Hazy but never lazy summer

Where does the time go? I'm offended that Target has back-to-school things out. In the meantime, we're enjoying the heck out of our summer, in and out of the pool, playing with the dog, partying in the back yard, getting sunburned in spite of best intentions, still removing wallpaper occasionally but not doing too much crafting. There will be time for cozy indoor creativity later. Dorothy and I have been churning out cookie bouquets in the kitchen, however, since we all need to be in the air conditioning sometimes. I let her color on old CD adhesive labels, which we then stick to the plastic-wrapped cookies. That seems to be a good way to use those labels up as well as artfully decorate our goodies. Empty cans that used to house bottled coffee drinks make perfect small vases, and the link to cookie recipe we use is here. This bouquet went to a four-year-old friend with a birthday this week.

Vintage linens on the kid table, with flowers picked from the garden in a mason jar, all ready for a group of happy friends--does summer get any better than this?

And Miss Belle, who I think may actually have doubled her size since we adopted her, sporting her new Etsy collar with flower. She is growing strong on food from dishes sold by this store, and her sweet engraved tag came from here. These dog goodies were beyond my homemade ken, but I love being able to buy someone else's creative works instead of the same old stuff from the big box stores.

I also have a happy update on my car woes. It seems that my car is fixable! I may only be in my ugly, gas-guzzling rental for one more week. I'm going to have to do something nice for my car when I get it back. Maybe a homemade trash can? Or new cover-up rugs for the floorboards? I'm so excited. There's nothing to make you appreciate the status quo like having it temporarily compromised.

The living room

More house progress!  Removing the living room wallpaper was a serious pain in the ass. My mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, daughter and husband all worked with me (and in the case of my mother, much more than me) to get the wallpaper off this wall.  There was a thin liner underneath the regular wallpaper that had to be steamed and scraped away shreds at a time.  Ouch.  But now it's off!  Mom and I primed the newly-bare walls, which had never been painted in their 71 years, then painted them a perky green called spring cactus. I made the curtains from fabric I found online and posted about previously, from Heather Bailey's Pop Garden collection. This is a room we needed some furniture for when we moved into this house.  I fell in love with the Eames-inspired tulip chair from an online discount store, and we bought the light fixture and white sofa (below) from IKEA. This room is meant to house my collection of hobnail milk glass, and the bumpy white lamp and chair are really just accessories to my beloved dishes.  I have a less-is-more attitude toward some things, but dishes are just not one of them. I love dishes.  I have way too many.  But hey, better dishes than drugs and booze, right?

After I hung the new curtains this weekend  Dorothy came into the room.  She immediately noticed the curtains and rushed over to the windows to admire.  "Wow!  These new curtains are so pretty!  They are going to look beautiful at my birthday party."  My husband came home an hour or so later and his reaction was not as satisfying.  I had to drag him into the room to see the curtains, which I doubt he'd have noticed on his own.  He glanced and said, "oh, those look nice."  He might have said the same thing if I'd hung paper bags in the window.  If I hadn't prompted him he might never have noticed they were there. This is why I'm so grateful to have a daughter.  :)

My over-the-sofa art is going to be supplied by my children.  I purchased artists canvases at a craft store and covered them with more of the Pop Garden fabric using a staple gun. I have a can of low-tack spray adhesive that I'm going to use to adhere a rotating collection of the kids' art to the screens.  This felt like a formal but fun way to honor their artwork. I have admired framed child art in other people's homes, but I'm thinking this will be easier to peel off or stick up art as their talents and interests change.

Now all I have to do to finish this room is patch and paint the ceiling, paint all the trim, mop off the bits of wallpaper that seem to have stuck to the floor, buy a coffee table, sew throw-pillows, buy a coordinating shade for the milk glass lamp (not shown), sew a Pop Garden scarf for the piano, find or make an entry-way rug, paint or replace the plant stand that doesn't seem to match, and find the rest of my milk glass in a box downstairs.  It's a good thing my baby sleeps through the night and I have nothing else to do all day, right?  Oh wait...

