Grocery Bakfiets

Already having a long list of "least favorite household jobs" (emptying the dishwasher/dish drying rack, folding laundry/putting clothes away, taking the recycling out, cleaning out the fridge , etc. ), over the past couple months I had begun to loathe grocery shopping as well. I struggled with deciding when to go: while all three kids were at school? Using up some of my precious free time? Or when just Zeben was home? Using up one of my two mornings a week of Zeben indulgence? Or on the weekend, when the whole family could otherwise be having fun together? No time was the right time, and more often then not, I found myself heading to the grocery store after the kids were in bed at night. When many shelves were nearly empty and all of the baked goods were sold. Not so much fun.

But, over the past couple weeks, I've revived my love of grocery shopping (and it really was a love when Luke and Jaz were tiny since it was one of the only places I could take them to escape our house that first winter) by bakfietsing my way to the store. I'm not sure why it makes such a difference. Maybe because I feel less guilty about using up one of my Zeben mornings if he's at least spending a good chunk of time outside (rather than strapped in his car seat), pointing out each and every one (of the dozens) of robins we bike past. Or maybe it's because it can become a family activity on the weekends, with Jaz biking alongside me all by himself (and then convincing me to buy things that I wouldn't otherwise buy once we're in the store). Or maybe it's just that there's something satisfying about biking my groceries home afterward, with them all cozied up in the bakfiets, looking loved and yummy.


The only dilemma in this otherwise rosy scenario is that the (relatively new) food co-op is in a decidedly un-bike-friendly location, especially in relation to our current home. I likely will get brave enough to try it one of these days (maybe minus any kids on board), but until then I must choose between biking to Whole Foods (2 miles away, directly on the bike path) or driving to the Co-op. Sigh.

I am impressed by how many bags of groceries Bakfietsy Rose can hold and keep safe (in the week before Oestar, I once had 4 dozen eggs in the bak and didn't crack a single one despite a very bumpy tree-root damaged section of the bike path). I am once again glad for the extra seat on the back rack. Zeb would be able to squeeze in with the food up front if necessary, but putting him behind me is much easier (and safer, for the food!).

Next challenge for reducing carbon footprint of groceries: Stop Buying Bananas (so hard to resist since they're one of maybe 3 foods that all 3 kids are nearly always happy to eat)!

Making Tortillas

I've always loved baking. When Lena and I first got together, I used to make up recipes for baked goods and write them down in a cookbook that I called "The One Day Bakery Cookbook." I grew up thinking that baking "from scratch" meant using a box mix. Once I had my own kitchen, I found myself passionately learning how to really bake from scratch, making brownies and muffins and cakes over and over and over again until I felt (and Lena agreed) that I'd perfected the recipes. That they were professional quality and that I really could sell them in my very own bakery one day. I loved feeling like I could make delightfully tasty treats with just a few key ingredients that we'd generally have on hand (or that any of our friends would have on hand if we were at a party when the urge to bake hit).

Since having kids, I haven't felt the same kind of inspiration about baking sweet things, though we certainly do plenty of it what with all of the celebrations going on around here. Lately, I've instead been motivated to try baking different kinds of breads from scratch. It all started when I wanted to make quesadillas (one of our weekly staples) for dinner and I realized that I had forgotten to buy tortillas at the store. I was about to abandon that dinner plan when I realized that I could probably make tortillas. How hard could they be?

I consulted with chef google, and my first attempt turned out to be quite simple and delicious. Since then, I've been making the tortillas from scratch every time. Like most things you make with your hands, it's incredibly satisfying work.

Tortilla Recipe

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon oil
  
• 3/4 cup warm milk

Combine all of the ingredients and then turn the (sticky) dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead for a couple of minutes, until smooth. Divide the dough into 6 pieces (or more if you want smaller tortillas), and let the balls of dough rest for about 20 minutes (I usually prepare the remaining quesadilla ingredients during this time). Then roll out each ball into thin, circular sheets and cook them on a hot cast iron skillet (about a minute per side).

rolling out the dough

Jaz loves to watch them cook, and tells me when they need flipping.

When bubbles form, the tortilla is ready to be flipped.

Post-flipping

Once the tortillas are done, we use them straight away to make quesadillas. We usually include spinach (sauteed with garlic), chicken breast (also sauteed) and monterey jack cheese.

