RVA to PHX: Cousin Express

The RVA family took a looong-weekend trip to visit the Chandler clan, and we had an amazing time.


"Mama, are we on our way to Phoenix? On an AIRPLANE?"
She was soo excited to see cousin Elizabeth and baby Alex, and Auntie Krista and Uncle Patrick, and who could blame her?

We had a stellar time visiting, catching up, swimming in the pool, eating at gorgeous farm restaurants, grinning at how well the girls got along, and remarking on how adorable Alex is when he zooms around the kitchen with his shopping cart. Together, we were privy to the finest Costco samples ever known to man. The kids got chocolate bars and little silly toys, and all of us got Toothbrushes ( yes, I'm serious!), floss, and bleaching trays (just for the grown-ups) along with the usual assortment of food samples.


Double Trouble with Panda Hair in matching outfits from Grandma Dianne.

We took a nice walk along the Canal walk, and tried out a great neighborhood playground. Are you jealous of the double rocking plane?


The girls pretty much entertained each other.


And Alex entertained us.


We all got to read a lot of sleepytime stories together


We went to the zoo, where I failed to take any useful pictures of actual animals. But here's their swanky Cousin Express


And we got some great group shots

Happy Family Number One


Two ladies avoiding the sun


Happy Family Number Two

CSA Week 2, Cobblery, and Strawberry Tart

Several weekends past we found a wonderful farm near RVA filled with easy to pick transitional organic strawberries for $1.50/ pound. We met some friends at the fields and got picking. We filled P's new shoe box, my new shoe box, and 1/2 a Costco sized box of Goldfish crackers with 20 pounds of strawberries.

Ruby reds like these babies required us to make all kinds of delicious treats.

First up, Strawberry shortcake with rectangular slightly sweet bisquits from Bittman.


Our whipped cream came from a quart we bought in February, and then froze in muffin cups. Once the muffin cups were frozen solid (overnight) we stacked them into a freezer bag, and have been able to take out 2 muffin cups of whipping cream for a dessert for 2 grown ups. In the past, our whipping cream has always spoiled in the bottle before we could use it up. This trick has kept us in whipping cream all spring from one bottle of Non-UHT whipping cream. Now, onto more strawberry-flavored happiness.

With our bounty, we made Strawberry Daquiris (virgin for the lass), and Strawberry freezer jam, and 3 gallon bags of frozen dry-pack strawberries.


AND the most amazing treat of all, fresh strawberry tart with vanilla pastry cream.

We also got bok choy, rainbow chard, leeks, and salad mix. Strawberries, roasted beets, salad greens, olives, feta cheese, and lemon and olive oil dressing make for a transformational salad. It unfortunately undergoes a different sort of transformation (from ethereal to abysmal) when you photograph it. But try it, and you won't be disappointed.

E's favorite summer shoes broke. We took them to two separate cobblers in RVA, and were told that they won't fix Danksos because of their single-piece sole construction. After deciding that it was either trash them or DIY, we, of course, Did it ourselves. E even thought of it! A quick wipe-down, a blob of shoe goo, and our trusty Staple Gun (See P, it's paying for itself already!), and my feet are back in style again.

The final touch-up isn't visible in this shot, but E took a brown sharpie to the staples, gave the entire shoes a good polish and all's well.


Next up, our trip to Phoenix!

May Crafts and First Farmer's Market

P has been up to his usual crafty ways. All our neighbors have wonderful wind chimes, and once spring sprang and I started working outsides, I realized I'd like a wind chime for our porch as well. Ever the craftster, P made one quickly, using harvested chimes from one of our Carrboro homes, a little bit of wood, some fishing line, and a very creative wind weight.

We're in the habit of buying Greek olive oil by the 2 L can, and P chopped off the Athena from our ATHENA oil to make the chime. I'm amazed as always at his craftitude.







Week One Victory Farm CSA:
Last weekend our CSA began at the Farmer's Market. We're lucky to have found a CSA where we can choose our own produce from the market stand. We brought home candy-striped beets, leeks, chard, kale, and broccoli. If you've never had farmer's market broccoli before, it is a life-changing experience. The bonus is all of that only cost $13 for organic veggies.

