Marblehead, Boston

During the big Boston family trip, mom and I did a drive around sight seeing, we went out to Nahant Point, where my mom found her retirement home.  (it was nice…I hope she has a rich relative)

Onto Marblehead, mainly because I know it's a sailing town also.  Very pretty, quintessential New England.

Nahant Point

Low tide in Nahant. Big tides up here!

High tide.  Low tide there would be beach for about 50 feet past the outermost rock.

Boston skyline from Nahant.

View of Marblehead.

Marblehead (Neck) Lighthouse.
Built in 1896, automated in 1960.
Still working today.

A Midwesterners Guide to Bostonese

They put these road signs up recently. Hilarious.

Just got back from spending 10 days visiting family in Boston and the surrounding area.

It cracks me up that Bostonians always seem confused on why the rest of the nation picks on them for their accent.  True, they are not the only ones with an accent, but I think it's the entire invented dialect that goes with it.

So, here's your guide to translation if you ever go up there.  This should get you started.

Pronunciation
Anything that ends with -er will be pronounced -ah.  As in above: blinker = blinkah, lobster = lobstah, and so on.

Most anything containing an 'r', also replaced with an -ah sound.  Except at the beginning of a word.

If it it ends with an -a,  then you add an -er.  Seriously.  My friend growing up always wanted to know why my mom called her Amander.

Vocabulary
Wicked Awesome.  Yes, it's real and not something you just hear on SNL.  Reserved for the highest echelon of cool.

Dunkies.  Boston is the mother ship of Dunkin Donuts, started in Quincy, MA.  Locals affectionally call it Dunkies.  There is literally on every corner.  More prolific than Starbucks (of which you hardly see any)  I tried to get a picture of my mom pointing at the Dunkies we were at and the one across the street.  Didn't work out.  But both were busy.  Go figure.

Yah sah/nah sah.  Used in various configurations.  Often times when we would use the phrase, you know?  or right?

Soda/Tonic/Cola.  The word pop is not used.  You might wind up with a frozen treat out of the freezer.
All of above are used if asking for a Coca Cola or similar beverage. Two small restaurants we went to made soda by using the bar gun to put carbonated water into a glass and then adding the flavoring.  Think Sodastream.  (or if you are on Honey Ryder…Jesus Juice)

Frappe.  Not used as much anymore, but that would be a milkshake.

Getting directions
Don't even try.  Use your GPS or get one.  Holy cow.  You don't make a turn, you veer right or left.
Street signs and lines on the streets are optional.  If you take a regular path, start paying attention to landmarks such as businesses, that is your only hope.

Food
Eat the chowdah!
I used to think there was something seriously wrong with my mom because she always ordered fried seafood.  Nope, that's how it's done where she's from.
Fried clams--these are clams that have the bellies on them.  I'm not a fan.
Clam strips--these are just the 'necks' of the clams.  A bit more tolerable, and used in chowdah.
Find a deli or 'steak' shop and get yourself a good east coast sandwich or cheesesteak.  Yum.  Order a cheese steak monster style and you get pepperoni/onions/green peppers/mushrooms chopped up with the meat.

Morelamania

Over the past few weeks, my great white hunter 'caught' about 3 dozen morel mushrooms or more.  For those not in the know..morels are seasonal, usually only about 1-2 weeks in the spring.  People guard their 'hunting' spots with their lives.

The taste of morels is divine.  However, most midwesterners think that the best way to eat these delectable morsels is to douse them in flour and fry them up.

No.  NoNONONONONO.  You don't take something that shows up once a year for two weeks and turn it into a chicken mcnugget.  (sorry, mcdonald's don't sue me)

Morel cream sauce (with madeira and shallots) is divine, pour it over some pan seared chicken and bake…oh, my. Heaven.

We tried grilling the morels.  Basically, we decided you are just steaming them because the suggestion was wrap them in foil.  However, with a little parmesan on top.  YUM.  Add a perfectly gilled filet and some roasted baby jewel potatoes.  Voila!

my plate needs a bit of culinary color, methinks

Next morning, after seeing a recipe in the paper.  Toasted sour dough with goat cheese, roasted asparagus, sautéed morels and poached egg.  

Last night,  pasta with morel/shallot/pea buerre blanc.  Tim tried to crisp up some Canadian bacon to add to it, but not recommended.  Not fatty enough, it just turns into jerky.  But if we had some pancetta on hand……

At our last batch for breakfast tomorrow.  What to do, what to do….

St. Michaels, MD

Since the boat show is pretty small, we didn't need to spend more than one day there.  So after some asking and researching we moved our little party over to St. Michaels and spent the night there.

WineFest was going on, so not having to come back over to Annapolis was a good thing.

My phone was going dead so not a lot of pictures.  I wish I had taken one of the Spouse's face when we got our first tasting.  They had governors on the wine bottles and barely a sip came out into our glasses.  By sip, I mean less than 1/2 ounce. Fortunately, not everybody was using governors and you tell the more popular tents were those who actually poured a tasting size.

St. Michaels was a beautiful little town.  Had a great time there.  

Beautiful Church…very old.

Tim doesn't know what it is, but he wants one.

The view from our hotel room.

Sundowners with our purchases from wine fest.

Later on, we went to a happening little dive joint.
That is my glass of wine by Tim's beer.
No, I didn't photoshop it.  It was that big of glass and she
poured it that full. Now we're talking!

Weekend Trip to Maryland

We got tired of the extended winter in our area, so we took our stir crazy selves to the Spring Annapolis Boat show.  A good show for brokerage boats.  We saw some possibilities, but we are not ready to pull the trigger yet.

We stayed at the Marriott again because we like to throw our money away with joy.  They are currently remodeling and part of the remodeling is renaming all the floors.  So, you can imagine that made my little engineer boy's head pop right off.  After a couple of drinks we thought it would be hilarious to start taking the temporary signs off and moving them around, but..alas, we didn't.  But you can see by the pics below it would have been really easy to do.

Our room number before….

….and after.