halloweens past

My mom made all my costumes.

Well, okay, there was the one year I went as a bride and she had to cut down the Southern Belle monstrosity we'd found hanging poofily at the thrift shop, but for the most part? I was an original.

I don't make all my kids costumes, though. Crafty skips generations (or so I'm finding) and they're still delighted with bits and pieces. Last year, I made my son's costume (he was a zombie) and bought a wee witch outfit for R. The year before, he was a Transformer and she was a purple cat. (I didn't get the purple paint out from under my nails for weeks!)

Tradition-wise, we've started them young (they both went out their first Halloween (in costumes) - Cass was 26 days old, and Rosey just a couple of weeks) taught them the old-school spooky thrill of scaring people, hammered into them (or at least I hope so) the importance of saying thank you when strangers give you candy, and set them free to run in the joyous gloom of Halloween night. We live in a rural enough area that the houses are in places few and far between, and we usually end up taking our car. Wherever the houses are closer, the kids (and I!) hop out, and they swoop through the dark, looking for the next house with a light on, while B trundles behind, headlights on low.

The kids also like telling spoooky stories after the great candy hunt with only the light from the fire......great for sound effects and grandiose gestures (with the occasional crackling noise from furtive wrappers) and hushed, quiet, cliff-hanger voices that grow LOUDER at plot points and character changes.

After Halloween we say goodbye to the pumpkins and the gourds and the crazy spiderwebs hung over everything, and the world looks stark and plain for a few days.

But the candy goes on and on....

click here to read about more of our traditions and hear about what candy will be at my house this year!

frustrated foodie

I have a lot of food links. 

I like food, you see, like creating new recipes and old cookbooks and figuring out the kids' latest favourite thing and eating, my god, can't forget eating and planning a grocery list (altho' not so much the actual shopping) and trying to re-create experiments and remembering suppers gone by.

(I mean, holiday suppers. I don't moon around thinking of last Thursday's corn pudding and sighing.)

I am lucky enough to have found some great food bloggers and to have several sites that send me new recipes to try. And I do, really, but there are some things that I just cannot make, no matter how easy they are. Things that would never get eaten.

There should be a sub-set on many recipe sites:
Food that may taste good, but your kids? Are nevah, nevah gonna let any of this pass their lips. Good luck on that one.

Can someone tell me what would possess a person to name a pasta salad "Fruity Pasta Swiss Salad"? Or tout Eggplant Roll-ups as a family favorite? Put zucchinni on a grilled cheese sandwich. Or even use marshmallow in a main dish. Italian Marshmallow Chicken, anyone?

Trying to get my kids to eat that would be an exercise in futility. I can pick my own battles, thank you. And frankly, I'd rather deal with the tried-and-true narrowed-eye suddenly suspicious 'Do I smell onions?' than to break new ground with those horrors.

My kids have had all types of different foods. Some they even liked! And we never stop trying new things. Some recipes, though, are just not worth the trouble.

Although they do love Peanut Butter Pork, so what do I know......

cheese olive bread

adapted from a recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

You need:

1 stick butter
1/2 cup mayonnaise (NOT miracle whip)
2 green onions, chopped
1 can pitted black olives
1 jar green olives with pimentos
1 bag shredded Italian 5-Blend cheese
1/2 bag shredded mozzerella
Pinch paprika
1 loaf French or Italian bread, cut open as if for garlic bread

Mix softened butter and mayo together, add in green onions. Chop black olives and green olives, add cheeses. Mix together, shake in paprika. Chill for a few hours to let flavours blend.

Mound on bread (it will look like too much but keep going) and bake at 325 for 25 minutes until bubbly and beginning to brown.


This is one of my go-to recipes. It's awesome for potlucks, parties, and anywhere you need something gooey and good.

Enjoy!

nutrition fail

I'm not a gourmet cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I like to use new recipes and try to serve good stuff that everyone will tuck into at supper-time. This means I usually try to have several different styles of the same approved-of meal (meatloaf? I have seven recipes) so that time constraints and differing ingredients won't slow me down.

A good idea - however this can make for some strange combinations when the pantry is low!
Oh well.
As long as it isn't too spicy, I can generally get away without a bunch of 'Oh, Mom's (dratted people that don't like indian food as much as my daughter and I do....)

