mr skaggs | Apothecary Shed

Cooking Up a Fancy New Year 2023

January 10, 2023

This year we rang in the New Year with delicious food and an intimate two person party.

Nine hour Burgundy Mushrooms are absolutely delicious! But they do really take nine hours. Six hours of simmering with a lid on and three more with the lid off. The new Mauviel christmas pot (my best present by far) was perfect for the job.

We also roasted a chicken and veggies in the new pink pot using one of Romey’s recipes. Likewise delicious.

This was “first dinner.” The coup de grace was still to come.

Mr Skaggs paid a visit while the cooking proceeded and we had a couple of Seelbach cocktails (take care of the time warp!). We’re pretty sure that’s why we accidentally fell asleep before midnight. LOL.

This was a fancy pants Seelbach iteration with veuve clicquot champagne and blanton’s bourbon. Absolutely fantastic.

And then it was time to cook up blinis for the caviar. We went to the “gold plated groceries” store for the fixins. Crème fraîche for the win. So delicious.

Incidentally, these were fried to perfection in another new pan.

This special meal called for a vintage bottle of pink veuve clicqot.

We attempted to watch Fight Club (which I had never seen) , but we fell asleep just before the end (and just before midnight). We blame the Seelbachs.

The leftover champagne and blinis made a great first breakfast of 2023.

Happy New Year to all.

The Stick (Fall 2021)

October 29, 2021

Sunset and Moonshine (by Romey)

Who knew that installing a new washer/dryer combo thing could be so fun? That’s the nature of the Stick, I suppose. Now that I properly own it again, the time has come to spruce it up (a constant battle in the elements provided by the nearby Atlantic). We also fixed the ridiculously installed electricity, added some lights in the kitchen and over the bar, and installed a beautiful shelf in the bathroom.

Special thanks to Mr Skaggs for the help, as always above and beyond the call of duty. Anyway, here’s how all that unfolded over two visits

Moonshine and Rosie demonstrate how it feels to arrive at the Stick.

Mike learned about pickapeppa on cream cheese. A serious YUM.

The ocean is great when you are under one

Look at that professional grade piping!

The new shelf

Kitchen lighting. Now there is no excuse for not properly cleaning the kitchen.

The bar lights

Claudio and his family are going to do some major work next year. But first they need to see what they are getting into.

A second trip down with the Shepardsons and Romey was required to install the W/D (on order for several weeks).

Installing this thing required taking the entire closet apart, cleaning out 25 year worth of dryer lint, and putting it all back together (without improving the design one tad…LOL). Gotta say that drying sheets and towels is a thing.