Home

Our kitty, Lewis is home, after being missing for two weeks. We are so very thankful to the thoughtful person who called the local shelter to report a stray cat. To say my children (and I) were devestated is an understatement and after two weeks of tears we are so thrilled to have him home. He has been snuggled and petted and snuggled some more and could now very well be the most spoiled cat ever.

So far we've been able to keep Lewis, our bird-rodent-bug hunter extraordinaire, from the chicks, who have grown so much I hardly recognize them as the little fluffballs who came to us two weeks ago. They have feathers and giant chicken feet and a chickenish look in their eye now.

We've enjoyed the last (hopefully) of some very rainy weather by staying in our pj's late, snuggling up with good books, and cooking some delicious breakfast food. I saw the baked oatmeal at http://www.soulemama.com/ and after realizing that life is too short to go without this, decided to make it one morning. I found the recipe here :
http://www.lottieanddoof.com/2011/04/baked-oatmeal/
It was a delicious accompaniment to my usual green smoothie.

Cooking with K

K and I spent the morning preparing some homemade bread for Easter. Now that the weather is nice D and J spend a considerable ammount of time playing outside, but K is really too little to go out on her own. We did a trial one day and she ran right down the driveway and into the street, chasing a ball, so that was the end of that. So when there are things that keep me from heading outside with the kids to play, she is my little helper. Things proceed slowly when there is a little one 'helping out', messes are considerable, and clean up seems to take forever. But I love having her there, learning alonside me, hopefully making memories that she will cherish and share with her little ones someday.

Yum. Honey is delicious.

This Week

We had a fun-filled, action packed, whirlwind of a week. Here it is in pictures:
We spent Tuesday at the New England Aquarium

We celebrated St. Patrick's Day with one of our favorite books, Tales from Old Ireland, and by cooking some Irish yummies. We made Roasted Cauliflower with Cheese and Irish Soda Bread. They were both quite delicious. You can find the Irish Soda Bread recipe at my friend Marissa's blog http://greenroommag.com/spoonful/?p=833

The kids worked on their science projects all morning on Friday and played outside all afternoon, enjoying some spring-like weather! We read some great books this week, and Dylan began listening to Number the Stars by Lois Lowry on CD. We are all drawn in to the story, including me. We listen to books on CD a lot in the car, and the girls requested Saint Saens's Carnival of the Animals to listen to this week. We have a great recording with the poems narrated by many wonderful actors, including James Earl Jones and Audrey Hepburn. Before I knew it the weekend was upon us, as well as a big hockey tournament in Hyannis on Saturday and Sunday for D! I don't have any pics, unfortunately, because I was in Boston with J at the Massachusetts Suzuki Festival. It was awesome! She had a great time playing her violin with lots of other kids from Massachusetts.

We also heard a concert by local folk musician and Suzuki violin teacher Susan Reed. She is amazing. You can check her out at http://susanreed.com/

Here and there we did some math and language arts, but by and large spent the week very much involved with some of the kids' favorite things - science, cooking, sports, and music. What a great way to spend the week.

yes, we have no bananas

Actually we do have bananas. Lots and lots of bananas. They were looking rather forlorn and left out in my cabinet today so I decided to put them to good use and whip up some delicious vegan treats. We began our morning with some vegan buckwheat banana pancakes and then moved on to some buckwheat banana bread. Can you tell I like the pairing of buckwheat and bananas? The bananas sweeten buckwheat's earthy flavors and add potassium to buckwheat's fiber and magnesium. And they taste yummy together. Two great tastes that taste great together. What could be better?

Vegan buckwheat banana pancakes from Vegetarian Time's Healing Foods Cookbook can be found here http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10043

I veganized my tried and true all time favorite banana bread recipe from Epicurious using egg replacer and earth's balance vegan butter. I omit the chocolate chips but add a tablespoon or two of ground flax seeds. I used half buckwheat flour and half all-purpose. The kids gobbled it up so quickly, I couldn't even get a picture before they'd began taking slices! You can find it here
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Aunt-Hollys-Banana-Bread-239027

Today was our last day of vacation and it was great to spend it in the kitchen with my four favorite people. And lest you think we eat nothing but sweet treats around here I added a picture of our dinner - braised seitan cutlets in mushroom and red wine sauce, also from Vegetarian Times. This was so delicious I have been dreaming about it ever since. I made a chicken version for my carnivorous husband as well. It is destined to become a family favorite and I can't wait to make it again.

hellooooooooooooooo 2011

Seeing as how 2010 was an absolutely terrible year for me and my family, I'm very excited that 2011 has arrived, a crisp and sunny day bringing with it the promise of new beginnings and fresh hope. Don't you just love New Year's Day? I love that one can promise to be their best self - thinner, kinder, healthier, gentler, more patient, and what have you. Yet by Jan. 2 those things seem like a long-forgotten dream as you bark at your kids to just 'hurry up and clean up their rooms or we will cancel Christmas for next year!!!' while scoffing down another cookie. Ah, New Years.

