First Harvest

What perfect spring weather we've had these past three days! I will surely make more progress on the flower beds today. My reward will be to relax this evening at St. Joseph's Catholic church, just one block from the TRI.

The Hays Symphony is performing a free concert there with a Ft. Hays State University choir. I know several of the musicians in the symphony, and although they don't get paid for their considerable efforts, they never disappoint their audience.

Before strolling over to St. Joe's I and a friend will have a very springy supper chez moi of cream of asparagus-leek soup and spinach salad. Some goat cheese melted into the soup will give it body and complement the vegetables perfectly.

And speaking of springtime foods, for the first time this year I was able to serve fresh mint with the fruit at breakfast. My favorite mint has to be apple mint. If you've never grown this hardy plant be forewarned that it is very invasive and difficult to contain unless you grow it in a pot. But it's a very pretty plant, growing taller than most mints. It has soft, almost "spongy" light green leaves, either oval or round. Once it reaches a mature height pinch back the white flower spikes for best flavor and continued production. The flavor is perfect with fruit, in tea, or as an infusion. When you steep tea for ice tea (whether you use a cold or hot method), just toss in a few fresh mint leaves. Mint leaves can be used fresh or dried to make a soothing, tasty infusion (herbal "tea"). Using fresh leaves will yield a liquor with only a tinge of color, and you'll need quite a volume to get much flavor. Add a drop or two of honey if you like.

Here's an easy recipe for mint syrup. I keep it on hand in the refrigerator all summer and fall. At the end of the growing season, I harvest all the mint in the garden, make a big batch of syrup, and freeze it in small plastic containers. (You could also use a divided ice tray.) That way I have it all winter long.

Applemint SyrupCombine 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes to make a simple syrup. While the syrup is cooking, wash the mint leaves (no stems or flowers) and shake off excess water. You should use at least 4 cups of mint, loosely packed. (Use more if you like; you can't use too much.) Any size leaf will do, and you don't have to chop the leaves. Remove saucepan from heat and stir in the mint leaves. Immediately cover the pan with a lid and let steep for at least 10 minutes. If you get distracted and leave the mixture steeping for an hour, that's okay. You can't oversteep it. When the mixture has cooled to lukewarm, pour it through a strainer into a clean container. Press hard on the mint with the back of a spoon to extract every bit of flavor. Discard the leaves.

If you like to sweeten your ice tea, mint syrup is great for that. No trying to dissolve sugar crystals in an ice cold drink. Although the best way to eat fresh fruit is unadulterated and at the peak of season, during the sping and fall the fruits we buy can need a little help with flavor and sweetness. Mint syrup is a great way to give them a boost. Naturally, you can use any kind of mint you have available to make this refreshing syrup. Enjoy!

Tea, hope and renewal

This Easter weekend is a typical one at the Tea Rose Inn in that I don't have many guests here. I guess it's a stay-at-home or stay-with-family kind of holiday. In any case, I can't remember an Easter holiday when the inn was really busy. That leaves me a little spare time to do some outdoor chores on this windy, windy spring weekend.

This evening I will have dinner at someone else's house--a rare opportunity for me on a weekend night! Sunday I will have more leisure time than usual, which is great because I like to spend Easter with family and friends. So tomorrow I am hosting an afternoon tea party.

We'll have darjeeling tea, hot and iced, plus fruit punch. For nibblies I'm making miniature strawberry tarts with fresh organically grown strawberries, poppyseed cupcakes decorated for spring, and some whole strawberries for those who want to keep it healthier. On the savory side there will be asparagus tips rolled up in prosciutto spread with a little herbed goat cheese, cucumber sandwiches (of course!), and egg salad on multi-grain crackers.

Tonight I get to blow out about 18 eggs for our tea party activity. I'll set up a decorating table on the front porch with paints, pens, stickers, etc. Everybody gets to take home an egg they've decorated.