Sunday was Cass's birthday, and for his birthday supper he decided he wanted bacon cheeseburgers. Which isn't something I think I've ever really cooked for the kids, but I was game. Birthday boy and all that. Birthday cholesterol doesn't count, right?

I suggested sides. 'Rosemary potatoes? Salad? Broccoli? (heh.)

He pulled a face. 'No, I really just want the burgers. You know, those ones you do with the grated onion and the little blobs of ketchup and mustard on top? With those big hamburger buns? I'd like those with cheddar cheese and some bacon on them too.'

I never grate onion. I know I would remember if I ever grated onion. I stared at him, thinking, running different meals and cuisines through my mind. 'Honey, did you eat those at one of your friends' houses? I don't think that was me.'

Cass blinked. 'No, you did. It was when I was getting over that cold, remember? And I was just starting to feel better, and you made cheeseburgers and they were the best thing ever....'

So much for nutrition, and home-made meals, and mom of the year awards.

I started to grin. 'Nope. Your father brought those home from McDonald's.'

mind like a steel sieve

I am quite possibly the world's worst record-keeper.

Cass is going to be eight in a matter of weeks. (Crap, really? He's that old?) He has a lovely filled-out baby book that I can't find and an album jammed with pictures from birth until three.

The rest of his life resides on various hard-drives and letters to grandparents.

Rosey, on the other hand, in true second-child tradition, really got the shaft. Her pictures never made it to a baby album and instead exist solely on the computer.

At this moment (although I'm SURE I have this written down somewhere) I can't really remember their birth weights. Wait. Weren't they both over nine pounds? No,wait.* They weren't. Cass was seven something and Rosemary a few ounces less. Then R dropped weight and all the foghorns of alarm started to blow in the hospital and......yeah.

This is not to say I've forgotten everything. I remember holding Cass for the very first time - where we were, the medicinal smell in the room, my mom's joyous, happy tears, how the air was rarified and still when they brought in my boy, and how lovely and wizened he looked.

And Rosey - how we ended up far from home and unpacked in a room where it seemed our cameras and videocam took up most of the available tabletop space, and how the first night my roommates baby cried most of the night and I (baby-less by way of the NICU) swallowed most of my tears and shook silently, so afraid that the spark of a girl I hadn't been able to see yet would be gone before I could hold her.

It's not the big stuff I forget. But the dates and numbers and minutiae of their sweet lives? They're just...not...there. They sift themselves silently out.


I didn't start blogging as a way to record their babyhoods, although it's been a useful tool for that, and reading the old entries (Ladies and Gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure - most of my girl child's life! Cast your eyes upon the archival dates at the left!) helps when I need to recall something. So today I'm using this power for good.

September 8th, 2009.

Rosey's very first hot lunch at school.

*Ahem. That was actually me.

if a tree falls in the woods, do the birds stop and listen?

I'm torn between making soup and reading a book.

Not even a good book, really, a pot-boiler, but it sounds sort of decadent to curl up in a corner and get swept away for an hour or so to a place where children scream only when it furthers the plot and the weather is always a good indicator of what's coming up next.

It's grey and sodden today - a perfect day for soup: hot, nestled into blue and white bowls, small faces tipping down into the steam....hm. Chicken and white bean? Avgolemono?I would love to make reuben soup, but that's a crockpot recipe and I want it now.


Instead, I'll probably make chicken parmigiana and coax everyone into garlic bread-pasta carbohydrate-induced slumber.

Then, the livingroom, the lap blanket, the blessed silence....

will be mine.

day of grace, week nine

1) Blackberry jam on ice cream.

2) Looking my next project in the eye, breaking it down into stages and getting really excited about it.

3) Talking to my mother. She was so excited! The kids used chopsticks for the first time. Cass did an awesome job, and R perfected the one-fisted stab-it maneuver. I love hearing that in her voice.

4) Rain. Isn't that a strange thing to be grateful for? (Especially for one who lives next to a watershed!) But last night was magical, listening to it needle into the windows, making our house seem like a haven from the elements.

