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.

Shooting Frogs

Not really shooting and killing, just shooting photos of the chocolate frogs we made for Carl's Harry Potter birthday party this year. If you've read any of the books, you'll know that Harry and his friends enjoy a little sweet treat here and there. One of them is a chocolate frog. These were the hit of the party as cake toppers. They were so wildly successful that the kids barely touched the homemade chocolate cake beneath, but instead focused all their attention on the slimy green stripes on the dark chocolatey frogs.

I'm posting a food shot to share with you that I didn't win the photo class contest with Penny de los Santos. While it would have been wonderful, it is probably a good thing. With the school year ending, two kid-birthdays this week, a brother-in-law graduating from dental school and the tulips in bloom in Minneapolis, who has time to flit off to Seattle? At least, however, I'll be able to check in on the live on-line class. You can too, if you register. It's free. What are you waiting for? The class starts Friday. See you there!

Almost Famous

Gus wanted to join the Mexican Dance and Culture class at his school to become famous. Maybe it was an excuse to get up on stage, or maybe just an opportunity to wear some amazing costumes, but I think he's well on his way to becoming famous. I mean, really. A kid this Scandinavian looking, dressing up in a Mexican Viejitos (Little Old Man) costume and understanding most every little Spanish word spoken on stage, is pretty fun. He had a performance last week with his group and another all-Mexican dance troupe in which they performed more than their staple dances. He was able to do a fisherman dance (with the all white outfits and hats), pretend he was part of a Mariachi band and then his old man dance. Such fun. Viva el baile!

Ready to De-Clutter?

My friend Amy just sent me an email with some information about an exciting day coming up.

Free stuff will be available in neighborhoods all over the World (hopefully) on May 14, 2011. Really. It is a day when you put stuff out on your curb and then anyone interested can pop over and help themselves. We regularly do this anyway because it is much easier than driving a load over to the thrift store and fun to watch people's happiness at finding a good treasure. Go ahead and join us! Here's the website with details.

Penny de los Santos- Food Photographer

If you've been following me here for more than a post or two, you'll know that food and photography are definitely in my top five list of favorites. Toss in a little travel and a language or two, and we've nearly hit all five.

Imagine my excitement when I read about an opportunity to take a class with Penny de los Santos, a food photographer, in Seattle. She shoots for Saveur (love it!) and National Geographic, has a picture of Frida in her kitchen, spent time in the kitchen with Rick Bayless and her first official food shoot was in Chile. She said she's calling all "food geeks." I mean, really. It feels like we've been leading parallel lives, or well, parallel interests!

But part of the deal to win a spot in the class was creating a video explaining why I'd be perfect for the job, along with five other lucky contestants. Enter husband, iphone user and budding videographer. It took a huge learning curve, and we're still not that impressed with the quality, but it was more than fun. A po'boy and beer out at Sea Salt while the kids were in school... mmm.

So here's the video, nervous me and all. If you're interested, you can stream the class live via Creative Live. Wish me luck... my first video and my first tweet!

p.s. Penny, if you do choose me, I'll bake you the most kick-ass brownie you've ever eaten. Promise.

New Sweets in Town

This is a wonderful time to be alive and awake in Minneapolis. We have THREE new bakeries in South Minneapolis. We're a bit sad that Rustica headed for Uptown, but are quite glad that Patisserie 46, Sun Street Breads and Sweets Bakeshop have arrived and are in a lovely bikeable proximity from our house.

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If you're in the mood, may I suggest the amazing raspberry scones at Sun Street, where I got to meet the baker Solveig herself. She must slice open the dough and slather in the raspberries before sending them off to meet their fate in the oven. At Patisserie 46, there are no wrong turns. The almond croissant made me moan (quietly, of course, I'm Minnesotan) and their open face sandwich special one day with blue cheese, walnuts, fig preserves and endive was swoon worthy. I've only ventured into Sweets once and was impressed, but could only afford the small cupcakes, as shown above. They did make for the perfect little treats for my kids for an afternoon of tea party fun. My green macaron, the french variety, not the coconut kind, was delightful, if not a bit spooky, due to the odd green color. Yum, yes.

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You may want to check out what the local blog Heavy Table has to say about the "trifecta" we've landed. I second that.

Chalk in the Late Sun

The weather has been on-and-off here lately in MN. Recently as I was trying to wrangle the kids into the house for a bath and bedtime, I spotted Louise in her studio, er, in front of the garage with a masterpiece.

A Belated 8th Birthday

Carl turned 8 recently and I missed the occasion to send well wishes out into the blogosphere. He said no to a cake, unless I could quickly whip up a crazy cake in an hour, so we went with his old favorite treat to bring to school on his birthday, donut balls. Yes, good old donut holes. They make for a great cake, don't they? This Carl guy isn't so little anymore, and is starting to do things in a very grown up way. He's speaking Spanish to me and Gus much of the time we're at home, has really taken to Harry Potter books (is almost done with #4 on his own!), takes charge of a few household jobs, and is really learning how to think about other people's needs. He loves legos, beans and rice, soccer, making scrambled egg dinner for the family by himself, reading, playing outside, fishing, drawing, wrestling with Dad, calculating money, homemade coleslaw and riding his bike, in no particular order. We're really looking forward to lots of free time outside this summer so we can ride bikes and work on growing a sunflower forest for the kids to play in, with the seeds that he picked out. . Happy Birthday, Big C. We love you!

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!