Summer Recap

It's official, summer has ended for me. I just moved back to school Wednesday, and though I love being back and seeing all of my friends again, I already miss my doodles and waking up to drink coffee with Momason in the mornings. 

Since I have some down-time today, I thought I'd go ahead and post a general summer overview. I may go back and talk about certain things in more detail later on, but for now here's a glimpse.

I started babysitting this little dumpling named Will. He's 6 months, and super smiley and happy. It was fun to hang out with Will and watch him bounce and wrinkle his face up when the applesauce was still a bit cold from the fridge!

My parents and I also went to Paris for a long weekend! It was kind of spur of the moment, and I'm very glad we had the opportunity to visit. We stayed on Rue St. Michelle in the 5th Arrondissement. 

 This was along the bridge from Ile de la Cite (island with Notre Dame) to Ile Saint-Louis. Ile Saint-Louis is a small island in the Siene with a more neighborhood, local feel. We ate lunch here once and dinner as well. Lunch was at a creperie, the dinner at a little bistro. The island also has great ice cream shops (pics above)! Walking around the island was one of my favorite afternoons in Paris. 

Dinner on Ile St. Michelle 

Just a cute bistro along our walk. 

We found a local shopping street, and stopped into a pottery, fabric store. One of my traditions when traveling is to buy a small dish or pot from every city. I found a cute little brown and green pot for my collection here. 

This is at the table of the best dinner we ate during our trip.

 It was a family owned restaurant with a chalkboard menu and the nicest waiters. 

On the left: mushroom ravioli in a foie gras sauce. yes, you read that right. Foie gras sauce. It was the favorite of the night, despite being only an appetizer!

On the right: warmed camembert with honey and wheat bread. Simple, yet delicious. I want to do this at home sometime, or maybe college... we'll see. 

This was an entree: snapper with wilted spinach and a tomato, white wine sauce. 

The left: seared duck breast with caramelized apples and a savory grape sauce

The right: veal shank with sweet potato puree and au jus gravy

 Dessert: a chocolate poached pear with vanilla ice-cream. 

Remember the pre-dinner picture? Well, this is the post-dinner picture.... 

It started raining on the way back to the hotel. We had no other option but to make a run for it and face the downpour. 

We went in a chocolate shop too! They had large mounds of meringue for sale, macarons, baked goods, and of course chocolate. We got a small bag of assorted chocolates we scooped ourselves. The picture below shows the mussel shaped chocolates.. they look a little weird, but they were one of my favorites!

View of the Notre Dame 

The car picture was taken outside of a cute "concept store" called Merci. It was a bit of a walk to get there from the 5th arrondissement, but was a very cool shop to go through. 

On the right shows my purchase from Shakespeare and Company, a quirky bookstore filled with floor to ceiling books with tons of character.

 

We had to take a pit stop at a pharmacy for bandaids.... I made the mistake of wearing new shoes the night before, and the next day my toes were not happy.

Of course, we made the obligatory trip to Laduree. I love macarons, and have even baked them at home many times, but I always stick to more tame flavors such as vanilla or lemon. The flavors we bought from Laduree were excellent. We had rose, lavender, salted caramel, hazelnut, pistachio, passionfruit, earl grey, etc. My favorites were passionfruit and pistachio. 

 

Just Momason at a Creperie.

We bought this drink from Monoprix, basically a target of sorts in Paris. There are a ton of the stores in the city, this one had a small deli/market on the ground floor, an upstairs clothing, makeup and toiletries section. The bottom floor (basically the basement) was a grocery store. 

This drink was delicious! Not overly sweet or tart, it had a bit of pulp to it and was refreshing. They had several flavors, the picture shows the citrus one. Momason and I have tried to find it back in America to no avail. 

Besides Paris, I hung out with my doodles Charlie and Lola! Lola is the apricot (orange) doodle, and Charlie is the white/gray dog.  

 

I had to include Mr. Bubbles in this post. He was a big portion of my summer. He has become very loving in old age, and is always around when anyone is on the computer. He enjoys sitting on or beside the keyboard to soak up the heat.   

I also took some trips to the farmers market. Momason and I bought boxes of canning tomatoes and made marinara sauce and also roasted some tomatoes for other sauces. 

We had some leftover, good looking tomatoes we needed to use, so we pulled out our Chef and the Farmer cookbook: Deep Run Roots, and made a tomato pie.  Let me tell you, this was delicious. I think the major difference came from incorporating both roasted and fresh tomatoes, along with caramelized onions for extra pizazz. The crust was simple, and yet it was the best crust I have eaten to date.  Definitely a keeper!

The topping was a mixture of mayo, parmesan, and fontina.  

I also went to the beach on many weekends. With my family, and with my friends once too. 

This is Brittany and Brandon, who couldn't hang with the rest of the family after driving to the beach early in the morning. 

At the beach, my family loves to play games. Our newest favorite is Blokus. It looks kind of like tetris, but involves more strategy and planning than you'd originally believe. 

The view from our dock :) 

Me, Brooke, and Momason headed to dinner on the golf cart. 

I had three friends from college come to the beach with me in late July. One of them had studied abroad in Spain during spring semester, so it was fun to have everyone back together finally. 

So Blokus is our new fave, but Phase 10 will always be our go-to game. 

Sometimes the games last for hours. During this one, Bubbles tried to tell us we had played enough and it was time for bed. 

 Momason and I have been working on redoing my room at home. It's a work in progress, but we made headway with the bedding and wall decor. 

Charlie and Lola were very unhappy when I started packing. Neither one of them would let me pack my shorts!

 That's it for my summer recap. All in all, I had a full summer, but I still feel it went by too fast. Now I'm back at school, getting ready to start my junior year. Where has the time gone? I'm a couple years away from adult-life, but I am sooo not ready for that. I'll just have to make the most of the time I have left :) 

Until next time, 

Barrett