5) Bialys. The actual bialys were a gigantic hit, the filling, not so much. The next batch I think I'll eliminate the salt and do some sort of cinnamon/brown sugar stripe through it. More like the bagel braids I remember from when I was growing up.

croutons

Katie asked (and I'm happy to share)

We always have heels of bread around. My children have somehow decided that crust on bread is something to be avoided at all costs, so the heels are left waiting for me to ferret them out and squirrel them away in the freezer. They make good breadcrumbs and things.

Unless, of course, they're chopped up and toasted on salad. Then (like magic!) they're considered yummy again...

CROUTONS
(All measurements are approximate - that's the way I cook. And I don't think I need to say that you can substitute any kind of bread, or change the herbs up, or whatever...)

Take six or seven slices of bread. Use your good knife and cut them up into reasonable sized-squares. (Not pissy-small like the bags of croutons you can buy, and not huge monsters.) Spread them out onto a buttered cookie sheet.

In a coffee cup, slosh some oil. (Olive is lovely - canola or sunflower works well too.)Press a garlic clove or two into it, leave the solids in the oil. Add some salt and pepper, too. I like a little rosemary or savory in mine also, but other herbs (or plain) would be good.

After your herbs and garlic have steeped in the oil for a bit, dribble your oil over the bread cubes and toss with your hands to coat.

Umm, this is remarkably similar to my rosemary potato recipe...

Pop into a hot oven (350? 400?) and toast the bread.

Easy peasy and you'll never go back to those stale things at the grocery again.

**Also? If you add shredded cheese to your salad? Add hot croutons and the cheese melts. Um, yum? Yeah....

i consider myself a kind person

but then why does my son look so sad? So sad....and horrified? So unhappy?

I mean, I didn't yell at him, or take away his DS, or make him go have his shower first (the horrors of -gulp- cleanliness!) or announce that he needs to play ponies with his sister, or anything nasty like that. Like I said, I consider myself a kind person.

A good parent, you know? A good parent.

And one that believes in the finishing of brussels sprouts.



Behold the unhappy mug.

sparbles

I love old cookbooks.

This one, tattered, worn, spotted with age and careless drippings, has lived at my father-in-law's house for over forty years - it was a gift sent to my mother-in-law from people back home in Newfoundland in the sixties. Published by one of the flour companies (Five Roses, Cinderella, Cream of the West, Purity, and so on.) as a way to seal brand loyalty, this one is skewed to the hard-scrabble Newfoundland heritage of making everything out of nothing and being proud of what you had.

We own a re-print of another flour company cookbook (Purity, an example recipe here) and Bear's face always lights up when we cook things from it - it feels like home to him.

B is busy gearing up to begin his Christmas baking (what? Huh, you thought I was the one who baked? Ummm, no.) and I have little doubt that several of the yummy things listed on these pages will appear.

chocolate is gooooood therapy

One Person Five Minute Chocolate Cake

• 1 Coffee Mug
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons baking cocoa
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 3-4 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional) (or a mini candy bar, or a spoonful of peanut butter)
• Small splash of vanilla

Instructions:

• Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well.
• Pour in the egg, milk and oil and mix well.
• Add the chocolate chips or other goodies (if using) and vanilla, and mix again.
• Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!
• Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
• EAT!

This can serve two if you want to share, but sharing? Is...sometimes highly overrated.

with two cats in the yard....

Our house....

smells of turkey and stuffing right now, with undertones of home-made pumpkin pie filling and just a snap of bacon for the beans....

Happy Thanksgiving.

mystery fruit

Now I'm all confused.

Every year I wax poetical about my Japanese Quince bush, its lovely blossoms, the way it sprouts up everywhere and charms me.

This year it began to bear fruit. Oh, it had given off a few stunted things for a couple of years, but this was the first for it to give off an apronful. The kids and I picked them this afternoon, and I consulted the internet for recipes. I had a friends' recipe for jam, but...no. Something else. Something...sweet.

I gathered the quinces, chopped them and took many of the hard little cores out. Then poured in some water and boiled them until they were soft. They smelt like apples and pears and cinnamon, slightly exotic and heady.

And was surprised when the bubbly mess didn't go golden. Or blush. Or turn red.

Like quinces are supposed to.

