Wow.

Five days between posts, that's a record around here. I didn't intend for it to stretch that long but the days have been getting a bit more hectic around here. I've had spurts of nesting urges and this being the fourth time around I know better than to put things off for later when I might be too tired to do anything. But the cravings march on and what would a post about the latest craving be without a picture? Baked brie (on the super melty side) with cubed ciabatta, sliced apples and a bit of cherry preserves on the side for moi. The kids had their own portion and loved our lunch of brie fondue as it was billed. I know by now that if I get settled in with a plate of something new and delicious it never fails to attract the children's attention. Suddenly that slapdash meal on momma's plate looks way more alluring than the same 'ol, same 'ol. So I make sure to gush and build up the new item then give them their own and let them go to town.




But we haven't just been cleaning and feasting on cravings around here. No siree, we've actually been doodling as well.






It's no secret that my kids love to plunk themselves around the dining room table to doodle, draw and color. I've loved seeing their abilities develop as they draw items from a favorite story, cartoon or just inspiration from around their world.






I'm by no means an artist. However I remember reading an interview of Mo Willems who has certainly earned his status of favorite around our home. He said that a lot of adults stop doodling and drawing because they think they are not as good as a professional but mentioned that some guys aren't pro basketball players and yet continue to shoot hoops at home. He encourages parents to continue to doodle and draw right along with their children just as we would continue to read aloud to our kids despite not having the ability of Jim Weiss and continue to cook for our families despite measuring short of Jacques Pepin. With that rolling around the old noggin I grabbed a sheet of notebook paper, and sat myself next to my oldest artist. He was intrigued as I sketched the alstroemeria in the vase on the table.

I took a note from the Camp Creek Blog entry on observational drawing and just kept my eye more on the object in front of me than the drawing at my hands. I actually enjoyed myself and better yet was able to use my ability to hyperfocus to my advantage. It's not perfect but it's a pretty good drawing and even better still my kids saw me try something new even though I'm not an expert. A great life lesson in general.

Happy summer to meeee!

Not a big deal, just another craving satisfied and without having to hit the grocery store or even leaving the house. Do you like pesto? I love pesto but once I had fresh homemade pesto I was forever ruined for any other kind. The other day I had a major craving for some pesto but I wanted to try some spinach since it's what I had hanging around the house. No problem, google to the rescue. Soon I had pulled up this recipe. But if I'm going to be honest I didn't pull out a measuring cup and added a bit more oil than indicated so I can't say how accurate my version was.




What I can say is that it rocked on some tortellini. So much that even my 4 year old, ewww-what-is-this-green-stuff took one bite and said, "momma this is delicious!" Garlicky bite, nice sharpness from the parmesan cheese and since I have sunflower seeds in the freezer at all times that's what I used instead of pine nuts. It came out thicker than traditional pesto but adding a bit of extra butter or oil to the pasta is my solution instead of too much to the pesto.




However, my true litmus test for pesto is toasted on a crusty roll. I like to keep small crusty rolls in the freezer so I can pull out one or two as needed. Yes, as needed. I split a few open, spread on the vibrant green stuff, added a little kosher salt and then for good measure some more parmesan cheese. Toasted and the pesto melted into the bread. Utter heaven. Of course, what's a little spur of the moment summer lunch without a iced glass of lemonade? Oh yeah.

Meeting of the minds part 2.

This was totally spontaneous. The older one, inspired by finding an old notebook of mine (just another failed attempt at journaling) said, "let's write a mystery!" My other boy grabbed the tray to organize the papers and when she saw there was a buzz of activity the little one grabbed her chair and planted herself right in the middle.

Older one scribbled furiously in what he calls cursive, filling the page then handing his younger brother the pages to organize in the tray. The baby pretended to file the papers as well and did everything in her power to test the 4 year old's patience (which admittedly is not that much). They then distributed the papers to each other and walked around talking about mysteries, robberies and bad guys in 20s tough guy speak.

