How to Beat the Heat: A Photo Essay

It was hawwwwwt in Boston this weekend. 95 degrees-sweating by 8AM-get me near a fan rightnoworI’mgoingtolose it HOT. Mike and I spent the weekend beating the heat, and – despite the constant state of sweating – it ended up being one of our favorite weekends in Boston!

So you wanna #beattheheat? Here’s what you can do…

Step one: ICE CREEAAAAM, duh. Rainbow sprinkles FTW.

Step two: Get near the water, ASAP. We took the ferry out to Spectacle Island and it was perfect! It was pretty deserted and we found a little spot of beach to have a picnic and dip our toes in the water. 

Step three: Recruit someone else to make dinner for you. Why sweat in the kitchen when you can have your own personal chef making you grilled pizzas??! Thanks, Mike and Katy! Step four: Find some more water. Get in it. Try not to get eaten by a snapping turtle.

Step five: Find some shade. Get in touch with your natural side.

Step six: YOGURTLAND. One just opened in Coolidge Corner and OMG. OH.mg. The flavors are out of this worrrrld and? Unlimited free samples. Get on it.

Step seven: Decide that the day your apartment reaches the highest temperature is the day you’re going to clean it out. Assist your roommate (ahem, MIKE) in cleaning out their closet (ahem, FIFTY T-SHIRTS [and one pair of soccer cleats FROM HIGH SCHOOL] LATER) and collect a dumpster-sized mass of garbage and donations. Feel suuper zen after ridding your apartment of all Mike’s the clutter.*

Step eight: Fall into bed after a full and glorious weekend and try to figure out how to sleep in a way that the bed/sheets/blankets/your clothes don’t touch your ridiculous left-shoulder, right-kneecap sunburn. Make a mental note to get better at applying sunscreen.

*This has nothing to do with beating the heat. I just needed the world to know that Mike has been hoarding t-shirts (and millions of various other items, see: this insane glove collection) and my intervention saved him.

Rockport & Gloucester

I’m baaaack! I’m going to try my hand at a more casual approach to blogging – more life updates/photos, fewer recipes, same amount of crazy stories of my adventures. I hope you’ll stick around!

Mike’s parents came to visit this past weekend, and we took a day trip up to Rockport and Gloucester. We hit up Halibut Point State Park, ate lobster rolls by the ocean, and just be-bopped around. It was a beautiful day!

 

NYC!

This past weekend Mike and I headed to NYC to hang with some of our favorite college peeps, and as always, it was a whirlwind weekend of food, friends, and FUN! We spent all day Saturday boppin’ around the city looking for the most delicious eats with my bestie Alix – we went to Doughnut Plant (finally!), Balthazar Bakery (felt JUST like Paris), Rice to Riches (graham cracker rice pudding FTW), and Momofuku Milk Bar (All. Everything.) Fooooood comaaaaa.

On Saturday night we went to a friend’s engagement party then to a Cornell young alumni event at the Bowery Hotel, which meant getting all fancy and catching up with so many people we hadn’t seen since college! On Sunday, we hit up Artichoke for the YUMMIEST pizza – they make a pizza with spinach and artichoke dip baked on top. It is ev-a-ree-thang and more. We took a nice long walk back (and obvi stopped for bagels) to Alix’s apartment before heading to our bus back to Boston. I love wandering around the city and just taking it all in; it’s my favorite way to explore!

More NYC visits, friends! MORE!

Boston in the Golden Hour

There’s a magical hour right before sunset where the world looks extra perfect & beautiful and you have to take 100,000 photos of everything because it might never look that beautiful ever again. After last week’s Cambridge eating tour (400 miles + 400,000 calories)*, Mike and I walked across the Salt ‘n Peppa bridge, down Charles street, and into the Boston Common. We stopped for some hot chocolate to warm up, then ventured out to walk on the frozen swan pond (is that what we call it? Swan Boat Pond? Public Garden Lake? Body of water inside the Public Garden where the swans live?? Do you know what I mean???), feeling like a couple of BAMFs. Then we headed back down Commonwealth Ave to catch the T just as the twinkly tree lights were turning on. MAGIC, I tell ya.

*Only exaggerating by a factor of 100.

{selfie fail}

Cambridge Eating Tour Adventure

Last weekend, Mike I planned to spend some time poking around Cambridge. Naturally, “poking around” translated into “searching for food” and we ended up on an eating tour of sorts. I loved that our adventure took us to so many new places we had never even heard of before, AND since we walked the whole thing (almost 5 miles!) none of the calories counted 😉 Here are some pictures from our adventure, followed by a list of the places we went to!Three words, five syllables: Bel.gian-waff.les-YO.