Hmmm.

Rubbed through a sieve, I added sugar and set it back on the heat to bubble and blend.

And an hour later, was still waiting.

Needless to say, I now have a cookie sheet full of something that is neither applesauce nor candy, but something slow and syrupy. Gorgeous sludge, still smelling like candied apples dusted with spices.

But it never blushed. So what on earth grew on that tree??

blackberry pie

I may have started something here.

Everyday since last week's berry picking, the kids have been scouring the side-yard for edible things. And they keep finding them.

Eat your hearts out, city-dwellers. Who knew such bounty existed right outside?

Today's haul was blackberries. With a few unexpected raspberries and a handful of blueberries. We're also seeing a lot of apples ripening and some chokecherries.

I pointed out the fluffy fronds of wild carrot and the thin, gorgeous red-stemmed vines that hold wild strawberries in the spring. We nipped a few purple clover heads and inspected the area where Cass has been planting his apple cores for the last month. (Nothing yet. We still have hope.) I'm thrilled that they are enjoying being connected to the earth this way - and woefully aware that I don't know enough to teach them much more. I think we'll all be visiting the library - soon.


Tonight's pie should be spectacular.

ingalls wilding

Today while the kids splashed and caroused and were kids, I stuck my nose deep in my really not-so-thrilling book and suddenly an image swam up, something so compelling it triggered me to salivate and swallow convulsively.

I suddenly wanted blueberry pie. Badly.

Our little piece of land here is rich in growing things - apples and wild strawberries abound. We've nibbled off the wild blueberries that line the edges of the forest*, but never baked with them, and today it struck me....why not?

Especially when I could picture a piece of blueberry grunt, all moist and clinging to the spoon, just waiting for the kiss of ice cream that would make it a work of art...

The kids noticed I'd grabbed a container and was taking off on them. Soon I had enthusiastic helpers. (They like blueberries too.)

The birds had beaten us to it, unfortunately, and we were reduced to sweeping the bottom branches, hunting for ones that had been missed.

We found a few - enough to mix with apples and make a pie, and then....I spotted something.


Blackberries. This was going to be a good pie.

Back to the house to make crust and toss apples in brown sugar and cinnamon, to pour the berries over, to assemble and send covetous looks through the oven door.

It's perfuming the house right now. I can't wait.

It's not living on the banks of Plum Creek, but it's a start. Soon the (cultivated) zucchini will be ready to eat, and then it will feel like I'm hunting and gathering and providing for my family again.

Nellie Olsen might be impressed.


*There is something very grand about being able to point to a bush when the kids get fractious and saying 'Here. Have a snack.'

casa dolce domestica

Today, a rainy drippy day, I made roast chook (stuffed under the skin with butter and basil leaves, rubbed with a a little olive oil and salted) cooked in the pan with long, skinny organic carrots left unpeeled and uncut, basting themselves in the chickeny goodness, and bread salad.

Panzanella, made with italian bread and olive oil,wine vinegar and fresh tomatoes and black olives and basil, thin cut strips of fresh basil, so green among all the bright red and bread chunks, and garlic smooshed to a paste and tiny-cut red onions. Probably not an authentic recipe, but one that filled the house with the scents of my dreams of Italy.

I've always wanted to go to Italy.

It started out being interested in their cookery and multiplied a thousand times when I read (and saw!) A Year in Provence (yes, I do know that's set in France) and the books of Frances Mayes and Ferenc Mate.

So I stood at my oven and dreamed, the sounds of my children squabbling fading away, trying to pretend the flat gray day was the golden light of Italy. That there were Mediterranean breezes blowing through my house, that I was soon to set lunch on the table for my family, where we'd sit and eat the good peasant food, happy just to be with each other.

(There's a subset to this, where I would be basking in the joy of my family's appreciation for the food and not a single person would say 'Yick! Tomatoes!' or 'Oh, Mama. You know I don't like green stuff.')

I was almost there, the children's quarrel sifting into background noise, the smell of the roast chicken and the good wine vinegar whisking me away, when a crash! and a 'He broke my pony!' came through, jarring me back to reality.