And today is my daughter's actual birthday.  She gets to bring a treat to school to share with her classmates, so we made cupcakes with lavender icing at her request. I love this recipe for vanilla cupcakes and have made it several times, even though the method of adding the butter to the batter seems rather unorthodox. The cupcakes don't turn golden-brown until they are over baked--you have to do the toothpick test to get them out in time--but they come out really moist and they hold their shape nicely so you can eat them without having most of your cupcake dissolve into crumbs all over your lap.  According to Dorothy's birthday wish the cupcakes needed to have her classmates names on them, so we did that too.  I printed the names onto a sheet of card stock and we just cut, glued and folded the little tags onto toothpicks. Hopefully the birthday girl will feel like she got all her birthday wishes granted today. She woke up pretty excited!

Sorghum cookies

This picture is blurry, but it's hard to shoot a moving target.  Dorothy is displaying the apron I found at a thrift store recently.  Guess where it's destined?  This lovely turn in the weather has inspired me to make camping reservations for us at some state parks we want to check out this spring.  I'm so looking forward to our first 2011 trip!

Today in the kitchen I experimented with a local ingredient I'm not very familiar with.  I had picked up a recipe for sorghum cookies at the state fair last summer and had yet to try it.  I altered the recipe to suit our diets and our taste, and they were really quite tasty.  As Rob said, "I still don't really understand what sorghum is, but it makes very good cookies."  Exactly.

Here's the recipe in case you decide to Bake Kentucky Proud as well (or something):
1 cup plus 2 TB sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg
1/3 cup sorghum
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup oats
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut

Preheat oven to 350 and line three cookie sheets with parchment.  Whisk together flours, soda, and salt in a bowl or large measuring cup, set aside.  Cream butter, oil and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer, add egg, vanilla and sorghum.  Beat well.  Add flour mixture in two parts, beating well after each addition.  Stir in oats, chips and coconut.  Drop onto prepared cookie sheet and bake 10 to 12 minutes.  Cool three minutes on the sheet, then transfer to wire rack.

Winter days

I think every year my husband starts complaining about winter at about this time, and each year I'm surprised that winter is even in full swing already (wasn't it just Christmas?) and then all of the sudden I get impatient for spring too.  I have to say, though, that I'm not as impatient this year.  For one thing I'm not horridly pregnant like last year, and for another it is just much easier to live in the present now that this move is over.  Without having to constantly put "real life" on hold to show the house or to spend so much time prepping for change it is easier to appreciate and even linger on each day.  One of the things I've been really enjoying this winter (besides my fireplace, have I mentioned that lately?) is this cookbook.  I got it for Christmas and it's the best.  I love America's Test Kitchen (I've blogged about my fierce devotion to Cooks Illustrated before) and I love the unaffiliated magazine Cooking Light, and this cookbook seems to be the best of both worlds.  The recipes have the reliability of Cooks Illustrated and the health aspects of Cooking Light.  Perfect!  Of course, some of them also have the fussiness factor and four-hours-later-dinner-is-on-the-table factor of CI, but that's part of the journey, right?  I swooned over the vegetarian chili (with tempeh), scarfed up the cornbread, served the spaghetti and meatballs for Rob's birthday, splurged on the oven fries, slurped the lentil soup, and changed my go-to bread recipe to their basic whole-wheat loaf. And I've only had the book since Christmas!  The only recipe I've tried but didn't love was multigrain pancakes, which were dry, but I think I may have overcooked them.  In any case the red pepper frittata we ate with them was superb!

 

Could anything be sweeter than this?  Both of my kids somehow made it into my bed in the wee small hours a couple nights ago and I snapped this photograph of them in the morning.  I think they should always wear coordinating clothes because I'm surely more patient with them when I'm giddy over their matchy cuteness.  Rock star pajamas!  My sleeping angels.  This picture will keep me going next time they are irritated with each other and I'm feeling likewise toward them.