If Easter is a holiday that is important for you to celebrate, I hope yours is everything you want it to be. But even beyond the religious holiday, I love that we all celebrate the arrival of spring together with age-old symbols and activities. I love the community of Easter. The springtime theme of renewal, both symbolic and actual, makes it such a hopeful time.

So here's wishing you hope and happiness this Easter!

Transition

The Kansas Bed & Breakfast Association held its annual meeting and conference in Abilene on March 15. As the KBBA's vice president, I was in charge of planning the conference. Weeks of intensive planning, getting every detail into place, and then...it's all over in a day. (Kind of like Thanksgiving dinner!) Abilene's convention center is in an old train depot with lots of character. It was perfect for our gathering.

We elected new officers, so now I have the pleasure of serving as president of the KBBA, which is sure to keep me busier than ever. For me, the conference marks the end of the winter season.

In this busiest of seasons--early spring--familiar faces and new ones are coming and going at the TRI at a pretty brisk pace. But the garden is beckoning! Where to find the time? Last weekend we had slow, soaking rains, and now it's warm and sunny. Perfect. I've got to get out in the dirt for at least part of the day today.

This morning I snipped the first bunch of tender chives from the garden and folded them into the slow-scrambled eggs. The mint is just beginning to show the first tiny green leaves. By next week I should be able to harvest a little.

Today I will clean the porch furniture and install my new planter boxes on the front porch rail. Yesterday the winter door wreath was exchanged for one with an Easter theme. I'm declaring it springtime in Hays. No more snow allowed!

Springtime in Austin

I cruised into Austin on Sunday in a light rain, just about sundown, bound for the innkeeping conference. That first night I stayed at a friend's house whose gorgeous gardens and landscape make me sigh with envy. (Did I mention she's retired? Someday my "grounds" will look as good as hers....) We had dinner at one of my favorite Austin restaurants, East Side Cafe. Over the course of the next three days and nights I got to sample a couple more of my old favorite haunts, plus a new one, in the company of old friends.

But most of my time was spent at the annual innkeeping conference sponsored by the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII). I didn't meet a single other person there from Kansas, so I hope I represented our fair state well!

Let's see, I learned how to make a perfect omelet in 60 seconds from a very entertaining demonstrator, and I tried out the technique yesterday at the TRI on a guest. That's the omelet assembly line at left--we had to make our own lunches! I got some great ideas and resources for using more local and regional foods at the inn. (Notice how I go right to the "food news"?) I spent most of a day with other officers of state associations, sharing, comparing, and planning. I learned some tips about blogging and took in some food for thought about customer service. The four-day conference was a great experience that will be helpful to me as an innkeeper and as the new president of our state association.

As I packed up my car to leave Austin on a perfect spring afternoon, I had one last mission. Just as I'd hoped, the hotel concierge confirmed to me that Amy's Ice Cream was still in its old location, a shopping center just next door. (You knew this story would end with good food, didn't you?) Alas, they didn't have my favorite flavor on hand that day, the very elusive hazelnut ice cream. I settled for an order of half Kaluha and half dark chocolate. Nirvana. I sailed up I-35 just ahead of rush hour traffic, listening to KGSR on the radio. Can't wait to go back and do it all again!

First harbingers of spring

I'm inserting a little note here in the middle of my travel log to let you know that winter really is almost over in Hays. I know this because yesterday--a perfectly spring-like day--I saw the first Siberian irises in the flower beds. Their electric blue flowers make me smile every time I see them. They're only about four inches tall, but they stand bravely through the last wintery blasts (blowing in even as I write this).

Texas Bound

What a whirl the last two weeks have been! I was away from the inn for most of that time. Two weeks ago I drove all the way to Ft. Worth, Texas and spent the weekend visiting with family members and an old high school buddy who lives in the area. I got to visit my favorite food store, Central Market, and one of my favorite art museums, the Kimball.

