Happy Birthdays to Gus and Louise

Gus and Louise will always almost share a birthday. Gus' birthday is May 12... the big 4. I remember being in the delivery room with Louise and asking the nurse if this baby was going to have its own birthday. She dared me to make it happen. A few pushes later, Louise was born on May 11th. Now she's 2. How did that happen?

We celebrated their birthdays together with our families on Saturday. More than anything in the world, Louise wanted a Dora cake. A Dora cake? Well, I am a Spanish teacher. She's wholesome and speaks Spanish, so I couldn't really complain. Gus wanted a robot cake, a natural extension of his robot building with Uncle Erik recently.
Instead of trying to integrate the two in one, I made two. I think it was 1:45 a.m. when I finally went to bed on Friday night. Oh well, these are the things that get my blood flowing. I can't stay up that late for some reason or another doing laundry. Wonder why?

Here's the robot cake. I attached the leftover parts from his robot part shopping trip at Axe-Man and stuck his robot in at the last minute. The grey frosting was a hit.

Here's the Dora cake, though it is a little tough to see the shape of it due to the angle of the photo. It is shaped like a hill or a mountain. I took an angelfood cake loaf pan and baked the cake in it, slicing it in half horizontally before I froze it for optimum decorating texture. The frosting is brown with chopped peanuts for the winding road, colored coconut for grass, and various chocolates and malted milk balls for rocks. She loved it. The hardest part was taking away the recently acquired Dora doll and Boots, hand-me-downs from a 6-year-old friend who is moving out of the Dora stage.

When we ask them how old they are, Louise promptly starts counting, usually finishing around seven. So she's seven but really two. Gus, however, claims that he is already four. We'll let him believe that... his birthday is coming soon.

A Hike to Spring?!?

The kids and I recently walked to Bachman's to welcome the spring by playing with the farm animals in the petting zoo and by each planting an impatien plug into a tiny pot.Carl, Gus and Louise got to pretend for an hour that they are indeed farm kids and not just city kids, dreaming of their farm someday. On the way home we talked about what animals we would like to have at the farm when we move there. Carl informed me that a pig would be fun because he'd like to slop the pigs. "You can feed them the food scraps that don't go in the compost, Mom." Oh... good thinking, Carl. Previously I had thought that there would never be a chance of owning a pig, but suddenly as a form of recycling, I could be game. Except of course, there reaches a time, well, unless we want to enter a 1,000 pound pig at the Minnesota State Fair someday, that well. You know. I'm thinking that we're going to be slightly wimpy farmers and won't be able to deal with the butchering aspect of rural life. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just need to spend a little more time in the rural landscape, getting my hands dirty, my boots muddy, and opening my eyes to the reality of country life. For now though, goats and chickens are what we're thinking. A sheep or two, maybe?

Our new Farm (the CSA)

(photo from jigsha.com)

We joined a new CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this year. For those of you unfamiliar with that term, a CSA works like this: You buy a share at the beginning of the growing season that generally feeds a family of four. The farm takes the money from everyone's shares and plans their gardens and the next six months or so of their lives accordingly. If the weather is great and the pests don't take over, every week they deliver a shipment of whatever happens to be ready for harvest at the farm. If the weather is terrible and there's a sudden pestilence that takes over the Minnesota countryside, then we have all shared the risk and we shop at the grocery store instead. At most of the CSAs around, the produce is organic, though the farm may not be officially organic as the certification is quite arduous.

Our farm is called Victorian Meadows. You can follow this link to check out their site. We've belonged to other CSAs in the past but I was attracted to this one because they have goats. And they make cheese. And the cheese is part of the share! Can you see where I'm headed with this one? I contacted the owner early on and mentioned my fascination with all things goat and she assured me that I could have goat milking lessons as well as help out with the cheese making. Perfect! We split a share with my parents this year, hoping to learn a little more about just how much food comes in the boxes weekly at this farm.

