General

It was a beautiful early spring weekend and the nice weather coincided beautifully with Maple Weekend. This was a new event for me as I had never heard of Maple Weekend before. It is a way for all the producers of maple syrup in New York State, to open their doors to the public. You get to learn and see how maple syrup is produced and if you’re lucky (and we were lucky), you get to taste some of the products made with maple syrup, like cookies, maple spread and all sorts of other goodies.

We attempted to visit three maple syrup producers and had an interesting experience trying to get to the 3 places we had decided to visit. We plugged in the address of the first place into our Garmin GPS. I have a love hate relationship with my Garmin… lots of times it’s extremely helpful in getting around, especially to previously unknown destinations. But the Garmin has a nasty habit of telling you that you’ve arrived at a destination when if fact you have not. And sometimes Garmin will try to take you down a road that is in pretty bad shape (think really bad dirt road) or a seasonal road (which is closed in the winter). Well, that’s what happened to us. We were driving down this really steep dirt road with lots of icy and snowy patches and suddenly we got to where a sign indicated it was a seasonal road and basically closed. So we turned around and found our way back to the main road. Garmin thoughtfully rerouted us to the final destination but when we arrived, we found a deserted sugar shack.

Oh well, onward to our next destination, the Cedarvale Maple Sugar Company. This place had a rustic but cool gift shop. Many maple sugar products were for sale, and there were cookies for sale that were made with maple sugar and my personal favorite, cotton candy made with maple sugar. Yummy.

After indulging in some taste treats we walked to the sugar shack where the sap is boiled down to make maple syrup. Things are pretty high tech these days…gone are the wood burning boilers, replaced by gas fired burners. And also gone are the buckets hanging on trees…these have all been replaced by a high-tech network of plastic tubing strung from tree to tree to collect the sap.

We headed back to the gift shop for a couple more snacks and then hopped into the car and let Garmin get us lost again. Sure was a fun day!

Wow, 2008!

I am excited about the beginnings of this new year and all that it will bring. I look forward to working with all my clients this year and am thankful that I have such a wonderful job that lets me share in the joy of the weddings that I participate in.

I’m thankful for my wife who is so full of love and compassion for everyone in her life and I look forward to spending this year (and every year thereafter) with her.

We can take so much for granted on a daily basis. The beginning of a new year is a time to stop and reflect on all that we have, the people that surround us and what we can do to help another person who is struggling in this life. It can take just such a small gesture to make such a huge difference in someone’s life. Contemplate what difference doing a bit more than a small gesture could make in someone’s life. Small acts can have profound effects.

I hope you have a very Happy New Year!

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! My thoughts were focused on the son (David Seaman) of a friend of mine who is serving our country in Iraq. I could not help but to reflect on the significance of his sacrifice while I am my family were enjoying a bountiful feast in the comfort of our home. The reality of what David was experiencing was in such stark contrast to what I was experiencing. I pray for him daily. Our troops need our support.

This Thanksgiving was spent at my In-Laws. It’s sort of become tradition that I am the one responsible for cooking the turkey. This year I decided to try something completely radical and chose to deep-fry the turkey. This was not a decision that was made without a serious amount of consideration because if I were to fail at my task and deliver a less than perfect turkey to the table, I’d have 30 really hungry people to deal with. So yes, I was a bit nervous about this undertaking. I put in my due diligence and researched as best I could the process by which you deep-fry a turkey.

You’ve probably seen the contraptions that are sold just for this purpose. A large aluminum pot sits on top of a propane burner/stand. You put in the proper amount of vegetable oil, heat it to 375 degrees, gently lower the turkey into the oil then reduce the oil temperature to 325 and let it fry away for about an hour. Technically you let it cook for 3 minutes per pound up to 15 pounds, or 3.5 minutes per pound for a turkey over 15 pounds. Our turkey was 19.5 pounds and it took about 70 minutes to cook. Very little preparation was done except for rubbing the cavity and the outside of the turkey with a poultry seasoning. Other than that nothing else was done.

The end result was a complete success. It was one of the tastiest turkeys I’ve ever eaten. Everyone agreed that it was really moist and extremely flavorful. You might think that it would leave some kind of greasy taste in your mouth, but there was none of that whatsoever. I think I’ll have to do that again and can heartily suggest if you’re looking for a different way to cook your next turkey, give deep-frying a go. It’s well worth the effort.

Here’s most of the group that got to enjoy the feast…

The past week has been so cold, snowy and windy that it has made it difficult to get out in order to enjoy the opportunities for skiing that this weather has created. But today was the day. It started off rather chilly, around 15 degrees but as the morning progressed the temperature rose into the mid 20’s. Put that together with blue skies and bright sunshine, it made it into a perfect day for XC Skiing.

I loaded up the car and headed out to my favorite spot, Bear Swamp. Bear Swamp is a State Forest at the South end of Skaneateles Lake, near Sempronius. It’s a beautiful area and has a lot of trails. So much snow had fallen the past week that the access road was actually impassable for vehicles. I had to park along side the road with lots of other people and had to ski about .2 miles to reach the trailhead.

Fortunately there had been some snowmobilers and snowshoers out tromping around on the trails otherwise it would have been a bit more challenging skiing as the snow was so deep. Unfortunately I don’t have backcountry skiis, which float up on the show a little better than my skinny touring skiis. All in all it was an incredible day skiing and here are a few photos that show you what it was like.

I’ve had so many friends and family emailing and calling. They all want to know exactly how much snow has actually fallen here because Network TV has been painting a pretty bleak picture.

Well, most of the worst weather has been to the North East of Camillus. Places like Parish, NY, Oswego, NY and Pulaski, NY have seen in excess of 12 feet of snow in the last week. It’s unbelievable how much snow they’ve gotten.

In Camillus, just in the last couple days we’ve had in excess of 2 feet of snow. Together with the 25-30 mile per hour winds that we’ve been having, it has made some for spectacular drifts and lots of driveway clearing… like a couple times per day.

Here are a couple of hastily taken photographs…one out the back door looking towards the woods and the other out the front door. You can see that we’ve got a lot of drifting, snow on roofs, and plowed snow that nearly covers mailboxes. It’s great for skiing!

Now if the weatherman can be beleived, we’re supposed to see temperatures possibly in the 40’s next week. Could flooding be far behind if that happens?