Holiday Weekend

Yesterday was a frustrating day. Too hot to work in the garden, a flat tire that meant long hot delays getting where we were going, and a mysterious leak in the basement. Today the only productive thing I did was make these cherry hand pies. They are on my great grandma McDonald's hand painted Bavarian china.

Gluten free, from a King Arthur Flour recipe. My kitchen was too hot for the pastry to stay cold and bake up flaky, but everyone liked them. R visited with the chickens and we marveled that we still have four of our original (she calls them the OGs) girls. This is Cricket, who at age 5 still lays beautiful bluegreen eggs. We still have the OGs Marigold, Egglantine, and Stellaluna, and the later additions Flannery and Willa. We've lost Iris, Colette, Poppy June, Felicity, Fialka and Charlotte to what appeared to be natural causes. All of them just passed away overnight in their coop over the course of five years, no illnesses or predator injuries. (Thank you Charlie the livestock guardian!) Tilda turned out to be a rooster and went to live on a farm since we can't keep roosters in the city.  The next year, Poppy Junior and Bonnie turned out to be roosters although they were sold as pullet chicks, and we adopted them to a farm along with their sister Sylvie who was attached to them.

We have a new batch of chicks who are almost big enough to leave the brooder inside and join the big chickens in the coop. This is Frances and Ginger the day we brought them home. They are bigger than this now. Charlie takes his chicken protector job very seriously. Ginger is a Bielenfelder and Frances is a Cream Legbar, who will lay sky blue eggs. Males and females have different coloring from birth in those breeds, so we know we won't have the heartbreak of raising a chick by hand and then hearing a crow. Then we added Flora the Speckled Sussex and Mila the Red Star, who is also certain to be a girl. Flora is supposed to be a pullet also, but we've had bad luck with pullets turning out to be surprise roosters. We love her and really hope she's a girl. Flora came with Evangeline, who got progressively sicker after we brought her home. She was tiny and unsteady on her feet and we couldn't get her to drink or eat. I stayed up all night keeping her warm and feeding her electrolyte water, but she died in my hands near dawn. It is always hard to lose a chicken, but this was our first chick who didn't make it, and it was heartbreaking. She was the shape of a little bumblebee. I still feel so sad thinking about her.

I'm going to try to wake up early enough tomorrow to work in the garden while it's still cool. After letting the front yard garden languish for a few years as life events got in the way, it feels so good to have it up and running again. I'll take some pictures tomorrow.

New Year's Beans for Good Luck and Prosperity

Traditionally it's black eyed peas or lentils that bring good luck when you eat them early in the new year. I hope Mario Batali's Braised White Beans count too. After soaking the beans for two days, I sauteed the vegetables in olive oil but cooked everything long and slow in the slow cooker. I added a smoked turkey leg and a small square of salt pork I had left over in the freezer after homemade baked beans. I added a defrosted a jar of turkey broth from Thanksgiving, scented with citrus and poultry herbs. These beans are so luxurious and melty.

I also roasted a spaghetti squash with some Irish butter and sea salt. We're learning that gluten free cooking is only tricky when it comes to baking. So far it's been a great way to refocus on produce, lean proteins, nuts and legumes, without reaching for easy carbs. D and R love their baked goods though, so I'm learning to work with "flours" that behave nothing like wheat.

Serving greens is traditional to encourage prosperity in the new year. So we also had a chopped kale and mixed greens salad with dried cranberries and pumpkin seeds. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here is an old Irish blessing for each of you:
May the blessing of light be on you
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
and warm your heart
till it glows like a great peat fire.

 Tonight we had corned beef; carrots, turnips and apples glazed with apple cider; colcannon with cabbage, potatoes, spinach and scallions; and Irish soda bread. And Guinness of course.

One more blessing for good measure. This one was on the favors at our wedding:
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you.

Thanksgiving 2011

I have to catch up with so many blog posts. Thanksgiving 2011 was another gorgeous, shirtsleeves day for the weather, and once again we were lucky enough to share it with our cousins. Above is my cousin J, who brought half the food and also had the brilliant idea of floating cranberries in the kids' sparkling cider glasses.
As usual, all the action was at the kids' table.


R's little cousin N, the bon vivant, makes a spirited toast to the assembled family. We asked the kids to go around the table and say what they are grateful for, and this is a picture of him raising his glass and saying, "I am grateful for all of YOU!"