Because in my daydreams, Paolo and Francesca don't fight over the demise of a pink My Little Pony. Ever.

bullets over tuesday

• Boy home today. A *cough, cough* sore throat, j*u*s*t bad enough to make him beg to stay at the house and not go to school. He's had friends over the last two days - I think it may just be exhaustion. R was too tired to go to school yesterday...they and Cass's friend were playing a game Monday where one would take off on a bike, pedaling fast and free into the field, and the other two would run after them full tilt and try to catch them.
  
• Y'know, I have suspected the dog is as dumb as dirt. And now I have proof. R brought home a school project last week - it's potting soil tied up in a nylon with googly eyes stuck on. After a few days of watering it faithfully, grass seed began to grow through the netting. Well, tonight the dog.....ate it. Dirt and all. Yumm-o.
  
• Am trying to convince B he can take R to have her haircut on Friday. I will e-mail a photo of what I want, absolve him of any differences....B is not convinced. He does have a bad history with haircuts.
• Tomorrow night's supper: broccoli and cheese calzones - the bread for the crusts is rising now, and the air is yeasty and sweet.

Except, of course, where the dog is burping potting soil and running his tongue questioningly over his teeth.

disjointed post (I'm tired)

Kids in bed, loot out....
Easter outfits hung and bits and bobs sorted...


There is a pork tenderloin marinating in the fridge with a couple big crushed cloves of garlic, a thin-sliced lemon, some green onion and a mixture of butter and olive oil in the fridge....I keep opening the door to get a sniff.

What to serve it with?
Quartered potatoes, browned in the oven with rosemary and sea salt?
Rice, confetti-ed through with bits of lemon peel and green onions?

I want to try to bake biscotti.

Why do I watch Losing Isaiah when I know it's going to make me cry? And it irritates me tremendously that I do cry, since I spend most of the film hating Jessica Lange's character and can't stand Halle Berry's wooden-ness and find it hard to feel any sympathy for any of them?

(It's the film du jour to run late at night)


Tomorrow we'll be doing the bunny here, then packing up and showing the kids off at my sister-in-laws, where they'll hunt for treasures and get spoilt with chocolate by their grandfather. We'll eat strata and fruit salad and rejoice in family.

And now, to bed. New library books await!





Happy Easter, everyone. I hope your day is happy, full of family and fun.

parkin

(a very basic and not-too-sweet cake)

for TX Poppet, who asked

Preheat oven to 350.

Melt 1/2 cup butter, mix with 2/3 cup molasses in bottom of large bowl.
Add:
1 cup rolled oats*
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
and 1/2 teaspoons of:
ginger
cinnamon
salt
baking soda
pinch of cloves

Stir with 2/3 cup milk. It will make a lumpy, odd batter.
Greased square pan about 30 minutes or so. Done when cake begins to pull away from the edges of the pan.

Also really good with a handful of chopped pecans, topped with any icing or glaze. Or eaten straight out of the pan. Your call.

*Using rolled oats gives it a definitively bumpy texture. I've been known to run the oats through my food processor for a minute or so to break them up a bit, too. This makes a smoother cake.

This makes the house smell fantastic and is an easy thing to whip up before the kids get home.

Enjoy!

noone named crocker lives here

I've been going through a spate of cooking lately.

I blame the weather. Nothing like a blast of Arctic wind straight off the tundra to stir up the juices and make you want something hot and filling like beef barley soup, or shepherds pie. Split-pea and ham! A big rosemary and garlic cracked-pepper roast.

Oh, and cookies. Oatmeal, spice drop, caramel. Sometimes I'm so domestic I slay myself. Last night I even made a Parkin cake, topped off with a lemon glaze. (Thin-ish oat-cake with lots of ginger and nutmeg - not too sweet.)

So today B bounced downstairs after his shower, sniffed appreciatively, and said "Are you making lasagna? It's been ages since you made that! Can you cut me a piece to take to work tonight?"

I put the milk back in the fridge. "Not lasagna. I can make that next week, though."
B sniffed again. 'Spaghetti? Well, that'll be good. Did you make those little meatballs?"

"Not spaghetti, either."

"Well, what good thing are we having tonight?"

...a pause....

"Why, it's frozen pizza tonight, hon! 'Cause I love you."