Catalytic Beet Cake

Our catalytic converter was stolen from Brian’s truck last night, whilst we slumbered. When I called to report it stolen, the officer asked if we own a Toyota Tacoma...
Me (happily): “Yes!!! Did you find our converter???”
Police Officer: “No maam [I swear I could hear him roll his eyes]. There’s been a rash of catalytic converter thefts lately, all aimed at Toyota Tacomas.”
Me (feeling entirely stupid): “Oh. Yeah.”



I’m pretty sure I was the laughing stock of the police station. And he was right -- evidently, CC theft is the latest and greatest trend around here amongst the thief set. The whole thing just makes me sigh (and feel a little silly for thinking our car part would be recoverable).



So to keep my mind off insurance claims this afternoon, we baked a resounding success of a Chocolate Beet Cake using this recipe. I’m not sure how it survived, considering the fact that I only came up with 1 cup of pureed beets and misread the baking soda for baking powder. Either way, it was a nice surprise ending to our anti-catalytic day!

Fava Beans AGAIN???

Yes, yes. I know, I'm a little obsessed. But they are so cute and yummy and fleeting. And they really do signify Spring's arrival (despite the past three days of heatwave worthy temps around here).



This past weekend Esme fell in love with the little bedded beauties, just as her brother did almost 3 years ago. I showed her how to shell them from their cozy beds and prep them for their bath, whereupon I was immediately dismissed from any more shelling duties with a curt "ME DO." So I left her to her work and was surprised to return to a freshly shucked pile of favas sitting next to a bowl of compost-ready pods!? That little girl knows her beans! After a quick parboil and ice water bath, they were eaten as quickly as I could remove their skins.

And this morning to our delight, we happened upon a solitary fava sitting amongst the living room book pile. How it got there, I can only imagine (Holden thought fava fairies might've had something to do with it), but we were quite ready for fava pancakes (kidding).

Our Town, Revisted

Portland's endearingly eccentric McMenamins headquarters in McMinnville, OR hosted a UFO festival last weekend. I think the circumstances and these pics speak for themselves. So without any further ado…check out the highlights of the day:


Our first alien sighting…a VW Bus. Haven’t seen one of these in quite awhile and as soon as I saw it, I knew we were amongst friends.


I love Holden's look of “What…? We can’t just take over these comfy, perfectly placed parade-watching chairs???”


Holden’s rendition of a “happy alien,” complete with mezermerizing eyes and encapsulated space pod.


Where else on earth can you openly (and safely) high-five a storm trooper?


I’m short, and Holden already staked claim to Brian’s shoulders, so I couldn’t see much of the parade. I did catch sight of a few clever floats but the costumes were really my favorite.


This alien needs to know that there's better beer on earth than Coors Light.


I think the best costume award (or would that be CONSUME award) goes to my good friend, Tom. Appropriately double fisted, he embodied the true spirit of the day. Rock on Aliens!

Veg Love

We got our first CSA box today, WooHoo! I think I’m going to dedicate Friday posts to our weekly box content, my plans for the veggies, recipes and sources so that I can look back next year and have that info handy. I meant to do this last year, but never got around to it and now I’ve forgotten many of the dishes. So, be sure to let me know your secret recipes if your favorite veggie appears in our box!

(Speaking of weekly posts, and regarding my big plan to journal our progress in teaching our kids about sustainability, um…errr…the whole posting thing’s not quite happening. It’s not that we’re not doing those things, it’s just that whenever I sit down to write about it here it sounds all pretentious and preachy, ya know? And that’s not how I want it to be. So once again, I’ll take my own “goals not deadlines” advice and stick with mentioning our progress every now and then. OK, I feel better.)



So, this week's box contents:
Green Butter Lettuce, Red Leaf Lettuce, Spinach: Salads (duh)
Carrots, Icicle Radishes: The kids and husband will eat these up. Radishes are too spicy for me. I need a radish burper like the one in the House of Tomorrow cartoon.
Green garlic, Basil: pesto
Strawberries: Already demolished by the kiddos
Rainbow Chard: sautéed with garlic, dried cranberries and walnuts or sliced almonds. Sprinkled with goat cheese. I had a similar dish at Lorenzo’s, only made with kale. It was so yummy, I had to steal it and now it’s a favorite in our house.
Sweet onions: I’m not a raw onion fan, so we’ll probably grill these puppies. Cooks Illustrated advises brushing with olive oil, salt & pepper then grilling. Sounds good, fast and easy to me, sold!

Ok that was easy, now onto the follow through. Wish me luck!

TTTB

I’m too tired to attempt cohesiveness, so here’s a bunch of random.



