Sea Salt Caramel Brownies

My brother is starting a catering business and asked for some help with a dessert for a recent event. What better way to avoid correcting papers and planning curriculum? Staying up late, testing various brownie recipes and discussing the finer points of sea salt. Mmmm.... salty caramel on seriously tasty brownies.

Who needs fancy doilies or brownie wrappers? I just got out my roll of parchment paper and my rotary cutter and made my own!

Snow Fun in Color

As the temperatures have been rising and the snow doesn't seem to want to disappear, we've been spending a lot of time outside. Now that we've had a full five months of winter, we have made the executive decision that it is time to get creative with how to be happy outside, even when you're ready for some green. Enter: the colored water spray bottle! Ah, the smiles and laughs and interesting creatures to be made with colored water!

Exhibit A (above) part of the buried dragon.
Exhibit B (below) the painting of the buried dragon.

Exhibit C: the Easter Bunny.

And Louise even got in on the fun, but she was mostly busy digging in the cave looking like a fancy snow queen!

Our dog wasn't too pleased when we kept throwing her stick inside the tunnel to retrieve. Guess tunneling into a cave isn't a natural instinct for a lab, maybe just for wolves.

Orange Fun

We bought a huge bag of oranges recently at the local grocery store... maybe it was even 18 pounds. We all love oranges and have been eating them at every meal. After a while, however, we decided that no matter how good the orange might taste, 18 pounds of anything is too much!
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I enlisted a little help from the kids and got down to business. The cool old-school juicers are from Mexico City, purchased outside "La Merced," the largest market in the country.

My Valentines

On Valentines Day I set the table with all kinds of hearts and red things, just like my own mom used to do for us. I hid behind the fridge to watch their faces when they saw the fun!

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For dinner that night, of course I had to make this loaf of bread.

Working On: Plans for the Future

We've had our farm in the country for over four years now, but we don't feel any closer to moving there than we did when we first bought it. Thankfully we have wonderful people who rent from us and take great care of it, but it is difficult to spend much time there when we have little or no access to the house while it is occupied.

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Instead of visiting, we dream. One of my largest dreams for the farm is that someday we'll have an outdoor wood-fired bread and pizza oven, built near the barn and the outdoor piazza we hope to have. I've read many tales of the lovely breads that are baked in these outdoor beauties, heard stories of the pizza farms that have cropped up near the Twin Cities, watched YouTube tutorials and pored over the listings at the North House Folk School in northern Minnesota for the class I long to take to figure out how to build our own.

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This weekend there was an inspiring article in the Star Tribune about a minister who builit his own wood fired brick oven and decided that it was a great means of building community with his parishioners. Make sure to check out the photos... the one where they are pulling the hot bread out of the oven on a cold, winter day and the steam is rising... it is amazing.

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I noticed that the class at North House is full for the summer. Cheers to all the future back-yard pizza bakers. May our crust be crisp and our families' bellies be full!

Working on: Bread

While the oven was out of commission for five weeks, I had a difficult time adjusting to life without fresh-baked bread. The night the oven died, my lovely neighbor Sarah allowed me to bake my five loaves that had risen on my counter at her house (last minute teacher and school friend gifts... gasp!). Later I baked at my parents' house, but nothing compares to hanging out in my robe, mug in hand, waiting for a hot loaf to come out of our oven.

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I remembered finally that my brother and sister-in-law had given me their small bread machine and it was hiding in our basement, untouched. One day I decided that it might be worth it to try it, perhaps even using the timer feature and setting it to be ready in the morning. I dutifully followed the recipe one night for a hearty oatmeal loaf and set it up to be hot and ready at 6:00 a.m. as my coffee began sputtering in the pot adjacent to it on the counter. The smell? Amazing. The bread? Pasty white and not even worth mentioning. Am I looking forward to my first loaf in our new oven? Definitely!

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Does anyone know of a good recipe for a bread machine? Or is this the reason why all thrift stores are filled with bread machines? Please share your tips!

Liberty Custard: Losing a dear friend

Tonight was the last night for our dear old friend and neighbor: Liberty Frozen Custard. About seven years ago an inspired couple bought an old-school gas station and refurbished it into a beautiful neighborhood charmer, a locally owned ice cream, er custard shop that sold kiddie cones for less than a buck. They ran a lovely business for those seven years and realized that they just couldn't sustain it anymore.
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With the restored luster of this old-school place, families from around Minneapolis would stop in for a quick cone on a hot summer's day, after a concert or sporting event, or even in the middle of a cold, snowy afternoon. My kids grew up here, tasting their first bites of rich creamy custard while still riding in the baby Bjorn front pack. They learned how to play pinball, how to put a quarter in the little red car, how to get their own glass of water from the old fashioned beverage machine. I think Liberty Custard may have been responsible for helping me pack on a few pounds of pregnancy weight with Gus and Louise.When we heard the news, we made sure to take a last family outing to celebrate their great run in the neighborhood and to say goodbye. Each of the kids got to play a few games, ride the red car and the boys took one last spin at the large chess set. I shed a few tears when I realized that for Gus and Louise, at ages five and three, Liberty may not be a memory they'll be able to take with them. We'll have to remember it in our hearts and retell the stories of their childhoods.
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Tonight Liberty Custard closed. While we were celebrating Ron's belated birthday with my family, my Dad ran out to grab a few of their last pints of custard to go with the cake. They were out of custard, but he bought a couple pints of their yummy Italian Ice. As we drove home from my parents' house afterwards, we saw them carrying the pinball table out the front door, loading it into a U Haul truck.
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Goodbye, sweet Liberty. We loved you 'til the last lick.

