Spring Days

I've been away from the blog for a few days. It has just been a busy time for us - emotionally and in terms of events and activities. Thursday JT and I stirred up a btach of green sugar water to make some sugar crystals and then in the late afternoon headed to the farmer's market to get a flat of super ripe strawberries. Friday, as we were about to take a picture of the spider on the sunflower, JT stepped on a dried thorn in the yard. He has been tip-toeing around, and although it is not infected, there is possibly still a piece of thorn in his heel. What to do...

That same evening our street had its monthly potluck, and we met some new neighbors with a son the same age as JT. The two boys took to each other immediately. One conversation:

JT: How old are you?

Boy: Uh, dad, how old are I? Am I?

(He knew, I think it threw him for a loop that another child was asking.)

Saturday the boys went to a May Faire at the nearby Waldorf School. And in the evening, they were too grumpy, so I went by myself to the International School fundraiser. We eneded up spending about 30 dollars for 2 passes for a whale-watching cruise, tickets to the Mingei Museum and a year-long pass to the Children's Museum in Escondido. N0t bad. My t-shirts only went for about 10 dollars each, but supposedly at the German School fundraiser, JK's easel went for over 100. (It makes a big difference when the parents have a greater disposable income!)

Sunday we had some friends over for pancake breakfast. JT enjoyed playing with the little girl from German School and her younger sister. He really liked to push "the baby" (she is about 15 months) in the swing. I also think it was good for him to hear adults speaking German.

That afternoon we made strawberry-lemon jam. It came out much too sweet, even though I didn't add quite as much sugar as the recipe required. I think I will stick to the no-sugar needed pectin next time and add only a small amount of sugar for sweetness.

Monday was a school day. And we went to Trader Joe's after. Luckily we had no excitement, and JT let me relax on the couch some while he stirred up some play food for me at his restaurant, Espaniol.

Tuesday I went to a meeting on campus while JT visited his friend N. In the evening, I decided to make some granola (based loosely on a recipe, I will look up the link later). I used a bag of dried fruit and nuts from TJ (add the fruit after baking), oats, sesame seeds, brown sugar, apple sauce, a little oil, honey and maple syrup and cinamon and ginger. It was ridicuously easy to make and tasty, so I think we will be making more of this in variations.

JK and I watched "The Day After" that evening. I think I can vaguely remember when it came on TV in 1983. Not that I watched it, but I somehow have a recollection of my parents watching it and me peeking in? Nuclear winter seems a fitting topic to think about with all the natural disasters and man-made difficulties in the world at the moment.

Yesterday my friend came over to cheer me up and we made orange marmelade while the boys played with JK. The two boys are great friends but they come together like an explosion! They were just wild, wild, wild, and naked for a while, too.

Which reminds me: JT and JK are sitting on a wheeled desk chair going down the driveway in the last post. And of course, it culminates in a moster-sighting!

Crazy Weekend

What we do on the weekends around here:

This weekend was a wierd mixture of good and bad. We had a heatwave. It was pretty hot. We got up early on Saturday only to discover that our friend did not actually need us to come over, so instead we went to breakfast at Big Kitchen in South Park. (Whoopi and Rachel Ray ate there. No, not the day we were there, but it was small, cute and quirky.) We did not know that you have to pay with cash or check, but luckily I had my checkbook along; unluckily I was out of checks. Luckily there was an ATM across the street, but I imagine it cost a fortune in fees. Thousands of calories later, we returned home so I could work on my editing project. And I discovered that my computer had decided to kick the bucket while we were out. But, even though this meant I had to ask my friend to extend her deadline, all was not lost. Our resident computer expert, aka hubby, set up our desktop (or maybe it had been set up for ages. I don't actually know.) and found me a laptop to use, salvaged my harddrive, and then, as a bonus, ripped out the toilet, replaced a wax ring, and decided that we need to replace some of the subflooring as well.

(Aren't you glad that we don't have smell-o-internet yet?)

And in between we hung out in the shade (it was cooler in the shade than in our house), went swimming, went to Lowe's, did some crafts, and drank at least 2 pitchers of homemade lemonade. Oh, and Monday JT got a new cousin!

This is a set of parent-child aprons for the German School silent auction. JT helped pick out the fabric. I have to make him a child-size one, since he tried this one on and thought it was his.

I made 2 sets of a little t-shirt and reversible mini-tote bag for the International School silent auction, which happens to be on the same day as the German school auction/fundraiser. And by the way, it only took me a whole day to figure out how to sew a tote bag. There is a nice useless tube-thingee made of the same material sitting on my desk right now. That was an early version. (And yes, I even followed instructions, but apparently I have no ability to understand sewing directions or envision how a pattern will fit together.) PS The boy has also requested that I sew him a shirt with a flower on it. I just want to squeeze him, he is so cute!