The house is still coming along.  The kitchen and dining room are shaping up and gradually other things are migrating to new, permanent homes.  Sometimes stuff doesn't want to stay where you unpack it--it has to get moved around a bit before it settles.  I organized my serger thread in a lovely old cabinet that belonged to my grandparents and I think the colors are so pretty; it's like a functional rainbow over in that corner of my family room.  I also purchased an old wooden ironing board at an antiques store so that I can leave it out in the family room and hope it looks more like furniture than something that is on loan from the basement.  I want all my sewing supplies to be out and accessible, but I don't want my living space to look too utilitarian.  Hopefully I'll figure that out.

Lite my fire

Happy New Year!  I've been doing really un-bloggable things lately like unpack boxes, but things at the new house are progressing.  For one thing we got new appliances.  Now I'm a girl who likes old things--vintage, used, recycled, repurposed...I'm usually all over that.  But the appliances in this house just crossed some sort of line for me.  They weren't like old/vintage, they were just like old/nasty.  The stove in particular bothered me.  It's not all the old-style knobs and dials, which are rather fetching, nor the retro "futuristic" font.  It's the fact that in the late 1970s, the previous owner of this house installed a cutting-edge stove that included an early microwave oven right there in the oven cavity, and that I was concerned about accidentally radiating my family each time I turned it on.  Tucked in the folder of paperwork that came from this house was even a letter, dated 1980, from the range manufacturer informing the previous homeowners that their microwave oven was no longer up to code.  Apparently it lacked appropriate locking mechanisms.  Yikes.  So this old stove just had to go, although I did feel like it should have gone to some appliance museum instead of the inglorious end it met by being hauled away by the new appliance delivery guy

I was super-excited about the new stove, which I thought I chose with care. We had the plumber run a gas line to the kitchen so I could get a gas range, which is something I really missed in our last house.  My appliance dreams included a long, middle gas burner with a built-in griddle pan, which this new stove has.  As I got to know my new stove better, however, I realized it wasn't going to make all my kitchen dreams come true.  I do love the griddle, and the whoosh of flame that looks like "real" cooking in ways an electric burner never will.  But the stove is also some odd appliance equivalent of look-alike new construction housing developments (aka, not my cup of tea).  It says "lite" instead of "light," or "on" or "ignite," which seems needlessly stupid--couldn't they have made the font smaller or something?

But I was willing to forgive "lite" until I saw this.  My new range has a "chicken nuggets" feature.  WTF, you might ask?  I turned to my trusty appliance manual.  This feature apparently brings the oven to the correct temperature to heat "convenience-style" chicken nuggets, then keeps them warm for up to three hours.  I'm not sure at this point which is worse--an early microwave oven that may leach radiation, or a stove that has a special feature to "cook" frozen, breaded chicken bits without human interference.  Having never purchased "convenience-style" chicken nuggets myself, I'm starting to suspect this stove was not meant for me.  I'm going to suspend judgment, though.  There is still the griddle, and "lite" seems to ignite a healthy flame that I can use to cook my own less-convenient family favorites.

Finally, wallpaper demolition started today!  The main living rooms are feeling unpacked and comfortable enough now that I felt like we could take the move-in to a new level.  My own dear Mum started peeling paper in the living room, and I'm afraid it's going to be quite a task.  This is her wrestling with the liner.  Underneath all that liner, however, is a lovely plaster wall that should like quite nice once it is painted sage green.  At some point!

The waiting is the hardest part

Housing inspection tomorrow; the buyer needs everything moved away from the walls in the basement.  That's rough, because our basement is crammed full of stuff.  Crafty supplies can unfortunately take up a lot of room, and we've been hanging on to miscellaneous stuff that we intend to put in our next (bigger) house, and it's all been stashed in the basement.  In the midst of all the basement chaos I am intent on acquiring and wrapping Christmas gifts.  While it seems like one of the less pressing things we've got going right now, it is near the top of my mind.  Santa must be able to find us, wherever we are!  I typically do my shopping gradually, and I'd ordered a number of things just in the last week or so since it started looking like we'd be moving, so now most of our Christmas things are simply and hastily wrapped and sent off to Nana's to hide in a closet until we need them.  Having at least one thing under control makes me feel a little better.

Dorothy and I also made spice cake (we skipped the pecans) from this month's Cooking Light to celebrate selling the house.  I guess I overcooked the maple part of the icing a bit because it hardened too quickly and is more like fudge, but it still tastes good. It was nice to take the time for a mother/daughter project in the midst of all this housing hustle.

