May 17th, 2021

I had such a very nice weekend!

I started with being gifted some beautiful blueberries by my neighbor Joanie.    Wow!  That's a lovely present. Thank you!    As soon as I got home, I hauled out my trusty family recipes book and took a little wander through.  What to make, what to make?  The answer, as it turns out,  was blueberry cake.  

It's an old family recipe.  And for a change, not one of Nana's. This one was from my Aunt Lydia.  Another wonderful old Mainer.   The only issue I ever had with this cake is that it's hard to get out of the pan.  No matter how much I grease and flour, those darned (yummmy) blueberries make the cake want to cling instead of coming out of the pan smoothly.  I got the Brainiac idea this time around to use a springform pan instead of a regular one.  Genius!   Anyway, the cake came out terrific!  Tastes like Maine ;)

I have these wonderful childhood memories of picking blueberries with my sister in  this marvelous wild patch of berries on the other side of the cemetery.  We would bring them back to Nana's house (or Aunt Lydia's - she lived next door) and later enjoy the rewards of our labour with blueberry cake hot out of the oven. The only thing better than a great recipe is a great recipe that holds a great memory too.

Also ended up getting some new shoes this weekend.  Oooooo fancy!  New Shoes!   As you all know and are, I'm sure tired of hearing about, I walk a lot.   Since I had only one pair of sneakers and I use those for Photo Safari day, between the hard hiking and the immediate and very necessary washing of the sneakers after hiking,  they were getting used up fast.  So I was trying to help my sneakers last longer by only wearing them for Photo Safari day.  The rest of the time I was walking in either sandals or Vans-type shoes.  They weren't real Vans, but Van knock-offs y'know what I mean? And as it turns out, while those type shoes are fine for normal daily wear - hanging around the house, going to the grocery store....not so good for the feet when you are walking miles.   And I do, walk miles I mean.

On an average day, I end up walking somewhere between 4 and 5 miles.  Mostly on tile, concrete or asphalt (I'm speaking of non hiking days). Anyway my feet were beginning to object to that many miles done wearing such poor quality  shoes .  So it seems that what I really needed was a good pair of walking shoes. So we headed to Peltz!  It is a semi-local (in the same county we live in) shoe store with a wide variety of shoes.  Tim strongly suggested that, for a change, I don't choose a pair of shoes based on the lowest price I can find, but instead a shoe with good support that is well made instead.  What a concept!   And for a change, I listened to him.    I ended up with Skechers.  Never wore that brand before.  Turns out I like them very much!  I tried roughly a zillion different kinds of shoes, ended up trying to decide between two so Tim just bought them both for me :):) :)  He's that kind of guy :)

My existing sneakers which are already pretty beat up will remain my official Hiking Sneakers. But now I have the grey sneakers for walking around town and those funky white (and pink!) bootie looking sneakers for anything else.  Both are machine washable!  Yay!  I am happy happy!

And we did manage to get our butts over to the beach to admire the sunset over the weekend too.  We walked over early enough to get some non-sunset shots and then stayed to watch the show.  Always a pleasure.

​So that's how I spent my weekend.  How about you?