Here is the latest email from our farmer Jill:

Just some quick updates on the CSA farm……
We got all the seeds into the ground and everything is planted. The gardens are ahead of schedule by almost a month! We got a little “over ambitious” for those who know me… know that it’s not hard for me to be over ambitious.
This year we decided to put in over a acre of green beans, an acre of peas and a acre of sweet corn. Along with the other gardens…. So we have a total of 6 extremely large garden fields this year and we have a huge variety, just like last year.
The only things I haven’t plant yet is the fragile produce like tomatoes plants, broccoli, peppers and sweet potatoes plants. If we even were to get a light frost they would be gone so I always wait. Next week they will go in after mother’s day.
Radishes are peeking there sprouts out of the ground and it shouldn’t be too long for them to be harvested along with small soup and salad onions!
We have organic pasture raised eggs high in Omega 3 ready to go along with goat cheese and soaps. We are going to start May 8th this Friday!
We need the egg cartons back
Organic chevre or ricotta goat cheese:
Will come in a glass jar and fresh frozen. I will need the glass jar and lids back as well.

We received our first shipment on Friday. 2 dozen eggs (brown and blue beauties!), freshly snipped chives, a tube of goat milk based lip balm and one of eye cream, and a strong scented farm made goat milk based (lemon grass... yum!) laundry soap that requires only one Tbsp. to do a large load of laundry. 1 Tbsp? Yes... so far, it is working well. I'll keep you posted on the grass stains on Gus' new dress pants. You can order the laundry soap here. Slim pickings in terms of vegetables or fruits, but this is Minnesota and the ground is barely thawed.

A tree house is growing at our house:: part 2

More updates soon. It is getting close!

Saturday morning at our house

We had a lovely Saturday morning, soaking up the sunshine as it came pouring in our windows. The boys woke early and occupied themselves with their Legos at the dining room table while we slept in, well, until about 7:30. The coffee was hot, the cinnamon raisin swirl bread was actually swirly, and art projects were flowing.

Swirls

I tried another bread from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This time it was a request from my grandma who is recovering from hip-replacement surgery. She's at my parents' home for a few weeks and I've been able to see her quite a bit more often. The kids and I have loved it. So... when she asked me the other day, "Jenny, do you think you could bake me some cinnamon swirl bread? "... I knew the answer would be yes. I thought I had seen a recipe in the book for a raisin cinnamon loaf. How hard could it be to leave out the raisins?
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This recipe is a bit different from the master dough recipe because it includes some sugar as well as a cup of buttermilk. Thankfully I've discovered the powdered buttermilk that keeps for a LONG time in the fridge and always have it available. I followed the recipe for the dough as written, but started to just wing it when it came to the cinnamon part. I was making cinnamon toast for the kids for breakfast, so I just sprinkled some of the same cinnamon-sugar mixture in our shaker on the dough as it was rolled out into a large rectangle, on top of the beaten egg mixture which makes it stick. Note to self: follow the directions next time. They are there for a reason.

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The bread was wonderful tasting and lovely, but it was missing the rich, thick cinnamon layer that is found in this kind of bread. I think that the mixture in my toast shaker is much more sugary than the proportions in the recipe. Yep, peeking at the recipe now I see what happened. Next time, more cinnamon. Also, the thinner you roll the dough out into the rectangle, the more impressive swirl that develops.

I wanted to bring a little loaf to a few neighbors but don't have small loaf pans. I improvised with these Martha Stewart mini-casseroles that my parents gave me when they gave me my favorite soup pot for birthday a while back (pictured in this post.) They baked up beautifully.

And you? Do you prefer your cinnamon swirl bread with or without raisins?

A tree house is growing at our house:: part 1

Life around our house has been more fun lately with Daddy home more often. Ron has been working incredible hours these past few months as the owner of his own business. It feels good to know that every hour he's away from us, he's putting in an hour toward our future. Still, having him around here really feels good.

Last weekend the boys and Ron broke ground, or shall I say, cut branches on a tree house. Ron had been thinking about building one with the boys for quite some time when he received a great book on tree houses for birthday this year. It was inspiring for the boys to look at, drool over and dream about. Carl even took it outside one sunny afternoon a few weeks ago to study and then sketch out his dream fort with a visiting friend.

In addition to just having him home, I like that it is his project. Well, their project. I'm the gardener and flower tender in the family while he just mows. It makes me smile when the kids crowd around him and the old apple tree that will soon become their new home and I find that I actually have a few kid-free moments to do my own digging.Getting started: a post that was dug into the ground and concrete poured on top. (Please don't report our peeling paint to the city. It's on our list for summer tasks.)

