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snacks & adventure

Tag Archives: food

Mill Road Winter Fair, y’all

09 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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belly dancers, food, Mill Road, Mill Road Winter Fair, sausages

mill rd fair

Last weekend was the Mill Road Winter Fair, one of my neighbourhood’s social highlights.  It was already packed as I headed to my mid-morning zumba class (like I was going to miss out on Gangnam style! Honey, please); it was busier on my way home; and by the time Ian and I made it to the food fair, the whole street was bumping, despite the fact that it was the first day of a pretty serious cold snap.

Ian and I saw belly dancers, a Chinese dragon, and a ten-year-old playing a surprisingly good version of “Wild Thing.”  We sampled some mulled cider; bought some potato bread and rice pudding; and crammed our face full of pizza and sausages.

The sausages from the butcher on the corner were a highlight last year, so I was pretty psyched to see them again.

Literally everyone, up and down Mill Road and on many of the street branching off, was out in force.  It was a lovely afternoon.

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Eating my way across Amsterdam

26 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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Amsterdam, food, My Friend Karin, photography, Spekuloos, The Netherlands, travel

Things I ate in Amsterdam:

– waffles
– one herring sandwich (one was more than enough)
– mini pancakes
– Vietnamese pho
– fries
– almost a full jar of Spekuloos spread
– Spekuloos ice cream
– chocolate shavings (you put it on your breakfast. its a thing.)
– cheese, every chance I got
– lots of beer and lattes

 

Urban Homesteading

22 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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Tags

Cambridge, England, food, harvest, summer, vacations

I spent a year living in rural Pennsylvania, and while I was there I had a huge garden and a small orchard. I froze fruit, made applesauce, harvested garlic, learned to make pesto from different greens to deal with the chard that ran wild in my garden, picked berries, foraged for chives in the spring…I was just learning, so I didn’t do anything stupid like pick mushrooms, but one of my favorite parts of living in the country was how much the land gave you if you looked.  Even an idiot like me could materially reduce their grocery bill just by paying attention.

Then I moved to Boston, where opportunities for gleaning were much thinner on the ground, and I was too busy to take advantage anyway.  Apart from a memorable trip to pick blackberries, my time in the big city flew by in a blur of grad school and Trader Joe’s frozen meals.

Last autumn, I was too overwhelmed by the move to think about apple picking.  But even though my attempts at gardening only yielded about five strawberries, it turns out Original Cambridge is full of free fruit, and apples are just the beginning (or, seasonally speaking, somewhere toward the end).  Earlier this month, I wrote about plum picking at the Orchard Tea Rooms. Things have picked up speed since then, and here is a brief list:

– applesauce with apples purloined from Grantchester, used in a variety of baked goods and distributed to friends and coworkers
– a second round of apples for applesauce, apple butter, apple helppies, apple juice, and any other apple product you can recommend because
– plum freezer jam, again with purloined plums
– elderberry syrup from elderberries in the Mill Road Cemetery
– elderberry muffins
– frozen elderberries
– blackberries frozen for baked goods later in the year

Last weekend I got completely carried away with the elderberries.  I strolled through the Mill Road Cemetery until I literally couldn’t carry any more, encountering two adorable small children near the Cambridge Blue, both of whom wanted to help me pick fruit.  Because I wasn’t eager to be the creepy adult peddling fruit to six year olds, I said no thank you and told them it would stain their fingers – which they took as a challenge.  One of the little girls, with pale skin, frekcles, purple leggings, a purple skirt, and pink crocs, held a single elderberry between four fingers and sang “look! I didn’t stain my fingers! I’m going to eat this one!”

I must have managed to strike the appropriate air of adult authority, because I gave her my best Disapproving Look and said “I would really prefer if you asked your mum first.” And she said “aw man!” but let the berry fall, and I moved on.  At this point I was lugging around a giant pot literally overflowing with berries, so I slogged home and started de-stemming them.  Five hours and no breaks later, I had about three pints of elderberry syrup, a purple-stained countertop, and four or five cups of elderberries for muffins (check!), freezing (check!) and leaving in the fridge too long and letting them get mouldy, thereby wasting all my hard work (check!).  I’m including two pictures, including one blurry one with my face in it – for context.  We are talking serious elderberry action. The pot was so big that I had trouble getting everything into the photo.

It was epic.

