Tag: Boston

Meet the Hellebores, Winter Blooming Perennials

We were noticing more and more of these blooms in Back Bay gardens. A friend with plant expertise told us they are Hellebores and are also called Lenten Roses and Christmas Roses because they bloom in winter.

We are grateful for any plant that brings the thought of spring our way in the darker months. So think about adding a few of these as you plan additions to your garden. This year, they've had lots of company with some pansy, crocus, and snowdrops springing up early. But, in colder years these will bring smiles to the faces of winter weary neighbors.

But, since we were just formally introduced to the Hellebores, we'll let them star alone today as our photograhy models. Above is a carpet of them that we found on February 5th.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

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March 26, 2012
Mr. Beagle Taking His Friend for a Walk

We were waiting to go for a stroll with our Greyhound friend Greer when we spotted this busy Beagle boy taking a favorite toy for a walk.

He didn't have time to stop and chat, so we didn't even get his name. As you can see, he was really busy showing this cuddly critter a bit of the outside world. His walker told us she didn't know which toy it was– he had grabbed it on the way out the door.

Have fun, Mr Beagle. Hope your little pal made it all the way back to the toy box.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.

March 25, 2012
Tranquil Cloister

On a quiet morning,

Sun streaming through the arches,

Turquoise tiles shimmering in the light,

Marsh Chapel's cloister was tranquil.

Sunday coffee with friends

And, one very good dog.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.

March 24, 2012
Emerald Necklace Conservancy, Our Friday Link

Living in Boston, you think you know all about the Emerald Necklace, the glorious string of parks created by Frederick Law Olmsted between 1878 and 1896. But, how many of these parks have you explored? This spring, we suggest you pick a section of the necklace that you haven't visited and spend some time there.

The Emerald Necklace Conservancy site has a wealth of information about the parks. Explore their site and then get out and see the parks in person.

Slowly, even these treasured places are being destroyed by special interest groups who insist on having passive areas and natural open spaces chopped up to create dedicated spaces for one type of park user.

Enjoy them while you can before every inch is filled with playgrounds, ball fields, tennis courts, statues, memorials, and special gardens. Olmsted knew the value of passive places and time spent with nature. It's sad that many who admire his work today don't understand that concept.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.

March 23, 2012
Easter Sunday Dining Reservations 2012

Those in the know already have reservations for Easter brunch and dinner. This is one of the big days for dining out, and popular restaurants will fill their tables for Sunday April 8, 2012, quickly.

First up, the list of places that organize information about Easter reservations and special offerings.

Open Table seems to have the most complete information, and you can click right through to make reservations. They also give you some idea of prices and special menus. And, you'll find a few places that are offering their regular menus as well.

Boston Chef's offers a place to look at the offerings from their member chefs and restaurants.

Gayot lists favorite brunches at places like Henrietta's Table in Cambridge.

Next a few places we picked from these lists

To meet up with family who don't want to come into the city, consider AKA Bistro in Lincoln. We're happy to see that they're offering their regular brunch menu in addition to some Easter specials. The nearby deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is the perfect place to walk off your brunch and take Easter photos.

Turner Fisheries Restaurant & Bar says, "For a Bountiful New England Seafood Buffet–visit us on Easter Sunday from 10am-3pm. We'll feature the freshest seafood and traditional Easter Sunday favorites." If you have a seafood lover in your family or typical Easter brunch is not your favorite meal, this could be an alternative.

Craigie on Main in Cambridge has a special prix fixe, three-course brunch but it was nice to discover that Chef Tony Maws is also offering some Passover favorites on April 6-7.

Don't be surprised if some places require a credit card to secure the reservation. This is the type of holiday when people may book multiple restaurants and decide where to go at the last moment. That can cause the restaurant to turn away other potential customers.

One thing we would look for, if we were dining out on a holiday, is a place that is offering its regular menu for the day. That's always a plus for us. We're not fans of special menus.

If you know of places where the regular menu will be served, let us know. If it's a place we can recommend, we'll add it to our list.

Opting Out of Easter

If this holiday stuff is really not part of your life, this is a great day to go ethnic. Chinatown will be wide open and filled with great menu options. Your neighborhood Indian, Korean, Chinese, or Persian restaurant will be happy to feed you. And, most BBQ and Pizza places do not have Easter menus.

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Don't miss an Easter photo opportunity. This Canon G12 digital camera kit will give you what you need to take stills and video of your Easter celebration. Canon's G series is our all-time favorite for everyday cameras. We own the G10 and G11. They're a little bigger than the compacts most people use, but let you shoot with automatic settings or easy-to-use manual controls that please the many pros who use them as second cameras. And, if you are ready to turn pro, follow our lead. We just added the Nikon D7000 Digital SLR to our camera fleet and are extremely happy with the performance it has delivered.

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Writers: Penny & Ed Cherubino

Photos: from iStockphoto.com

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those comments add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads out of comments.

