Laura and I got back from a weekend in Stowe recently. It was a lot of fun and relaxation. We went up Mount Mansfield a few times, once in the gondola, once on the auto toll road. Ben & Jerrys was fun as usual. We got to see the video this time, although I can't say that it was all that special. The flavors we sampled were excellent of course; there's nothing like fresh ice cream!

For your enjoyment, here is a small selection of the nearly 200 pictures from the trip:

Pictures from Stowe

I had my first poker experience in Las Vegas. I bought in to the 2-4 hold'em game at the Palms. I picked the Palms because it had the limit I was looking for (I didn't want to withdraw more money to sit down at a 4-8 game), and its nice and close to my hotel (the Rio).

The experience there was very different from Foxwoods, again strengthening my belief that as a casino, Foxwoods really sucks. It seems to me that the dealers at Foxwoods aren't particularly nice, and the people there all seem to have a relatively high level of miserableness. In contrast, dealers in Vegas are all very friendly, and casinos really try to get your business, and are therefore very player friendly. That's just my opinion though, although I'm sure some people feel the same way.

The poker room at the Palms was TINY, maybe 7 tables of 2-4 and 4-8 holdem combined. Compare this to Foxwoods where there are like 30-50 poker tables running, maybe more! Anyway, I put my name in and had to wait a good 30 minutes or so to get a seat. The line wasn't long at all though, maybe 5-6 people.

Another weird thing was, they allow chip trays on the poker tables. Every other poker room I've been to (admitedly not too many), you couldn't do that. So everybody was playing out of trays, which was wierd. I didn't do that though. I took a stack out, placed it on the table and played with that. Luckily I was never down by more than a few bucks.

The table was very loose-passive. In fact, my first pot I picked up when an Ace came out on the turn (I had KJo in the hole) and everybody had checked the flop. That was a nice little pot, at least $20 or so. I didn't win too many other pots, but when I did, they were usually fairly substantial. Furthermore, I never really got into a situation where I called down to the river and lost. Most of the time it was obvious when somebody hit their draw, and I could save myself by folding before it got too expensive. I won a few other hands by playing AX suited and hitting the high pair. Some people can't seem to resist calling down to the river with second or third pair. Towards the end of the night, I had a couple of big pots when I had JJ and managed to win both times. First beating somebody with 99, and second by sucking out on a set of 8's on the river to hit my straight. (I had an open ended straight draw on the flop, so I guess it wasn't totally a suckout). Overall, I spent most of the night folding. I'd say about 1/3 of the pots I entered I ended up winning, maybe more. Most people didn't seem to notice the tightness with which I was playing, and I often had 6-7 callers when I would raise the pot in early position. Hey, just more money for me.

Most of the players knew each other there, and even knew some of the intimate family details of some of the dealers. (Dealers can play poker in their own casinos? They sure seem to be able to at the Palms). I guess this is a fairly common thing, but it seems that its ripe for abuse.

In the end, I left on a high note, up $60. My first winning session in a casino!

Well, it seems that this is turning into a cooking 'blog. That's prefectly fine with me, as cooking is really fun! I still suck at it, of course, but I'm trying to learn from my mistakes (like 1 cup of lemon juice is always too much. Unless, maybe, you're making lemon curd). Anyway, I tried this Orange Cake recipe from Good Eats the other day, and I think it turned out pretty well.

The orange blossom honey I found at Wild Oats. It was a bit expensive, and I'm not altogether convinced that it really adds that much to the flavor. I think maybe a bit more orange zest could make up the difference, if you end up using wild-flower honey.

I also had a little trouble with the cooking time. Even after 40 minutes, the top of the cake hadn't set up completely, or so it seemed to me at the time. After 45 minutes it was done, but I think I overcooked it a little; a mistake I think I make too often. I remember hearing that you really have to take it out of the oven before its done, but when I put the toothpick in after 40 minutes, it still came out with some cake on it.

It is pretty tasty, and the honey keeps it moist (as honey is hydrophilic, it absorbs moisture from the air).