From this yummy hoard, we made:
--beet green, leek and potato soup with broth we made from the chicken we ate for P's birthday when Grandma and Grandpa were here. Two leeks + Beet Green Tops from one bunch beets + 2 potatoes + 1 qt broth + 5 cups water, cooked for 25 minutes and pureed makes the most delicious bowl of witch's brew you've ever tasted. The color does not recommend the soup, however.

--Chard, tomato, chickpea, ragu with cheesy polenta
--Broccoli with Black Bean tostadas with salsa
--Glazed Tofu with Kale and Brown Rice

P has also been feeling jealous of his ukelele, so he built one from H. Here she is premiering the beginnings of her career as a singer-songwriter.

the Mother's Day and Apple Crisp

Happy Mother's Day Auntie Krista and Grandma Dianne and Mama Erika!

H is trying out her new Kai-lan hair. It's good for summer heat and still lets her nap easily.

In honor of mother's day and Cinco de Mayo, we invented a drink here in Richmond.
The Mother's Day:
1/2 shot each of gin and campari
3 shakes bitters
ice cubes
1/2 can aranciata san pellegrino
The color is as pretty as you can imagine, and perfect for mother's day. This is nice, sweet, grapefruity, bubbly, and with a hint of gin. In fact, it's a hybrid of the color of the roses that grow in our backyard.


Apple Crisp
E came back from the store with a bag of apples, and half of them had big soft brown spots. Boo!
So we made apple crisp after cutting off all the brown bits. We're planning to eat it for breakfast with yogurt.
4 apples, cored, sliced
1/2 cup old-fashioned or quick-cooking (not instant) oats
1/2 cup flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
juice of 1/2 lemon
5 T butter, softened and sliced to blend in more easily


1. Prepare 8 inch square baking pan with a little butter. Toss sliced apples with lemon juice, 1 T brown sugar, and 1/2 of the cinnamon.
2. Blend up butter. You can cut in dry ingredients a bit to resemble crumble topping by hand with a pastry blender. Or, you can do like we did and pop butter into food processor and pulse. Then pop in flour and oats. Pulse a bit. Then add brown sugar, cinnamon. Pulse a bit.
3. Pour and distribute topping on top of apples. Bake at 400 for 30-40 minutes.

Carrot Cake for Paul and for Easter

Here in Richmond, we had our first Easter Feast and an egg hunt.

For dinner, we had Asparagus to welcome springtime, Kale and Sweet Potatoes for the winter that's now over, and a Lemon and Sage Roast Chicken, seasoned with plenty of good company.
And women in belted dresses. We've known our special guests, M and J, for 13 years, and it turns out that, even after living apart since 2006, E and M have very similar habits of dressing.



Carrot Cake for Paul, adapted by Kate Ramos from Chow.com

INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup well-shaken low-fat buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 pounds carrots, grated on the large holes of a box grater about 6 cups
1 cup raisins, toasted and finely chopped
Cream Cheese Frosting

1. Heat the oven to 350°F and arrange the rack in the middle. Coat two 8-inch cake pans with butter and flour, and tap out any excess flour. Set aside.
2. Grate 2 lbs of carrots (that's about 17 carrots worth at our house)
2. Combine flour, baking powder, cardamom, cinnamon, baking soda, ginger, and salt in a large bowl, and whisk to aerate and break up any lumps. Set aside.
3. Combine eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk, and vanilla in a large bowl, and whisk until eggs are broken up and mixture is thoroughly combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold in flour mixture until just combined. Fold in carrots and walnuts until evenly mixed.
4. Divide batter evenly between the prepared pans. Bake until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 50 to 60 minutes.
5. Remove cakes from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool, about 15 minutes. Run a knife around the perimeter of each, and turn cakes out onto the rack to cool completely.
6. Frost as you please. Enjoy!



Walking off the feast on our first really hot day. It was about 90.

Pasta!

A while back I decided to try to make pasta from scratch, so I looked up some things online, apron-ed up, and gave it a shot.

