White Wine & Red Tomatoes

The tomatoes are finally turning red! I thought they'd never turn. I always seem to remember them turning red before August. Are anyone else's tomatoes late turning red? Maybe it's the weather...

We're on the last of the bottles of wine that we bought at the wineries. We've apparently become quite the winos! We have been enjoying having a glass (or 2) each evening with dinner. Thank goodness I'm heading back to the wineries this weekend when Amy & Robin visit so that I can stock up on more great NY state wine. (The above bottle of wine was purchased at the 3 Brothers Winery.)

This was our dinner this evening. BBQ chicken, rice and of course wine. On the deck, it was a beautiful evening.

And before I end my blog post for today, I have to wish my Mom a very Happy Birthday! Not that she can read this as she is traveling right now, but maybe if she finds some wifi somewhere soon, she can see her well wishes. Hope you had a great day!

Brunch, Lunch and a Little Bit of Jazz

Eric had some old friends from High School visit this morning. (They were in town for their HS reunion, they were the HS class behind Eric's class.)

Chris and Mike are pictured here with Eric. They stopped by our house with their families this morning for brunch. We had a wonderful time. It was great that Eric got to spend time with friends and I was happy to get to meet them! I hope we can all get together again soon.

After Chris and Mike went off to the reunion, Eric and I went over to the Retreat for a great lunch outside on the patio. It was a gorgeous day. And as you can see, it's never too early for a beer!

We met up again with Eric's friend Chris at the Fulton Jazz Fest. It's a small event, the music was pretty good (although I'm pretty sure I had never heard the Jazz version of "Love Shack" before...) Eric and Chris kept bumping into people they knew, as Kelsey and I looked over a sea of faces we've never seen before. It was a fun event though, good food and great company.

Kelsey, Eric and I at the Jazz Fest... self-portrait. Apparently, I think that every blog post needs to have a self-portrait!

Dobie Sitting

I've been cat-sitting this week for Dobie while Alex and his dad have been visiting NH. Dobie is going on 17. (I think.) He's a little on the elderly side. The highlight of his day is eating dinner. I'm not sure he does much else besides sleep. I had to turn his bowl around to get a view of his face...

...because this was the only thing I was seeing while I was cat-sitting...

It's a Small (Mini) World Afterall

Here are a couple of more photos of Eric's new Mini Cooper. He wants to get some white stripes for the hood...

And maybe some numbers for the doors... (Magnetic of course, so we can remove them if we want.)

Kelsey fits perfectly in the trunk of the Mini! Yes, it's a very small trunk. But isn't it cute?! And don't worry, I think we'll let her ride up front...

So speaking of small things... like the small world we live in. I have a very small world story to share. You all know how I love Facebook. I've enjoyed re-connecting with old friends from various parts of my life. Childhood, high school, college, former jobs I've had... I've become friends with cousins I've never met, and I keep in touch with family too. It's really a great tool.

Well, this past weekend I recognized a name in the "Suggested Friends" area. It was a girl I went to Jr High and High School with. We were pretty good friends in Jr. High. We would have sleep overs and go to Gymnastics together on Saturdays. (She was MUCH better at that than I was!) And honestly, I'm not sure the last time we saw each other, but it was more than 20 years ago. I sent her a friend request, which she accepted the following morning. With a question, "Where in Syracuse do you live?" I emailed her back and told her what town we lived in, and wouldn't you know. We live less than 5 miles away from each other, in the same exact town. This is really amazing when you realize that we went to High School in a very small town in Maine. Which is well over 500 miles from here.

We've sent several emails back and forth and are going to try to get together next week for dinner. I wonder if we've ever crossed paths at Wegmans and not even known it!!

A Mini Obsession

I think Eric might be spending the night in the driveway tonight... Maybe I should bring him a pillow and blanket!?

Dragonflys and Chicken Wings

I discovered a little dragonfly hanging out with the tomatoes this afternoon. I love the macro feature on my camera.

I made some slow-cooked wings today. Our friend Louise made the most delicious slow-cooked wings and served them at her last party. I'd never made wings of any sort before. All I remember her saying was that she cooked them at around 200 for several hours. So I went with that. And I put BBQ sauce on them too...

I ended up cooking them for about 3 hours at 250. Then for about 15 minutes at 450. They weren't as "dry" as we had hoped. I kept having to drain the liquid every half hour or so. I was surprised how much grease/water these little wings produced. I think I need to put them on a broiler type pan next time so they can drain, so they don't end up soaking in any liquid. Then I think we might have what we were looking for. They were quite tasty though, just a lot juicier than we thought they would be. Oh and we bought the bag of wings at Aldi, along with the BBQ sauce. So they've been dubbed the Aldi Wings.

In other news, we found our screen! Oh, you didn't know it was missing, did you? Well, the painters had taken the screens down when they painted the house and one was missing. We couldn't find it anywhere. Well, Eric found it this morning when he was cleaning the gutter. It's on the roof, next to the skylight.

Our Fabulous Day

Have you ever had one of those days where everything went really, really well?? Well, we had one of those days today. We had some spectacular weather, so it was a perfect day to visit some wineries. The above grapes are from the Swedish Hill Winery on Cayuga Lake.

Here's a beautiful view of Cayuga Lake... summer is gorgeous here in Central New York.

We loved several wines at Swedish Hill, including this one... "Jack Ass Red".

It was named after their pet Donkey... Doobie. He was a very sweet, um, Jack Ass. And he posed for many photos.

Here are 2 more Jack Asses posing for a picture... heh heh...

My favorite winery of the day was on Seneca Lake. It was called 3 Brothers Winery. There are 3 wineries and a brewery all on their property. It was a destination all in itself. The wineries are all very different. One is a bit fancy (Stony Lonesome), one is fun and frilly (Passion Feet) and the other is set in a Bayou and is for people who are more comfortable in a dive bar (Rogue's Hallow). (The above photo is walking down the dirt path to this winery.)

This is the outside of the "Rogue's Hallow" winery. There's a band, food and lots of great wine to drink...

There was also a neat Brewery there. We didn't try any beer today, but would love to go back sometime and get the "Passport" to try everything. This was the last winery that we stopped at today, and we were a little wiped out by the time we got there!

On our way from the Wineries to the Waterloo Outlets, we drove by a European Car Dealership and Eric spotted this Mini Cooper. He's been doing some research on Mini Coopers and really wanted to test drive one. So we did!

It wasn't as small as I thought it would be inside. And it's pretty cool... the speedometer is in the middle of the console.

I'd say Eric rather enjoyed himself!

He and the car salesman gave the car a once-over. I think Eric was quite taken with the car, but for now, it's still there...

We dubbed this day our "lucky day". Somewhere along our travels today, we found a perfectly good $100 bill just laying on the ground... completely unattended. I looked for the candid camera people, but nobody jumped out of the bushes. And there was no one around. So what is a person to do?? Well, we scooped up our good fortune, and our day at the wineries and outlets were paid for! This picture was taken at the Bass Outlet... before Eric bought some new pants and I bought a couple of shirts. For "free"!