DG and I spent a quiet night at home with the kids last night, hearing their new year's resolutions and thinking up some of our own, from the serious to the not so much. (like mine that includes finally organizing our art closet aka 'the closet from hell' or as my husband lovingly refers to it, 'the fred flinstone closet' My hope is that by the end of 2011 it will not take us 45 minutes to find the correct paint bottle.)We made some delicious homemade pizza and fried dough, a delicious, artery-clogging family favorite. I had meant to go to the party store and at least pick up some party hats and blowers, but never did get around to it, so suffice it to say that our night was very, very quiet, and very, very nice. D was the only one to make it to midgnight! We tucked two sleepy girls in at 8:30, DG was right behind them, and I surrendered at 11. I blame it on the martini and Christmas-induced traumatic stress disorder. Perhaps next year I will actually make it to midnight. There you go, a new resolution.

baking spree continued

I have been dreaming about baking pistachio cupcakes ever since I recently saw them on a friend's blog. She has all sorts of yummy recipes posted and I just had to try this one. I frosted them with a honey cream cheese frosting, which was a bit heavy for the light, airy cupcake, I think next time I will try her pomegranate icing instead. yum. Here is a link to her blog, but I must warn you - you might find yourself baking uncontrollably, or salivating at the very least if you read it.

(as usual, blogger will not let me insert a link - as usual, i can't figure out why. when my tech-savvy engineer husband can't figure it out, i raise the white flag while yelling "damn you blogger! damn you!)

but you can cut and paste http://greenroommag.com/spoonful/ to read her blog.

baking spree

I don't know why, but I have a desire to bake all sorts of goodies lately. Today we baked homemade bread. I recently bought the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, the sequel to Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and yesterday we made our first batch of whole wheat dough. My three helpers measured flour, which gets a bit messy when you have a toddler who insists on measuring things herself, whisked eggs and watched the dough rise, checking on it every so often to see how much bigger it had become. D even mentioned to J that the reason we could mix the water and oil together is that we added eggs, which act as an emulsifier. I was glad to see that he remembered some of our chemistry from earlier this year!

My next baking project this week will be some cupcakes that I have been dreaming about since I saw them on a friend's blog. Can't wait.

molto buono

Last Wednesday was Italian culture day (not officially, just here at our house). We read Strega Nona by Tomie DePaula, and I Vivaldi by Janice Shefelmas, as well as books about Italian culture and the people of Italy. We listened to some Verdi, and when that got a bit heavy for the kids we switched to Vivaldi and listened to The Four Seasons. D was outraged that Vivaldi chose to write Summer in a minor key. Why, he demanded, would someone write about the best season of the year in such a despondent and tragic sounding key? Hmmmm... something to ponder.

We also looked at some art of the Italian Renaissance in our Art Up Close book, which I absolutely love but haven't spent nearly enough reading with the kids. We looked at the Mona Lisa, and Primavera by Botticelli.

The best part of the day, however, was spent making homemade (from scratch!) pasta. When we spent our first Christmas together, DG told me of childhood Christmas' past when his mom and aunts would spend hours making homemade ravioli. He used to love helping with this tradition as a wee tyke. After we were married I bought a pasta machine, complete with fancy ravioli attachment, envisioning the creation of our own Christmas pasta-making memories. Six years later it was still sitting in the box, collecting dust in the basement - until Wednesday, that is, when we dusted off the machine, assembled it ourselves sans directions, and put her to long-overdue use.

We thoroughly enjoyed rolling the dough through the pasta machine, watching it come out a bit thinner each time. I cut the dough into strips by hand, because I couldn't figure out how to attach the linguine cutter. But I must say (pat on the back) it was delicious. We rounded out the meal with a garden salad and a nice chianti, which we devoured sitting outside in our olive garden, overlooking the Italian riviera...okay just fantasizing about everything from the chianti on, but we did finish the meal with some yummy gelato from Whole Foods.