tudor place – saturday may 15

Because my graduation ceremony was on Friday and Commencement was on Sunday, we had a free day on Saturday.

Susan had told me about this house tour that her boss had taken her and her fellow employees at Christmas time – Tudor Place in Georgetown.  Just the kind of thing that’s up my mom’s alley so that’s what we decided to do with our day.

The tour was a lot of fun with quite the mishmash of objects from the family – descendents of Martha Washington – throughout the over 100 years that the family had owned and occupied the house.  We couldn’t take pictures inside – no surprise there – but the grounds were beautiful and it was a gorgeous day outside.

The back of the house.

   

 

Taking a respite from the sun and walking.

 

A few shots from the garden: irises, the neatly coiled hoses, foxglove?
 
This was the family car in 1919.  If I remember correctly, it cost $13,500 in 1916 when it was special ordered.

I may or may not have wandered into the garden that was set up for a wedding that afternoon to take a few pictures.

After the tour, we made a special lunch trip to La Madeleine in Georgetown to satisfy Mom’s request every time she visits for a stop in to one of our favorite places from Houston.

We had a quiet evening of church and a homemade meal by yours truly.

In an effort to make Dad happy, I essentially made steak and potatoes.  I used a Real Simple recipe for Flank Steak with Balsamic Mushrooms and Arugula (link!) that I’m pretty sure that I’ve made before but added roasted potatoes as a side (Will and I would skip the potatoes and call it a meal).


YUMMMM!!  Even Dad liked it.  Though since I never can find arugula, I substituted spinach both times and it tastes great.

For dessert I tried another Good Things Catered cake recipe.  This time it was for Sweet Lemon Rhubarb Bundt cake.  I was being lazy about finding rhubarb and she said you could use strawberries (cut in large pieces) or whole blueberries – I went with the strawberry option.

This is my only prep picture even though I was actually using my Kitchenaid because I was trying (with Mom’s amazing help) to make dinner and a cake at the same time.  I felt really bad for Will when he had to clean up  because I generally make a mess with any new recipe period but this was 10 times worse than normal with me trying to do two major things at once.

Finished product sans lemon glaze – it never did cool off completely before we were ready to eat it.

Also amazingly tasty!  This one will DEFINITELY get made again and not just because I heart my bundt pan ;-)