And speaking of the housing hustle, we still don't know where we're going.  I'm starting to, ahem, sort of lose my s#!$ about it, and I'm tired of waiting to know where my family is going to be sleeping next month.  The short version of the story is that we made a verbal offer on a house that is not for sale.  It is none of the ones I described in my last post.  As you might imagine, there is slightly more to the story than that, but I don't feel like detailing in the blog.  I don't want to live in the knives and lizards house (besides, did I mention the kitchen there?  Bleah!), the good memories house is overpriced, and the dilapidated charmer is really just too dilapidated.  We've been waiting since Monday afternoon to hear back, and at this point I'm jumping every time the phone rings.  I need to go back and read my own post about not wishing my life away!  But housing is a basic need, and even though I realize and am thankful that we are not actually faced with homelessness, with every box I pack in the basement I get more anxious about not knowing where these will be unpacked.  Please send me good housing vibes!

Weekend pictures

Another fun, busy weekend!  I finished this hat before we left for an overnight camping trip, to take to a 5-year-old birthday party when we returned.  The new owner seems to like it.  Dorothy approved of the "gem" beads in the center of the flowers.

We took the camper to Lake Monroe in Bloomington.  I went to college at IU, so it was fun to be back in that area.  We drove to campus in the late afternoon just to see how things had changed and vowed to go back next summer to visit some of my favorite old haunts.  Our campsite was, once again, not very woodsy.  Next fall we will know that we have to make reservations early (or commit to 2-night stays) if we want to camp in a natural setting during October.  The place we went was more of an RV park for Indianapolis fishermen or weekenders who are interested in an RV intentional neighborhood scene, not so much a woodsy campground one.  We had no idea going in, but it was also the weekend of this site's annual Halloween festivities, including a campsite decorating contest and trick-or-treating.  We hadn't planned on this, so during our excursion to campus we stopped by a grocery store to purchase candy and a makeshift costume for Dorothy--a $2.99 tiara and wand set.  It ended up being a fun surprise.  The other families were very nice, and the whole evening ended up being very enjoyable even though it wasn't what we pictured.  Since groups were walking around from site to site, many people also made a point to go over and peek in our cute camper, which was once again very unique among much larger and newer (and neutral-colored) campers.  My favorite comment was from one person who asked if it was really retro, or had we purchased it new to look like that.  :)

Now for my pictures.  Above, Dorothy is broom-sweeping our camper as we get things set up.  She fancies she is like Laura Ingalls doing her chores.

Even though our site itself was not woodsy, the campground was right next to the woods surrounding Lake Monroe.  We took a gorgeous hike through the pretty foliage and down to the lake.  (Can you spot the baby?)

Dorothy pretended to be a lake mermaid.  I got this photo of her pretending to jump back to her watery home, but unfortunately did not capture the hysterically cute affected mermaidesque hair-tossing of a moment before.

We cooked chicken sausages on the fire, and enjoyed our favorite fall acorn squash soup, which I'd prepared at home and warmed in the camper microwave.

The almost-full moon was a perfect backdrop to the campsite trick-or-treating. 

Pumpkins

Another busy week around here.  Lots of fall fun, including a trip to the pumpkin patch.  We've had several house-showings, which is driving us a little crazy at this point.  I think we've given up hope of actually selling, and just wish people would leave us alone.  Why do we keep giving free tours of our home to people who will just say things like "oh, it's so cute!  We just love it!  But we needed an extra bathroom."  Or first-floor bedroom, or extra square footage, or garage...it's always something that we clearly didn't have based on the information in our listing, but for some reason people want to come see it (and not buy it) anyway.

This photo was an accident--he looked away as I was taking it, but isn't his hat adorable next to the real pumpkins?  I made that for him last year.  I'd just made a similar one for Dorothy and she insisted the new baby would need one too.  Obviously she was right.  Speaking of her being right, today she was putting on her ruby slippers and talking to my mother-in-law.  She said, "when I wear these shoes, people always say, 'are you Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz?' But I'm like, 'ummmm, no, I'm Dorothy from the city.'" 

