Greenmarket

More ways to eat strawberries....freeze them, blend them with milk and agave. I could get a good shot of the "gelato" before we started to snarf it. Look at last years blueberry entry and imagine that it is bright pink.

Frozen berries above.

There is nothing more simple and delicious than the first fresh strawberries and organic handwhipped cream....

It is so exciting at the market. Finally some fruits and veggies!!! There have come and gone some of the real delicacies of spring- ramps and fiddlehead ferns. Now we have asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries!

What a great day

Sunday was like a Saturday, so we went to Central Park. J. and I. joined us and we rented a boat to row around the lake. See here, we are about to go under the Bow Bridge, designed by Calvert Vaux. It is fun to watch New Yorkers trying to get the boats to go in the right direction...
So romantic, our husbands rowing us around.
We had a picnic, topped off with the Paula Deen's 500lb. Banana Pudding...
Then we whipped their butts at bocce.

Disney

I guess you should really start at the bottom of the page and go up.  We arrived on Saturday, rested, ate dinner at the hotel and then went to the Magic Kingdom.  Sunday we went back to the Magic Kingdom (lunch at the Plaza) and rode Space Mountain, the train, stitch's escape, Peter Pan's ride and Big Thunder Mountain.  That evening we ate dinner with Mickey and then took the monorail to the Magic Kingdom to get a boat to our hotel.  We went to Epcot on Monday and rode Mission Space and Soarin'.  Both of which were crazy visual rides.  You are sitting sort of still and a screen is showing you the action.  But somehow it still mimics the sensation of moving; you feel g-forces when the space ride takes off...I got a little motion sick.  We also rode on clam-mobiles in the Nemo ride- really fun!  We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the World Showcase and then stayed to watch the fireworks.

On Tuesday we got up early to go to Animal Kingdom.  I really wanted to take a Safari- they had elephants, giraffes, rhinos, warthogs, and lions.  But the truck didn't stop- so I got very few good pictures.  We also rode the Mt. Everest roller coaster and the Dinosaur ride.  That evening Epcot was open late for resort guests, so we had dinner in Morocco and pastries in France.  We also rode the Test track ride at about 11:45!
On Wednesday, our last day we went to Disney Hollywood studios.  Besides, just being exhausted, this was the hottest and most humid day.  We had a reservation for lunch at the Sci-fi Dine- in Theater.  It is like a drive in movie and you sit in "cars" and watch the big screen.  We rode the most intense rides- Tower of Terror and Rockin' roller coaster and then got the heck out of there. 

Our last night there we had dinner at the Polynesian hotel in the Ohana restaurant.  It had a view of the Magic Kingdom from across the lagoon.  After dinner, there was a huge fireworks display and the soundtrack to the fireworks was piped into the dining room.  We did a last bit of exploring (planning our next trip...) and then went back to pack and collapse.
We had our own wild Animal Kingdom waiting for us....
Really, NYC is a little like Disney World, just dirtier.

More Disney

We spent five days in Florida, so we headed back to the Magic Kingdom on Day 2.  This pic was taken in Liberty Square aka Philly.  

This is our new house- pretty impressive for first time home buyers....
We had dinner with Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald at the Contempary Hotel.
There was a flower show happening at Epcot, so there were amazing topiaries and flower towers everywhere.
Everyone has to take a silly picture like this...

Disney World Trip

Here are our pics from Walt Disney World.  We stayed in the Wilderness Lodge which is created to look and feel like the Pacific Northwest.  It was very charming with a "geyser", a beautiful lobby and a lake.  The service at the entire resort was pretty amazing.  Once we landed, Disney took our bags directly to our hotel and left them in our room.  The whole place has mass transit: the monorail, boats and buses that run regularly to all hotels and theme parks.  Everyone is ridiculously friendly and helpful.  I should have known what was in store when we walked across the red carpet to get on the bus and the guy scanning our tickets was wearing a huge Mickey mouse hand! 

This is D., Mr.'s sis.
These boats took us from our hotel to the Magic Kingdom.  
The first night we were there, the park stayed open until midnight.  We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, It's a small World, Snow white's scary ride, Mickey's Philharmagic, saw the light parade and also the fireworks going off!

Things to Do

School is out.  We are back from vacation.  I have many things that I want to do this summer.

1. Scholarly reading

2. Greenmarket cooking and exercise

3. Crafts and organization

4. Spending time with friends (especially Mr.)

Here is one big thing off our list.  This year's garden.  The object is to plant things that are pretty without a lot of attention and will not attract thieves.  I think that these flowers will fluff out and fill in nicely.  Plus none are that large to be tempting.  We bought a big beautiful bag of dirt for the tree planter and I am hoping it will make everything grow like mad.

Danger

This is my latest craze. I t is a modified Martha recipe, a brown butter toffee blondie. I cannot find toffee bits anywhere in this town, so I have been making them with pecans and butterscotch chips. Groan....so good....so much butter....I try to make them when I know that I can take them out of the apartment for consumption. I planned a little get together tomorrow in the park- but it may rain.School is pretty much out- I have one large paper to write. I just realized that I have been procrastinating quite a bit- yikes. This is the first picnic of the season under the cherry blossoms.
Last year I got a go-ped and mostly it just takes up space in the hallway. But every once in a while we go out with Sparks and scoot around. It is funny and a little dangerous.
I couldn't resist these peach blossom branches at the green market last week, even though they are probably driving our allergies crazy.