Happy Birthday, Grandma Bopsie!

What kind of birthday dessert do you make for someone who has recently lost 87 pounds and is still in the losing stage? Of course, everyone knows the ideal birthday cake comes in two forms- a high, light carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and marzipan carrots in a layer or "dirt" made from crushed up Newman's Own Ginger-O's, and the Chocolatey-chocolate-chocolate kind. Period. But, you know, there's something about making a birthday cake that the birthday girl will actually eat that is rewarding, too. And so:
Grandma Bopsie's Peach and Raspberry Pavlova Birthday Cake:
meringue
Beat three egg whites, 1/4 t. cream of tartar til frothy, slowly add 1/2 c. sugar. (I thought this would be delicious with some ground pistachios, but I was at Grandma's house, and she didn't have any....) When it is stiff and glossy spread the sticky mixture out in a circle, or several little ones, or a heart shape, or bone shape for Halloween, or whatever takes your fancy, on parchment paper, bake in a 275 degree oven for 60 minutes, and then let cool in the oven.
Top with sliced fruit, sprinkle with powdered sugar, serve with whipped cream or ice cream. Or top with whipped cream (or ice cream) and put the fruit over that. That's what I would do, normally- we were just trying to keep calories and fat lower, and served the cream on the side.
It was a hit. Miles thought it was like eating a cloud. Grandma Bopsie was very happy with her pretty, light birthday dessert. Yay!

Capturing the Sun: Marigold Salve

In the spirit of using the harvest, enjoying the last summer sunshine, making do and making at home, Miles and I created a little homemade marigold salve.

He went out and picked marigolds himself, and washed them, took the petals off, and put the stems and heads in the compost, all by himself. I wanted to use beeswax, and almond oil, but we were out, so we raided the cupboards and came up with nearly a pint: unpetroleum, shea butter, coconut oil, Weleda baby oil, honey. Miles dumped all this stuff in a pan.
Next in the saucepan: all those lovely, sunshiney marigold petals. Miles picked, washed, and plucked petals himself. We brought our concoction to a boil, then simmered for half an hour. Marigold and honey scent filled the house. Then we strained the mixture into a jar, and let it cool. It is a lovely orangey-golden color, smelling flowery and a little bit sweet. The salve itself is soft-ish and melts right in to Miles' eczema-raw arms. Oh! How he hates having lotion rubbed into his skin! This is just perfect for after baths, and Miles is certain it is full of goodness, sunshine, "strongness" and bravery, perfect for Michaelmas coming up, the waning of the sun's season, and all of the things little boys need extra courage to face. "It's like a sunshine hug!"

This was my first attempt at making salve, and it was super easy. I'm thinking, of course, of all the variations to try: maybe something with all that mint outside, what about the lemonbalm, the echinacea? I have comfrey, too! Rosemary? Lavender?

Where Did We Go?

Can you guess where we were? Here area few clues:
1) We camped out, with COLD nights and warm days.
2) We met a lot of people from all over the world.
3)We hiked around lots of clear, cold lakes, with colors ranging from milky white, all the blues, even jade green.
4)Everywhere you look are rocks in red, green, and white, exactly matching all the mountainsides around.

5)Alpen-like vistas and Swiss-themed lodges kept us thinking "Heidi", chasing mountain goats and singing "The Sound of Music" tunes all day long. (Yes, I know The Sound of Music was set in Austria, but still, who can argue with "The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music" as a mental soundtrack to this adventure? Who?)

6)"U" shaped valleys, anyone? Anyone guess where we were yet?

7)Of the 25 glaciers left in the park, all are expected to be gone by 2020. 2020!

8)Water from those glaciers flows to three different oceans- the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Arctic. I think it's amazing to stand on the ridge of the continent and think of all the directions available, and that with just a step one way or another, the path is determined.

Hooray! You got it! Yes!

We were camping in Glacier National Park in Montana.

We had other adventures too, I'll tell you later! For now, just know we're home, we're safe, the old Volvo has mysteriously expelled a semi-truck's worth of clothes and books, boots, swimsuits, snowsuits, rainsuits, camping supplies, dirt, cocoa packets, and sleeping boys all over the driveway and house.

Tomorrow we wash and organize, re-enter the world of work and school, chores and schedules. Tonight we'll leave the windows open, though, and sleep one more night with our dreams in the mountains, trailing off in every direction, to all the corners of the globe.

Good night.

The Rhythm of Our Days is Over There...

