given me a room with no exit. How do I leave?"

The desk clerk says, "Sir, that's absurd. Have you looked for the door?"

The person says, " Well, there's one door that leads to the bathroom. There's a second door that goes into the closet. And there's a door I haven't tried, but it has a 'do not disturb' sign on it."---

Until Thursday, Have a great New Years everyone!

With Love,
~Brande N.

Happy Holidays!

Hello everyone!
The Inn will be closed for the holidays this week, and Dan and I are headed back to NY to visit with family. I'll be back and blogging on the 28th, hopefully with some fun new stories to share. Happy holidays, travel safely, and make some memories!

With Love,
~Brande N.

Biscotti Ponderings

I love biscotti. Love them. Mmmm, Biscotti. And the next best thing to eating biscotti is making them. Biscotti are nearly fool-proof and unbelievably versatile. Cranberry-Pistachio? Delicious. Peanut Butter Cup? Amazing. Apricot-Almond. yum! I'm sure even something as crazy as Maple-Bacon could be great. It's so much fun to sit and stare blankly off into space pondering on what would be the next great biscotti. Some ideas I have pondered on include:

-Spiced Pumpkin with Nutmeg Cream Cheese Glaze

-Vanilla Chai Spice with Crystallized Ginger

-Peanut Butter and Jelly (PB biscotti with Jelly Filling inside)

-Carrot Cake

-Dark Chocolate with White Chocolate Mint Center

-Raspberry-Lemon Swirl

-Apple-Walnut with Cinnamon-Caramel Glaze

-Just Honey

-Chocolate Dipped Sweet Cherry

-Maple-Fig

-S'more-style (Chocolate with Fluff filling and Crushed Graham Crackers on top)

-Gingerbread Dipped in Ginger-White Chocolate Ganache

And it just so happens that tomorrow is a big baking day for me. I'm making 5 different kinds of cookies to give to friends and family for the Holidays. I've decided on 4 varieties of cookies which thus far include: Cinnamon Bun Sugar Cookies, Chocolate Turtle Shortbreads, Raspberry-Lemon Cutout Sandwiches, and Tart Cherry Pistachio Tea Cookies. But I have not yet decided on a biscotti.

Any suggestions, oh lovely readers of mine?


(...Drat! All this talk of cookies has made me hungry now!)

The Garden Gables Inn Presents:

A Compliment of the Highest Regard

A True Story, Adapted for the Stage:

Cast:

-WAITRESS

-YOUNG MAN

-YOUNG WOMAN

-HUSBAND

The Scene:

A cozy New England Bed & Breakfast. Early morning. A nice young couple sits at one table, sipping coffee and nibbling at goodies from the buffet. Their WAITRESS approaches, order pad in hand.

WAITRESS: Good morning! Would you folks like a few more minutes or are you all set to order?

YOUNG MAN: I think we’re ready.

WAITRESS: (names off litany of breakfast options, which includes waffles, eggs cooked any way, omelettes, blueberry or chocolate chip pancakes, and apple strudel french toast)

YOUNG MAN: (with awe) Can I have one of everything? (laughs)

YOUNG WOMAN: (in a motherly, gently reprimanding voice) No, Honey. We’ll each get one thing and split it, okay?

YOUNG MAN: Alright... Well I want the Apple Strudel French Toast then.

YOUNG WOMAN: I’ll have an omelette with goat cheese and tomato.

WAITRESS: Sounds great! I’ll have that out for you in a few.

(A few minutes pass while the WAITRESS and her HUSBAND cook their order. She returns with French Toast that looks a lot like this:

..and an omlette that looks a lot like this:

...and presents it to the COUPLE.) (The YOUNG MAN stares at the plate of French Toast in front of him, nearly mesmerized. The WAITRESS is amused.)

WAITRESS: Can I get you guys anything else?

YOUNG MAN: (in an entranced voice, still staring at his plate) No... absolutely nothing.

Eco Update #2

Alright, I want to prepare you for this. We at the Garden Gables Inn have made a revolutionary and unprecedented ecological decision. It took a lot of hard work and dedication to make this happen. Months of planning, debating, conference calling, consulting, and editing have finally come to fruition. Are you ready?

