My Grape Growing Experiment

I have decided to grow some grapes, and maybe, in a few years, make some wine?  Who knows.  I ordered a couple plants from Burpee.com, Marquette varietal. This is what they will hopefully look like:

So I bought a couple of Trellis' and planted them today :

This is a long shot of the yard on the side of the house.  Notice the lack of neighbors..  I will probably end up putting a stake in the middle, and stringing some wire in between the two, we'll see. 

Close up of the first plant

Close up of the second plant

I put some compost on top of the soil.  Well, it's almost compost, as you can see it hasn't composted all the way yet, but it's better than nothing.   I'll be updating this with more pics as it grows , probably not till fall or winter.  Wish me luck!

My Cooking Life

Alright, for this blog i will go over my cooking career, why... i don't know, i guess i'm bored.

When i was 17 my brother got me a job at a local restaurant, Cornerstones, as a dishwasher.  I was getting ready for school and he yelled down to me, " you're working tonight" .  Okay... So i worked as a dishwasher for a year or so before i moved up to prep cook.  I did that for a bit, maybe another year between that and dishes before I got moved up to grill cook.  I think someone as sick or hurt so they just threw me on one night.  By this time i had tried community college , for business, but hated it.  School would have to wait a few years.  Eventually i moved up to saute cook, and i did that for a year or so.  Eventually I even ran the kitchen for a week.  We were between head chefs and they needed someone, so that someone was me.  Soon after one of my friends called me up with a job opportunity at another restaurant, for more money and responsibility.  Around the same time I decided that it was time to go to cooking school, get an actual education.   So i left my job and took the new job.  I started part time while i went to school at Johnson and Wales in Providence, RI 4 days a week.   Don't worry, i won't go into my schooling... at least not now.

I worked at this restaurant, Silvesters , for a couple years before they closed down for good, which is too bad, it was a great job.  From there i went down the street to Nashoba Valley Winery.  I was there for about 5 years.  I did everything from grill, to saute, to pastry chef to sous chef.  You name it, i did it.  It was a great job, but it just wasn't a job i could make a career out of.  No benefits, no nothing.  I learned a lot there, but i'm glad i've moved on.

Now, i am at an assisted living community in Marlboro, New Horizons.   This job is nice, it has good pay, paid vacation, sick days, 401k, holiday pay, everything.  One of the only drawbacks is that it's a long commute.  I've been here for almost 2 years now, it will be 2 in May, and i can definitely see myself staying for a while.

So there it is... my cooking jobs.  From now on my blogs will be more about specific cooking topics... well let's hope so at least.  I just wanted all 2 people that might not even be reading this to know where i'm coming from.    So long for now...

Just a long long post about my new Chrome Laptop

Welcome to my Blog!  I can already tell that this will be the greatest most interesting blog out there... or not.  I doubt anyone will even read this, but i'm gonna keep publishing anyway, maybe i'll actually post something helpful.

Don't be upset with me if i'm not the most grammatically correct blogger out there.  I just type as the words come in my head, and i don't see punctuation in there, so i just type and type.  Sorry. 

So I got a free laptop from Google this week.  I"m supposed to testing out their new OS called Chrome.  It's actually more of a netbook than a laptop.  You can't install programs like on a windows PC.  It doesn't even have a hard drive, it has an ssd drive, which stands for solid state drive, basically a large flash drive.  This one is only 16 gigs.  The bonus of ssd is that it is extremely fast compared to standard drives.  This laptop boots up in seconds compared to my PC upstairs which takes a couple minutes.

I think Google wants people to live on the internet.  Hell, without an internet connection, this laptop i'm using right now wouldn't even work.  It requires you to be connected to use it.  If you can't do it on the internet, then you can't do it on this laptop.  Thankfully, you can do pretty much anything online these days. There's Google Docs, which is basically a web/free version of Microsoft Office.  I have Picnic, which is a photoshop substitute.  I have an app(not a program, google uses apps) called MSpot, which you can upload all your music to, and listen to it anywhere.  There is also Picasa, which is a photo sharing app.

All of this is done via the "Cloud".  Basically you don't store anything on your laptop/pc/whatever except whatever it takes to run it, and the rest is stored on the server of the app you are using.   Google has also introduced Cloud Print, which lets you print anything from anywhere, as long your printer is connected to your main PC, so i can print anything from this laptop to my upstairs printer without needing it to be connected to a router or anything, i just need the printer and pc to be turned on,  I love the cloud life.

I will be posting about cooking...eventually.  Maybe my next one.. we shall see.