Feeling Veggie

My favorite, all time summer food is grilled veggies. If you serve it with a side of roasted red pepper dip, I don't need another thing. Well, maybe a glass of wine to help wash it down. I don't think I've ever shared this recipe (from an old Bon Appetit), so here goes:

Roasted Red Pepper Dip

2 large garlic gloves 1/2 cup diced drained roasted red pepper from jar (or your own roasted ones)1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/2 cup mayonnaise

With processor running, drop garlic through feed tube and mince. Scrape down sides of bowl. Add roasted pepper, vinegar and cayenne and process until mixture is almost a smooth purée. Add 1/4 cup mayonnaise and process using on/off turns just until combined. Transfer sauce to a small bowl; mix in remaining 1/4 cup mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate at 30 minutes. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Keep refrigerated.)
Place dip in center of platter. Arrange vegetables around dip and serve. The dip is great with cold crudite or warm grilled veggies.

(If you've never grilled your own veggies, it is time to get started! Just choose some good ones, prepare by peeling, chopping or slicing, then drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse salt and pepper, then grill on a medium temperature grill until they have the right amount of grill marks and appear soft. Be careful with mushrooms and asparagus... they go fast!)

Our Summer List: a pie

At the beginning of every summer, we sit down and make a list of all the activities and projects we want to do during the summer. Usually the list is long and we don't check off every item off the list, but we're going to try our best to do most this summer.

Many are making their bucket lists, but I've never fallen in love with that term. I love lists, so I make lists. If I knew how to make a button for the sidebar, I would send it out and try to get many of you to join in on sharing your summer lists. Anyone know how?

Carl wanted to spend more time going through his kid cookbook that he received for Christmas and in particular, wanted to bake a pie. We picked the black raspberries for this funky pie from our yard and added a few from the freezer to fill it out, but Carl did all the measuring, mixing, cutting, rolling and baking himself. With a scoop of vanilla icecream, it was simply amazing.

Caterpillar Love

The summer officially started for us just two days after school got out for the kids: we went camping with our original ECFE (early childhood family education) group that we've been camping with since Carl was one. We've taken two years off with newborns, but otherwise, it is a trip we look forward to sharing with old friends. The kids were delighted to find some other old friends near our site, the monarch caterpillars. After carefully taking care of them for several weeks throughout their steady diet of milkweed, climbing to the top of the critter cage and forming the "j" and then going into their chrysallis, we've been very attentive care takers. This week, the butterflies released to celebrate with us.

p.s. Did you know that caterpillar poop is called frass?

Have you raised any fun critters lately?

July 4th: Welcome to our summer

Yes, I'm back. I've been mentally composing blog entry upon blog entry, even taking all the photos to share with you the fun things we've been doing so far this summer, but that's it. It is all in my brain. Until tonight.

Hope your summer is going well. Many of you are taking trips, growing things, cooking the treats growing in your gardens, sneaking out of work for inpromptu picnics, playing with your children, reading, jamming to summer concerts and loving every single moment of summer. We've been doing a lot of those things, and more!

I'll try to catch up a bit on our ins and outs, but I'll leave you with some highlights from our two days at my parents' cabin in Wisconsin.

A little time away....

We went away for our 10th anniversary this weekend to a lovely place in the country called A Journey Inn. It is an eco-friendly Bed & Breakfast located on 66 acres of prairie and woods with winding paths throughout the property. We left on Saturday afternoon on a leisurely drive and arrived in the nearby artsty town of Maiden Rock, Wisconsin in time to visit a funky gallery owned by my friend's mom called Secret Heart Gallery. I had tried to visit it a while back when Janet and I visited Seed Savers in IA, but we arrived after hours and missed it. What a place! Ron and I found a few goodies to bring home to decorate our ever-expanding collection of Mexican-themed art in the upstairs hallway. I can't get enough of Frida!

Back at the inn, we enjoyed our stroll down the plush (and too buggy for being outside without bug spray) mowed paths through the woods and restored prairie. We dream of someday moving to our farm and maybe even turning the old house into a retreat center of sorts, so this place helped us to imagine what our lives could look like in ten years. The construction of A Journey Inn is very eco-minded and simple, with dramatic views of the nearby rolling hills and bluffs, as well as filled with thoughtful details like a walk-in shower, plush organic cotton towels, low VOC paints and a delightful organic brunch in the morning. The brunch is served at 11:00, with coffee and toast available for early risers (or coffee in bed fans, like me!).

We stayed on the 2nd floor and thought the view was amazing!

Our cucumber salad this morning featured house-grown cukes and tomatoes and was sprinkled with calendula flower petals and garnished with a nasturtium leaf. So beautiful!

For dinner we went to Norton's Downtown in Red Wing, MN. The restaurant is owned by a local MN musician and has been on our "must visit" list for years. Mmmm.

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We returned home 24 hours later feeling refreshed, well-rested and happily in love. And tomorrow... I return to work.

The Geek Squad

Carl recently learned about the Geek Squad, Best Buy's computer tech guys who dress the part and live up to their name. He digs the way they drive geek-mobiles and dress up in ties to go to work. He also loves that he is the first kid to make his own Geek-Squad lego mini-fig. (Geek Squad: if you come across this post, drop the kid a line! He'd love it!)

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These pictures encapsulate much of our daily existence: Legos and being outside. In fact, if I were to type a list of our top five summer activities, this is how it would look:

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1. Go outside.
2. Play Legos.
3. Go on picnics.
4. Read together.
5. Hang out with the cousins, most likely doing the above activities.