If only . . .

. . . it were this simple. Rest assured, the video is totally safe for work, school and your granny. Just a little fanciful story telling.

Bread in a hurry.

I've had this recipe for over five years now, shared by a fellow mom on the infamous old babycenter recipe boards. Infamous because if you've ever been on the babycenter boards at any point in the early years it was a hotbed for controversy. Thankfully the recipe board was spared from the drama and had a generally pleasant vibe to it. This was posted originally as a Macaroni Grill bread copycat recipe. I haven't been there in years but if my memory serves me right it's pretty close, a thin crispy crust that softens upon cooling with a medium tight crumb. Definitely not an artisan parisian loaf but a great loaf to dip in some well seasoned olive oil or for the double carbers like myself, in the last bit of lovely pasta sauce. What can I say? In Dominican Republic we have fresh baked bread in the morning, then again in the evening with a good dose of rice for lunch. Even growing up in South Florida you couldn't go 10 feet without finding a Cuban bakery brimming with lard based loaves of loveliness fresh from the oven. One thing I know is carbs.

The other wonderful part of this recipe is that relatively speaking, for a bread recipe it's pretty quick. You can start the recipe in the early afternoon and have fresh baked bread for dinner, ahem with dinner. This time I was making some to go with our Huevos Flamenco for that evening. The original recipe calls for all purpose flour but I typically use half white whole wheat. You'll also notice I'm making the bread in the food processor. I've admitted to loving kneading dough by hand. My children, however, have a radar that must come up like a bat signal whenever I get my hands in dough or raw meat. They suddenly need me or better yet I can hear they definitely need me from across the house. So when I have only one batch of dough to make I put that baby in the food processor and it's mixed and kneaded in under a minute and a half. If you don't have a food processor feel free to mix this up by hand (kneading 5-8 minutes) or using your stand mixer of choice (kneading 2-4 minutes).





Macaroni Grill Bread Copycat

1 tablespoon dry yeast
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 1/2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water - If you're using the food processor the water can be cool or room temp. Food processors heat up the dough slightly during processing.

dried rosemary
kosher salt


First, place all of the dry ingredients in the food processor and pulse them to mix.






Next, turn on the food processor and pour in the water as it runs. The dough will begin to come together.






Now there's one step I add to any bread recipe and will improve your bread baking right away. Aside from learning to measure flour the right way or better yet, using a kitchen scale for weighing baking ingredients allowing a dough to rest before kneading is an important, often overlooked step. Why? Flour doesn't hydrate instantly and especially whole grains. Allowing a dough to rest 10-15 minutes after mixing will mean the flour hydrates properly and you won't have a dough that is overly stiff because you used a bunch of extra flour to knead a very sticky dough. Allow the dough to rest and most of the tackiness will be gone without you having done a bit of extra work.






After allowing the dough to hydrate (this is called autolyse) run the food processor for 60 seconds to knead the dough. You'll know the dough is well kneaded when the ball comes together against the side of the bowl and the dough has visible, stretchy gluten strands.






Dump out the dough on a lightly floured surface and give it a knead or two to shape it into a ball.




Then place the ball of dough in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl and place in a draft free place to rise. I stick mine in the oven (of course the oven is off). Let rise until the dough doubles or about an hour.




This dough doubles so beautifully. I still stand in awe at watching yeast, water and flour at work.




Dump out the dough onto your counter and cut in half. This recipe makes two modest sized loaves. You won't need additional flour at this point since the dough is elastic and well hydrated but not excessively tacky. In fact, adding flour at this point will make it difficult to pinch the loaf into shape. The flour on my counter is leftover from the first step. Yes I'm a messy cook.






Take one dough half and press out the air with your fingertips. Just flatten it in order to shape the loaf.




Then bring the edges of the dough and gather at the top to form a tight ball.