I'll report back as the project progresses and the fun continues.

A little junk= a lot of fun

For Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gave my boys an adventure day certificate. Recently they cashed it in for a day with my brother. I figured that they would eat a meal together, maybe do a craft project or two. They were gone for EIGHT hours. I think it was a present to me.

He picked them up right away in the morning when they woke up and took them to a local favorite breakfast joint for pancakes and apple juice. Afterwards they went to an asian grocery store to browse the seafood tanks for live crabs, lobsters and more. They spent a few hours at the Science Museum of Minnesota then headed off to lunch. The highlight of the day was going to Ax-Man Surplus, a local junk store filled with parts, what-nots, doo-dads and everything in between. They were each allowed to spend $5.00 on supplies to build the robot of their dreams. As they sat later at Erik's kitchen table building, I think these boys fell uncontrollably in love with my brother. They've always loved him, but to them, a chance to use a glue gun, tools and have his focused attention is probably better than a Liberty Custard cone with sprinkles.

Check out the finished creatures. They came home happy, full, crafty and confident.

Birthday Fun

For Carl's birthday, we had a few kids over for a belated celebration. As part of the festivities the kids got to create their own t-shirt design, following Amanda Soule's freezer paper stenciling technique from "The Creative Family."

We didn't have freezer paper, so we used parchment paper instead. It didn't have the sticky effect that ironing the freezer paper does in her instructions, so we just used a bit-o-duct tape. The kids drew their designs with a pencil on the paper and I cut them out with an X-acto knife. Using fabric paint and stencil brushes, they painted in their designs.
We let them dry in the sun in the porch for a while while they played in the yard and each child left with a new shirt and a big "I-did-it-myself" grin on their face.

On sharing

Our neighbor brought over some Easter bags full of German chocolates last week. Louise was very interested in the bag that contained three beautiful and colorful egg-filled wonders. She's at an age where carrying bags around is very exciting. Add to that fun the loading and unloading of chocolates into said bag? A dream come true. She sat talking to this bunny for quite a while that day, sharing one of the bags of goodies with him, then telling him in her own almost-two-year-old way that they were yummy. Her brothers were happy that the bunny didn't actually eat their chocolates.

A Fun Book Surprise!

A padded envelope arrived unannounced in my mailbox the other day. Postmark? Virginia. Hmmmm. The book is called "My Mama Made That," a book of yummy favorites from the women in Virginia. It was published by The Junior League of Hampton Roads and had been reviewed recently in the paper where my friend Julie lives. She hopped quickly over to the bookstore and picked up two copies, one for herself and the other for me, just 'cause it reminded her of me. What a special treat!

The book goes above and beyond all other local-type cookbooks I've ever seen. They arranged for a photographer to shoot amazing photographs of delicious southern fare as well as a beautiful collection of aprons. The photography is by Lee Walker Shepherd who is both a photgrapher and stylist. Check out her stuff here. From the credits in the book, it looks like local friends chipped in to provide the props like a restored 1946 Chevy pickup.

And then there's the food....

A book featuring red velvet cake-- of course I love it!I think this might become a summer favorite around our house: Balsamic Chicken with Fresh Summer Relish on page 152.
It couldn't be from an ocean side area without a fun cocktail called Ocean Blue Margarita. Can you say, "Official Summer Beverage" anyone?

I love the rick rack trim. I also love the Coastal crab cakes recipe. I think someday when I actually get to the coast, not just a lake here in land-locked Minnesota, I'm going to make this. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my new nightstand favorite nightly. Sweet and savory dreams, to you all.

Easter Bread

For Easter dinner, I decided to put Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day to the Easter Test. I made a batch of challah dough, the butter variety. The eggs were dyed quickly before inserting into little nooks within the braid. I had heard that you could use both raw and hard boiled eggs in this type of bread. After being baked for 25 minutes, the eggs were soft cooked and edible, but I think next time I'd hard boil them ahead of time.

The outcome? A hit! Soft, fluffy, brightly colored bread... a real hit with kids and adults alike.

A little fun outside

Sometimes when the mood strikes, you just gotta get outside. In the sandbox, at a park, on a blue deer. A blue deer named Ned. You have to know my brother to understand, or even then, maybe you might not. The kids love Ned. I think he loves them too.