Who knew there was an entire store dedicated to honey? Who knew I liked honey? Revelation.Couldn’t resist making Mike play model. #hipsterVegetable samosas FTW. These were goooood. Like, I-don’t-even-like-Indian-food-and-I-still-thought-they-were-good goooood.Pistachio + coffee Oreo

Our last stop was at The Friendly Toast but they sat us in THE DARKEST corner of the whole restaurant so I didn’t snap any pics. We ordered this:

and it was everything I could ever hope for and more.

Then, we walked a million more miles back into Boston and I snapped a million more pics, which I’ll share another day, another time. 

Cambridge Eating Tour Adventure

1. Zinnekin’s – Belgian waffles in Harvard Square
2. Follow the Honey – Just outside Harvard Square
3. Dosa Factory – Indian food in Central Square
4. Christina’s Homemade Ice Cream – Inman Square (right next door to Christina’s Spice and Specialty Foods, which has every spice and random baking supply you could imagine!)
5. The Friendly Toast – Kendall Square

We didn’t stop at these places this time around, but here are a couple more of my favorite Cambridge eateries:

• Flour – bakery in Central Square
• Sweet – cupcakes in Harvard Square
• Area Four – bakery/bar/pizza/etc. in Kendall Square
• Bon Me – Vietnamese food in Kendall Square

 

Blizzard Bonanza

NEMO!!! Love ya to pieces.

Disclaimer: I don’t have a car or house to shovel out and wasn’t affected by power outages or transportation delays (perks of being on a school snow day schedule) so to me blizzard = play time. Major playtime.

Mike and I headed out Friday night in the height of the blizzard to hang with my old roomies (perks of having besties two blocks away) and almost became insta-snowpeople. Observe:

On Saturday we (I) made Nemo pancakes because HOW COULDN’T I, then we bundled up and hopped into our cross-country skis to ski around the ‘hood. Cross-country skiing is HARD, yo. I was sweating like a wildebeest and almost-crying but eventually channeled my inner snow bunny and got the hang of it. We dropped our skis off at home and hippity-hopped around town, took 1,000 photos, and came home to eat Kraft mac and cheese and drink hot cocoa. It was wonderful 🙂

I asked Mike if he had any spare gloves I could wear. This is what he presented me with…

The Adventures of M&M: Christmas Tree Hunting

Fa la la la la, la la la CHRISTMAS.

This past weekend Mike and I went Christmas tree hunting with our pals Liz and Dave. We jingled all the way to Grafton, MA to pick out the most perfect Christmas trees at Highfield’s Farm, and throughout the course of the day, no less than four Christmas miracles occurred.

Christmas Miracle Number One: When L&D picked us up in the morning, it was rainy and gray and I was being a Debbie Downer because I believe that you CAN’T chop down a Christmas tree in the rain. This is Christmas Law #2, closely related to my other irrational belief that it’s not Christmas if there isn’t snow on the ground (you know you grew up in upstate NY when…) But somehow, miracle of miracles, as we pulled into the Christmas tree farm it started snowing huge, fat, fluffy, stick-to-the-ground flakes. Walkin’ in a winter wonderlaaaand…!

Christmas Miracle Number Two: Mike and I found a tree we agreed on.

(You should know that growing up, my family got a normal 6 1/2 foot tree and Mike’s family got a monster 11 foot tree. So we settled on [what appeared to be] 8 feet.)

Tiiiiimberrrr!

Christmas Miracle Number Three: Let’s do some math here: one car, two trees, four people, seventy five feet of rope, zero roof rack. How did we expect to get these trees home, you ask??? Brains and brawn, people. Brains and brawn.

While Liz and I scurried away to the farm’s cute little log cabin to get some hot cider, Mike and Dave worked on tying down the trees. When we returned to the car they had successfully tied one tree to the roof. We all high-fived and moved on to the second tree only to realize….our genius men had tied half the doors shut.

At least the tree was secure?

We managed to attach the second tree (using the “wrap the entire car in rope” approach), and headed on our merry way. While driving back through Boston we were so delighted that people were pointing at our car and smiling; we thought we were spreading so much Christmas joy!

And then we pulled into the driveway. And the trees were precariously perched DIAGONALLY across the car.

But we still had both, AND they didn’t fall off while we sped down I-90! Fa la la la la, la la la…miracle.

Christmas Miracle Number Four: After praising Santa and his reindeer for helping our trees miraculously make it home, Mike and I hopped in our elevator with the cute and perfectly-apartment-sized tree.

And then we brought it into our apartment. And it was two feet too tall. And four feet too wide.

(Dear landlord, please don’t check our ceiling for tree sap scratches. And if you do…sooowwwwwyyyy.)

Though buying a saw to chop two feet off of the bottom of the tree inside our apartment can hardly be considered a Christmas miracle, the fact that we managed to rearrange our living room furniture to fit a two-sizes-too-big tree certainly is.

It’s a woooonderful feeling, feel the love [and the tree] in the room from the floor to the ceilin’ 😉