I made this neat table, our rhythm/schedule thingy, and tried to post it here, but it didn't work, so here it is, on the homeschool site, even though it's not strictly homeschool....

We're off on a grand adventure this afternoon. I'll tell you all about it later!
Hopefully I won't forget the camera, OR batteries!

New Friends and Old

Miles describing his new friend "She's nice. She's a good burper. A REALLY good burper!" and his old friend "She's my best girl. Best in the world!".
Just take a moment of grace for you friends, old and new, and appreciate their many talents, would you? Even burping.

Oh Darn It!

I was showing Avery some dumb-but-funny you tube video a friend sent me, which I'd seen and thought would add a moment of lighthearted fun to our day, and he started reading a link title somewhere on the web page. A title that included the "F" word. The real one, not what had passed for the real and still forbidden word in our house until just that moment. I hadn't even noticed it!
I sort of jumped and yelped, "Don't read that!" and tried to exit as fast as possible. Although, I suppose, the damage was already done. And shouting didn't help the situation.
His big eyes filled with water, threatening, just threatening to spill. He didn't know it was a bad word. I reassured him I wasn't angry at him, I wasn't angry at all. Just shocked to hear it from his mouth, surprised it was there in the first place for him to see. He still felt bad, all afternoon, from the unexpected encounter with ugliness, the bad taste in his mouth. The loss of innocence, I suppose. He couldn't quite articulate, except to wonder why people would say something that makes them feel so bad.
Remember being a kid? Being curious about all things grown up and forbidden, but also how raw and terrible those nibbles can be, when we're nowhere near ready for the taste of them? 'Cause, darn it, I do, and it's just as painful on the grown up side, watching the little injuries, watching childhood tear away, bit by bit.

Easiest Summer Landscape Fix

The sunflower! Who doeasn't love sunflowers? Cheap, easy, fast growing, drought-hearty, invincible, cheerful, and self-sowing.
The first spring after we bought this house there were some sunflower self-sown starts in the garden, and a little problem of the big low deck needing something around it to keep a new toddler from thinking he could walk off the edge. Perfect! Our deck is surrounded now by sunflowers, self-sown, and they grow around the sand pit, too, making it a shady little hidden place all summer. Along side the driveway, where nothing was growing and I never water? Sunflowers, cheerful sunshine faces bobbing along in the breeze, peeking over the fence, saying hello to all who pass. There's always one or two who make it through in the veggie patch, and they are always mammoths, with stems I can't get a hand around, and huge flowers, bobbing over everything like massive, benevolent scarecrows (and at least as effective as the straw and overalls variety!).
Their charm doesn't end with summer, either. As the seeds ripen they become a forest of standing, waving, living bird feeders. Even after we pull them from the ground the fallen seeds attract birds, all winter long. And somehow, beyond amazement, there are always still way too many popping up again in the spring, pushing eager heads up and out, searching out the sun with us winter weary citizens. Because of sunflowers we've been able to delay rebuilding the deck, installing irrigation, rebuilding the fence, doing all kinds of more expensive landscape fixes!
Unfortunately my efforts to harvest the seeds have ended poorly, but still there is hope, and my own nest full of hungry birdie-mouths eager for "homemade" sunflower seeds. Maybe this year!

No more diapers?

As the mother of an infant, diapers are always on my mind. Or in my hand. We've gone through different systems over the years, bouncing back and forth between cloth and disposable, wraps and pull on pants, all in ones and homemade felted wool covers.


















This time around Avery is in on the action, too. He's a champion diaper changer (and fetcher from the laundry liner, too!). But here's his idea, better than disposables or washable cloth diapers:
A Baby Bidet! Perfect, right? Oh, wait, you can't quite picture it?
Imagine a softish vinyl or plastic "diaper" (maybe Crocs material?) with two hose attachments. When the baby messes, or just needs a clean-up, you attach the "in" hose to the sink faucet (or a water bottle if you're out) and the diaper, and you attach the "out" hose and hold it over the toilet. Picture it now?
Brilliant, eh?
You may say it's not practical. Call it the wishful dreaming of a 9 year old boy, but I say he's not the only one dreaming of a day without diapers going to the landfill OR the washing machine. And, you know, I think it's pretty cool that I even have a 9 year old boy who THINKS about diapers, you know?
And if I see this in the One Step Ahead catalog alongside the silly changing table pee-guard, at least I hope the credit goes to the right kid, okay? (And if anyone buys it, well... all parents start out as silly first timers....)

