Busy Month Here in Maine!

Hey everyone!

First I want to make an announcement: THERE IS A NEW MEMBER OF THE SQUISHABLE FAMILY! He is a regular-sized Squishable, unlike my three other mascots who are miniature-sized. He is a Palila bird which is a bird native and only lives on the big island in Hawaii. I thought about what to name him for a long time. I wanted to give him a name that would make sense in English but could be easily translated to Hawaiian. I finally thought of Hibiscus, as the yellow hibiscus is the state flower of Hawaii. "Yellow hibiscus" translates to "pua aloala" (PU-ah ah-LOHah-loh), and Aloalo is the perfect name for him I think. Thus, we have a new friendly Squishable who will be joining us from time to time. Welcome Aloalo!

Next I wanted to tell everyone how sorry I am for not posting sooner. Things have been a little hectic but are starting to fall back into place. I am not sure how long I will be in Maine for, it could be anywhere from three weeks to the beginning or January (more on January later in this post). I have posted pictures on some things I've been doing below. We've had some glorious sunsets, my fiance and I have been doing various activities such as apple and grape picking, we've both been working pretty hard, and I've finally been decompressing from being in Munich. Some cool things worth mentioning:

Podcasts - Awesome to work by. I may be a huge loser, but I love learning. Podcasts are a great way to find something that interests you that you can expand your horizons in. For example, I love cooking. I searched for "cooking" in the search box, found the America's Test Kitchen Radio show, downloaded all the shows for free, and only have one and a part of one left to listen to. It's awesome (and free)!

Speaking of cooking, we (my fiance and I) have finally been doing some home cooking. I cooked a roast chicken with veggies served with wild rice that had been cooked with vegetable broth (yum) for my birthday (with homemade halva for dessert!) but a recipe that I will share with you below is actually one of my mother's favorite dishes and it turns out I love it too! No picture is included with this one, I hadn't thought to take a picture and if I took one now it wouldn't look as good... been sitting in the refrigerator for some time...

Holly's Homemade Baked Ziti!

Ingredients:

2 pounds of dry ziti or penne pasta (gluten free works)

3 large jars of pasta sauce (about 20 ounces per jar or so depending on how much sauce you like)

1 medium onion, chopped

2 smashed cloves of garlic

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 fresh large mozzarella balls, cut into about 8-10 round slices per ball

1 tablespoon of butter or olive oil

1 cup chopped mushrooms (optional)

Directions:

1) Melt the butter (or heat olive oil) in a large skillet over medium heat. During this time also bring a large pot of slightly salted water to a boil.

2) When the butter has melted or when the oil is hot, place onions in the pan and saute until soft. When the salted water comes to a boil, pour the pasta in and cook until al dente.

3) When the onions are soft, place the mushrooms and garlic in the skillet. saute until mushrooms are soft then remove from pan. (If not using mushrooms, cook garlic with the onions and then cook onions until slightly brown.)

4) Heat the pasta sauce and Parmesan in the skillet until hot and slightly bubbly, then set aside.

5) When pasta is done, drain, then set aside.

6) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a large baking or casserole dish, layer about a third of the pasta sauce on the bottom. add about half of the cooked pasta. Top with half of the onion/mushroom mixture, then with another third of the pasta sauce and evenly distribute 8 of the mozzarella slices on top of that. For the final layers, add the rest of the pasta, the onions/mushrooms, the last of the pasta sauce, and then the final mozzarella slices.

7) Place in the oven for 30 minutes or until mozzarella is melty and slightly browned.

Thanks to Allrecipes for the baking time and temp.

And speaking of food even more, apple and grape picking was amazing! We got to go to a real orchard and pick organic Jonagold apples. When we first got there, we arrived at the store portion of the orchard. My finace had a caramel apple which he adored and I got a gallon of apple cider. We were directed to the area where we could pick apples, and when we got there and got our half-bushel bag and were surprised to find out that we could also pick grapes! We got an additional bag for that and spent a while walking through the trees and eventually the vineyard. I have never had a fresh picked apple and let me tell you: there is no comparison. None whatsoever. I thought I had taken a bite of heaven. It was so good I didn't even think it could be an apple. The grapes are to die for as well. We had a really amazing time. (Want to find an orchard to go picking near you? Check out Orange Pippin!)

Both of us have also been going around Maine doing some other things as well, going to Whole Foods, visiting local organic/all-natural grocery stores, going to fair-trade places, vising the Maine Mall... but we do expand our horizons from time to time. We have talked about going mineral hunting which I think is a great idea and we still may do that. The Fryeburg Fair, which is a huge deal around here, is happening on the 30th of this month and I have wanted to go ever since the end of my first summer here. I'm so excited! And the best idea I've had in a while which we will be doing on Saturday: indoor rock climbing! We found a great place just north of here and we're going to have a blast! We've invited some friends who may go with us but either way we will have a great time. (Want to find an indoor climbing facility near you? Check out IndoorClimbing.com!)

The weather has been cooling down quite a lot so working outside (which we all pretty much have to do) is not so much fun anymore. But we do get some amazing sunsets and have fun watching various animals. We saw a garden snake slithering along the parking lot the other day and not so long before that we had seen a beaver in front of the cabin! It's really neat to be in a place with such cool animals.

Now on to the pictures!

This is the beginning of a sunset we saw while we were on a hill near where we are staying.

Monarch butterfly... my grandma grows them and I wish I could do that again with her.

The apple orchard! I loved this entire trip.

A section of the vineyard. I thought this was a beautiful picture to take. (My favorite grapes are the ones that are fat and round and dark purple with kind of slimy insides... tart and sweet! Yum!)

I thought this picture was hilarious. Let me describe this to you: this is an apple I found on the ground near the vineyard. There is an obvious tear where it is rotting out of the side of it. Now, this hornet you see is not stupid. It does not want the rotting flesh. It wants to make its own hole and dig inside this delicious apple and get as much of the fresh juice as possible. So this little guy was tail-deep in this apple just enjoying the fruit to the fullest. So funny!

This is our final harvest. It was just under $40 for a rather large half-bushel of organic apples and about a half peck of grapes. I think it was worth it. (By the way? Boggle? Not ours. It was left in the van we were using. Never really liked Boggle. I'm a Scrabble girl all the way.)

This was the sunset over the lake tonight. Definitely one of the prettiest I've seen... and I've been here for four summers!

So... the million dollar question everyone's been asking me: what am I going to do next? Well as of today the ball has been set in motion for my next adventure... working on an organic farm in Costa Rica! I sent out four mini messages today to see if any of those four farms would be willing to take me from January until May. I now can afford it officially plus on my birthday I realized I'm not going to ever get younger years back again, so I'm going to go for it. I'm very excited about it and my fiance has backed me 100%. (Japan is still on my list for 2014!) If you'd like to check out the WWOOF Costa Rica website to learn more, just click on the link!

And by the way... my best friend Justin said that he may have purchased me another Squishable... so I may have a Squishable Quintet soon! We'll have to see!

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll write again sometime after we go rock climbing! I'm so excited!