March 21, 2012
It’s Spring, Mother Nature Says So…

The trees agree that it's Spring. If you love the Commonwealth Avenue Magnolias and come view them around Patriots Day each year, move that date up to this weekend.

This cherry tree was in full bloom outside the Prudential Center yesterday.

And, on Sunday, BU students made a beeline for the "BU beach" as they returned from Spring break.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.

March 20, 2012
Catching Up with a Favorite Sunday Dog, Riley!

It’s no secret (at least not anymore) that one of our favorite Sunday Dogs is a sweetheart named Riley. We hadn’t seen her in quite a while until a chance meeting the other day gave us all some much needed time to do a bit of catching up.

Riley was so happy to see us, that she was willing to give up a tasty stick to say hello. We were honored.

^{Are you going to show them my baby pictures?}

I’ll never forget the first time we saw this gorgeous Golden. She was quite little and hard at play with a Doberman puppy friend named Lola. They were both trying to dig their way to China– and probably would have made it, if we hadn’t distracted them.

At 2 ½, Riley has grown into a beautiful and loving companion with an incredibly gentle soul. Her person told us how she’d lucked out with Riley. But, we think they lucked out with each other.

See Lola & Riley Digging Their Way to China

Lola & Riley – The Sequel

Get to know all of our Sunday Dogs at Boston Dogs.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.

March 18, 2012
Saint Patrick’s Day All Year Round, Adams Village Dorchester
Anytime you feel like wearin' the green or enjoying a taste of Ireland, you can visit Adams Village in Dorchester. Since we prefer our celebrations to be low key and without the crowds, we went last weekend.

Our visit began with an Irish Farmer's Breakfast at Sonny's Pub & Restaurant. Unlike many Irish pubs where Irish breakfast is a weekend brunch special, Sonny's serves it all day, everyday.

Two eggs (the way you want them), 2 slices of brown bread, beans, potatoes, grilled tomato, black pudding, white pudding, sausages, rashers, and a slice of orange overflowed the large plate. Ed proved himself to be a hearty trencherman. He finished his plate, and then went after Penny's leftover brown bread and potatoes.

Sonny's looked like the neighborhood pubs and bars Penny remembers from a childhood with Irish relatives…

…right down to the separate entrances for the bar and dining room and lots of "everybody knows your name" welcomes as regulars moved in and out of the place.

As we reported on Thursday, we stocked up at Greenhills Irish Bakery.
And, we made a stop at the Butcher Shop Market for some Rashers/Irish bacon to take home. The quality of the meat they were offering looked outstanding and this will be a stop to shop for meat, cut to order for us, anytime we're in the area. You can take a peek at the meat cases by clicking on the thumbnails above.

We took a Zipcar and found parking to be very easy. There's a large parking lot behind the bakery and butcher shop, but we just drove up the hill where there was plenty of on-street parking. Our spot didn't even have a time limit.

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.
March 17, 2012
Greenhills Irish Bakery, Adams Village Dorchester
A visit to Greenhills Irish Bakery was one stop on our Saint Patrick's Day shopping run last Saturday. This time of year, we like to have a supply of soda bread and brown bread on hand.
With many places, this is the one time of year they make it. Greenhills has it all the time, and even late on a Saturday afternoon our breads were still warm. Click on the thumbnail views (above) to see more of their soda bread with caraway, brown bread, and scones– blueberry and raisin.

The service was warm and friendly, like we walked in there every day. The staffperson explained they only had soda bread with caraway seeds. We said that was the way we wanted it and other customers joined in the seeds vs no-seeds discussion.

In addition to fresh baked goods (and they do have far more than breads), they had a small display of favorite products for Irish ex-pats and those who love to try things from other lands.

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Greenhills Irish Bakery

780 Adams Street, Dorchester, Massachusetts 02124 (map & reviews)

617-825-8187

greenhillsirishbakery.com

Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.
March 15, 2012
Out and About from Paris to Boston

Last week, Mary Kay from Out and About in Paris was in Boston for a few days and we met for lunch. She had been following our food truck coverage, so my friend Laurie and I met her at The Dining Car in front of the library.

After a lingering lunch and some good conversation in the courtyard, we took Mary Kay on a brief tour of a couple of our favorite spots in the McKim building: the main staircase, the Puvis de Chavannes Gallery, the Abbey Room, and Bates Hall.

With a spectacular day outside, this appetizer was enough to tempt Mary Kay to explore more of one of my favorite buildings on her own. The three of us took to the outside world. We made a quick stop at the Society of Arts and Crafts and then strolled down Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

It is such fun to meet the people behind blogs. Mary Kay is as warm, friendly, and interesting as her persona on the web.

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From another great blogger Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris

From the wonderful Patricia Wells, The Paris Cookbook

Learn to Speak French

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Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
Photography: © 2012 Penny & Ed Cherubino

Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those add a great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.

March 14, 2012