Brown Boxes

A goodly stack of them were waiting for us when we came home from a long weird weekend in the mountains. It's our favorite time of the school year- the end of summer, with last minute desperate dashes for fun all intertwined with school year plans getting more and more detailed, flushed out, projects and field trips in the works, book lists for the library getting compiled. Shelves being organized and reorganized. And boxes. Lovely brown boxes arriving in the mail, full of the things that mean school to us- some math workbooks, sometimes, sure, but a big stack of blank lesson books to fill with beautiful pictures and examples of our learning, new packages of colored pencils and beeswax crayons, lots of books to read and absorb, some games to play, a year's worth of "work".
I just realized about five minutes ago that I have a whole order, those math workbooks, three science kits, and a writing program, that I didn't put through yet! Wow! I tried, there was some problem, it slipped my mind. Oh well, I'll do it now and they'll be here eventually. It's not as if we're lacking school materials to get started with!

Free Museum Day!

Do you know about Museum Day 2009, when you can get free admission to museums just by printing off an admission ticket from the Smithsonian magazine's websitesite, right here? No, not just the Smithsonian museums- yeah, I know those are always free. If I lived in the DC kind of Washington we'd be there all the time. But we don't. We live in the other kind of Washington. Where Seattle is. Hey! Speaking of Seattle, the Experience Music Project is there, and guess what? They're participating in Museum Day! Uh, not that I'm going with the little ones, but it's a perfect kind of big kid and Papa rock and roll thing to do. For free, instead of the usual $15 for each ticket. Check it out- even if the EMP isn't your thing, there's lots of other Museums around the US participating.

Fake-ipes

One of the things that lately makes me tear at my hair and moan "O! what is the world coming to?" is the absolute abundance of "semi-homemade" or even "not-a-bit-homemade" recipes out there. There was one in the paper this morning- a store bought graham cracker crust, cream cheese from a package, sweetened and mixed with cream, topped with sliced fruit. Seriously?
I'm sure it tastes good, but REALLY? this needs to be documented as a RECIPE?! Really?
It's like cookbooks with a "salad" section full of dishes that start with a package of JELLO. Please. Aren't we smarter than that? Can't we do better?
Don't get me wrong- I'm all for quick recipes, things that are yummy and healthy and easy for those times when we're busy and tired and still have to feed our families. Fine. I have a recipe for a gluten free 15 minute pizza crust that we all really like. But it doesn't start with opening a box of anything. Dishes like that are TECHNIQUES, not recipes, I think.
I have a bunch of ways to turn a box of Annie's mac and cheese into a meal, but, you know, Annie has the recipe, I just have some techniques to add to it. Like grating summer squash, carrots, and onions, or adding black beans, salsa, sour cream, avocado, cilantro.
For the record I also make a delicious home made mac and cheese, and I may share the recipe sometime. Rest assured it doesn't start with "open a box of mac and cheese...."

Yogurt, Take Two

I've said before that we eat a lot of yogurt. About a gallon a week. I did a whole post some time back about making yogurt in the crockpot, which is so ridiculously easy, and so much cheaper than buying it, even in the big Nancy's yogurt containers I used to buy every week.

But then I melted the electrical cord to my crockpot, so it was out of commission for a couple weeks. Avery and Grandpa Randy fixed it, but it seemed like it was working better than it had been before- well, hotter, or faster, or something. The milk was getting cooked to the bottom of the crock. And let me tell you- yogurt with little chunks of burned milk in it is not a taste sensation you'd want to repeat! And pouring $5.49 in organic milk down the drain makes me sad. Very, very sad. Heating the milk on low worked better, but oh! so slow. So unbearably slow. So I started buying yogurt again. Ugh. I hate buying things I can make better and cheaper at home. Which is one reason why we hardly ever eat out unless we go to the city. Don't even get me started!

Then I remembered my friend Jennifer- she makes it in the cooler. So easy! Not quite as easy as the crockpot method, but more predictable, at least with my hyper-functioning crockpot. Just heat up the milk to 170, place the pot and all in the sink (or my big blue basin) and dump some ice around to cool it quickly, skimming off any skin that might form. Stir in the yogurt starter (and honey and vanilla if wanted), pour into containers, place in a cooler with jars of hot tap water. In the morning- lovely thick, creamy, smooth, burned-milk-bitless yogurt. Hooray!