When did she become such a teenager?  She also seems to have a particular interest in a boy from school, in a way that seems to indicate to me that she's got a budding awareness of "special" boy/girl relationships.  She always tells me what he's up to, talks about him often, and last night after church choir (which they also both participate in) she said, "C. sat next to me at choir, then I patted his back, and he went [ insert giggle silly face with tongue sticking out and full body wiggle].  Then after choir I gave him three different hugs."  Oh my!

Today we made cookies, without boys.  (Except Worth, I guess, who was kept happy with pea crisps while we baked.)  The last few years I have tried several different recipes for pumpkin cookies, but to be frank they all sort of suck.  I mean, the are edible, they made from butter and sugar after all.  But they aren't good like pumpkin-bread-in-cookie-form or anything.  Today I thought I'd try a different route and make a recipe for applesauce cookies, but sub in pumpkin.  I also added pumpkin pie spice, and substituted chocolate chips for the recommended raisins.  They taste good but are too chewy, and the bottoms basically scraped right off when I severed them from the cookie sheet they were stuck to.  Parchment might have helped with the release, but not the texture.  I think it must be hard to develop a pumpkin cookie recipe because of all the moisture in cooked pumpkin.  If anyone has one, please let me know!

In between house-showings and pumpkin patches this week I did something that makes me feel really smug and obnoxious--I ordered my Christmas cards!  I know it's early, but it was this gorgeous afternoon, the kids were playing out front, and from the basement I'd just unearthed the holiday dress I'd purchased on clearance last year for Dorothy.  It has a matching dress for her doll, which is always extra special.  Dorothy saw it and had herself and her dolly dressed in no time, so I popped the baby into this little fleece Santa suit left from Dorothy's babyhood, and clicked away.  I got adorable photos of both kids in their holiday get-ups, so I figured I might as well finish the task while I was on it and selected a pretty photo card online.  Now bring it on, season-accelerating commercial world, I'm ready for you!  Before you even change your displays from spooky to Santa, my holiday cards are done.  Pow!

I am a dork, but you are reading my blog--please love me anyway.  :)

Barley in a rice cooker

Right around the time the baby was born I upgraded my rice cooker. Before, I had a little red one (Oster, maybe?) that was okay for making a small amount of white rice in a pinch, as long as you didn't mind a little burned to the bottom. But it wasn't very good at making brown rice, which we prefer, and it wouldn't keep the rice warm for any amount of time without scorching. I used the Cooks Illustrated method of making brown rice in my oven, and that never seemed like a big deal. But somehow the addition of an extra human to our family rendered the steps involved in making rice (boiling water, for example) too fussy, and I invested in a good rice cooker. It works great, and as of today I love it even more. A few weeks ago I tried making quinoa in it, according to a suggestion I read online. That worked so well that today I decided to branch out and try pearl barley. It worked! Hooray! I used the liquid-to-barley ratio suggested on the package (2.5 cups water to 1 cup rinsed barley). I rinsed my cooked barley to cool it down, then made it into a Greek-style grain salad similar to this recipe. It's yummy, and I'm about to take it to my "baby" brother's birthday party tonight in my fun new thifted bowl. (Is it possible he's 30?? Holy cow!)

And oat raisin muffins! Rob and I have a little tradition of taking homemade muffins on road trips. We once made a little peace summit trip to Galena, Illinois (our agenda: to discuss the possibility of ending nearly a year of not speaking to each other by getting just getting married) during which we munched on my homemade pumpkin muffins the whole time, and since then it just feels like small road trips and muffins should go together. Today I experimented with a new recipe plus adjustments for what I had on hand, plus addition of fallish spices, and this is what I got. They are yummy! We're going to take them on our camper-seeking expedition. I'll share the recipe I ended up with:

1 cup oat flour

1/4 cup quick oats

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp cloves

2 eggs

1 cup vanilla yogurt

1/2 cup real maple syrup

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup raisin

Preheat oven to 400. Spray 12 muffin tins with cooking spray. Stir dry ingredients together in a large bowl by using a whisk or a fork. In another bowl or large measuring cup whisk together eggs and wet ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, blend. Stir in raisins. Divide evenly into muffin cups (each should be about 3/4 full). Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool for 5 to 10 minutes before removing the muffins from the cups. If you take them out too soon or wait too long they will stick.

