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| (2009) |
(Dessert at Hell’s Kitchen)
Tomorrow morning I’m meeting up with my team from school. We were supposed to go for a boat ride but the river is too high so we are going to just sit on her deck (our friend Mary who lives on the river here) and relax together. No children. Just us. The deck and the muffins I’m bringing.
I knew as soon as I decided to bring a morning treat where to look; The Cottage (from La Jolla’s favorite beachside bungalow)-many times I google or Pinterest a recipe but every once in awhile I know what to get from my own shelves. Tried and true excellent recipes. If you love brunch and fresh food this book is a must.
Blueberry Muffins {pg 14}
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 stick butter, softened
3 eggs, {farm fresh}
1 cup sour cream
3 1/2 cups flour, {unbleached}
1 T. baking powder
2 cups blueberries
Preheat the oven to 350. Grease and line one 12-cup or two 6-cup muffin tins. In a large bowl beat the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time mixing after each addition. Mix in the sour cream until blended. In a small bowl mix together the flour and baking powder. Stir the flour mixture into the batter until just blended. {At this point I squeezed in a little fresh lemon juice} Add the blueberries and stir gently. Pour the batter into muffin cups to the top. Bake for 25 minutes. {I added grated lemon peel to the top half way through the baking process}
Makes 12 muffins
Enjoy your day tomorrow. I’ll be on a deck, watching the river flow, with friends and muffins.
Empathy is a hard thing to teach. You can show it again and again but for some it is just a natural extension of their personality.
When you love books as much as I do you look for them in odd places. I was having a girl’s day with my friend Mary Kay one day, a lovely afternoon of lunch and second hand/antique shops. As we were browsing I happened upon a book by Elsa Beskow. I was in love.
First published in 1910 this is a beautiful picture book from a different era but many children would love it. Tiny forest people with mushroom caps on their heads. Elsa’s story relays the fun the children have in their woodland home, playing with other animals, and going off to school to learn. Following the little folk through food gathering in the fall, winter snow games, and fresh spring beginnings…the seasons are beautifully portrayed by Elsa Beskow, an artist and author from Sweden.
I have another Elsa Beskow book-Ollie’s Ski Trip-that my friend Mary Kay found for me later. It is as small as my palm and filled with beautiful illustrations and it is like a small chapter book with pages filled with words about Ollie waiting for winter so he can use his new pair of skis. Old Man Winter eventually does show up but first Ollie gets to meet Jack Frost.
Charming books-ones I bring out when I need a moment of respite from the busy world around me.
We love brunch; making it, eating it, sharing with friends. I made a lovely meal on Sunday for all five of us plus a friend.
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| {bloody mary ingredients rounded up; somehow the pickles refused to be in the shot} |
Again we started with Bloody Mary’s (homemade is the way to go). The over 21 crew each had one while I was finished cooking. We chatted with Heather who came bearing gifts of champagne and orange juice. Second favorite brunch drink! What a great day.
For eats I made homemade crepes and since elder daughter and I couldn’t decide on either savory or sweet we went all out with both; just in less quantity.
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| {Scene from Mn Ballet-The Nutcracker} |
I feel terrible when I look at this blog that I love so much and see that a month is half over and I haven’t posted books or recipes or even what my life is like. If I review blog posts many of them share a common theme of crazy busy happy life. The month of November has been like that + more, like us amped up on lots Halloween candy.
Groovy Girl is in rehearsal for The Nutcracker with the Minnesota Ballet through her local dance studio. She is excited to use her dramatic and dancer skills in such a favorite production. We’ve gone several times to this show as she was growing up and I remember the first time like it was yesterday. She had on a magical deep blue dress and she couldn’t sit still. Luckily we were sitting on the aisle in a front balcony and I could let her dance next to me as the dancers on stage made her want to dance with them. The performance is soon and I will be happy to watch her perform and then happy to cross it off my schedule.
While she has been busy with that I decided at the end of October that this was the perfect time to try my hand at National Novel Writing 2015 so every spare moment between her rehearsals for Nutcracker and regular dance classes (5) and cheerleading activities I’ve been piecing together a story. I’m at about 21,000 words and I need to write double time to finish by November 30th. I don’t know if what I am writing is good but it feels fantastic to write it out. Several pieces of the story are real events that I’ve always wanted to incorporate into something real.
I also threw in two weekend trips because they were already scheduled and I wasn’t going to give them up. My husband whisked me away to Iowa City for a night away-I was able to do some writing there. I also had a date with two college friends in St. Paul and that provided research as that is the setting for my story. It all works out. That’s my mantra.
Work is also crazy right now even though about a week ago I felt caught up-in that one moment because now I’m racing to get things finished up for conferences and our Scholastic book fair which occur very quickly after Thanksgiving. Oh and I am really looking forward to that lovely day of relaxation with my family. We are eating very unconventionally and then have a playdate with freinds for board games and cocktails at our house. Hopefully by then I will have really caught up in my daily word counts for nanowrimo2015 and I won’t feel a bit of guilt as I hang out with friends.
My friend, Barb and her family, own a bakery in Indiana and for the last 2 years Groovy Girl and I have traveled the 5 1/2 hours east to visit her and work in the bakery. Her uncle owns a strawberry farm and the bakery is attached. It’s hard to figure out which draws more; the bakery or the u-pick farm and garden center.
It’s strawberry season and this past weekend it was strawberry fest on the farm. They were super busy which in turn makes the bakery busy. As we worked in the back making strawberry donuts and buckwheat pancakes with strawberry syrup we could see the line wind several times through the store and out into the parking lot. It was crazy!
