A MEMORY BOARD FOR SID

As a child my very favorite things were art and craft supplies, journals and photo albums. This was, of course, in the era prior to our current scrapbooking culture (which I, supringly, never had any interest in. But I digress…). In an effort to instill the love for creative documentation of a young life into my daughter, we created a memory board for her today.

She would have enjoyed the project more, I suspect, had she been able to help. A pile of nails and tacks and a hammer and mommy’s overwhelming need to have the fabric stretched perfectly evenly was not conducive to a group project with a four year old. But she was a great couchside cheerleader!

SUMMER PASTA

Sometimes a series of images just needs no explanation. I’ll give a little anyway. This was my first foray into homemade pasta. No machine. Just me, my hands, a rolling pin and a pizza cutter. To say that I felt like a handcrafting, homegrown, goddess-filled genius would be an understatement for sure.

The dish was amazing. Sidney didn’t help. She played Plants vs. Zombies the whole time.

CORNBREAD – NOT JUST FOR SKILLETS

Inspired by an ice cream parlor visit on The Travel Channel’s Bizzare Foods, Sidney and I made cornbread ice cream! I went simple for this recipe, choosing a Jiffy cornbread mix instead of going at it completely from scratch.

We first mixed up a batch of cornbread batter. We separated the batter in half, and cooked one half of it on the stovetop like a giant pancake, breaking it apart at the very end till it resembled scrambled eggs more than a pancake. The other half of the batter we mixed with a little bit of yogurt butter and cream and then added it to a basic vanilla ice cream recipe.

Once the ice cream was nearing completion, we dumped the cooked cornbread pieces through the open top of the ice cream machine.

Can a mother and teacher of young children say “Fuckin’ yum”?

I think I just did.

Next up on the ice cream docket: sesame!

SUPER SLOPPY CHOCOLATE PRETZELS

Our first Summer project was a yummy one! Chocolate covered pretzels!

We did have one mishap and a totally unexpected one at that! After successfully melting dark and white chocolate over a double-boiler, my dumb ass thought that adding a little heavy cream would create a beautiful, creamy and delectably smooth mixture. For reasons unknown to this unexperienced candy maker, the whole chocolate concoction became this thick, matte, unmeltable blob incapable of coating the pan itself, let alone our little pretzels.

So, with great regret…we got to do it again! Sans cream.

LOVE IN THE SUMMER OF KINDERGARTEN

I plan to do great things with my daughter this Summer. She begins Kindergarten next year and this is the last Summer before she is officially in the Education Rat Race! Lots of garden and kitchen and art project are in our three month future. I plan to chronicle our adventures here under a new section, The Summer of Kindergarten.

Below, my daughter, Sidney, rocking out at her preschool “graduation”.

UPDATE! – CHICKENS

Though my garden season didn’t begin so smoothly, I can honestly say that the chickens have been fantastic. They are big girls now! I haven’t seen any eggs yet, though the alpha seems to be so advanced that we keep checking every day, even though they aren’t due for egg production for another month or so.

No, I haven’t painted the coop yet (but we bought the paint!). Yes, I’ve been lazy (the summers in Florida are a bitch!). But I don’t hear any complaints from the girls. They love rice spinach and have pretty much snubbed their nose at chicken feed. They wait patiently (ok, not too patiently) for our meal scraps and I don’t think they enjoy anything more in the world than a little rainstorm. They get in the mud and bathe in it. They look like little stealth ninjas when they are done.

Though my garden season didn’t begin so smoothly, I can honestly say that the chickens have been fantastic. They are big girls now! I haven’t seen any eggs yet, though the alpha seems to be so advanced that we keep checking every day, even though they aren’t due for egg production for another month or so.
No, I haven’t painted the coop yet (but we bought the paint!). Yes, I’ve been lazy (the summers in Florida are a bitch!). But I don’t hear any complaints from the girls. They love rice spinach and have pretty much snubbed their nose at chicken feed. They wait patiently (ok, not too patiently) for our meal scraps and I don’t think they enjoy anything more in the world than a little rainstorm. They get in the mud and bathe in it. They look like little stealth ninjas when they are done.

UPDATE! – GARDEN

I’ve been gardening! I have! I swear! But I’ve been a terrible blogger. Okay, I haven’t been a real great gardener either. Here’s the story:

I planted the seeds in little sprout cups. I had placed these inside of a large aquarium with a screen lid. The aquarium? To hold a steady 1/2 inch of water or so to keep the seeds moisturized. The screen? To keep out pesky bugs and curious kitties (I can’t tell you how many times one of my cats have thought sprout cups were the best ball game in the world). The seeds? Everything I could have ever wanted to plant, including carrots, basil, tomatoes, bell peppers, peas, leeks, green onions, spinach, watermelon, sunflowers as well as black hollyhock.

(I must add, at this point, the black hollyhock story. I purchased these seeds a couple years ago and was very excited to plant them. They never grew. I tried again. No cigar. It got to a point where every time I planted seeds of ANY kind, I would throw in a couple black hollyhock seeds and hope for the best. It became a bit of a personal joke. Moving on…)

Would you believe I had sprouts on nearly everything? (Even the hollyhock!)My aquarium looked like a mini greenhouse. It was beautiful. One morning I go out to check on the little sprouts and find that a few had been nipped off at the stem. In retrospect this should have been a big clue that something was amiss. In fact, I’m still not really sure why I didn’t get it. Of course, you guessed it, the very next day every sprout had been descimated. Even the very first black hollyhock seed that I ever got to sprout. I open the screen to assess the damage and find one fat and very satisfied caterpillar.

My guess is that he entered through the screen as a tiny little thing and grew up dining on the very best gourmet greens in the neighborhood. At least he can’t complain about a rough childhood.

It’s been a very caterpillar-heavy season this year. My thriving brussel sprouts plants in the garden look like they’ve been screenprinted with polkadots. Or like they’ve been through a machine gun stand off. Your choice.

Sidney and I plucked all the caterpillars we found and put them inside a makeshift butterfly house to watch them change. As of this day, we have 3 cocoons in the midst of change and we have already released 2 very shaggy brownish moths and one tiny little green butterfly.

Garden Status? Pretty damn empty.