From the Spencer House...

Cookies, Cookies, Cookies...

2010-01-21T10:07:00.004-05:00

One of my most favorite pastimes is baking cookies! I love the endless array of possibilities, the joy in creating something new and delicious, and the fact that very few folks will turn down the opportunity to sample a delectable little cookie. After all, it's just a cookie. It's not a real commitment, not like a piece of cake or pie. So even someone watching what they eat or not big into desserts may find themselves willing to sample a cookie.

Here at the B&B I am always faced with the possibility that an incoming guest may have a nut allergy so I tend to shy away from them in much of my baking. But, my husband Richard is a HUGE fan of peanut butter. So, on occasion you may indeed find one of our tea time choices to be my peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. (clearly labeled for the anti nut crowd)

This is a great little cookie. They stay nice and soft for several days making it a good choice for the cookie jar. If you are like me and want to bake up a nice hot fresh batch today and then maybe again tomorrow keep any unused dough in an airtight container in the refrigerator. The dough should be chilled before baking anyway, so your dough can go right from the frig to the oven and presto a fresh tray of yummies without any mess!

A couple of notes before I give you the recipe:

I swear by Nordic Ware baking products and my Bakers Half Sheet and Bakers Quarter Sheet pans are in constant use. You can probably find Nordic Ware in any good kitchen store but here is there web-site:

http://www.nordicware.com

Also, I highly recommend a silicone sheet for your cookie tray. There is nothing I have found that is easier, cleaner and more reliably non-stick for cookies. Inexpensive and reusable they will save you money and are more eco-friendly than using parchment paper.

I like to make these cookies little, you know...kind of a pop in your mouth treat, so I generally roll them into approximately one inch balls. If you make larger cookies you will need to adjust cooking time. However, do not over bake these cookies. They are a soft cookie and will even look slightly under done when removed from the oven. But don't worry...a few minutes cooling on the tray before you move them to a rack and they will set up perfectly. Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 a stick of BUTTER melted
1/2 a cup of PEANUT BUTTER (smooth or chunky)
1 cup + 2 tablespoons FLOUR
1/2 a teaspoon SALT
1/2 a teaspoon BAKING SODA
1 cup + 2 tablespoons BROWN SUGAR
1 EGG beaten
1 tablespoon of MILK
1 teaspoon of VANILLA
1 to 2 cups of CHOCOLATE CHIPS (depending on your preference)

In a medium bowl combine flour, salt and baking soda. Whisk to incorporate well.

In a large bowl combine melted butter and peanut butter and stir until smooth. Add brown sugar and whisk or beat until well combined. Mix in vanilla and milk. Add beaten egg and mix well.

Add dry ingredients to the peanut butter mixture and stir by hand until well combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Cover and chill dough for at least an hour. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

With a small spoon scoop out small amounts of dough and roll by hand into a small ball. Place on lined cookie sheet and flatten only slightly. Continue until you have 12 cookies on a full size cookie sheet or bakers half sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes. Do not over bake. Remove tray from oven and allow cookies to cool for 2 -3 minutes before moving them to a baking rack to continue cooling. Store in an airtight container.

Food Glorious Food

2009-11-24T09:45:00.005-05:00

Thanksgiving is almost here and I have been preparing menus, recipes and shopping lists for ages! For foodies Thanksgiving is a wonderful time. A time to plan, prepare, cook and eat. It is heavenly.

The dessert buffet we offer our guests is probably the most fun for me. I mean really...how often to you get to make an unlimited menu of desserts? Usually one, maybe for a special occasion two, but not many other times do you get the joy of making as many dessert choices as you could want.

This Thanksgiving our guests will be indulging in their choice of any or all of the following:

Pumpkin Cheesecake
Chocolate Pecan Pie
Caramel Apple Pie
Iced Lemon Cookies
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Cake
Chocolate Pumpkin Cake
Triple Chocolate Cheesecake

With gourmet flavored coffees & teas plus a little hot mulled cider we will be blissfully happy come Thursday evening!

I can't personally decide what the most enjoyable part will be, making these decadent creations, watching others enjoy my work...or eating them!

