Life with Children

I have an amazing part-time job as a sitter for 2 of my nephews (& occasionally niece, but she's usually at school while I'm there) while my sister-in-law teaches at the nearby college twice a week. I get to play with the boys, feed them lunch, attempt to get them to nap, and clean up from all of these activities. I get paid, and I get to eat delicious leftovers for lunch. (My sister-in-law is an excellent cook.)

Ji, who is currently 3, is always saying extremely quotable things. (For example on Tuesday he told me that he loves me because I let him use "xissors." Which for the record happened once before this statement. It did happen again several hours after this statement, probably because of this statement. He has my number. When I was in college, a friend in the photo program with me once teased me that I would let a monkey use my camera if the opportunity came up. I would just tell the monkey to be careful.) Today when I asked him to go pick out some books to read (a before nap ritual) he said, "Let's do a scary book. Like Mouse Paint. That one's not scary for people." Then I was left trying to remember if Mouse Paint has a cat or a snake in it. (It's a cat. Or at least hints of cat.)

Ra's humor is more the Buster Keaton type, as he does not say words yet. Or do baby signs if an outstretched hand with fingers opened and closed will suffice. It's amazing the range of things you can express with this one gesture. Banging your feet rhythmically against your high chair also draws attention to your recent lack of food or boredom with the food given to you. We think he's going to be a musical genius. He can just reach the piano keys while standing, and gently picks out a very melodious arrangement. Another pastime of Ra's is transferring food from one place to another. Pieces of bread dropped into bowls of yogurt. Baby food poured out of the container onto the tray to be used as finger paint. Today he got meta and put his bowl of yogurt inside of his bowl of soup. (After dumping most of the soup out in disgust.) He also managed to turn his bottle upside-down while I was holding him and trying to wash dishes at the same time and doused my shirt before I realized what was happening. So much for multitasking.

Usually Ra will play quietly and happily by himself in the bedroom while I lie down with Ji to get him to sleep for his nap around 2 pm. (Sometimes their naps align, but it's rare, like an eclipse.) Today Ji was especially cuddly, stroking my arm and nestling against me. His movements stopped and breathing finally slowed, but I was afraid that if I moved he'd wake up again. Ra decided to get out a toy that makes noise and to squawk loudly himself, and Ji woke up, full of energy. I tried to bribe him to by offering a cookie if he'd lie down with his eyes closed again, and I gathered up Ra to snuggle in bed with us (Ra was not tired, but was willing to cuddle for a bit.) But the damage was done. No nap for Ji today.

Sometimes I try to bring something to do with me. Today I brought the ingredients to make our own graham cracker-like cookies and the animal shaped cookie cutters that I bought at Ikea thinking how much Ji (& my sister Ju) would like them. We made some cookies before lunch and then saved the rest of the dough to finish when K got home from school. K was not content just to use the cookie cutters, however. She had a grander plan in mind. She traced around her hand and made a hand-print cookie. Then she made another one of Ji's hand. Meanwhile Ra, who was mad when I shut the dishwasher (his personal playground. I had to stop him from climbing onto the open door), took the plastic lids that I had given him to play with and hid them inside a pot, in the cupboard he managed to open.

 Can you guess which pan of cookies I decorated with raisins and which one Ji decorated? In case you're wondering, it's Ji's professional opinion that the bottom right shape is a wolf, not a fox. Wolves have fluffy tails, too. The squiggliest shapes are from the pieces between the cookie cutters. I got lazy/creative.

Hand-made cookies! You can find the recipe here. It was very simple and delicious. The dough held up well being rolled out multiple times. It's also vegan, so no raw eggs to worry about when Ji started eating the dough. Although I did have to tell him to stop so we'd have dough to make cookies. (I did double the recipe, and we baked 4 cookie sheets worth.)

Pancakes!!! For Lunch!!!

Grandma G, Ji, and Grandma V:  3 generations bonding with Bisquick!

      My mom came for a visit last week. She was mostly here to see grandkids, but I did get to hang out with her some too. On Saturday she came over with my oldest niece and nephew. M and I had been talking about making pancakes for lunch (after deciding that we should pioneer bagel smoothies: "It's Not Nearly as Bad as it Sounds"), and I thought this would be a fun thing to do with the kiddos. Just as I set the Bisquick down on the counter, Ji materialized next to me and pronounced his desire to help. His first step was scoot a chair to the front of the fridge so that he could reach the freezer, where he knew that there were frozen strawberries. (This kid knows where we keep the good stuff.) I partially defrosted some and let him at them with a butter knife. (I did stress that he could only use a knife if an adult was supervising.) Turns out even the blunt side of the blade can cut through partially frozen strawberries. K was much more interested in making signs for our restaurant. They have their own restaurant, Rosie Rose's, at home. Ji is the cook in their play kitchen and K manages and markets the restaurant. I have eaten many a plastic fruit and vegetable soup there. I am occasionally employed to work in the office at Rosie Rose's, where I take internet orders and balance the books.