Jaz has been very helpful in the kitchen lately. On Saturday morning he even made us all the most delicious French Toast, completely by himself (he learned how at school!). He enjoys preparing the quesadillas.

All ready for a tortilla cover and some time on the griddle.

Finished quesadillas

I don't feel like this tortilla recipe is perfect yet (and Jaz would definitely agree, since at dinner tonight he complained that something wasn't quite right), so I've still been tweaking it. I think I might need to try using bread flour next. I'd also love to try and make a gluten-free version so that Lukas can eat more than just the fillings on quesadilla night.

And, after our fabulous outdoor hot dog roast this past weekend (it was just too beautiful out, we couldn't come inside), I'm thinking the next thing I'd like to learn to make from scratch is hot dog buns. How hard could they be? And then once I master sandwich bread (I'm suspect it's the trickiest of all), I'll never have to buy pre-packaged bread again. And that will be pretty cool.

How Many More Minutes Until June?

Luke and Jaz have picked up this key phrase, "how many more minutes?" from Charlie and Lola (our favorite show that we watch on dvd).

"How many more minutes until Summer Solstice?"
"How many more minutes until we go to first grade?"
"How many more minutes until Zeben is six?"

I find myself constantly multiplying, or refusing to mutliply, and guessing, and sighing and throwing my arms up in the air. But the big question on everyone's mind: How many more minutes until Leo is born?

We are getting closer to meeting our sweet little one, and patience is running thin.

"I feel like we've been waiting forever for Mama to have the baby!" an exasperated Lukas exclaimed on the way home from school the other day. He was not placated by my cheerful reminder, "we only have to wait for about 100 more days!" One hundred is practically one million as far as the kids are concerned.

Zeben vacillates between sweet moments with Lena's belly (the other day he decided to play peek-a-boo with "baby Leelo"), and stubborn insistence that anything tiny in our house (newborn size cloth diapers for example) belongs to him. "It fits ME," he demands, holding up a size 0-3 month onesie, and refusing to hear anything to the contrary. I am anticipating that he might have a bit of a hard time with the arrival of his baby brother. Luke and Jaz really didn't have any difficulty at all with the arrival of Zeben, but they were older than Zeb will be, and were already used to sharing their moms in a way that Zeben hasn't had to yet. I'm not sure if there's anything I can do to really help prepare him or make the transition easier.

Yesterday I signed the kids up for summer camp (a variety of art, drama, and farm programs) so that Lena and I will have some quiet alone time with Leo in the weeks after he is born. I think that will make all the difference in the world for us moms.

I heard Jaz yesterday, saying, "March . . . April, May, JUNE! It's already almost summer!" Summer, sun, beaches, babies . . . so much to look forward to if we can just stand the wait.

26 weeks

Egg Party

The reason why eggs are often the focus of Spring Celebrations is because they are the ultimate symbol of fertility, birth, and renewal. Whereas on the Winter Solstice we celebrate the rebirth of the Sun, on the Spring Equinox, we celebrate the rebirth of the Earth. Because we live in a rather cold climate, the Earth is really only just barely beginning to come back to life at the time of the Spring Equinox. We often still have several inches of snow on the ground. But this year, I felt the timing of the equinox corresponded quite perfectly with the new life emerging outside.

The party scene

On Sunday we had an egg party in my mom's backyard. I made quiche, equinox pound cake, and popovers, and many of our friends and family members came with yummy food too.


14 out of 40 guests arrived by bike, which I thought was pretty excellent, especially considering that it was rather cold and windy out, and that everyone had to travel at least 3 miles to get here.

I loved seeing all the bikes parked together.

The kids ran around and played in the sandbox and the grass table between bites of food, occasionally pausing to warm up by the fire. We also did an egg hunt, and--our favorite Spring Equinox activity--filled blown-out eggs with birdseed and threw them at a tree. I think everyone had a pretty great time. I know I did.

The kids pooled all of the eggs from the egg hunt into a collective basket,
and we divided them up at the end (to ensure that it would be fair).

Aviva reaching in for another birdseed egg.

Lukas getting ready to throw his egg (and make a wish for spring).

My hope is that next year, we'll have an egg party with eggs from our very own chickens! One of our plans for the next few weeks is to build a chicken coop, and we are very excited about it.