Eating your way through England: Bath

13 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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Bath, entertainment, food, The Circus, travel, UK

Ian and I are champion eaters.  In fact, its recently occurred to me that I’m really going to have to step up my fitness regimen if we’re going to continue to travel like this – the trips we’ve taken recently have included Valencia (restaurant week!), Brussels (moules frites!) and Bath (just….food.  so much food.)  And we’re not exactly abstemious in our day-to-day life, either.

Anyway.  With the exception of a disappointing Thai meal (and it was still Thai food, so how wrong can you go?), we ate phenomenally well.  We went to Gascoyne Place, a gastro-pub, for an early meal before the Theatre Royal Bath (apparently its a big deal.  We saw School For Scandal.  It was pretty good).  Then we went on a mini-bar crawl – we went to The Raven, a pub we liked so much that we went back for lunch, and to the Canary Wine & Gin Bar.

The food highlight of the weekend was The Circus, a tiny, unassuming little cafe (it turned out to have a huge downstairs – way less tiny that I thought) with amazing food.  I had grilled peppers, peaches and chorizo with rocket salad, and Ian and I split an heirloom tomato salad.  I was ready to just set up camp in the corner and stay forever.

Still to come: the tourist attractions! The Roman Baths and the Jane Austen tour.

The Perfect Day and a Half in Freiburg

21 Monday May 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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bachle, cathedral, entertainment, food, Freiburg, Germany, photography, travel, Vauban

Freiburg is not a city that was on my radar at all – I’d never been to Germany before and figured when I did, I would probably go to Berlin.  But whilst traveling with My Friend Sarah, we did a nostalgia tour of Freiburg, where she studied abroad, and as a result I got the Insider Tour.  We wandered around the city and into a park with views of the city (we also found an AWESOME SLIDE; see above. I went down four times, although the first time my rip-stop trousers were too grippy and I ended up scootching down one bum cheek at a time.  After than I wrapped my fleece jacket around my waist and I flew down that thing, so much so that I almost face-planted at the bottom).

Anyway.  Here are some cool things about Freiburg:

1. The whole city has a system of tiny canals (ranging from 6 inches to a few feet wide) called bachle.  They are delightful.

2. There are vineyards all around the city.  Sarah and I took an easy walk along a creek that led us directly to public walking paths through the vineyards with panoramic views back toward the city.

3. The cathedral is just amazing – just breathtakingly beautiful.

4. There are mosaics in the sidewalk all over the city (images to follow on Wednesday)

5. There is a brand-new eco-village called Vauban that we strolled around for hours.  It was a major geek-out moment; I was so pleased to be there with another planner.  For my impressions, see my other blog.

6. It was way, way cheaper than Basel, and as a result I ate flammkuchen (thin-crust pizza) and drank Riesling to my heart’s content.

Falmouth & Food

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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Tags

Cornwall, England, entertainment, Falmouth, food, photography, travel

Hola lovers (that was an obscure reference to one of my favorite blogs, GoFugYourself).  I am back from Switzerland! And I am spending hours on a Sunday evening queuing up blog posts about it, which is all the proof that I need that my social life is on less secure footing than I had previously thought.

Before I get into the details of my recent trip, I wanted to post about my trip to Falmouth, in Cornwall, at the end of April (my life is so great: two trips to Cornwall, one to Germany and Switzerland, and Valencia, Ireland, Wales and Southampton on the horizon).

So Falmouth was pretty great. Its home to an art college and a crapload of tourists and lots of cutesy shops and delicious restaurants.  All we did, all weekend, was walk around and eat.  Since Cornwall is a peninsula, the seafood is incredible. And since its very rural, its also known for its dairy – particularly clotted cream and ice cream.  So we made sure to immerse ourselves in local cuisine, which we earned by walking miles and miles every day.  As far as I can tell, eating and being outside are the only things to do in Cornwall.  Its especially important to eat cream tea (scones, clotted cream, jam, and tea), which we did enthusiastically.  As for the outside stuff, there are lots of options: walking, climbing, sailing, blokarting (seriously, that’s a thing), surfing…I think its pretty impossible to be bored, as long as the weather isn’t completely miserable.  And as we discovered, even miserable weather affords a certain amount of adventure and comedy.

Nature in Cornwall

04 Friday May 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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Cornwall, eating, England, entertainment, food, hiking, pub lunch, travel, UK, walking

I posted a few weeks ago about my Easter trip to Cornwall.  Because I am blithely ignorant about UK geography (although less and less so!), I had already agreed to go back to Cornwall (this time by train).  Two Embassy workers named Erin went with me, which wasn’t confusing at all.