      Reader's Digest (which keeps coming in the mail even though Grandma stopped subscribing) had some ideas to liven up pancakes: dividing up the batter and making each a different color with food coloring, using a squeeze bottle to make lacy shapes; that I thought would be fun to try. Instead of just using food coloring, though, I thought we could also use different ingredients. So we made one batch with peanut butter, dyed yellow, and one with strawberries, dyed pink.

      I had gotten a Tolovo Pancake Pen as a gift, and M (check out his new haircut) was the master of pancake creation. He went beyond just letters to pictures using both colors of batter! Notice the lion face on the left below:

      We all enjoyed a hearty lunch of pancakes and scrabbled eggs. Although Ji's request to have ketchup on his pancakes went unanswered. The best part was that Mom volunteered to do all the dishes and cleanup :).

Hanging with the horses while the pancakes cooked. Notice Dell, Ji's nephew.

Cleansing & Rebirth

What a pretty spring soap that A gave us. Almost too pretty to use!

In my planner on the month of April was a cryptic note: "Make lamb cake for Easter." I have no memory of what prompted me to jot this idea down, or what form exactly a lamb cake should take. It seemed like a nice idea, though, so I decided to make one.

Coconut flakes seemed essential. Maybe only because of the lingering memory of this cake from February, edged in coconut flakes, in honor of my roommate's grandmother's birthday. If she was still alive she'd be 100.

Fortunately R stopped me from cutting into the unfrosted cake thinking it was a pan of cornbread before I'd done too much damage. (This was before it was heart shaped.)

I was planning to cut a sheet cake into the shape of a lamb and frost it in white with coconut. But then I had an even better idea: lamb cookies! My mother makes coconut macaroons with egg whites, sugar, and coconut flakes. They would be perfect as fluffy little lambs. I imagined sliced almonds as their faces with a chocolate chip eye and black licorice whips for the legs and tail.

They didn't quite turn out as I planned. The almonds were too small to have chocolate chips as the eyes, so I made the chocolate chips the tails. The licorice didn't stick to the cookies after baking, I was afraid to put it in before baking for fear of it burning. But with a little imagination they sort of resembled sheep, and they tasted good, which is what really matters.

I'd invited A & her family, T, K, and L over for Easter dinner. R, K and I spent Sat evening doing most of the cooking so that we could just relax on Sunday. Then we ordered pizza and played Ticket to Ride. The dinner was nice, very good company. J made bread, T made a green salad and L & M made a fruit salad. I was too tired to do much but enjoy the food and conversation, but I think everyone had a good time. I meant to take photos to document the people in my life, but then it seemed like it would change the dynamic too much. I do wish that I'd managed to think of an Easter activity. But our church meeting was nice--I sang two numbers with the choir, and there were a couple numbers by the children and a piano solo. There were 2 short talks about Easter and spring.


Since I didn't manage to take any photos of people at Easter, here is a photo from February of A & J's darling children. I love having them come over and going to visit them. They were here for Easter. Notice my photos of other loved ones in the background.

Here's my mother's recipe, complete with her notes:

Coconut Macaroons

2 egg whites
1/2 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut

In a mixing bowl beat egg whites and vanilla till soft peaks form (tips curl). Gradually add sugar, beating till stiff peaks form (tips stand straight). Fold in coconut. Drop by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake in a 325 degree oven about 20 minutes or till edges are lightly browned. Cool cookies on a wire rack. Makes about 30. (It only made about 15 for me. I was impatient and didn't beat the sugar and egg whites until stiff, though. I could also have made them smaller)

It's a good recipe for Passover 'cause there is no leavening. Also gluten free.

Variations: I have made them with chocolate chips instead of (could be with) the coconut, tinted them green and added a little peppermint extract, added 1 tbs lemon juice instead of vanilla and put grated lemon peel with the coconut. I have never tried the nutty version where you add 1/2 cups toasted almonds, pecans or hazelnuts with the coconut but it sounds delicious.

I also saw a recipe where you shape them like birds' nests and then put jelly beans in them for the "eggs."

Rosemary & Thyme

Today's post is about baking, which I've been doing a lot of lately. You're probably wondering what the title and this photo of my Rosemary plant have to do with baking.

