Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
Since I bought the house in 2004 with the plan to turn it into a Bed and Breakfast, wellness, treat spa inn, I have been dwelling on the window treatments. Being the way I am, I just didn’t want to do something that would clutter the room specially since it is my vision to set it up as a place where guests come to let go of the pollution of life in a calm, beautiful and intimate setting. So I finally decided to install shutters in all of the bedrooms eventually in the common areas. It is quite expensive so I had to wait till I could find a way of doing installment payment which I did so I ordered shutters for all the five bedrooms. They were suppose to be delivered on Monday but I got a call on Thursday from the trailer driver that the shutters are sitting in his massive trailer and ready to be delivered right now.
I had to call the installer to come help to move the boxes to the house because of the blizzard that was coming on Friday. So he came and helped the driver to put the boxed in the hallway ~ now the hallway is full of boxes and he will be here tomorrow early morning to install the shutters. I can’t wait to see them in the bedrooms!
Saturday, January 22nd, 2011
It snowed from early morning till late afternoon today. The good thing about Bath, the cool little city of Ships in Maine is that it has good city maintenance. As soon as it snows the plow trucks are out to clear the snow so the streets are clean and the houses, the trees are covered with beautiful soft snow.
My guest is staying in Suluhiana room which means at ‘Peace with each other’ both in Farsi and Swahili ~ she has a view of the winter street church and the library park.
Friday, January 21st, 2011
The year 2011 has been off to a good start at the Kismet Inn Bed and Breakfast Spa. Had the house full of women who booked randomly. Two Australian girls who live in Boston and work for American companies. They both enjoyed massage with Kate and yoga session with Kate also. One of the girls was up early on Sunday morning doing her meditation before the yoga class started. There were two young mothers from Machias, Maine whose husbands had bought them gift certificates for their Christmas to enjoy a night away from the two young boys they each have. They enjoyed two yoga sessions, a massage each followed by dinner by the fire and a great soak in the deep Japanese style soaking tubs. The third groups were ladies from Boston who come up to Maine often but had never stayed in Bath, Maine as it is knows for ‘City of Ships’ They found Kismet Inn so they decided to give it a try ~ and they loved it.
All the guests loved their stay and said will return soon!
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Kismet Inn Maine After a busy day last night I had John and Dominique over for dinner and I had promised them to make a prune, carrot, spinach dish that I remember my aunt use to make except she would make it with chicken in stew form and serve it with rice. Rice seems to be served with everything in my native land along with many different kinds of stew. I often take the ingredients from my childhood dishes and mix them with the dishes I have had at the many different places I have lived. In this case, I decided to use fish instead of kitchen, sweet potato instead of rice and not make it in the form of stew.
At farmers market we have ‘Port Clyde Co-op’ fishers who bring along their map showing where they catch the fish… the fish is fresh and incredibly tasty. I had bought halibut last weekend which was excellent so I planned to get halibut this weekend but she didn’t have any instead she recommended monk fish so I got some monk fish.
First I sauteed some onions in teaspoon of ghee then sliced carrots added it to the onion with a tiny bit of salt and pepper, let it simmer for a few minutes. I sauteed onions in 1/2 teaspoon of ghee added spinach, salt & pepper turned off the stove put the lid on the pot let the spinach cook for couple of minutes with the turned off burner’s heat.
I cooked the sweet potato separately for 20 minutes.
I put a teaspoon of ghee in a frying pan, washed the monk fish put it in the pan, added salt, pepper, masala spice let it simmer for 5 minutes then turned it over added more masala spice let it cook for another 5 minutes, squeezed 1/2 fresh lemon juice let it cook for 2 minutes. It was ready to serve.
For salad I picked some fresh greens and herbs from the garden added just olive oil and squeezed half a lemon.
For Cheese I got two kinds of goat cheese from Caitlin ‘appleton creamery’
John and Dominique brought a bottle of red wine (sorry can’t remember the name of the wine) I am terrible in remembering names.
The fish turned out excellent mixed with prune, carrots and sweet potato, the spinach was just as good. If you cook spinach with just the warmth of the turned off burner it will still have that wonderful green taste. The greens from the garden were so fresh that I didn’t need to put any salt or pepper just the olive oil and the lemon and the cheese is always good. The whole dinner took about 45 minutes to make. A note — I do things very slowly!