And because they were so popular at the party (literally disappearing within seconds of my placing them on the picnic table), I thought I'd share our favorite popover recipe (it really works, every time!).


2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 eggs
1-3/4 cups milk, warmed to just above room temperature
2 tablespoons melted butter (plus extra for the pan)

Preheat oven to 450°. Mix dry ingredients. Beat eggs until light, then add milk and butter. Slowly add dry ingredients to wet. Beat for 2 minutes on medium speed.

Preheat a popover tin in the oven for 5 minutes. Paint each cup with melted butter. Pour the batter into the pan, filling each cup nearly to the top.

Bake at 450° for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for 30 minutes more. This recipe makes six popovers, and can easily be doubled to make 12 (and, you may want to go ahead and plan to make 24, since that's what we ended up needing).

Serve plain or with apple butter or maple syrup. Enjoy!

March Break

Today is the first day of Spring (happy Oestar!), and the last day of the kids' and Lena's March break from school. I had all sorts of grand plans for what we would do this week (murals, museums, home make-overs and more!), but we didn't end up doing much of any of it. Instead, we mostly just lounged around and ate brunch and were lazy and forgot to make dinner. It was lovely.

Luke getting a snuggle in while Mama naps.

Zeb joins in with a "prehistoric creatures" book.

I have been trying to switch over into full-on "bakfiets mode," since it's basically warm enough, and the bike path is now cleared of snow. I'm hoping that the car runs out of gas soon so that I'll be forced to really make the bakfiets my only way to get around. Not that I don't enjoy biking, I much prefer it, but it does require allowing more time for travel, and some advance planning. Really, it just requires a mental shift, and that's the part I'm still waiting on. Luckily it isn't taking me too long to get my biking muscles back; I really don't notice that much of a difference anymore (but I' have yet to bike more than 7 miles in a day). Twice this week we biked to the library, something that I hadn't done since we moved (since I, uh, forgot about the library for a few months). And it turns out that the new set-up (with Zeb sitting behind me in his "seal seat car seat" (as he calls it)) allows for plenty of room for a fourth child OR a big bag of 34 library books.


Aside from our few bike rides into town, I've just been feeling so unmotivated to do anything during this vacation. Which is fine, I guess, assuming that my motivation returns when we go back to our regularly scheduled life on Monday. I think Zeben's expression in the following photo kind of sums up my state of mind for the past week:


But at least we still have the April break for murals, museums and home make-overs . . . or lots of laying outside in the sun, listening to the birds. We'll see.

Start Early

The warmer weather of the past week or so has opened up a world of outdoor activity possibilities, some of which we had completely forgotten about over the long winter. Luke, Jaz and Zeb spent a couple of hours on Tuesday looking for bugs for their bug cage. They found one wooly bear caterpiller and were thrilled (and spent another chunk of time collecting things for the caterpiller's "habitat"). I've been putting bins of inside toys from the playroom into my mom's basement, where we'll leave them stored away until next winter. The season of outdoor toys is upon us. The garage door is often left open all day, allowing easy access to hula hoops, scooters, buckets and bicycles.


Zeben is now big enough to ride his very own bike. He has officially inherited Jasper's wooden run-bike, "Blueberry Lime" (as named by a four-year-old version of Jasper), and he couldn't be happier about it.


He's actually a touch too short to really be able to ride it comfortably, but that doesn't seem to bother him in the least.


The way it works with run-bikes (also known as "balance bikes") is that first kids just walk around while straddling them, then they start to run, and eventually they lift their feet off of the ground and glide (at which point they are ready to balance on a regular two-wheeler bicycle). Lukas and Jasper were both experts soon after they got the balance bikes for their fourth birthday. Zeben is, obviously, much younger than they were, so I'm not sure how long it will take before he gets to the gliding stage. For now, he's strictly walking.

"I riding mine own bike!"

I love being witness to Zeben's new love of biking. I hope it's a love that will take him many places and keep him feeling free forever.

T-shirt Applique: a tutorial

A couple of people commented in request of a tutorial about how to make fabric-appliqued t-shirts, and I figured why not? Actually I can think of two good reasons why not to. The first is that I'm entirely self-taught and have no idea if I am even doing this correctly, and the second is that once you see how easy it is, you may no longer find me at all inspiring whatsoever.

But, I decided to go ahead and do the tutorial anyway, in honor of baby Ellis who was born to our dear friends Di and Ben this past Monday.

