This past week was all about trying new things, which ran the gamut from baking, to crocheting rag rugs, to visiting The Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA.

My first new attempt was crocheting a rag rug. A few years ago my mom taught me how to make granny squares but since then I’ve been a little out of practice. Not having my mom around, I figured youtube, craft blogs and about.com would be the best places to refresh my crochet skills. I used Craftsanity and the Vintage Chica blog posts (tutorials) as inspiration for my rug creation. Ripping old sheets to make rags was quite therapeutic, and the overall crochet process only takes a few hours (for a newbie like me). I will definitely be making these for everyone I know this holiday season (sorry guys).

Last year my friend Dave and I tried to make Greek Easter bread (tsoureki) but the recipe had a typo in it, which caused our dough to massively fail/implode. Being newbie bakers we didn’t know that too much sugar would be bad for the yeast. Anyways, setting this fallback aside… I decided to try a no-knead recipe for focaccia bread from this blog entitled My Culinary Journal. My first attempt went a little wrong since I misread the directions which said to preheat at 230 CELSIUS not fahrenheit so it took my bread double the time to bake and I only realized my mistake hours later when I re-read the recipe. Irregardless the bread tasted amazing even if the crust wasn’t brown. I slightly changed the recipe by adding garlic and grape tomatoes.

Lastly, thanks to a post in the Rough Guide to New England, Tim and I visited the Fruitlands Museum out in Harvard, Mass. The Fruitlands Farmhouse was a transcendentalist utopian experiment in communal living which was spearheaded by Amos Bronson Alcott (Louisa May Alcott‘s father). They intended to live off the land (vegetarian) but according to the museum’s bio “[t]he men spent more time discussing philosophy than farming. This left the group ill-prepared as winter approached. The experiment officially ended [after only 7 months] in January of 1844.” Since this movement was so short lived, the Fruitlands Museum also incorporated other exhibits: a Shaker House (turned into a museum), a Native American Collection and a 19th century fine art exhibit (all housed in different buildings). There’s even a well kept trail that goes through the woods, which made the trip even more worthwhile. Afterwards we stopped by the gift shop and I picked up bottle of locally made sparkling apple cider made from Carlson Orchards‘ Macintosh apples.

In conclusion: You gotta try something new every now and then (talk about captain obvious!).