FarMor and FarFar's 60th Anniversary

My first time making kransekake. It tasted just like it was supposed to--a minor baking miracle.

My Mom made a gorgeous fruit salad and farmer potatoes.  Justin made not one but two egg casseroles.  And I made banana bread, because I've inherited my grandmother's fear that there won't be enough food. (There was!)

I also made a vanilla cake with raspberry frosting.

Hostess gifts were snickerdoodle cookies and pieces of the kransekake.

Bread Sundays

I have gotten back into the habit of baking bread once a week.  The recipe I use is similar to the famous Poulaine sourdough, except I don't have a wood burning fire to cook it in, or legions of French kitchen assistance.  What I do have, is a whole wheat sourdough starter that lives in my fridge for most of the week.  I feed it on Saturday night just before bed, adding flour and water to make it active again and leave it out, overnight, in the counter.

By the morning, the starter has nearly doubled in size.  To start the bread, you mix flour with water and allow it to sit for 20 minutes to allow the gluten to develop.  Then you add in the salt and the starter (putting a small amount aside for the next time) and knead it in a mixer.  I think the mixer actually does a better job than mixing by hand, and it's much easier.

After that, you set the bread to rise.  After one hour, you encourage the dough by flipping in over and kneading it briefly. It can rise after that for another 2-4 hours.  Once it has nearly doubled, or at least made some kind of an effort to rise, you shape it into a ball and stick it in a brotform, which is a reed basket.

 Now, for the past few weeks I have had a terrible time getting the dough out of the brotfom when it was ready to bake, so this week I very cleverly lined the basked with plastic wrap that I had oiled and floured.  It didn't have the beautiful design on the crust, but at least it came out in one piece.

The bread rises in the brotform for another two hours or so, and then, finally, it's ready to bake.  The thing I like about whole wheat sourdough is that it lasts for several days in the breadbox and actually improves in flavor for the first few days.

It might seem as though this recipe it takes all day, but it really requires very minimal effort. You just have to be remember to move it from stage to stage.  The end result is (usually) delicious and a way to show my love for my family. 

Smooches

We have a wonderful little cookbook called Mouse Cookies, by Laura Numeroff.  It's a companion to the "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" Series and it has ten simple and delicious cookie recipes.  The peanut butter cookies are amazing, with only two ingredients.  There is an easy sugar cookie recipe that we make every year at Christmastime. 

And then, there are Smooches, which combine two of the girls' great loves--cookies and candy.

Cousin Bitsy's Smooches
30 cookies 350 degrees oven
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup softened margarine (we used butter)
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
30 unwrapped Hershey's Kisses (The girls loved counting, unwrapping and eating the chocolates, we used Hershey's Dark Chocolate Kisses since they were out of regular at the store.)

1.  Mix all ingredients except Kisses.
2.  Drop one-inch balls of dough onto a greased cookie sheet (we used parchment).  Press a chocolate Kiss into the top of each cookie. 
3.  Bake for 20 minutes.

My tip--pop the bag of  Hershey Kisses in the freezer for an hour or so before baking so they don't melt too much.

That's it! 

Pickled Peppers

These:

Went into those:

And now my dear husband is very pleased with himself.

Contemplative

Keeping me honest

During dinner at my parents' house tonight, while I was lecturing/encouraging Miss Bee on her table manners, I gestured a little too wildly and clumsily poked myself in the eye. 

I assumed she didn't notice but nothing escapes my oldest child.  She looked at me scornfully, matched me tone for tone and said, "Mommy, did you just POKE yourself in the EYE?"

I could only meekly reply, "um yes, yes I did."

And that ended my lecture.  Parenting is impossible.

Flipping out

So tomorrow it's back to real life.  I had a wonderful three weeks of vacation + five weeks of training but now it's time to get back into working full time. 

These eight weeks of just normal life have been so wonderful.  We went to Rhode Island. We went to the beach. I was able to go to the girls' ballet and swim lessons. We spent lazy afternoons together doing puzzles and going to the park. 

So I tried hard this weekend not to dwell too much on the fact that this was my last weekend "home" with the girls before regular work kicks back in.  But somewhere between Saturday night and this morning the reality of it started to creep in. 

So, what to do when you're starting to freak out just a little? In my family, there is only one thing to do actually--cook good food.  We tried a new recipe tonight, recreating the cheese spaetzle from last year's trip to Germany.  I would not recommend trying this without an actual spaetzle maker, we had a heck of a time convincing the noodles to go through our cheese grater..  I made pretzels to go with the spaetzle; the Wednesday Chef recipe never disappoints. 

For dessert, I made "Sunday night cake" from Baked Explorations. Oh my goodness that chocolate frosting was amazing and like nothing I have ever tasted before--closer to a pudding than frosting.  

I'm off to spend the next hour doing something completely mindless.

Doll clothes wash day

Yep, they're busy, busy little mommies to their dollies. 

Both girls insisted that the pretend washing machine would not get the dolly clothes clean enough.

So I sent them outside with a wash board and a bucket and they had a great time.