We stayed in Falmouth, an artsy little city on the coast, in a nauseatingly picture-perfect hotel called the High Cliffe B&B.  The full English breakfast with local sausage was one of the highlights; I think I ate more meat in three meals than I ate the rest of the month.

Anyway.  I have separate posts about Falmouth and about the many beautiful, tiny little fishing towns we visited; this post is meant to highlight the amazing natural beauty in the region.  Our first day, we ate a huge meal, drove to Lizard Point (the southernmost tip of England), hiked 4 hours, ate an enormous pub lunch, and hiked 3 more hours.  It was my perfect day, and Cornwall is unlike any other landscape I’ve ever seen.

The weather is very changeable in England in general and Cornwall in particular.  We were lucky that we had beautiful weather for the most part, although we did endure about thirty minutes of driving, miserable, freezing rain.  During the rain, it was also so windy that my rucksack rain cover went flying off my backpack.  One of the Erins pursued it until it went over some barbed wire and into a freshly manured field.  I wasn’t put off so easily; I rounded the corner, jumped a stone wall, and sprinted into the wind along the edge of the field until I reclaimed the stupid piece of waterproof fabric, now covered in poo.

Pub Signs

14 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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Cambridge, drinking, England, entertainment, food, history, pubs, travel, UK

This is the fourth installment of a regular series entitled “Cantabriggian Details,” about Cambridge, UK.  The Eagle is a famous one because its where Watson & Crick celebrated the discovery of the double helix, and there’s a room in the back with signatures from RAF members.  Plus its in the dead center of downtown.  The Six Bells is right next to my new workplace, though, and the Live and Let Live is just around the corner from that – so if I’m partial to any of these places its those two.

Snacks in Tel Aviv

24 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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adventure, food, Israel, My Friend Jaime, pita, Tel Aviv, travel, Yemenite Quarter

I took 676 photos in four days in Belgium – its a picturesque place.  But I’m having trouble distilling my photos, so I turned to my file of images from Tel Aviv in November.  I don’t love olives and I didn’t eat hummous until I was 22, so Tel Aviv is not the culinary paradise for me that it is for many.  Even so, I ate incredibly well.  The pita bread at the corner store made me understand why people eat pita bread.  The pomegranates were literally the size of my face (see below).

Furthermore, a lot of the more memorable things I did in Israel centered on food.  I went to the Yemenite Quarter on my last day, and decided that I would walk up and down the market until I ran out of things to look at.  Three hours later I emerged with a lamb pita and a pomegranate and a bunch of mediocre photos.  On my last night, Jaime and I went to the fast food place on the corner to look for halloumi.  Except it turned out the place we went was a meat-only place (how could we have known? It was all in Hebrew), and the guy who translated for us looked at us warily before leaving and said “Are you guys ok?” – not as in, can you complete the transaction, but as in, are you okay in the fundamental sense? His concern was heart-warming but also depressing, because I like people to feel that I’m not completely incompetent.

We also spent a comical amount of time thinking about food while we were at the Dead Sea, because there wasn’t any food there (despite it being, you know, one of the world’s biggest tourist attractions).  And, as is a theme, I spent a lot of time poking around grocery stores and corner stores.  I brought back a packet of chocolate chips that I had every intention of putting into cookies but, now that I have them, I don’t want to open the bag with the ugly teddy bear logo and all the Hebrew writing.

I love food.

Back from the Hedonistic Holiday

22 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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architecture, Beer, Belgium, Brussels, churches, drink, entertainment, food, travel

Over Christmas, my sister and I talked a lot about how organizing a holiday around food was a completely reasonable thing to do.  I decided to treat my long weekend in Belgium as a test case and I can tell you that, while my cheeks are fuller than they were four days ago, it was an absolutely brilliant time and I can’t wait to eat my way through somewhere else.

We spent two days in Brussels and two days in Ghent.  Brussels is a city that reveals itself slowly; I think living there is probably much more fun than visiting – which is saying something, because visiting was great.  Above, photos from the Comic Book Museum, a Victor Horta Art Nouveau staircase, Cathedrale de Saint-Michele-et-Gudules, a waffle, the Carillon Brewery and the Delirium Tremens Bar.

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