Boys in the Kitchen

We harvested our first ever cabbage from our garden last week and declared that a big bowl of coleslaw was in order to celebrate.
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The boys hauled up the food processer from the basement (an old-school one that once belonged to my grandma) and tried to patiently take turns running it.
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We're really into making our own salad dressing, but there is no better coleslaw sauce than Rudolph's.

Smiles of Summer

Hope you're enjoying every little watermelon filled moment of summer. We are!

Someone loves tomatoes

Our tomatoes are starting to yield a little bit of fruit around here. We planted three different varieties: cherry tomato, yellow pear tomato and an Early Girl, I think.

Gus called me over to the tomato plants the other day and said, "Mom, there's something that looks like a yellow egg plant growing!" Sure enough, our first yellow pear tomato was ready and Miss Louise was more than happy to be the recipient of our first yellow beauty.

I think that is chocolate ice cream on her face, by the way, her other favorite summer treat.

And you? What kind of tomatoes do you have planted chez toi this summer?

Birthday Sewing

For Louise's birthday this year, I really wanted to sew her a birthday dress and continue a tradition I began when she was one. A week before her birthday I found the perfect fabric and although I knew I had no time to be attempting such silliness, I decided to go ahead. The fabric was only found at faraway fabric stores or even a local store in NE Mpls... but that meant packing up three kids to a fabric store and hoping for the best. Instead, I found a terrific resource here in my own backyard, almost. An online fabric store called Cia's Palette is located just over a mile from here and... she delivered my fabric! I wanted to kiss her when she arrived at my door! Not only did she deliver it, she also consulted with me over the phone about which fabric would make the best contrasting fabric and mailed me some generous samples in the mail from which to compare.

I finished the dress after her birthday, but at least I finished it within a month of the date. Next year, my sister warned me, I had better get started after Christmas.

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?

Using up the Veggies

My dear friend Stephanie came to visit last week with her boyfriend Rolf. They live in Angola (in SW Africa where they speak Portuguese) and she visits the midwest once a year. Minneapolis and Iowa are always her stopovers to see friends and family and we happily play hosts for as many days as she allows us. We had a lovely time hanging out... cooking, eating, drinking, playing with the kids, remembering old times, taking a cooking class at Cook's of Crocus Hill, going to the cabin and more. We had a few friends over for a last minute barbeque, or as Rolf calls it, "a brai." I think that is the S. African way of saying "amazing BBQ."
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Ron and Rolf were in charge of all-things-grill and meat while Stef and I took over the crisper drawer and its overabundance of vegetables from several CSA shipments that hadn't been completely used up. Our goal was to use as many of those veggies as we could. I think we did pretty well: roasted vegetables with sundried tomato dip, refrigerator pickles with radishes and cucumbers and fresh dill, a Swedish beet salad with apples, onions, sour cream, a bit of lemon juice and s/p, and then a salad we had noticed at Whole Foods and tried to replicate with beet greens, swiss chard, shredded carrots, sesame oil and ginger. The steaks and chicken legs were amazing, but I found myself more impressed with the potatoes and onions individually wrapped and placed in the coals in the bottom of the wood-fired grill. I don't know if the men were more excited to eat it that night while it was fresh, or the next morning heated up for breakfast. Mmmm.

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.

An Iowa Adventure: Seed Savers

A few weeks ago, Saturday morning came very early. My alarm went off at 5:15 in preparation for my day trip to Seed Savers, near Decorah, Iowa. My friend Janet had been wanting to visit for at least ten years and asked me a few months ago if I might have any interest in going. Need she even ask? I, too, had been wanting to visit for years. She found a tour of Seed Savers with an early morning bird watching and wild flower viewing focus and thought that we would enjoy it along with a pancake breakfast served on the sprawling lawn outside their new visitor's center. We left Minneapolis at 6 a.m. and arrived in good time, ready for hot pancakes served with compostable plates, forks and coffee cups.

Our tour guide Larry was the most knowledgeable outdoorsman I had ever met. He had stories about plants and their scientific names as well as their primary and secondary common names. He told tales of wild outings where he and friends had foraged for entire meals. His recall of bird sounds was outstanding. And his excitement when he saw a bird he had been hoping for? I thought he might break into song.

Such beauty, such amazing preservation of seeds and so close to home. We also enjoyed a little tour of the old barn and former visitor's center. The highlight for me (having just gotten through our own recent infestation) was seeing the mouseproof room where seeds were stored... covered from floor to ceiling with mesh. A mouse-proof fortress.

Next time we'll bring our kids and maybe our husbands. The chickens, ducks, and geese were just too much fun to keep them to ourselves. But just for that day... we loved every little moment of quiet...and a greasy hamburger and beer on the way home.

And here's a little background on Seed Savers, straight from their "About Us" page on their site.

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"Seed Savers Exchange is a non-profit, member supported organization that saves and shares the heirloom seeds of our garden heritage, forming a living legacy that can be passed down through generations. Our loyal SSE members have distributed an estimated 1 million samples of rare garden seeds since our founding nearly 35 years ago. Those seeds now are widely used by seed companies, small farmers supplying local and regional markets, chefs and home gardeners and cooks, alike.

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Seed Savers Exchange was founded in 1975 by Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy to honor this tradition of preserving and sharing. Their collection started when Diane's terminally-ill grandfather gave them the seeds of two garden plants, Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory and German Pink Tomato, that his parents brought from Bavaria when they immigrated to St. Lucas, Iowa in the 1870s.

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Today, the 890-acre Heritage Farm, Decorah, Iowa, is our home -- and Seed Savers Exchange is the largest non-governmental seed bank in the United States. We permanently maintain more than 25,000 endangered vegetable varieties, most having been brought to North America by members' ancestors who immigrated from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and other parts of the world. Unlike Fort Knox, Heritage Farm is not surrounded by security fences and guards. Our perimeter is patrolled by Bald Eagles, red-tailed hawks, deer, raccoons and other wildlife. The farm is ringed by 8.5 miles of hiking trails that take visitors through majestic scenery, past some of our 23 acres of certified organic preservation gardens, historic orchard and ancient White Park Cattle."