 I should put them in charge of all the household laundry.

on ponytails

In February I donated my hair to locks of love.  Many people I know do this on a regular basis; they grow their hair until it's the required ten inches long and then cut it off.  For me though, it was a little more complicated.

I began growing my hair out over five years ago.  I was living in Latvia at the time and after one particularly traumatic haircut I swore I wouldn't cut it again, there anyway.  The hairdresser only spoke Russian and this impeded our ability to communicate.   

It slowly grew out, though, eventually grew from shoulder-length to long to "whoa, your hair is really long."  And I kept it that way for a good two years. 

It seems obvious to say, but my hair was an extension of myself.  Bee loved to style my hair with her brightly colored clips and barrettes.  I would fidget with my ponytail when I was bored or nervous.  As a baby, Cheeks would twirl my hair while I nursed her, tangling her fat baby-starfish fingers in my hair until we were again connected to each other. 

On the other hand, though, my hair was a pain to wash, nearly always piled up on top of my head in a messy bun.  Most of the women in my profession have short hair, or at least a hairstyle that is professionally cut.   I really liked the idea of donating my hair to someone who had lost theirs.

But the truth is, my motive in cutting my hair was hardly altrustic.  In February, I found out that a member of my family, someone who I love very very much, was seriously ill.  The extent of the illness came as a complete shock and I was powerless to do anything to help this person recover.  I was angry that this could happen to my family.  I just wished that I could do something, anything, to make things right again.  And even though there wasn't much of a logical connection I decided that cutting my hair would somehow help.  Help what exactly, I'm not quite sure.

So, without thinking too hard about my course of action, I booked an appointment.  My hairdresser here in the United States is someone I have known a long time. She was very skeptical of my plan but was willing to do it.  She gathered my hair into a long ponytail and asked me at least five times if I was sure.  I was the only person in the salon.  The scritch of her scissors slicing through my hair seemed to echo throughout the room. 

When she was done, she handed me my hair and I unceremoniously shoved it into a manila envelope, without looking.  If I had looked I would have cried.  Not out of vanity but because of everything else.  And okay, maybe vanity too. 

I took a deep breaths while the hairdresser snipped and styled and I was left with a short bouncy cut which I reassured her that I just loved. And I told everyone that I loved my new short hair even though I secretly didn't.  My poor husband returned home from a business trip to the Middle East and was quite shocked to find his wife so changed. 

But the thing about hair is that it grows.   My family member is no longer sick and I say prayers every day that this person continues to heal.  And today, six months later,  I can pull it back into a serviceable ponytail.  And as I was fiddling with it in class today, I realized I can even honestly say that I like my hair again.

And that is what I think about when I think about ponytails.

the best laid tomato plants

You know, I always plant my garden with the very best of intentions.  I weed and water faithfully for a good two weeks until life intervenes.  Then I kind of forget to water.  Or I go out to water, but it's 110 degrees, gotta love D.C. summers, and I stand there listlessly with the hose for less than five minutes before retreating indoors. 

Or like this weekend, when I bought a lovely pot of thyme at the farmer's market but then forgot to plant it for a few days.  It's a little crispy on the edges now, and I'm not sure that it's going to recover. I may have planted dried thyme.

My garden grows in spite of my less-than-stellar efforts.  This year, however, it seems to be growing to spite me. 

The blackberry bush is angrily putting out tendrils in every direction, but is not interested in growing any juicy fruit for pies.  Did you know that blackberry leaves look a lot like poison ivy?  My mother and I had a long email correspondence on this subject at the beginning of the season.  The blackberry bush seems to know this though, and has produced hundreds of luxuriant green leaves guaranteed to keep and visitor to my backyard away from that corner of the garden. 

In addition to the blackberry busy, there are eggplants.  I take no responsibility for the eggplants because they were entirely my husband's idea.  The eggplants are right next to the blackberry bush and unfortunately do not get much more than 2-3 hours of sun per day.  In other words, not quite enough...  However, although two have withered, one industrious eggplant is using every ounce of its daily allotment sunlight to grow one eggplant.  I'm sure when it's finished it will be delicious. 

The tomatoes are doing a bit better, comparatively, but the problem there is the squirrels have already auctioned off all the green tomatoes to the highest squirrel bidder.  I hope I am able to wrench a few away from their greedy paws. 

The basil is great.  It just grows and grows and doesn't really mind what I do, or don't do.  I have a high regard for the basil. All I have to do is pinch the flowers off once a week.  That's the kind of gardening I can handle. 

Hanging out with the basil are the jalapeno peppers.  These are my husband's babies and they have produced dozens of spicy peppers.  He's very happy about this, and the rest of us, well, we're happy for him. 

There has been one definite success this year, the moon flowers.  They started out as a tiny transplant, a gift to the girls from my father in law and they have been phenomenal. I propped a small wooden trellis against the garden wall and they have just climbed right up.  No flowers yet, but we're checking for them every few days.

So this year is marked by few growing successes, but we sure are enjoying the fresh basil on our pizza.