Adventures in Boston

Tags

IPad, postaday2013, Posting, technolgy, writing

As I was walking to the Apple store on Bolyston Street in Boston, I looked up and I was taken with the beauty and clarity of the blue sky right above my head. Seeing the moon showing its face with a trail of pristine white streaking through the blue, I was compelled to take a picture.

I had to go to the Apple store because my iPad went into a coma again, this time to never see the light of day again. My tech genius Kevin was very helpful and kind, he replaced my iPad with a new one because the old one was at fault, no cost to me. So I am writing with my new iPad. I also went to an Urgent Care center because I self diagnosed myself with a kidney infection and I was correct, so I am on a strong dose of antibiotics and I should be as good as new in the coming week. A full day and the doctor told me that I need to rest and drink a lot of liquids, which I am doing and will do for the next week and beyond. Your body is your temple. I need to listen to that saying more often.

Playing with data

Tags

IPad, learning, pictures, postaday2012, technology, thoughts, writing

I am still playing with and discovering the bells and whistles of my new toy. Yesterday I figured out how to upload a video that my baby girl had shot of Jack and our dinner, the lobster. Today I found out that my IPad automatically uploads the pictures that my hubby takes into my photo stream. I just need to figure out and play with the settings to make my posts more attractive. I think that what I am aiming to do is fiddle around with the ratio of space between text and photo, almost like what I used to see the art directors do to the catalog and the print advertising at Conran’s-Habitat all those years ago.

These photos that I am going to upload are all the photos from yesterday,Christmas Day and the day before, Christmas Eve; in between the food and Jack, the camera’s were busy these past two days.

Food, my blog had forgotten you

Tags

chicken, IPad, postaday2012, recipe, Viking stove

I have been so intent on the garden and taking pictures of it that I have been neglecting my other passion, cooking, for a bit. Not having the children at home as much and my hubby working like a superman, I hadn’t felt the urge to really cook anything exciting. However just last night, I was inspired to do something different with chicken cutlets. We have a commercial size Viking stove, it’s not something that you deep clean everyday because the parts are heavy and they don’t fit easily in the sink, so when it comes time to clean, it is pretty much several hours worth of dismantling, scouring, rinsing and reassembling. Once your Viking stove is all sparkly clean, there is no way that anyone would want to sauté anything on the stovetop for at least one day. This desire to keep the stovetop clean led me to be inspired with the chicken, though they were nice and thick, they were still skinless and boneless, quite capable of coming out dry and chewy if not approached with care. Armed with my trusty iPad, I perused the web on my quest for ideas on how to bake naked chicken cutlets, lacking a backbone, without losing their tenderness. Seek and you shall find. I found the recipe on cooks.com, baked chicken with a mustard, mayonnaise sauce. It could not be easier, preheat the oven at 350, combine 2/3 cup of mayonnaise with a 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese and 2 tbsps of Dijon mustard, slather it onto the chicken breasts and dredge them in Italian flavored breadcrumbs. Your fingers will be messy but you put the cutlets into a baking dish and bake them for, it said 30 minutes, I forgot them and when my nose reminded me that they were in the oven, it was 50 minutes, which with the thickness of the cutlets was the right cooking time after all. The kids loved it, it was tender and juicy and not messy. Thank goodness for my nose, I have to say that with the more experience that I have baking and cooking I have come to realize that cooking times aren’t accurate at all, they are really just guidelines. You really have to trust your nose and your fingers to touch and smell when something is done.

Being without the hubby.

Tags

career journey, city of boston, construction management firm, dry spell, hubby, IPad, postaday2012

This week my hubby has flown the coop and embarked on an exciting career journey with the largest construction management firm in the Northeast. I am so happy because he is excited, happy, challenged and back where he belongs, in charge of big projects, meeting a variety of people and telling them what to do. This new position has him away from home, in the big city of Boston. So it is a little weird, especially with the remote control. Fast forwarding is his job and he is very good at it. Now it’s just me alone watching t.v and no one manning the remote, I could do it but it gets in the way of my writing and reading on my iPad. Not the worst thing in the world, but having the hubby take care of the nightly viewing of shows was really nice. I miss his company, the house has been quiet and I haven’t laughed all day. I’ll get used to it once again because before this dry spell, my husband was often away from home in New York and Boston and it was a way of life for us. I have to say that hearing how happy his voice is over the phone makes me very happy. I’m sure that he’ll be happy to know that I miss him.

The perils of the iPad!

Tags

IPad, postaday2012

During the evenings I am usually engaged with my iPad, sitting on the couch in the living room with the television on and myself either reading or writing on my iPad. My husband is sitting on the other couch across from me, reading and writing on his, romantic don’t you think. Yesterday I decided to take the extra eggplant and zucchini, slice them long ways, salt, pepper and sprinkle both oregano and olive oil and roast them in the oven to make a type of vegetarian lasagna since I had ricotta, homemade tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese lying around. I prepared the cookie sheets with the vegetables and into the oven they went at a comfortable temperature of 350F. I go back to my couch and start to read through some articles and my husband comes back into the living room and says what smells so nice and roasted. I didn’t even register that he had left the room, I jumped up, threw Jack the dog off my lap and ran into the kitchen, opened the oven door and was greeted with blackened eggplant, not all of them, two were salvageable, so was the zucchini, I had forgotten to mention the sliced onion, that was burnt to a charred crisp. Oh dear, I took what I could and constructed your basic lasagna minus the pasta sheets, and put the final layer of mozzarella cheese on top and back into the oven it went. I return to the living room to start reading again and lo and behold, my husband comes back into the living room and says it smells nice in the kitchen, I throw Jack back up into the air, run into the kitchen and take out the lasagna which isn’t black but a nice dark tan, salvageable and quite tasty. You would think that I would have learned my lesson the first time but no. The iPad is quite addictive and I lose all track of time and forget food, not good when you are cooking. I did get a good laugh at myself afterwards.