To all of you who love food as much as we do, knock yourself out this Thanksgiving. We hope that your kitchen will be full and busy, your hearts will be full and happy, and your tummies will just be full.

Happy Thanksgiving

Halloween Pumpkins

2009-10-29T10:41:00.005-04:00

It was pumpkin carving time at the Spencer House last Saturday. Our friends joined us for some good old fashioned messy fun. (Mine is supposed to be my Chihuahua Lilliput)

Apples & Pumpkins & Leaves...Oh My!

2009-09-27T07:50:00.005-04:00

Oh what a beautiful time of year in the North East! As September slowly fades into October and the leaves begin to change, the air is crisp and clear and every road side stand has an abundance of pumpkins and apples...I get excited about the change in my cooking and baking menu. Now don't get me wrong, I love the fresh berries and local fruits and veggies that dominate my summer menu but a change is always fun. And...fall weather has brought such a change!

My head is full of ideas for warm spiced creations of pumpkin and apple, local maple syrup and mulled cider by the fireside! I've pulled out my recipe box, favorite cook books and back issues of Everyday Food compiling ideas and notes and ingredient lists. I've been browsing the spice isles at the market, the road side stands and the local orchards. Next step...

Picking my own apples! I look forward every year to this ritual. One that I used to carry out with my girls when they were younger and now I share with my husband Richard and our dog Lilliput. It is truly the ushering in of the fall season for me and the beginning of my apple phase.

Each year from sometime in September until my apples run out I create apple everything! Apple bread, apple muffins, apple chutney, apple cookies, apple pies, apple coffee cake, apple stuffed french toast...you get the idea. The guests at the inn love the opportunity to spend a few days tasting the results of the homegrown fruit that comes in so very many varieties. But I wonder if Richard gets tired of it after a month or two?

With so many apples in so many colors, textures and tastes there are just endless recipe possibilities. And as any good foodie would, I intend to explore them all. Even if my husband fears he may turn into an apple.

So, now that I've bought oodles of pumpkins to decorate the front porch, started snapping photos of the change in the foliage and dusted off the cookbooks, I'm ready! I have three different orchards in mind, and if I have the time and Richard has the patience I hope to pick apples at all three! I'll let you know how it goes and what I create with all that sweet apple booty.

Meeting New Friends

2009-09-16T09:00:00.017-04:00

One of the things I love most about my job running a B&B is that I am constantly meeting new people. Each week as new folks walk through my door they bring with them new ideas, new stories, and very often times they become new friends.

Such was the case this past week.

Since it was the weekend after the Labor Day holiday anyone with children was wrapped up in the act of sending their little ones back to school, college students were already on their way to being settled into new dorm rooms and teachers were busy back in their classrooms once again. That meant it was relatively quiet here in the Berkshires for the first time in months. But, quiet often can mean more time to spend with individual guests. And that is exactly what happened with Sherrie and Michael.

When they arrived and happened to be the only ones in the house for the night it was great to be able to tell them they had the whole house to themselves. Sadly, they were only here for one night as we were a stop over in a longer travel plan but even so I told them to make the most of their stay. And I really hope that they felt that they did.

They had dinner next door at our restaurant, which the next morning they raved about! Sherrie even said that it came close to her mothers cooking. And they had shared a dessert that they said topped their meal off just perfectly. I am always happy when the morning discussion starts off with the tales of the wonderful dinner from the night before. As a lover of food myself, I always delight in a good conversation regarding just such a topic!

I also think they enjoyed their breakfast as well. They were so pleasant and so charming that we barely stopped chatting long enough for them to eat! As a matter of fact I feared one of their courses might even have gotten cold since I had been so caught up in our storytelling. But if it had they were gracious enough not to mention it!

We talked on and on, Michael, Sherrie & I, even my husband Richard joined in at one point from the kitchen. The subjects ranged from other places they had stayed, both good and bad, to politics and health care reform. (something one would not usually discuss with guests!) It was really so enjoyable that we ran on long past breakfast and even past check out time. Something we would not have been able to do if the house were full.