We started recycling.

Boring, I know. I’m sorry! Big, awesome, exciting things will come, I promise. But how else was I supposed to get excited about recycling? Its... recycling. But it’s something that we weren’t doing, was easy to incorporate, and has a big impact. I didn’t even know how big until I started this post. How big you say? I’m so glad you asked...


-Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch. Energy savings from recycling aluminum in 1993 alone were enough to light a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years.

-Recycling 1 ton of paper saves 17 mature trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 3 cubic yards of landfill space, 2 barrels of oil, and 4,100 kilowatt-hours of electricity — enough energy to power the average American home for five months.

-Glass never wears out -- it can be recycled forever. We save over a ton of resources for every ton of glass recycled: 1,330 pounds of sand, 433 pounds of soda ash, 433 pounds of limestone, and 151 pounds of feldspar.

-26 recycled PET bottles equals a polyester suit. 5 recycled PET bottles make enough fiberfill to stuff a ski jacket.

-If every American household recycled just one out of every ten HDPE bottles they used, we’d keep 200 million pounds of the plastic out of landfills every year.

Holy carrots!

I know that when I’m at home and I open up a can of soup, it sometimes seems like way too much work to rinse it out and walk it over to the recycling bin. But statistics like this help me realize that every little bit actually means something.

So even though recycling seems like a silly, insignificant, and common change to make, it’s worth posting about. Because it really isn’t silly or insignificant. And if it seems common, that’s great! I’m all for good things being common.

With Love,
~Brande N.

My feet must be tasty...

...because I seem to stick them in my mouth A LOT. Remember our previous conversation about all the mistakes I'll inevitably make while I learn the nuts and bolts of innkeeping? Well this morning was a perfect example of that.

This is the story:
A very nice couple ordered their meal, Dan and I made it, and then I brought it out to them. Whenever I bring out an order, I always check to see if the guests need anything else: syrup for their pancakes, butter for the toast, tabasco for the eggs, etc.. Speaking of tabasco on eggs, that is one thing I have just never seen the appeal of. It's just weird to me! But then again, I love beets and tuna fish with green olives and maple syrup in milk, so I guess I don't have much room to critique the preferences of others.

Anyway, the order in question was 2 eggs over easy with goat cheese and fresh tomato and basil on the side. In my head I thought, "Okay, they've got eggs, so they don't need syrup, and they've already got the side of goat cheese, tomato and basil, so they’re probably alright. But I might as well check, just to be sure.”

Me: “Could I get you guys anything else? More coffee? Ketchup or hot sauce for your eggs or anything weird like that?”

Guest: “Uh, yeah, hot sauce would be great.”

...and I just called it weird. Ugh! Boy my foot is tasty!

Snow, Finally!

I'll admit it, I was a little bit happy when it started snowing on Sunday. All this week, as Dan and I were decorating the tree and hanging wreaths and putting little candles in the windows, I couldn't help but wish that there was some snow on the ground. Everything just feels so much more Christmasy when it's covered in that blanket of white, you know? Christmastime at night is the best. I love seeing all of the lights reflect on the snow and cast pretty multicolored shadows.

So when I started seeing those flakes float down, my first reaction was (of course) to grab my camera and see what it can do!

This was the first picture I took, nothing too special, just a view of our driveway and the snow as it was starting to coat things.



If you click the picture you can see a few of the snowflakes up close. So pretty!



You can see the little snowflakes even better in this one.



The last remnant of summer's greenery falls prey to winter's cold.




This is probably my favorite. It's a view looking down the branch of a little ornamental tree in our garden. You can see some of the little snowflakes in this one too, and I love the touch of green.



And while the above photo is my favorite, this lovely little set shows my least favorites. The photography lesson I learned that day was:

It doesn't matter how hard you try, what setting you put the camera on, or where you focus; it is darn near impossible to take a picture of a single snowflake on your coat sleeve without it melting first.

...not to mention the fact that I must have looked really silly standing on our porch taking about a thousand pictures of my sleeve. Who would have known that I was taking pictures of snowflakes? But the good news is it's only December 10th. There's plenty of wintertime left to get more pictures.

With Love,
~Brande N.