Tea towel and twine turned into an improvised apron.

Online I found a recipe saying that one large egg and around 3/4 cup flour and a dash of salt make enough pasta for one person.

Flour! I think 3/4 cup or so...

Egg!

Mix! A lot. Also, I think I might have
sprinkled in some extra flour.

Knead! A lot. Until it the dough becomes really elastic.
Also, make sure you put down flour before you do.

Roll out the dough as thin as possible.
Then fold it in half and do it again.
This is what the internet said to do.

The internet also said adding finely chopped basil or rosemary
before the folding and re-rolling makes for tasty pasta.

ALSO: Any dough you're not working with,
or noodles you're waiting to cook,
should be kept on/under a moist towel,
otherwise they dry out REALLY FAST.

Cook in boiling water for a few minutes, and voila!

Boutiful Baskets & Asparagus Soup

They have a buying coop here called Bountiful Baskets where you pay $15 and you get a random assortment of fruits and veggies that fills up ~1 laundry basket. I decided to do it this week because we've been spending a ton of money on fruits and veggies (which is a good thing!). You place the order on Tuesday and then you pick up on Saturday. The place we pickup is about 3 miles from here and it's at 7AM. When you get there, they have rows of laundry baskets and you pick one laundry basket and load up all of the fruits and veggies. You don't get to pick what assortment you get and you can't trade between baskets. So if you see a basket that has a particularly fine set of bananas but icky looking strawberries you can't move the bananas to a basket that has lovely strawberries. You can have the strawberries or the bananas or you can pick a different basket. This is more of a problem if you do this in the winter because the quality isn't quite as good. This week, all the baskets looked good.
For $15 we got:
5 oranges
7 bananas
3 apples
3 tomatoes
2 mangos
a full seedless watermelon
a carton of strawberries
a bag of green beans
a head of romaine
2 bell peppers
2 zucchini
3 bunches of asparagus
I also ordered a mexican pack which had grey squash and assorted chili peppers and green onions and garlic and yellow onions and cilantro.


Now, when I ordered this on Tuesday, we were out of lettuce in the house and we had some clementines and a unripened cantaloupe. Then Thursday, Patrick's group had a picnic at work and we "won" the extra fruit bowl and a couple zucchini and yellow squash to bring home so we are currently up to our ears in produce.

The problem that we sometimes have is that I don't know what to do with some of the items. I'm not a huge fan of asparagus and I certainly won't eat 3 bunches before they go bad so I had to figure out something to do with them. I remembered that there is a maggi mix of asparagus soup that we occasionally had in Germany so I looked up a couple of recipes online for cream of asparagus soup and combined them to use only ingredients we had already.

Ingredient list:
3 bunches of asparagus (around 2.5 pounds)
2.5 cans of chicken broth
2.5 tbsp butter
1 large onion
5 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp flour
1 container of nonfat plain yogurt (I had greek yogurt so I used that)
some pepper (to taste)
~1 tsp salt (to taste)

I started out by asking Elizabeth to help me wash the asparagus. Alex helped. They both got very wet and had a wonderful time. Alex had to have his own chair so he could see what was going on.


Snap the asparagus into 1-2 inch pieces and simmer in chicken broth until tender. Move to a bowl and reserve some of the chicken broth that simmered the asparagus. Blend in batches until smooth.

In the pan used to simmer the asparagus, melt the butter and saute the onions and garlic until glassy. Then add the flour and saute for a couple minutes. Add in the reserved chicken broth slowly and cook for a while. Then put this in the blender and blend it up. Put the blended asparagus and onion mixture back in the pan and stir until warm again. Stir in the yogurt. To keep it from clumping too badly, I put the yogurt in a bowl and slowly thinned it out with soup until it would mix in smoothly. I think I put the salt and pepper in at the end.
One recipe suggested adding some fresh grated parmesan cheese at the end so I used some for garnish but it was too much and I would try something different for garnish next time.
I thought the soup was quite tasty and a good way to use the asparagus that lightens the flavor a bit. The rest of my family were not such big fans so next time, I will eat it all myself.

Any ideas for what to do with zucchini and squash?