For the freezer

Our carefree days of summer are coming to a close. Rob and I attend preschool orientation tomorrow and Dorothy begins next Tuesday. Today the girl spent all day with my husband's parents swimming in their neighborhood pool, which will close after this weekend. She told me emphatically she was not planning on doing flips in the water today because she has a runny nose. Somehow I doubt she maintained her position on that issue. I spent most of the day in the kitchen getting ready for our new routine. I made some chicken tortilla soup for the freezer, for heat-and-eat lunches at the weather gets cooler. I love soup for lunch in the fall, but I have never found any canned soup worth eating that doesn't have tons of sodium, MSG, or both. (If you know of one, leave me a comment!) So homemade soup in freezer jars it is.

Then I spent some time sprucing up Dorothy's room, since though she won't take it with her, it seemed like a nice thing to give her a pleasant and orderly jumping-off-spot. I laundered, pressed and rehung her curtains, washed her bed quilt, and tidied up her space a bit. Then I made a double batch of oatmeal pancakes for the freezer so I can feed her breakfast quickly without resorting to packaged food. I put freezer paper slips between them so they won't become one solid pancake brick in the freezer--it will be easy to grab just one or two.

I've prepped a Moroccan-style stew for tonight, with bread from the bread machine on the side, and I when I went to pre-cook my chickpeas I realized, ugh, that my pressure cooker was among the things I had to pack away when we put stuff in storage a couple weeks ago. Bummer. Fortunately I had canned chickpeas in the pantry, since you never know when you'll need an emergency batch of hummus, but it's rather frustrating. We did have a showing last weekend, but the prospective buyers claimed disappointment regarding our lack of a garage. And I have to say this is a bit confusing to me, since it states very clearly in our listing that the house has no garage. Maybe they thought we didn't mean it?

Sandwiches, pants, babies...

A sort of rambly blog post tonight. The rest of the family is asleep but I'm up, kind of on edge, watching over this huge pile of boxes ready to be put in storage tomorrow. I'm glad our realtor is having us put all this stuff away, actually, because it is a good reminder that we probably don't need to own much of anyway. I'm not an anti-stuff purist (if vintage glass dishes put a smile on my face, is their existence in my home really something to be ashamed of, even though I already own other dishes?), but I don't want needless clutter in my space, or to be caught up in its acquisition or preservation just for the sake of it. It's a small leap from "can I store this for 3-6 months" to "can I live without this altogether?" So maybe after this move I'll shed some of these things for good and feel lighter for it.
In the meantime, it's prime time to enjoy my favorite sandwich. I didn't grow a garden this year because of our housing situation, but we've still been able to get our hands on enough fresh, local tomatoes to make my very favorite grilled cheese sandwich. It's mutli-grain bread brushed in olive oil, the inside smeared with pesto, then melty cheese and slices of juicy ripe tomato. Yum, yum, yum. So tasty that eating it just wasn't enough--I had to be a dork and photograph it for my blog. :)

And pants. I said this post was random, right? I made these pants for Worth last week during the sewing frenzy, but never got around to photographing them.

Same funky print as the hat. I don't have a pattern that has this contrasting back panel so I just cut up the pattern and left a seam allowance around the area I cut. Next time I do something similar I think I'll start the panel down a bit lower. But I like the way they turned out.

And here's my boy. He's not really waving, though it looks like he is. He'll be six months in 12 more days and is on the eve of getting his first taste of solid food. I took a bunch of pictures of him today to record all his gorgeous fat rolls and chubby deliciousness so I can look back and be proud of this boy I fed. Not that he's going to stop nursing now, but soon I won't know which little dimples I can fully take credit for. He's sitting unassisted now and is getting all this fuzzy new hair. It's trite but true--they change so fast! I'm totally silly over him, my beautiful boy.

