Buffalo Cheesey Bread

Things have been so crazy here in Connecticut!  I'm so sad that I won't be able to head home to Buffalo at all this summer.  Major changes are happening (stay tuned) and I'm going to be busy here on the coast for the next few months.  This is good and sad at the same time.

The best time of the year to go to Buffalo is the summertime!  Fall always comes to town with rain and cloudy skies.  Winter barges in with layer upon layer of snow that doesn't completely disappear until March.  Spring slowly melts away and you find yourself in June.  The sun finally welcomes you in the morning and the nights are warm and starry.

Summertime also brings with it some of my favorite Western New York events.  You must head out to the Taste of Buffalo, but be aware, don't go with a large group.  There are so many people at the TOB that it's hard to make your way from one end of Main street to the other.  The food makes the trip totally worth it! 

I'm also a huge fan of Canalfest.  Held in the Tonawandas, it celebrates the Erie canal!  Or, what's left of it, I guess.  Whatever it celebrates, I try to plan my trips home around this event.  It all starts with a huge craft fair weekend, where you can buy everything from coasters to sheds.  There's a Miss Canalfest competition (which I totally wanted to be in when I was little, too bad I wasn't a resident...) and there is food galore!  Ribbon fries with vinegar, funnel cakes with powdered sugar and sausage with peppers and onions.  I always weigh a good five pounds more by the end of the day.

I also am missing my family this summer.  Boat rides on the Niagara river with my parents.  Long walks by the creek with Zoe, my happy, fluffy, red, golden retriever puppy.  Discussing fruit trees and computers with my brother (granted, that computer talk is usually one sided, not my side).  Soon I'll have the time to come home, just not in the next few months.

To cheer myself up and remind myself of home, I made some bread.  It's packed to the top with Buffalo flavor, the only thing that would have made it even more amazing was if I had some blue cheese in the house.  Next time!

Coconut Joys

Summer is in full swing!  I'm reveling in these sunny mornings, hot nights and long days.  I've moved around a lot in the past few years and I always get very confused with the rising of the sun.  My hometown of Amherst, NY is situated right in the middle of the Eastern time zone.  I grew up with summer nights lasting until nine or ten o'clock at night.  Fireworks on the fourth of July couldn't start until at least 9:30 because it was still too sunny before that time.

When I moved to Wisconsin I moved to the leading edge of the Central time zone.  This meant that the days started earlier and they ended earlier, but it also meant that television was on a whole hour earlier!  I loved having Letterman on at ten pm.  Eleven o'clock shows on the weeknights are just too early for me. 

Moving to Colorado proved to be the biggest shock.  Not only is Boulder at the leading edge of the mountain time zone, but it's also the furthest south that I've ever lived.  As winter fell away from the mountains, it would bring the sun to greet you at 4:30 in the morning.  I was so confused my first year there, wonding how on earth the sun could be up at that hour.  Crazy sun, go back to sleep.  At least the Daily show was on at nine pm.  I could get my dose of Jon Stewart and Stephen Clobert and hit the pillows by ten.  The mountain time zone is great!

I joked that I was going to try and live in every time zone before I was thirty.  Since I've moved back to the east coast with only a few months left before the big three-o, I don't think that's going to happen.  But that's okay.  I like this coast, I think I'll stay here for a while.

Cream of Asparagus Soup

I have some terrible news people.  Yesterday morning was going so well, until I went to dry my hair.  My favorite (only), trusty hair dryer was working its magic until it decided it had enough.  With half wet hair, my hair dryer coughed, sputtered and exhaled one final hot breath, then died.  I tried shaking it, pushing buttons, turning it on and off.  Even the tried and true electronic fix of unplugging and pluggin back in did nothing. 

I am now mourning the loss of my hair dryer.  I am also looking all sorts of crazy.  I guess the one bright side of no longer owning a functioning hair dryer (I like to call it an art piece right now) is that I leave the house twenty minutes earlier in the morning.  WIN?