Monday, November 30, 2009

A Visit To A Padded Room

Mama Bird and I got back late afternoon Saturday from our new Thanksgiving tradition. We decided while we were there that it would become our new tradition. The cottage we stayed in was perfect. A full kitchen (while small, was still bigger than my own), a fireplace in the living room and cozy furniture. Well, most of it was cozy (some of the chairs were less than comfy). The living room was upholstered! There was fabric on the walls and someone took the time to put piping along every corner, the top and bottom edges of each wall and surrounding each window and door. There was even batting under that fabric, so the walls were lightly padded. The bathroom had a half sized tub, something I don't think I've ever seen before. It makes sense though, you don't really need a full tub to shower in. And the Inn has a heated indoor pool just down the road, so you could soak there if the mood struck you.
The only bad things I have to say about the room are these; the fireplace came without any instructions*, and neither did the weird locking system for the front door.** Other than that, things were peachy! They left us fresh orange juice in the fridge for the next morning, and that fridge was large enough to hold all the perishables we brought with us.
* Ok, you might think that lighting a fire in a fireplace is pretty easy. And for the most part it is. But really, not everybody has much experience doing so. Mama Bird and I are both fairly proficient at it, but we still had problems. For one thing the flue was shut, and we did not know that until the fire was lit. The WHOLE cottage filled with smoke and we had to call maintenance to come help us out. I was on the phone with them while Mama Bird tried to do something about the smoke. If there were an audio recording of the whole ordeal, it would have been comedy genius.
** Again, you would think that door locks are pretty easy to figure out. This door lock was ... interesting. The door was unlocked when we arrived, and that was no big deal, we figured that was on purpose. However, once inside, I noticed that the lock was only accessible from the inside. There was no keyhole on the outside of the front door. It was some kind of deadbolt that while it certainly locked the door, was a bit odd. It turned out that if you left your cottage, say to go walk around the town, or drive to the next one to buy provisions, you locked your front door from the inside, and returned through the back door. That doesn't seem so bad, but the path TO that back door was poorly lit after dark and required a flash light to navigate.
All that aside, we had a great time. Again for the most part***. For dinner the first night we had butternut squash filled ravioli served with sun dried tomatoes, basil, shaved parmasean, and roasted pumpkin seed oil. It was... perfection. Just a tiny bit of garlic (fresh) and some italian seasonings to give it that little touch. For Thanksgiving dinner we went to someone else's house and had a full traditional meal. Turkey, stuffing, and veggies. I brought the mashed sweet potatoes and walnut green beans and for dessert I brought Ry's pumpkin cheesecake. All of those recipes can be found somewhere in the archives, and the cheesecake in the comments of "I Was On A Boat 'Yall". Everybody loved everything!
*** Put me and Mama Bird in the same kitchen and eventually tempers will flare. It never fails. But the food always comes out great, and we always get over it. I still maintain that there is some kind of catharsis to it.


---Little Bird has a new tradition

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, I'm way too lazy to type out my drunk pecan pie recipe again, so use the badass crust from here:

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2007/11/cooks-illustrated-foolproof-pie-dough-recipe.html

I adore Cook's Illustrated. Using Wild Turkey instead of vodka works very well, they're both 80 proof so I thought they would work the same way and I was right! Good texture and flavor even though I added a little flour to roll out the sticky dough.

And I don't usually trust foodnetwork.com, but the filling from here is fantastic:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/pecan-pie-recipe/index.html

I just took the reviewers' advice, didn't use their weird crust with egg in it and more than tripled the bourbon. Also TEMPER THE EGGS! I don't know why they don't say to do that. My pie was devoured in minutes at a potluck, yum :) The two-crust apple with Jack Daniels was pretty amazing, too...

~dilly

Anonymous said...

Wild Turkey and good flavor should never go in sentences anywhere near each other.

Little Bird said...

Sure they should! You don't expect me to cook with the good stuff do you??!?

Mama Bird said...

The inside of my handbag still smells like smoke.