Two kitchen experiments

The kids and I spent a lot of quality time in the kitchen today, partly because I figured that way we'd only mess up one room of the house we'd just cleaned for last night's realtor interview (it went well, one more to go). I dearly love mixing up sweet concoctions and then running the through our ice cream maker, which is the easy-to-use electric kind with the bowl you just freeze in the freezer--no ice or salt required. You can dump just about anything liquid in the ice cream maker and make a nice slush--margaritas, ice creams, even instant pudding (before it sets up!). When Dorothy was a baby I used to puree fruit and plain yogurt together and turn that into "ice cream" in tiny little individual jars for her. She loved it! Today we made purple ice cream, and it's been a hit. I blended a cup of blackberries with 3 cups of milk (skim is what we had on hand) and 1 cup of sugar, then poured it into the ice cream freezer with 1 cup of half and half for a little richness. I could have strained out the seeds but didn't bother--we don't mind the seeds. It's light, not super creamy (what with the skim milk and no heavy cream), but it's still delicious and we don't feel too bad eating a lot of it! And it's purple, which is the current favorite color of Dorothy.

Today's other kitchen experiment was sweet potato chips. I'd read somewhere online recently about making really healthy sweet potato chips in a food dehydrator (our model: thrift store, $2), so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm not a big salty snacker myself, I'm more of a sweets girl (see above) but Dorothy is quite fond of chips and I thought this might be a good snack for her. So I dragged out the mandoline, which is kind of a neat kitchen toy but not one I get out often, given how it is a fun-looking gadget that involves super-sharp blades, and my assistant chef is four. Anyway, I used the mandoline to slice up a sweet potato into reaaaaally thin little slices, then Dorothy and I loaded up the dehydrator trays with them and salted them (you can't use oil in a dehydrator because it doesn't dehydrate) and waited eagerly for the results. An hour and a half later the chips looked beautiful. I took one out and broke it to see if it was done--lovely, crunchy brittleness! We each bit into one. Wow. They were totally nasty. Ick. Like orange cardboard with a whiff of sweet potato. More salt didn't even help. Don't they look pretty, though? You can't win 'em all...

Hot buns

Because, well, I just couldn't resist that title.

I've done bloggable things this week while Dorothy's been at Bible School, but in the form of a birthday gift for Molly, and since she reads this blog I'm not going to dish. :)

These rosemary-herb sandwich buns came out of the oven this evening looking so pretty I just had to photograph them. Wish I could capture the smell too.

And photographing reminds me that I'm now officially, totally addicted to Mpix. I mentioned them this spring, and I am a little more in love with them after each order arrives. The combination of the camera I got last month, my old but still useful copy of Photoshop, and the print quality from Mpix has turned me into some camera-toting-mother-hell-on-wheels-nightmare, and I couldn't be more pleased. Last week I took some sweet pictures of Baby in the outfit he'll wear for his baptism this weekend, and then I had little wallet-sized prints made for our guests to take home (they send them die-cut with the cunning little round corners!) and some 4x6 thank-you cards, too, since I know his proud grandparents have gifts for him. Necessary? Nope. But fun. And worlds better than Walgreens, when I have the time to wait for shipping.

Pesto from scratch: the sequel

A couple months ago Dorothy and I repotted some basil I'd grown from seed into bigger pots. It was really ready to cut and eat a week or two ago, but we finally got around to it today. Dorothy decided we should eat it on pizza, so tonight I baked vegetable pizzas with pesto, yellow squash and sundried tomatoes. Rob and I thought it was delicious; Dorothy picked off the visible vegetables, dug in, then declared that our basil was "nasty." Luckily I'd thought to bake a separate pizza with more traditional toppings. If you've never made pesto at home, it's fun and easy. Fill a food processor bowl most of the way with clean basil leaves, then drizzle with olive oil, throw in a handful of pine nuts, a handful of shredded parmesan cheese (the real stuff, not its bastard cousin that comes in a plastic can), sprinkle with salt and whirl. Yum.