Dig your fingers/knuckles into the middle of the dough ball and pull it firmly against the counter towards you 3-4 times. This will give the ball an elongated shape. Pinch the ends of the loaf on top from one end to the other to seal.










Flip the pinched side down and there you have one loaf. Repeat with the other dough half. Check out my Vanna White impression.




Place the loaves on a parchment lined pan (or greased baking sheet) and put back in the draft free place to rise again until doubled or about 45 minutes.






You'll know the dough is doubled if a finger inserted in the loaf doesn't fill in or fills in slowly.




Now you'll need to prep the loaf for the oven. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and if you're using the oven to allow the dough to rise, please be sure to take out the loaves before preheating the oven. Then brush the loaf with water. Water will promote a crispy but light crust. You can also brush with butter or even an egg wash, the latter which will allow the toppings to stick more effectively. But I'm lazy and don't want to crack an egg just for this purpose so I stick to water which means the toppings are a bit delicate after they come out of the oven.




Then sprinkle the loaves with kosher salt and dried rosemary.






Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and if you're fussy the internal temperature is 190 degrees.




Then tear off a hunk and go dip in your favorite substance. Oh yeah.

The garden neglect built.

If you noticed a dearth of garden posts this year, yes it's been neglected. I hadn't stepped foot in the poor patch of dirt since last fall not even to clear out the spent plants much less this spring to make space for this year's plants. But the other day I finally faced my mental block head on and stepped into the garden. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed myself. Yes me, the black thumb had a good time and in the great outdoors at that. Those who know me will know exactly how much of a stretch that is.

First, I checked on the herbs. I was surprised at the amount of plants that had overwintered. The rosemary my neighbor said would grow like a weed and take over my yard is doing exactly that and I'm giddy. My vision of being able to plant some in the front of the house and rid ourselves of that awful pampas grass might just come true.




The sage is doing well, all silvery green and bushy. I lopped off the blossoms that had sprouted in hopes of keeping the herb plant portion going strong.






No I've not taken up headshrinking in my spare time. Just a carrot that overwintered and is looking quite um, rustic. I found it along with two onions from last season, eureka!






I had heard that strawberry plants send off multiple runners that grow into more plants so last year when my seed didn't sprout I bought one plant. One teeny little strawberry plant that gave us a total of seven or eight strawberries all season. Meet my proud garden mom, she's sent off runners galore.




When taking these pictures most of the berries were still green but now we've picked a few handfuls of small berries and the plants are full of blossoms.




This lemon balm is the plant that won't die. It's hard to tell scale from the picture but it's about 3 feet across and I'm about to hack into it if any of my local friends want a bunch for tea (very calming kid tea by the way). I need to keep it from blocking the sun to the German thyme plant that cowers at its feet.






The oregano is also alive and kicking too. I just wish I had found some of the smaller leafed Caribbean oregano to add to the garden - this is the larger leafed Greek oregano.




I threw a bunch of swiss chard seed into the plot last year which came back as a volunteer plant this year.




Finally, my pride and joy - the blueberry bush. I spent all summer last year watering this baby on a daily basis since I'd heard that fruit production is dependent on how much water the bush receives the previous season. Seems all the effort was worth it. The blueberry bush is full of fruit and I'm jealously guarding it from the birds.






My high tech defense mechanism? A CD on a string. I hope it works because I remember the birds last year divebombing the bush as I watched in horror from a window.




Alas, there was a casualty. The smaller bush from last year didn't make it when a colony of ants set up their home in its rootball. Darn ants and their knowledge that I refuse to use chemical measures to rid myself of them. Well I've got news for them - it's called diatomaceous earth and I know how to use it.




Oh and just for kicks. If you've ever wondered what my hardworking, white collar techie husband does when he lets his hair down, here you go.



Nah, he does play computer games but in order to keep the neighbors from coming to our front porch with pitch forks he does this thankless job all summer long. Boy is he ever glad we moved out of Florida or this would be a year round thing.