Well, recently I've enjoyed gourmet food from two wonderful places, Lil Treats, and Sacred Sweets, and both had herbs added to their desserts, which gave an extra dimension to the flavor. I really loved the vanilla thyme loaf. I've been baking recently, and experimenting with cookie recipes, so I decided to try adding rosemary to cookies, since I have a rosemary plant. (Thanks to a lovely friend!) I made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and added some fresh rosemary as a garnish (before baking). I used a cookie recipe from the 1964 edition of Joy of Cooking that my brother found for me one Christmas. (Which is a literary delight in and of itself, in the section on canning it says, "the pleasure of serving the fruits of your labor comparable only to a clear conscience or a very becoming hat.")

I thought the rosemary-chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies turned out very well, and really liked the flavor combination.



I also made some bread the other day, which I haven't done in a long time. It didn't take too long, and is the hearty, dense kind of whole wheat bread that I prefer. Here's the recipe, one that my great-great-grandmother reportedly used. Here's the recipe.

Stella's favorite bread:

Into 3 C warm milk (can use 1/2 water) put
2 T honey, brown sugar or molasses
Add 1 T butter
1 package yeast
1 T salt

Add 6 or 7 C fine ground whole wheat flour.
Just enough so that dough does not stick to the
sides of the bowl. Do not make too stiff.

Knead 10 min. or more

Shape into loaves, put in greased pans, half full.
Cover and let rise in a warm place (80*F) until almost
doubled in size.

Bake at 375*F for 40min-1hr (depending on size of loaf)

A cup of wheat germ can be substituted for flour.

Makes 2 loaves.

Pumkin Pie! Pumpkin Pie!

I love Thanksgiving. I love that it's about family and gratitude, that there are special foods that we always have, that it's not commercialized.

Did you know that Thanksgiving was instituted as a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, during the civil war? Here's a link to his proclamation:

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm

Growing up, Thanksgiving was my dad's holiday. He usually made the food, with a little help from us kids, and my mom got the morning off. My brothers made mashed potatoes, jello, and rolls. I always wanted to make the pies--using Libby's pumpkin pie mix and frozen pie crusts. (Once we gave a pie to our neighbors across the street, and he complemented the pie crust, saying that it was better than many grown woman's that he'd had. I had to tell him that it was store bought. Someday I would like to master pie crusts and be a real woman.) We'd cook all morning, eat in the early afternoon, and then watch movies and play games, going back for more food as we felt like it. There is also a important family story about my sister having to do with Thanksgiving. My mother points to this incident as the beginning of my sister's vegetarianism, at age 4. She took one look at the turkey and announced "I don't eat dragon."

During college, I spent many Thanksgivings at my aunt & uncle's, driving up to their house with some of their friends who lived near me. We'd often have the main meal at their house, then pack up the leftovers and spend the remainder of the weekend camping in the mountains, in a cabin with some electricity and a wood stove. We'd go hiking and play in the snow.

This year I went to spend Thanksgiving with many members of my extended family & one of my brothers. My aunt and my grandmother divided up the cooking. My aunt and her family made the pies and rolls, and my grandmother made most of the rest. I decided to make a cranberry chutney from my good friend/adopted cousin's family, where I spent Thanksgiving a couple years ago. I also asked my dad for his stuffing recipe, he makes his own every year that is unlike any that I've had elsewhere, and I missed it. It turns out that it's based on what his grandmother used to make, so it's a family tradition that I can now carry on.

We had a plethora of pies--my aunt, uncle, and cousins made peach, apple, cherry, lemon meringue, banana creme, pumpkin, and a fruit tart! Here's photos of them working. Each child got to roll out at least one crust. (So they are real children!):




Zesting a lemon



preparing fruit for the fruit tart




the key to a good photo is to hold something right in front of your face.


my helper with the cranberry chutney. I love blenders!


Peach pie, prior to baking.


cherry! sweet, not sour.


mini gluten-free pies & pumpkin.


2 different apple--crust and crumb topping


can you tell which dressing I made?


Here's the recipe for the cranberry chutney, thanks to Kim!


-1 LB. Cranberries
-1 unpeeled apple
-1 whole orange (skin and all)
-2 C. Sugar
-1 small can crushed pineapple
-handful of pecans


grind cranb. apples and orange and pecans
add pineapple and sugar
stir alottt
make well in advance
refrigerate

I didn't add all of the sugar, though.

I'd give you the stuffing recipe, but I'd probably have
to kill you. ;) Just kidding, but I think I'll keep it a
family secret for now.