How to Applique a T-shirt in Ten Easy Steps:

Step One: Choose and iron the fabric that you would like to use for the applique.


Step 2: Cut out the part of the fabric that you would like to use; cut generously to allow for trimming later.


Step 3: Get out your package of double stick fusible web. I prefer this kind:


Step 4: Take out one sheet of the fusible web and cut a piece about the same size as your piece of fabric.


Step 5: Now the fabric and the fusible web are ready to be stuck together. Peel the paper off of one side of the double stick fusible web, and stick the fusible web to the back (wrong side) of the piece of fabric.


Step 6: Trim the fabric/fusible web combo down to final size.

Step 7: Iron the t-shirt that you are going to use (for info. about dyeing t-shirts, check out this post).


Step 8: Peel the other side of paper off of the fusible web. The piece of fabric will now have a sticky backing. Stick it onto the t-shirt (and adjust until you have it just where you want it).


Step 9: Iron the piece of fabric onto the t-shirt for about 30 seconds.


Step 10: For the final step, use your sewing machine to zig-zag stitch around the edge of the fabric (which is already permanently stuck in place).

The final product: A "Splashy" tee for baby Ellis!

Equinox Pound Cake

In anticipation of our big Oestar brunch this coming Sunday (when we invite friends and loved ones to come and help us rejoice in the coming spring*), we're trying to go through as many eggs as possible. At the party, we will fill blown-out eggs with birdseed and then throw the eggs at trees and make wishes for spring when they break (and provide some birds and squirrels with a snack, while the broken egg-shells are good for the earth). So for the next 5 days, I need to try and blow out as many eggs as we can eat.

Today I made my favorite eggy baked good, Equinox Pound Cake. It took four eggs. And a bazillion mini chocolate chips. The end result is about half vanilla pound cake and half chocolate, a good metaphor for the approaching equality between the length of the day and the night.

I use my handy "blas-fix" to blow the yolks and the whites out of the egg shells:


This part of the process is a HUGE hit with the kids, who of course are quick to make all sorts of connections between the egg expelling its insides and other human bodily functions. And the end result of all this egg-blowing and baking is a huge hit too. Here's a timeline of our process:

2:00 p.m.

3:30 p.m.

3:45 p.m.

On the off chance that you want your family to have the opportunity to eat half of an Equinox Pound Cake in 15 minutes too, here's the fabulous recipe:

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
4 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 tbsp. vanilla
2 cups mini chocolate chips
(or chopped up semi-sweet chocolate)

1. Combine butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and milk
2. combine flour, baking powder, and salt
3. add the dry mixture to the wet mixture
4. stir in the chocolate
5. pour batter into a well-greased bundt pan
6. bake at 325° for 80 minutes

Enjoy!

* Any local blog readers who want to come celebrate Oestar with us, please leave a comment!

A Sure Sign of Spring

In anticipation of the vernal equinox (and the pagan holiday, "Oestar"), last Tuesday we dug out some baskets and the kids planted wheat grass in them so that the grass would have time to grow before our celebration on March 20th. Even if the Earth doesn't cooperate and we end up with a fresh foot of snow on the first official day of spring, we'll at least have a taste of what's to come growing inside our house.

reaching for handfuls of seeds

adding water

We put a layer of potting soil in the bottom of the baskets (atop a plastic barrier), sprinkled the soil generously with wheat berries, and added some water. Then we made space on the kitchen plant shelf for the baskets so that they would get some sun.

the Oestar baskets nestled amongst the plants

While we had all of the materials out, I figured we also ought to
"springify" the process table.

It only took a few days before the grass began to sprout,
much to the boys' amazement and delight.

grass beginning to sprout


It is especially cool to get to see the root systems developing
through the clear plastic side of the process table.

I'm still working on what to put in the kids' baskets to surprise them on Oestar morning, but since they've enjoyed this planting process so much, I'm thinking of gifting them each a small pot with some seeds to plant. And ideally I'll have time to sew them each something small as well. Some hopeful reminder of what lies ahead.

On Friday when we were biking home from school (yes, biking!), we saw our first Robin of the season.

"Look!" I said to the kids, pointing, "a robin!"

And Jaz yelped excitedly, "a sure sign of spring!"

Surely, this long winter is finally coming to an end. And we will be ready and waiting when Spring officially begins.