Food is Good

This past weekend, Jeff and I went to Seattle for the wedding of Alison and Chris. I'm working on getting up some photos from that, but in the mean time, I thought I'd post some other pictures from the weekend.

One of my favorite things about Bainbridge Island is the food. Many yummy things can be found on the island, and I like to indulge in my favorites while I am there. So this is a post dedicated to pictures of food.

On Saturday mornings, there's a great farmer's market. There are all kinds of vegetables.

There's also really delicious bread. I like to buy chocolate croissants from this vendor.

And Jeff got a chocolate peanut butter cookie from this stand, which also sells some good looking berry pies.

Here's a close-up on some berries. Mmmm.


And here are some lovely flowers you can purchase.

If you watch the Food Network, you may recognize this place. Cafe Nola was featured on the very first episode of Giada's Weekend Getaways. We'd been going there long before it ever showed up on TV...I think I went on my very first trip to Bainbridge five years ago. She went for brunch...I've only been for lunch and dinner. It's been delicious every time. I had porcini risotto cakes this past weekend, and they didn't disappoint.


And what's a day without dessert? Jeff and I shared this three-scoop ice cream cone from Mora Ice Creamery. They really know how to do ice cream there. We taste tested just about every flavor before deciding on cinnamon, chocolate mousse, and mango. As much as I love chocolate, I think cinnamon was my favorite. Really, really good.

Remember When Summer Meant Doing Nothing?

Sorry for the lack of posts, but July is a crazy month for me. Last weekend I was in Atlantic City for Joyce's bachelorette party, I leave today for Seattle for Alison's wedding, and next weekend I'll be in Louisville for Joyce's shower. I've hardly had time to catch my breath, more of less do or read anything worth posting about.

I'm not convinced August will be any better, although at least some of the travel we'll be doing then is for ourselves. Jeff and I are taking vacation from August 10-19. We're doing a roadtrip from here to Maine and back. This is pretty much our last summer in the area (we hope), so we figured we needed to see it all while we are close. We're going to a Yankees game and a Red Sox game. We're hitting Cape Cod to catch the end of the Cape Cod League. We're camping in Acadia National Park. We hope to go to the mountains in New Hampshire, tour the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont, and see some cute little towns. Problem is, we haven't really had much time to plan. We have one hotel booked, one night of camping, and one set of baseball tickets. Eek! We don't want to overplan...it's a roadtrip afterall...but if you know me, you know I don't like not to have things figured out.

So help us out. What are your favorite places in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maine? Any and all recommendations would be most welcome!

Down with the Pope

CNN Article -- Vatican: Non-Catholics Not True Christians

I find this to be so infuriating. Why is this what the church is concerned about? In a world that is so full of trouble, I find it disgusting that the church uses its energy and influence to dwell on such petty issues. It is simply another example of the church's intolerance and strutting I'm-better-than-you behavior.

And why is religion more important than faith? It seems to me that Jesus seemed to put more stock on faith. After all, he certainly didn't follow his own religion, Judaism, all that closely. It seems that the church is acting very much like the scribes and the pharisees that Jesus himself condemned, saying they were more concerned with appearances and the letter of the law than the spirit of the law.

I'm so down on organized religion. It certainly seems to cause more division than unity, to preach intolerance instead of tolerance, to offer much criticism but few solutions.

It's Live!

Thanks to my brother Gregory's assistance with design and HTML, I have a Web site for my freelance writing. Check it out at www.theresablackinton.com. Please let me know if you find any errors. There were some difficulties with embedded fonts (thanks, Word), and while I tried to catch them all, I was pretty tired towards the end of my work. I'll be going over it with a fine-tooth comb this week, but extra sets of eyes would be most helpful. I don't want to send it out to any editors until I feel pretty confident that there aren't any glaring errors!

Also, I have a new article out today in the Frederick-News Post. You can read it here on my Web site or here on the Frederick News-Post Web site.

Front to Back, Back to Front

If you're reading a magazine, do you read every article in it or just specific ones that seem interesting to you? I'm definitely a read-it-all kind of gal, which can make magazine reading a time-consuming process. We get a lot of magazines: The New Yorker, Smithsonian, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Budget Travel. None of which are particularly "light" reading, although only the New Yorker and Smithsonian are particularly heavy. Anyhow, I just can't retire a magazine until I know I've read every bit of it. I might not be especially interested in particle accelerators (the topic of a recent article in the New Yorker), but I read it anyway. I mean, if I only read articles about things that interest me, how would I ever learn anything new. Not to say I'm now an expert on particle accelerators or hedge funds or Richard Branson or glaciology or Alexandria, Egypt, but I do have a little tiny germ of knowledge and could say something semi-intelligent if any of the above ever came up in conversation. Or maybe by reading an article, I'll find out that I really am interested in the subject and seek out more information on it. Who knows?

Jeff, on the other hand, only reads select articles from each of the magazines. As I read (I almost always readthe magazines first), I turn down the corners to indicate articles that I think he might be interested in. Then he just peruses the contents page and my marked pages and picks out what he wants to read and reads only that. I think he's missing out, but considering he doesn't read as much as I do, he'd have huge piles of to-be-read magazines if he didn't. So I guess it works out, but now who am I going to discuss glacioloy with?