Of course we do other things, like eat a lot of frozen treats, make stuff, ride bikes and draw, but really.... haven't we covered most of the basic tenets of childhood?And you? How are you passing these lovely summer days?

The Green Kingdom

I saw a picture of kids in green crowns on my friend Kerry's blog and asked her how she learned to make them. Her response, "Really? I just wrapped them and twisted 'til they looked right."

So we made crowns of green and pretented we lived in a green kingdom with Gus as King and Louise as Queen for the afternoon.

Next on the list? Dandilion crowns... but I think we're a little late in the season. Maybe purple coneflower tiaras?

The Summer of Berries

We love berries around our house. We have three varieties from which the kids make their daily rounds of pre-breakfast sustenance. Many years ago we planted red and golden raspberries from cuttings from my parents' plants. Mysteriously one day some black raspberries popped up and appear to be on steroids. No matter how much I whack them back in the fall, they come back full force in the spring. It has been an amazing year for berries... the best crop we've seen around these parts. No, she did not get into my lipstick. This is 100% black raspberry slime. Do I need to start worrying now about her teenage years?
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And you? How do your berries grow?

A bit of calm

We have had a wonderfully jam-packed summer so far. Camping, cabin, friends, hikes, swimming, reading, Chicago, house guests, cooking, playing in the garden... and so much more. As I sit down here at the computer (which is a million times faster than it has ever been, thanks to Rolf!) I realize now that I need to sit still for a few days.

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This afternoon after our lovely guests left, the kids and I went over to Lake Nokomis and I let them lead. We just walked and discovered and named trees and looked at rocks and talked to dogs and swung from willow branches and learned how to use a pump on a water well and rolled in the grass and laughed and laughed. And that was that. No hurries or let's go or c'mon. I just followed their lead, carried their water bottles and snow peas and just let them be kids.

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I think I shall be back here more often now. I have a back log of photos I'd like to share. Hope you didn't give up on me.

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Go, run, take off your shoes and feel the grass and sand. We did. I shall sleep well.

Summer Is: Gathering With Friends

We had an indoor BBQ on Friday night with Kerry and Sarah's families. It has been raining almost non-stop here lately and we had hoped for a little break. The rain continued, so we just took the party indoors. Since we met we've been gathering with kids and just as women, so this was the first time we included the husbands. Of course, they got along fabulously and it was very difficult to get the kids in the car at the end of the evening.I had to bring dessert, so I opted for a Rhubarb Streusel pie from epicurious.com and fresh rhubarb from our garden.

I also brought along some sugar scrub for gardening hands. I found the idea over at House on Hill Road. It is sugar and dish soap stirred together. I used Mrs. Meyer's Lemon Verbena. It smelled so good and had the consistency of frosting... I wanted to lick the spoon! (note: it mixes together really well, but it separates after a day or two. You'll want to mix it up right before you use it to wash your hands.)

Summer Is: Homemade Pizza

There's nothing like discovering there's nothing that looks good for dinner... and then rallying with something that everyone loves. This time it was pizza. I remembered about 20 minutes before Ron came home that I had a bucket of Artisan Bread in Five dough in the basement fridge. Shredded mozz from the freezer, a can of stewed tomatoes from the cupboard and a few bits of this and that. Mmmmm. Just add a cold beverage and your loved ones. Welcome to summer.

Summer Is: Face Painting

There's nothing like some face paint and a few costumes with the neighbor kids to make the afternoon pass quickly by. I have a sneaky suspicion that we're going to be doing a lot of this.

The Bug Catcher

Louise grabbed my hand and pulled me into the porch. She didn't want me to finish what I was doing. She needed me *now*! I looked down and she was wearing big brother Carl's boots on her feet and had one of her ladybug boots on her other hand. She pointed to the window-- at a bug that was trapped between the glass and the screen.
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"I'm a BUG CATCHER, Mama. I have to catch it."

She stared intently, willing it to come out.

With a little poke of the boot, she wanted it out.

Fortunately, we have a few fly swatters around for such occasions. Bug catchers need the right tools. Two pairs of boots, a fly swatter and no pants. Sounds about right.

I think she finally gave up when she heard that dinner was ready, but the determination on this one makes me wonder where her future will take her. This little bug catcher might just conquer the world... in her underwear.

Summer Bubbles

Do bubbles bring smiles to every child's face? We sure do love them around here.

Butterflies Everywhere

Another monarch caterpillar raising summer, indeed. We've enjoyed finding the eggs on milkweed, carefully bringing the host milkweed leaves home, watching carefully as they hatch, eat, eat and eat more. They crawl up to the top of our box, just as they did last year, hang themselves upside down in the "J" position, and suddenly, POOF... the yellow and black stripes are replaced with a surreal green and gold dotted chrysalis. It is so amazing, every time. This year the kids and I were lucky enough to be watching as it actually happened, to witness nature's miracle. Although we're not homeschoolers, I think we've learned more than a year's worth of science curriculum with these critters over the past weeks. They will go on and on to strangers about the food that monarchs eat, the fras they poop, the positions they take, the cycle of their lives and even where to find milk weed in Minneapolis. Strangers look at me and grin.

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While we wait for the next cycle of monarchs to begin again (they sometimes have four cycles in a MN summer), we're learning about Painted Ladies. Our neighbor brought us a kit with six teeny tiny caterpillars. The learning curve starts again.

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And you? Any creepy crawlies in your life lately?