So yesterday I went shopping with my mother. Being the generous Nana she is, she bought Dorothy some new clothes from Children's Place--clothes Dorothy picked out herself. The girl selected one of her new outfits this morning and put it on first thing, instead of the usual time spent lolling in jammies. She put on this shirt with this matching (skimpy) shrug. My first thought was, sheesh, my mother bought my daughter hootchie-girl clothes! Why must little girl clothes be so much like skanky teenager clothes? Can't they be little and non-sexy for just a few years? Then I got totally knocked off my high horse. My kid said, "Mommy, in this outfit I look just like you! See this shirt? It has a nursing bra!"

Jam session

Busy day today! Trying to clean up around here for an open house this weekend (crossing fingers that we'll get some interest), got new tires on the car, and made strawberry jam with berries from my brother and sister-in-law's garden. Yum! Here's Dorothy with her jam face. I didn't bother processing the jars, as I learned last year that just one batch only lasts us a few weeks. They won't take up much room in the 'fridge until they are eaten up, especially since Dorothy is going through a stage where she'll only eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I love the sweet, homemade taste of the old-fashioned recipe with just strawberries and sugar, where you boil the s#!t out of it and it sets up on its own, but given the time constraints inherent in jam-making with a small baby I used pectin this year. So it tastes more like grocery-store jam, but I know it's not. :)

Now I'm off to party with my Mom who is retiring today. Hooray for Nana! Dorothy says "after today, Nana will be a stay-at-home-mom." Amen to that!

Hey good lookin'

This afternoon Dorothy walked into the kitchen and started to say "what are you..." then changed her mind, started again, and said with an impish grin, "Hey good lookin', what you got cookin'?" Nice way to score points with Mom, I guess, just in case the answer was cookies. It was flatbread instead, but she still ate just as much as she would have if it had been cookies. I use a whole wheat pita bread recipe but cook them on the stovetop in a skillet, tortilla-style, and they make great snacks with hummus or lunch-sized pizza crusts. Yum. Wonder what Hank Williams would have thought of that?

Tea pops and a zoo trip

First, tea pops. I made cold sweetened herbal tea to serve at Dorothy's birthday party last week and had quite a bit left over. I usually drink tea unsweetened, and it didn't taste good to me with all the sugar. I decided to use the leftovers to make popcicles. I have to say, they are pretty good. A little bit of a grown-up popsicle, although Dorothy totally loves them too. The only bad thing is that the sugar kind of gravitated toward the center, so the middle of the popsicle tastes sweeter than the outside. Still, cold and refreshing and not make of Kool-Aid!

We took our first family zoo trip of the season today, and the first one ever for baby Worth. Dorothy proudly wore her zoo bag (see last post) the entire time, and also sported her gorilla necklace. She also "took notes" in her notepad, walking along asking "how do you spell crocodile?" and jotting down wobbly letters. It was really ridiculously cute. It was sad to not see the baby gorilla. The baby was injured last week, apparently by the father. Totally horrifying. I felt a kinship with Mama Gorilla since our babies were born around the same time, and I just felt chilled going through the gorilla exhibit. Of course the baby was not on exhibit, and I don't know if the mother is being allowed with her baby or not. If not, what are they feeding it? And what is happening with her milk? It bothers me more than it probably should.

I've been taking tons of pictures of the kids as the weather turns nice and Worth changes every day. I've been unhappy for while with the quality of prints I've been picking up at Walgreens or ordering through places like Snapfish, so I'm in search of a better option. This week I ordered from mpix.com, and I like them much better than others I've tried. If anyone has suggestions, I'd be happy to hear about them. I like the matte finish and the consistent color quality (at least in my first order) from Mpix. I usually just order photo books from Blurb.com for our regular albums, but sometimes you need real prints to hand out or frame.

Pickles to Pittsburgh

Life imitated art today at our house, as Dorothy and I recreated a treat from one of her recent favorite books. Pickles to Pittsburgh, the sequel to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (no, we haven't seen the movie), features an enormous chocolate chip cookie at the end of the fantasy and the reality portions of the story. Dorothy has never encountered a pizza-sized cookie before, so today we baked one for fun. I'm not sure she was impressed that our cooking endeavor had a literary tie-in, even though we've read the book a zillion times at her request in the last week, but she certainly was all in favor of the biggest chocolate chip cookie she'd ever seen.