Central Market was just as I remembered it, a cook’s and a food lover’s paradise, overflowing with every imaginable thing. When you walk through the doors you can actually smell the food, unlike supermarkets where everything is wrapped and sealed to the point where you just have to buy it on faith. After wandering the store for quite awhile (and partaking of some of the samples that were offered) I selected a few choice items, including the most beautiful, fragrant, organically grown strawberries and a bottle of rhubarb pop sweetened with cane sugar. My friend Aggie and I ordered lunch at the deli/grill and ate outdoors on the patio. Aggie insisted we had to follow lunch with some gelato from the market’s own gelato bar. Are you surprised to know that I agreed? -ha ha- I got half “toasted almond” and half “chocolate turtle.” Then we were off to the Kimball.

The Kimball’s modest building is itself a work of art. Being inside it has the most calming effect on me. We meandered around the permanent collection, which began with a real show stopper: Michelangelo’s first painting, executed when he was just 12 or 13 years old. The painting is small, but it occupies its own room along with all kinds of documentation and label copy. It’s a fascinating little gem.

Now if you’ve read earlier posts on this blog you may be wondering where Baxter (my dog) was all this time, and who was running the inn. No worries on either account.

Baxter made the trip to Ft. Worth with me. He’s a great little traveler. Unfortunately for him, he had to “room” with another dog at our hosts’ house, but once they got used to each other they did just fine. As for the TRI, I left it in capable hands. My innsitters pulled off a tea party for 22 while I was gone and took good care of the overnight guests.

Sunday morning was pure leisure, followed by some preparations for the KBBA’s annual meeting and conference on March 15, and updating reservations at the B&B. (It seems all my vacations, however short, are working vacations.) But by mid-afternoon I was back on the road again, heading for my old home town of Austin. This time Baxter had to stay behind with his “cousin,” Scooter.

I was so excited to be returning to Austin—I hadn’t been there for 12 years! But that story is for the next installment.

Conferences are calling

In just two days I will leave for Austin, TX to attend the PAII conference. That's the Professional Association of Innkeepers International. As vice president and president-elect of the Kansas Bed & Breakfast Association, I'll be representing the KBBA at my first national (er, international) conference. There will be four full days of information, so my head will be much bigger when I leave for home! I'm very excited about the conference, and about spending some time in Austin.

You see, before I pulled up stakes and moved to Hays to begin a new bed and breakfast, I spent 18 years living in Austin. I was one of those many people who went there to attend the University of Texas and then decided to stay. So, although I won't have a lot of free time while I'm there, I'll have a few evenings to catch up with old friends. Even Baxter gets to make the trip. I'm hoping it will be warm enough for a walk around Town Lake, something I used to enjoy doing with friends.

The TRI won't be shuttered while I'm away. Thanks to a capable and reliable group of helpers, visitors will still come and go, and next weekend's bridal tea will, I'm sure, be a lovely affair.

After Austin, I should have about 1-1/2 days at home to regroup and repack. Then it's off to Abilene, KS for two days and two nights. As KBBA's v.p., I'm in charge of the state innkeepers conference. This year we're having a 1-day "mini conference" in Abilene on Monday, March 15. Anyone who is considering becoming an innkeeper, or who is brand new to the profession will want to be in Abilene on March 14 for the Aspiring Innkeepers Workshop. Both events are very affordable and essential for anyone who's serious about innkeeping! Details and registration forms are at http://www.kbba.com/events.php.

I haven't spent much time in Abilene, but what I've experienced there I like. There's a whole lot packed into that little town. (Check it out at http://www.abilenekansas.org.) Our conference will be held at the Abilene Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is in a converted 1920's train depot. It's a fantastic building, and the perfect space for the KBBA conference. The Aspiring Innkeepers Workshop will be hosted by Adrian and Jay Potter at their equally but differently fabulous Abilene's Victorian Inn (http://abilenesvictorianinn.com)

These days of preparations are rather stressful, but I know that when the conferences are over I will return to the TRI refreshed, rejuvenated, and rededicated to taking care of my guests in the best ways I can. What could be better than that?