More uses for our mega contact paper roll: plant markers & bookmarks. I got the bookmark idea from this cute blog, although I made the photo strip myself as the thought of dragging the kids to a mall photobooth overwhelmed me beyond words. Sitting in front of Photoshop, though. I could handle that.

We watched King Corn recently. It’s really good in an Inconvenient-Truth-scare-the-crap-out-of-you-and-make-you-want-to-go-live-in-a-cave kind of way. It’s an Instant Watch if you’re a Netflixer, which thankfully I am, otherwise I was number 153 on my local library’s wait list. And I slapped my head when I realized the filmmakers themselves were showing the movie and holding a Q&A session at our local library on Monday night. Frick frack frick for missing that.



Holden and I made popovers yesterday from Salad People. I love Molly Katzen. And I love hot popovers.

I’m about halfway through the Alice Waters Biography and liking it. How is it that I used to live 15 minutes from her restaurant and never ate there? Oh riiiiiiight. I was a poor, starving college student and couldn’t afford it. Bah.

Holden’s favorite color is “sparkly.” He told me so while we were making popovers yesterday.

This is my new favorite blog. I hope I’m blogging about growing tomatoes and making pasta from scratch when I’m 94 ½ years old.

Yesterday was raining and 62 degrees. Today was sunny and 92 degrees. Portland's weather is as random as this post. How's that for pulling it all together?

Beet-y Playdough

I made some homemade playdough today using this great recipe (found via Crafty Crow) tweaked ever so slightly (you know me) by omitting the Koolaid and substituting natural beet dye for the water. The Koolaid gives a rich, intense color, but I knew my kids would end up eating all that yummy-smelling dough. I’m also trying to avoid shelling out the big bucks for the natural food dyes from Whole Foods, so decided to go the cheap crafty route.



I made the dye by cooking down beet greens in about 2 cups or so of water (enough to cover) for about an hour, then left it on the stovetop to cool overnight. I got a little less than 1 cup of liquid so added some water to make 1 cup as the recipe called for, then followed the recipe from there. The best part is kneading that nice warm dough at the end, especially on a rainy, cold day like today.



The color would probably be more intense if I included the actual beets, but they’re just too yummy for me to sacrifice and I’m happy with the cute salmon pink color. I also tried cooking down some carrot greens, but they emitted a puke green color and I didn’t want to scare my children away from playdough for life. So we’ll stick with pink for now!



If you try this, have faith. When I first started cooking the dough I didn’t think the liquidy slop would ever form a ball and I started to convince myself that the beet juice was throwing off the chemistry. But lo and behold, a ball formeth!!

My mom found a cool set of wooden playdough toys at the thrift store, so we're all quite the happy playdough peeps!

dot dot dot dot, dash dot dot dot

A quilt for my BFF.

I can’t tell you how hard it was to keep this quilt a secret, and she was such a good sport about it. Even when I hint-dropped that I had a “surprise,” she did not press me as she knew I would cave. Instantly. With only the slightest of provocation.



That’s what’s so great about her: she knows me better than I know myself, and quite often saves me from myself (especially when it comes to surprises). Not to mention the fact that she has crazy good thrift store karma. She is my lady luck of thrifting.



When she and I were at Bolt last week and she so casually picked out the perfect missing fabric to this quilt, I nearly blew the surprise. But I bit my tongue, turned bright red and let out a little squeal instead. Just a tiny one, because I wanted this to be a surprise that she would love. And I think it was, and I think she did.



I named it ‘dots and dashes,’ a reference to that secret code that only the bestest of friendships share…and also because there’s lots of dots and dashes all over it, hee!

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl (even tho we already celebrated it, but you can never get enough HBs, right?)

Encore!!

Happy Mother's Day to all moms out there, mine and yours and you!! I think Holden summed it up best when he asked before trotting off to bed, "Do we get to have Mom's day again tomorrow?" Well, hmmm...more of this?


My spot on the couch with my new book (which I love, at least the first two chapters...thanks mom!) atop the quilt of my craft day labors which is not for me but it needed some breaking in before being handed over to its sweet owner (will save that for tomorrow's brag post!)...


My sweeties, being sweet to each other...


Inevitably being not-so-sweet to each other...


Finding new exciting uses for comfy spot, along with LOTS of giggles...


The making of sweets, from my Sweets...
The handmade gifts hidden (quite visibly) under the living room sofa...
The sweet "Happy Mother's Day to Meeeeee" song sung from my little girl...
The multitude of hugs and kisses and special foot rubs all day long...

Yes, little Holden. I think I could stand another day of this!