Charlie celebrated in the backyard with his traditional Thanksgiving visitor, Jake the gentle Bernese Mountain Dog. After dinner, we walked down the trail to play basketball.


Little C had just slid into a bloody knee and was handling it better than most grownups would. It still makes me laugh how she looks like an angry Gypsy.
Thank God for the blessing of family, a long sunny November day to enjoy each other, and a table filled with beautiful, healthy food. And little girl cousins, born one day apart, whose pictures we have been snapping together since they were newborns.

Happy Birthday Mama!

Church directory picture, Our Lady of the Annunciation, Albuquerque, NM, 1972. I love my little brother's snazzy plaid jacket! And I remember that yellow dress and how I wanted to wear it all the time. We love you Mom.

And here is today's bento.

Easter Sunday and Mary Poppins

Easter morning, Mass and new shoes and white gloves.

A rabbit was eating grass in the front yard.

He was not at all bothered by how close we were.

Then we came home, got out of our dress-up clothes, and shoveled compost in the backyard for a few hours. It is such a good feeling to move that big pile around with a pitchfork and get to the black gold on the bottom layer. A little over one year's worth of yard trimmings and kitchen scraps. D is a lot like my own Dad, always willing to stop work and talk to his daughter. And lift her up high, and be a safety net underneath her when she wants to swing from the locust tree.

She is waving at her neighbor friends: "Daddy's taking us to see Mary Poppins!" D got tickets to the Broadway touring company of Mary Poppins, on their last night in Denver. The 6:30 p.m. show.

R in the car on our way to see Mary Poppins.

I only had my cellphone to take pictures, but this is downtown Denver in front of the Convention Center's giant blue bear. I hope R remembers it for a long time. It was a wonderful show, and the whole experience of being downtown at night and sitting in the dark waiting for the curtain to come up reminded me how rarely I do anything like that any more. We're going to try to do it more often.

Valentine's Day Deliveries

More Valentine cookies, for neighbors this time.

Packages all ready to go.

R put together a special outfit to make her deliveries on foot.

D was off today for President's Day and we got some house projects done. Most importantly, we got some trays of indoor seedlings started. I love this time of year. The smell of the seed starting soil when it gets wet, shaking the tiny seeds out and planting them with toothpicks. Instant time travel back to previous springs since we've been married. I'm only starting some salad greens that can go outside in early March, some herbs I can keep on a windowsill until it warms up, and a few things that take a long time to germinate. I ordered my heirloom tomato seeds online yesterday.

New Bento Box and Swirling Snow

Looking out the kitchen window this morning.

And this is one of two new Shinzi Katoh bento boxes I bought for R. It should inspire me to be more imaginative with her lunches. I have been in such a Tupperware rut lately.

First lunch in her new box. It's the perfect size, and I love the ready-made divider in the box. I made some custom bento picks because I'm tired of the ones I have. The indoor photos are still so bad. I'll have to come up with a better lighting setup for stormy days when I can't take pictures outside.

Thanksgiving

We had D's brother, my cousins, and their families--even two doggie friends for Charlie. It was a beautiful day. 60 degrees, so the kids could play outside without coats.


Each family brought part of the meal.





The kids' table had paper to draw on, favor bags and a nametag filled with crayons.


Juice tastes so good when you've been running around outside.

Pie is very good also.



Thank you God, for family, for home and enough food to share, and for all our blessings.

Halloween, Or, Mama's Got a Glue Gun

R was a Snow Fairy. I had a bag of sequins, some glitter and a glue gun, and things got a little out of hand.

Her hair was plain white water-based tempera paint, some glitter hairspray, and some tinsel. I put acrylic jewels on her face with Elmer's Glue and it worked fine. I would have been more elaborate with the silver face paint, but she ran out of patience.





First Grade party.



My personal favorite was the little Elvis.

Trick or treating. The snow melted just in time. It was perfect. We went to a neighborhood chili-cookoff/Halloween party. They announced my name and gave me a ribbon and I thought I had won. I put it on my Facebook because I was so excited. The next morning, I retrieved the ribbon from D's pocket where I had stashed it, and saw that it only said "Muy Caliente." I guess it was the hottest? Not the best. It's amazing how crushed I was. I should have come clean on my Facebook status. But it had been so much fun for those 14 hours when I thought I had won, that I dishonestly left it up. If you bring it up, I'll admit that I didn't win. But I'm not going to go around telling people.