Shark Attack / Church-Building

Yes, you heard the news right. There was a fatal shark attack in San Diego - the first in 14 years. Yikes. And this weekend it is supposed to be quite warm here - 101 inland (das sind 38,3 grad C) and in the 80s at the coast (um 26 grad), practically a heatwave. And what happens when the weekend and warm weather coincide in San Diego? Everyone and their brother heads to the beach. We'll see how many brave the water.

In other news, JT made an ecstatic lego church. I say ecstatic since the preacher has apparently jumped on the altar. (I did help him make the cross, by the way.) JT has also taken to doing a "hand group hug" (holding hands briefly) and then saying grace at dinner. He likes to end it with, "I'm in!" (as in Amen). Grandma was such a good influence on him. :)

One Earth

Boy: Is there one earth for each place - like San Diego?
Father: No there is just one earth.
Boy: Oh, I didn't know. I thought there was one earth for each place.

In our small corner of the universe, we pulled out the last of the fava beans (which were too old and tasted more like lima beans, which I don't like), and re-seeded the corner of the garden with beans, carrots, radishes and chives, added in a purple basil plant and a lemon thyme, since herbs are always good, and considered our endive plants, which I am waiting to flower so I can gather the seeds for next fall/winter. (I think all but one will be going next weekend to make room for another summer crop.)Bonus question of the day: what are these insects? I found them on the remains of a chili pepper plant.
P.S. The various items in the garden are kitty-deterent measures.

Good-bye G-ma, Hello No-Knead Bread

This week we bid good-bye to grandma, who took the train up north to visit my sister. She is expecting baby number towards the end of the month, and my mom will help her and enjoy spending time with them and JT's cousin, LT. The kiddo and I got up insanely early to take g-ma to the train station, which was quie beautiful in the early morning.
JT was quite sad, and he would have preferred to take the train to visit his cousin as well. So this week he has been speaking in baby-talk quite a bit, but otherwise seems mostly unscathed.

Before g-ma left, she bought me a birthday present: a nice cast-iron pot from Ikea (the color even matches my smaller LC pot), since I really wanted to try out the (now infamous) no-knead bread recipe originally posted at NYTimes that has since circled the foodie-blogosphere. Together we watched the video that originally accompanied the recipe, and then set out to make it.

First, we measured out the flour, using the scoop and dump method. I wasn't quite paying attention, so I am not sure we actually got the 3 cups of flour that we needed.

Then we added the salt (about 1 tsp), and looked for the yeast. At that point, we discovered that we were out, which was not in the plan - I had decided in the sake of not-having-any-money-left-until-next-paycheck that we would not go to the grocery store until the weekend and just eat what was in the fridge and cupboard. That was working fine (we had spaghetti with homemade sauce, using a can of tomatoes, an onion, and the leftover carrots and one zuchinni that were all alone in the crisper drawer; we also ate bean soup made from dried beans and adding a cup of the sauce and another onion, some paprika, cumin and red pepper; and this morning we ate homemade oatmeal and some cereal with re-constituted powdered milk), but we were out of fruit, too, so the kiddo and I took a detour to the library, the store, and the Goodwill, where I bought 2 plates and a bowl, since several dishes have mysteriously broken lately. Well, perhaps not so mysteriously. So, later that day, we returned and added 1/4 tsp instant yeast and 1 1/2 cups water. At this stage, I should have realized that the dough was much too goupy (soupy?), but since we followed the video and mixed with our hands, we just had too much fun.

So, after leaving the dough to rest (covered with plastic) overnight (close to 24 hours), we dumped it out, and it was sticky, sticky, sticky. It did not easily fold over like in the video, but sort of glopped around. But we carried on, wrapped it in a flour-covered towel, and let it rise for about 2 hours. But it didn't get much bigger, and then I had to scrape it from the towel to drop into the preheated (450 degrees) pan. So at least half the dough remained on the towel, another 1/5 had been washed away after the hand-mixing (twice), and the dough was small. I was pretty sure that the bread would be terrible, but then after about 30 minutes of baking with the lid and 10 without, a tiny loaf of bread emerged.

And it was pretty tasty. Sort of like a baguette in texture. Next time I will:

a. add more flour or less water and check for a less runny texture during the first step.

b. add some beer or vinegar to replace a bit of the water so there is a bit more flavor.

and c. replace some of the white flour with wheat.

Because even though I had to "pour" the dough into the pot, the final result was bread with a crispy crust and airholes throughout.

Way too much fun

Look who is having fun with grandma. Way too much fun. Whatever will I do with him on Tuesday after she leaves?

Where the wild things are

We went on a safari. Or rather, we went to the wild animal park. The kiddo has been having all sorts of fun with his "grams" - she even played trains with him today. And he even enjoyed our trip to the fabric store. He enjoyed searching for some car fabric, he wanted to look at the "material books" in case he wanted to make some material [by which he meant the pattern books] and he even helped pick out some cloth for me, since I have gone a bit mad and decided to make a shirt for myself.