Finally we moved on from the dining room and went on a tour of the house and all the guest rooms. Again, not something I could have done while we were full. Both Sherrie and Michael were most complimentary of the rooms and the house itself and discussed the possibility of coming back again. We talked about all the great things to do in the area and they really seemed to think they would find their way back to us.

I hope so. They are really lovely people and were so much fun to talk with. I'm sure we have many more stories to swap about food, travel, and more. Even another discussion about haunted places to stay may be on the agenda!

When it was time for them to get back on the road again to finish their travels we said our farewells, hugged good-bye and then I watched from my kitchen window as they drove off. Richard and I talked about how nice they had been and how great it is to have the chance to meet people like them even for such a brief time.

If and when they do come back it will be like welcoming old friends into our home for a visit. I hope they went home feeling the same way.

Hummingbird Voices

2009-09-02T14:38:00.007-04:00

I started to realize just the other day that with the evenings getting cooler and autumn getting closer my hummingbirds may soon be leaving me. I asked my mother if she knew when they started to head for their winter homes and she thought that it was about mid September.

Hmm, that is just a few weeks away and I will be sad to see them leave.

This year I hung our humming bird feeder right off my screened in back porch behind a large Rhododendron shrub and just outside the window over my kitchen sink. Apparently it was a good choice. Not that we've had oodles of hummingbirds mind you, but the ones we have had are full of personality. The shrub has given them a place to perch between drinks and apparently, for one precocious male, it provides a look-out to keep everyone else away from his favorite feeding spot.

Though there seemed for the longest time to be just one pair of hummers frequenting our feeder I have discovered over time a smaller less prominently colored male and began to recognize the difference between two unremarkable colored females. But, at no time did any of my pretty little friends share space at the feeder. Now I've seen photos in "Birds & Blooms" magazine of feeders just loaded with thirsty hummers. But not at mine, apparently my little buddies do not like to share.

Which leads me to my original thought when I sat down to write today...hummingbird voices.

This ruby throated male, the one who watches from his perch in the Rhododendron, he taught me a wonderful lesson this summer. Hummingbirds are noisy little critters. Now up until this summer had you asked me about the noise a hummingbird makes I would have answered quickly about the beating of their tiny little wings as they buzz past your head at goodness knows how many miles per hour while your out in the garden. But, if pressed, I would not for the life of me been able to tell you if hummers talked.

Well, they do!

Maybe I am one of the last to figure this out, or maybe there are many others like me who had never had the chance to listen to them up close. One woman who stayed with us a month or so back was lucky enough to be staying in a guest room whose window is off to the right of the feeder. She was thrilled when she came out to breakfast to tell me about the gorgeous male ruby throat she had watched from her room. I had her come to the kitchen with me and told her to wait quietly for a bit and she might just hear him as well. And, just as I knew he would, he made me proud with his incessant chattering as he scared off his female companion so that he may have the feeder all to himself.

She was as wide eyed as I had been the first time I had heard him. He chatters with this little high pitched, but very audible and very recognizable, voice. And boy oh boy, when he's wound up he wants you to know!

I had hung, on the same arm as the hummingbird feeder, a feeder that holds a piece of fresh fruit. Well, my little male came buzzing round the corner of the house and right up to his favorite little branch in the Rhododendron, took one look at that other feeder and started in on a chattering tirade. It took me a few minutes to figure out what he was so upset over. But, once I did it was easy enough to move the feeder to a branch on the other side of the shrub away from his private feeding spot. That did the trick. He returned to eat just as soon as I went back into the porch.

He chitters and chatters at the female if she's there before him until she leaves. And he even yells at the chickadees and goldfinches if they get too close for his liking. To the best of my knowledge it is just the male that I have heard. I've never been able to tell if she yells back. Though I am sure that she too must have a voice my little male friend is so loud and so insistent I have never been able to hear her.

So, I will miss my hummingbirds more this year than ever before. I've grown accustomed to, even fond of, the daily chatter of my pushy little guy trying to keep his feeding station private and to watching him sit on his little branch cleaning himself and itching his head with a foot so tiny I can barely see it. I hope that next year I will have such colorfully (both literally and figuratively) and noisy little visitors.