Italian Hot Chocolate and More

Last week, Colette and I made an excursion to Hanover, NH.  A quest, if you will.  We had heard that our favorite gelato shop, Morano Gelato, also served Italian hot chocolate during the winter months.  Say no more.  We felt compelled to try it.

Step #1, study the menu.  Here, we discovered that you can get the Italian hot chocolate plain, or with a scoop of gelato in it.

Decisions, decisions.  They always have a tantalizing, drool-worthy display of flavors. Wickedly, they post their flavors (made fresh daily) on Facebook and tempt me from afar. (Some summer day, I’m simply going to have to make an impromptu visit when pear gelato shows up on the menu for the day!)

In the end, I opted for a small Italian hot chocolate served without gelato.  And Colette opted for the full chocolate experience by ordering it served with a scoop of dark chocolate gelato.  I think next time, I will get a scoop of this Forest Berries flavor in my hot chocolate.

The amazing elixir comes from this golden vessel, where paddles keep it continuously mixed.  Be still my heart!

Oh goodness!  And, yes, it really does need to be eaten with a spoon.

Suitably enlivened by cups of chocolate and sugar, we stepped out into the brisk winter air and spent some time walking up and down Main Street.  I love the beautiful, colonial architecture of the buildings.

As Colette says, “Llamas were spotted in Hanover” that day.

The beautiful campus of Dartmouth University.

Colette did a bit of shopping in the lovely J.Crew store.

Before we left, we stopped in at the Dirt Cowboy Cafe.  It’s a cruel thing to put the chocolates display just inside the door.

It’s a cozy and bustling place populated mostly by Dartmouth students seeking caffeine.  And they’ve come to the right place, as there is an entire wall of exotic coffee beans sold by the pound.

An almond croissant and a chocolate croissant came home with us to share with the guys after dinner that night.  Delicious!

Baby Shower for the Tiny Girl

Felicity is due in just eight days!  We can hardly wait for the arrival of the Tiny Girl!  Today, Colette and I hosted a baby shower for her.  Snow was softly falling throughout the party.  About twenty friends came for the baby shower brunch.  The party had a Valentine’s Day theme.

- The Menu -

Mini Pancakes with Orange-Vanilla Marscapone and Homemade Raspberry Syrup

Mini Strawberry Yogurt Parfaits with Homemade Apple Granola

A Trio of Quiches

Chocolate Dipped Giant Strawberries

Chocolate Macarons

Maple-Dijon Chicken Salad in Phyllo Cups

Valentine M&M’s

Orange Juice

Orange and Raspberry Infused Water

Coffee

Tea

Colette came up with the menu based around the concept of “little foods”.  She made the pancakes, which were beautiful, as well as delicious!

People, big and small, were eager to eat.

There was lots of visiting and laughter and games.

And then it was present time!

Our gift for the Tiny Girl was a christening gown!  We all attend church together at a reformed church that practices, as has most of Christendom throughout the centuries, infant baptism.  Hopefully, this will become an heirloom used by any other girls the Lord blesses them with, and then be passed down through the generations.

Order and Chaos

Felicity came over with the kids this morning, and they stayed for the day.  Theo and I played with the train set.  First, we moved the train all around the track, making appropriate, “I think I can!  I think I can!” narration.   Then we lengthened the train until it was as long as it could get.  Then it was time to focus on the details.  He started with the trees.

Then he turned his attention to the “people”.  It started out sort of randomly, but when it was finished, the yellows were all in a row, the blues in their own row, and the reds in a perfect line.

And then with just as much joy as he ordered everything, he came through and knocked it all down.  Order and chaos.  It’s the way of things when playing with a 2-year old.

Snow Play

One night a week Walter, Felicity, and the kids come for dinner.  Sometimes, Felicity comes earlier in the day, so we have more time together.  Last week, she came early and brought the kids’ snow clothes for some fun in the snow.  One of the great blessings of living in New Hampshire is being able to walk no farther than our own backyard to have an afternoon of fun in the snow!  We brought out our toddler, pull-along sled for the first time.  I found a small strap of sleigh bells, which Technohubby affixed to the back of the sled, making for a nice, merry jingling as we pulled them along!

Making a snow angel is challenging when you have help…of the golden retriever kind.

The faster we pulled her, the bigger her smile!  I think this one’s going to be a bit of a daredevil.

Guacatillo Sauce

When I was in California last fall, and after spending a few hours shopping in the L.A. Fabric District, I was quite hungry.  So, I plucked up my courage, and for the first time in my life I ate food from a street vendor.  They have small, push carts, parked along the sides of the streets, and cook your food right there.  It always smell so delicious, but I’ve never been brave enough, or at least hungry enough to try.  I ordered a chicken quesadilla, and it was served with sauteed onions, salsa, and guacatillo sauce.  I’d never had guacatillo sauce before, and I was pleasantly surprised at its fresh deliciousness!

So, I went online and found a recipe here. Assembled my ingredients and made a batch. 

If you make this recipe, I would add that you need to let the flavors meld for a bit, preferably overnight.  It tasted nearly exactly like the batch I had in California, and I will definitely make it again.  Everyone loved it!

Touring the MFA

After Max and I toured the Old South Meetinghouse, we worked our way over to the Museum of Fine Arts, one of my favorite places in Boston!

Everything in the MFA is beautiful…even the lobby.

Max, at the base of the grand staircase.

And if you go up that staircase and look up into the rotunda, this is the gorgeous view.

I said to him, “Ohh…go stand by the large green thing!  It will make you look short!”  At nearly 6’6″, there’s not much that does that!

We spent nearly our entire visit touring the American Wing, focusing on the early American art, which includes: paintings, furniture, re-created rooms, textiles, architecture, sculpture, and more.  Here’s a glimpse at what we saw there.

The sign explaining these antlers (donated from an historic home in Portsmouth, NH) said that the colonists adopted the European custom of displaying antlers in their homes, and that it was meant to symbolize man’s dependence on, and dominion over, the natural world.

This is a sculpture that is displayed against a wall of glass, and the view outside is of an apartment building.  I loved the juxtaposition of the classic and the modern.

This antique door has panes of bulls eye glass.  I recently learned that glass at the time was blown into large flat discs, and then it was cut into individual panes.  That’s why so many old windows have wavy glass.  But these windows are made from the very center of the blown glass, hence their circular feature.

On the hunt for a bakery treat for the ride home, we made a quick pass through the Modern Art Wing.

Before we left, I visited a special exhibit on the history of the color pink in fashion.  More on that in another posting.