Domestic Physics

As Esme feverishly dismantled the kitchen this evening while I cooked dinner, I was reminded of my favorite physical law: entropy (aka, the only thing I remember from freshman physics). I love the idea that by creating order, disorder is being created at an equal and opposite rate somewhere else in the world (or something like that. I got a C-, ok?). This is reassuring to me because it means that no matter how hard I try, there is never going to be perfection in this household. So really, I don’t try very hard.



The laundry isn’t folded, emails aren’t answered and the floor’s not swept, but I have a craft project ready for the kids after nap, a good dent in some upcoming (top secret!) crafty gifts and my mind and body are rested and ready for the remainder of the day. So for me, entropy is a free ticket to enjoy some simple pleasures without feeling the guilt of the looming…ever looming…undone domestic chores.



I’m not sure that my college professors had this in mind during their lackluster lectures on physical laws, but I think it may be one of the most useful lessons of my education.



Sadly, this law also applies to the craft room. Here is the aftermath of my latest (top secret!) projects.



Tomorrow, as a pre-mother’s day gift to myself from my husband (wink), I’ve been given a majority of the day to dedicate to said (top secret!) craft projects. So peeps…I’m going in! If I’m not out by Friday, you’ll know that entropy has run amock in this house!

Contact Paper Collages

One crafty mama was looking for a fun, easy activity to do with her little guy, so I thought I’d share this one. I got the idea from a project that Holden brought home from preschool and seemed great for the 2+ crowd (unless your 2-year-old is into sticking the contact paper onto her newly-grown hair like mine is).



Supplies:
Clear Contact paper – I bought a large roll at our local grocery for about $6 that will probably last our lifetime (considering it’s vinyl, will probably outlast us as well)
Tissue paper
Found objects – we’ve used leaves, flower petals, moss, sticks, sand, glitter, paper, fabric scraps, seed beads but really, anything small enough to stick to the paper works!

Step 1: cut contact paper

I cut ours to about 12 by 18 inches. If you think you might frame it, keep that in mind when you’re making the initial cut. Oh and I used my straight edge and rotary cutter. Bad for the blade, I know, but much more fun than scissors.

Step 2: tape contact paper sticky side up onto table.
(I took pictures of this step but much to my novice photographer amazement, clear contact paper taped to a table does not a picture make. Go figure).

Step 3: stick away! Be sure to leave some areas of the contact paper exposed to adhere to the tissue paper.


Step 4: place tissue paper on top of the contact paper + objects. Press to adhere to the exposed areas of contact paper and trim. Or, use another sheet of contact paper if you want the back and front to be seen (which would make a cute mobile!)


Step 5: ooh and ahh!


The kids had fun with the whole reverse image thing, seeing the "backside" of their work.


Esme, being two and lacking good judgment in the "appropriateness of found objects" category (leaves, flower petals = good; socks = not so much) needed quite a bit more supervision than 4-year-old Holden. But she LOVED touching the sticky paper, and had a lot of fun sticking stuff on and peeling them off.


Happy sticking!

Don't you love when they make up songs?

Holden, sitting on the floor with his little mini-acoustic guitar, plunked out this tune today:

"iiiiiii've been working on the raaaaailrooooad, alllllll the livelong daaaaay..." [continues until the "Dinah's in the kitchen" part...] Plink, Plink.

"Someone's in the kitchen with Dinahhhhh....saur! Someone's in the kitchen I know-oh-oh. Someone's in the kitchen with Dinosaur, strummin' on their dinosaur banjo!"

Plink, Plunk!

May In, April Out

My inability to grasp the whole “30 days has September, blah blah blah” thing caused me to miss May Day yesterday.

So we picked flowers and celebrated today instead.

Happy belated May Day and Sunny Spring Day wishes to you!

Portland Paint Chips

Our town journey today consisted of a quest for the perfect house color combo for our new (1912) homestead. We're inspired by that quintessential early 20th century craftsman palette while at the same time trying to avoid the mustard + avocado green vinyl siding phenomenon of the late 60's/early 70's. Tough, I know. But we did find a few keepers.


I had a hard time not getting overwhelmed with all this out-of-reach perfectness (we are far, far away from finished in our remodel endeavour, believe me!!) and in the end, rather than letting it consume me, I surrendered to looking for quilt color combos instead.


You can barely see it, but LOVE the chartreuse door on this one.


Aside from the adorable colors, I had to capture a picture of what is probably the only palm tree growing in Portland.


The kid's favorite house. Add some red trim and I'm in quilt-house heaven!

Yeah, I got bored pretty quick, so we'll be making a run to Yolo here in town to check out colors sans the running commentary from the carseat crew in the back.


And finally, the finished quilt. Forgive the light, the weather is still grey and rainy around these here parts.