A Step Back... part two

We hosted officially ONE event here during the Christmas season, a post-Christmas pageant brunch with our parents. Our oven had just officially died and we were faced with the prospect of making brunch, oven-free. As a baker, I wonder if there is a more difficult fate? Alas, we remembered the electric fry pan and realized that our brunch could be saved! Hello beignets! We served a southern inspired four-course brunch. Louise had fallen asleep on the way home from church and continued her slumber. Carl and Gus busied themselves playing Legos nearby while both sets of grandparents enjoyed the leisurely pace of the meal.

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Mimosas, a tangerine and roasted beet salad on arugula with cranberry vinagrette, a tweaked version of of this succotash (corn, red peppers, green beans, baby lima beans, zucchini, herbs and a splash of cream!), red beans and rice, and coffee and beignets for dessert. We might have set a record for brunch at our normally fast-paced breakfast time.

A Step Back... part one

I let Christmas pass by my blog this year, accidentally. Oops.
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In the spirit of the new year and starting over, I'm forgiving myself and allowing myself to go ahead and post a few highlights, knowing that someday I'll be glad that I just went ahead and posted them, end-of-January-or not.
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Here was our holiday card this year, designed by Flipawoo. I found her on Etsy and loved her speed and quality.

Keeping Busy

Here I am, back at the computer hiding in the cold basement. I can't quite figure out what my writer's block has been related to.... the cold in the basement? Being back at work? Keeping up with the laundry? There must be a way to find balance, right?
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One thing we have been doing well lately is finding ways to keep busy inside. One cold, snowy afternoon recently we popped popcorn in our Stir-Crazy popcorn popper (does anyone make real popcorn anymore besides us?) and giggled the afternoon away. The boys played Legos, Louise colored, we all cuddled on the couch and read books together.

Swirly How to...

Do you buy foam soap? Our kids love it. We find that its much easier to get the right amount of foam soap and not be wasteful with the regular soap refills. After we used up the soap in this Method brand dispenser, I wondered about refilling it. I looked on line and figured out that a 3 parts water to one part refill soap is a great ratio. The best part, though, is choosing the color. One drop of food coloring is all it takes! What color are YOU going to make?

Permission to paint

While we were stuck indoors from the blizzard, the kids and I found many, many fun things to do. The boys mostly played with Legos, thrilled that I allowed them to spread them all over the living room and dining room instead of the cold basement playroom. Louise helped me make the dough for gingerbread cookies that we'll bake later this week and practiced cutting things up with her scissors. (Is that a 3 year old thing? She could spend hours cutting!)

I needed a little break from kid play, so I pulled out the laptop at the kitchen counter. Louise walked in and asked if she could do facepaint on herself. I think she was expecting to hear no, so when I told her "yes, as long as you take off your shirt and promise to take a bath afterwards," she was astonished. I gave her permission to paint. Permission to paint her entire body. And paint she did.

Ready, Set, Decorate!

I'm keeping the Christmas decorations minimal this year, mostly because I think I really dislike putting them all away after Christmas. With my birthday in early December, we usually wait until afterwards to put up the tree. Ron's birthday is in early January, so I like to take things down before then. The time is so short... so I'm focusing on my mantle this year. Er, my piano, since we have no fireplace. (Please excuse the scratches on the piano.... it was once used religiously as a race track for match box cars. We did buy it used, however, for its great patina, so I don't mind a bit.)
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The felt trees were a great find last year at the dollar store. I think they were a subtle influence on the styling for our Advent calendar, though it may have been a chicken or the egg type situation. Did we style our Advent calendars that way then I fell in love with the trees? Or was it the other way around?
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On my to-do list is finish aembroidering my name on my stocking. Already the kids tease me that my name is "Je". Hey, their names are complete. Isn't that what matters most?

And you? How is your decorating going this year?

Lost in the Snow

We spent the weekend at home, trapped by the snow! It is beautiful and was wonderful to play in, though a bit tall for Molly-dog's tastes.
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It took over an hour to unearth the van to go and pick up the kids from an overnight on Saturday morning. Once Ron did pick them up, the van got stuck in the snow trying to figure out the best way to get home. Once he did near our house, there was a car stuck in the road, blocking our entrance. It took the Ron and the snowblower, several neighbors and their shovels to clear a path for Ron to drive into our driveway.
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Do I really have to go to work tomorrow? I'm thinking about taking the city bus so we don't have to dig out any more cars.

OLE!

Gus wants to be famous someday. We told him that it might happen if he joined the Mexican Dance and Cultural club at his school, a great fit for a kid that loves to sing and dance. He was excited about it for a day, then begged me to tear up the application and my check. With a little extra prodding, he made it to the first session and hasn't looked back. He danced this week at a fundraiser at a local bookstore. Look out world, here comes Gustavo. OLE!

His favorite kindergarten friend Celia stayed to watch him dance. He was thrilled!