It’s a serious working vacation. I get to spend time with my friends and help at the same time. The only time they are not busy is late December, January, and February, right when I’m in school so we make this work. And my back can tell you I worked really hard this week. I made batch after batch of steamy donuts; measuring out and weighing the ingredients, mixing it, pouring it into the donut hopper so it can drop perfectly into the hot grease where it is a perfect circle of dough. It makes its way down the small converyer belt; frying and turning to create a golden orb (with the ever important hole) and then tossed into a bowl of sugar and laid out on a tray to be sold. I made trays, and trays, and trays + +.
I now dream about making donuts. Last year I didn’t make quite as many and we were not here for as long. I’m also a year older and I didn’t sleep well this week; I woke up this morning with a terrible pain in my lower back. Barb and I did about 45 minutes of yoga; deep stretching with modifications for my back and my heart. She’s a trained yoga instructor as well. I don’t know how she does it all! We did kayak which is one of my favorite things to do but it’s been off/on rainy for days and our kayak venture was cut very short.
We did prepare delicious dinners together as well but that is another blog post. If you get a chance to stop in Hobart, IN be sure to stop by Marilyn’s Bakery (her mother started the bakery in 1986). You won’t be disappointed and if it happens to be strawberry season you might just glimpse me in the back pouring and dipping donuts. I need a vacation to help me recover from this intense working…vacation?!
I made a meal yesterday for two musically talented friends who came to town to play a gig. I offered to make them food as I’m all into this entertaining without cleaning utopia. I did actually do a bit of cleaning but I just don’t get stressed out about it. I mostly tidied up a week’s worth of daily clutter and swept our one hardwood floor that shows all the dust bunnies, dog prints, and crumbs.
I have several go-to meals I pull out of my hat that are easy to put together and still make a good impression. Homemade pizzas are a big winner~especially if you ask the kids to help scoop the sauce and decorate the pies. A Mexican burrito or tostado bar is another. This is the one I did today as I came across this great recipe for a Mexican-inspired quinoa dish from Damn Delicious. I woke up early yesterday morning and made the quinoa dish so it would be ready and I’d only have to reheat it.
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| (Sarah Prineas, Maribeth Boelts, and Jill Esbaum) |
I spent my day at the public library for a book festival. We had an amazing time. There were book characters, yoga story time, music, drama, and three Iowa authors. This was the first festival and I think a few things we could do differently but in general it was a good time for all. Groovy Girl had the opportunity to “be” Olivia and she LOVED it. She hugged lots of small people, posed for photos, danced and generally played it up. It was hot and sweaty in the costume yet at the end of the day she didn’t want to take off the huge costume.
After the book festival it was easy for me to wash some greens, saute a pound of grass-fed beef with homemade taco seasonings, reheat the quinoa dish, and fill little bowls with sour cream, cilantro, cheese, and avocado. Right before they arrived I heated corn tortillas on our griddle just enough to make them crunchy. And the best part was cracking open a container of feta cheese to sprinkle over the top. Mmm. It was good, not too heavy, and we were able to eat within about 45 minutes so my friends could travel the 8 minutes to set up their equipment. The most important thing was the lovely conversation around the table between my two children, my two young guests, and myself. There was storytelling and laughing. Entertainment bliss.
Our journey to Little Rock was a success. We drove first to Mountain View, AR for a bluegrass festival at the beautiful Ozark Folk Center. I enjoyed listening to the music and I was able to read while listening, which was important as I was desperately trying to finish Lucy Dillon’s A hundred pieces of me for our reading retreat.
From Mountain View we headed South to the Little Rock area, staying in a gorgeous and new Best Western, picked because it had an indoor pool area. Groovy Girl loves to swim and we love the hot tub. I had one lovely night sleeping there and a relaxing morning before my friend V. picked me up for the first leg on the reading retreat. We relaxed at her house for just a few minutes, waiting for A. to pick us up.
Our next stop was their local Whole Foods, a spectacular-looking store, basically a prettified Wal-Mart for natural food shoppers. It doesn’t give me the same healthy feeling to be in there like Whole Foods used to, it is different but it did have many of the picnic-type items we were looking for so we picked and chose carefully. Oh, to eat like this all the time! We had rice crackers, good hard cheese, a seedy hearty bread, a mix of olives, two delicious bars of chocolate, pears, apples, a box of salad greens, and two bottles of wine. Except it was a Sunday and we could buy everything BUT the wine. Drats!
A. luckily had a friend living nearby that had a bottle of wine, the funny part was that the wine had been a gift from A. so she borrowed her own bottle of wine back. We could live with one bottle of borrowed back wine and we headed to the hills of Greers Ferry. I sat in the back and pulled out my book again to continue reading. I wanted to finish before we made it to the cabin and they wanted me to finish so we could talk about the book. It seemed to be the crowd favorite.
Our cabin was lovely with way more space than we needed. The best part was the large back porch that looked out on the lake. It was a perfect spot to talk, enjoy the weather, and share a meal, family-style.
We had a great time. It was rejuvenating for me. We talked about our books, friendship, the world (and all the world’s problems). We talked about ourselves, our husbands, and our children. Everyone has joys and trials, let me tell ya’. We did a little bit of yoga. We sat outside and inside. We stayed up later than usual. We laughed. We drank just the one bottle of wine. We shared chocolate with fruit. We had 24 hours of solitude with each other; three strong women.
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| {breakfast} |
And the morning was filled with sunshine and hanging in our jammies. And then A. got the phone call. The one where her husband told her that their borrowed cat had been hit by a car. It was a sad note to end on yet it illustrated how life just keeps happening around us. The cat was a hard loss for her family-hopefully they’ve found joy in their shared memories of their friendly feline mate.
I hope we will get to do this again in a year or two. The theme of A hundred pieces of me by Lucy Dillon is about what’s real and important to you and the memories of our reading retreat are high on my list.
Peaceful Reader 