Out and About

This fall is flying by. Jason's parents were here for just over a week and we did a couple of excursions with them, including Plymouth and Boston. That's a picture of us in front of the Mayflower II:



We also went to visit Jason's cousin Christy at Wellesley to watch the Widows perform their fall teaser. It was really a lovely campus and we all enjoyed both the concert and the visit.


Finally, Nora and I have been wandering about the area, exploring while Jason is working. We try to make it to the library storytimes, and get out and about even if it's just in the back yard. I've also been cooking up a storm: cupcakes, trying new bread recipes, and returning to old favorites. Tonight is pizza night, but Nora has been begging for Mexican night. I attempted to satisfy this need with potato kale enchiladas, which she found lacking (Jason and I loved them), so we are going to have to find a Mexican restaurant. We haven't had much luck in that department so far, but we did spy a possibility that we need to check out soon. Let's hope for the best.

This final picture is from Skinner State Park and it was one of the most glorious days this fall - in the upper 70's and exceptionally sunny. The light was really amazing that day. Nora was immersed in finding more leaves to drag home. I was just enjoying the day:

Update

Saturday I had one of the most productive days of this fall. I managed to:
1. hem my jeans that have been waiting for over 2 months and I used this cool method I'd never heard of, but worked quite well.
2. make two pans of spanikopita for Thanksgiving.
3. Nora and I decorated hand turkeys and construction paper leaves to decorate the table on Thursday (I even traced real leaves - pin oak, tulip and maple - I feel so Martha)
4. sorted and resold a stack of Nora's clothes back to Kangaroo Kids where I got $30 in store credit, which I promptly spent. The rest of her old clothes went to Alana, my cousin's little girl.
5. We went to see Todd and Natascha and had a wonderful time catching up and planning for a crafty girls day.

I cannot believe I got that all done. Of course I've done nothing since then, although we did see my Aunt & Uncle and Nora went horseback riding again with Ellen. Maybe next time I'll get up on a horse too.

In other news, we took Nora to the allergist this morning. We got good news and bad news. On the good front, Nora was able to get a flu shot and it looks like she is non-reactive to peanuts, so we get to do an oral test with those. On the bad front, she is still very reactive and shows no progress towards outgrowing her egg and milk allergies. She is also allergic to almonds which sort of rules out all other tree nuts since they are usually processed together. We plan to do an oral test with her this weekend with peanut butter and I'm really hoping all goes well. It is very daunting to give your child something to eat that has the potential to make her very sick. Wish us luck.

Which Witch is Which?

A few photos from Halloween:

Pumpkin Hunt

This weekend we visited the pumpkin patch at Eckards in Grafton to find the perfect pumpkin for the jack-o-lantern this Halloween. Nora wandered all over the hillside and it was a cold morning. Just when the wagon was about to return for us, Nora finally settled on the perfect one. 23 lbs!




Afterwards, the day turned really pretty and we took a hike a Pere Marquette State Park, had some excellent beer at the Rotten Apple, and then took the river road further north to get apple and gourds at Ringhausen Orchard at Hardin. It was a terrific day.

Unproductive

I've been a very unproductive blogger in the last couple of weeks, which is sad since I was really on a roll in September. I'm still making Nora's lunch (although Jason did it last Friday) and I do usually photograph it, but of course I never have the camera when I feel like blogging, so there's not pictures for this post.

I've been cooking quite a bit lately. Last week I tested several of the Veganomican recipes, with success. The caramel apple cupcakes with penuche icing were a big hit at a potluck that I brought them to (and Nora and Jason liked them as well). I discovered penuche is indeed like fudge and it hardens up very quickly so I needed to re-melt it midway through icing the cakes. That same evening I made the Inside-out Samosas (samosa filled twice baked potatoes). I'll be making them again for Jason and I, but Nora opted out - she has a thing about potatoes. Ditto on the vegan "scalloped" potatoes. Jason and I liked them quite a bit, although I think I was too heavy handed with the nutritional yeast. Nora wouldn't touch them, but she did eat about a 1/2 a cup of sauerkraut. She is probably the only 2 year old in the world who won't touch mashed potatoes but will eat sauerkraut. She also like the roasted carrots and Polish sausage that rounded out that meal. All that was missing was a green salad, and we would have had a Sunday dinner, but I hate making salad. And I finally got around to trying Sarah E-Y's wheat bread recipe the week before last. I will definitely be making it again, it was terrific! I passed it on to Mom and she made it into some wonderful buns with raisins in them with Nora. So Sarah, if you are reading, thanks! and you might try adding raisins to a batch if you haven't already.

The weekend before last, we drove the Great River Road on the search for apples. It was a beautiful day, and we made a stop in Grafton at the Rotten Apple so that Jason could check out their fabled beer selection. The beer was good, the cider was good and the food was good. I'm sure we'll be back. Then we stopped at Pere Marquette and Nora played with the giant chess board while Jason attempted to coach her toward Chess Greatness. We should have hiked about some and looked for wildlife, but the heat and our heavy lunch kept us inside. Nora enjoyed the chainsaw sculpture of Illinois wildlife (eagles, raccoons, squirrel, and rabbits) and re-arranged the fuzzy rabbits in the deer diorama inside the lodge, so we sort of saw some animals. Then we headed up toward Hardin and I detoured off toward Jerseyville to stop at Ringhausen Orchards. Unfortunately Nora fell asleep, so there are no glorious pictures of her among pumpkins, atop hay bales, or holding shiny red apples, and actually the Ringhausen Orchard we went to (there are several) wasn't really that type of place. But the apples were great, I got Crispins, Jonathan's, and Honey Crisps. I ate the last one today for lunch, so I'm hoping Mom and Dad pick up some on their trip this weekend. On the way back to the main road, I saw a snake slither into the cornfield, so that sort of met our "see wildlife" goal of the trip.

This weekend we weren't much better about getting out into nature. Fortunately, the Grand Marshall takes Nora out to Powder Valley quite a bit, or else I'd worry that she is danger of developing a nature deficit disorder. Jason and I are lacking in our intake of fresh air, and I'm hoping we'll make it happen this weekend.

Anniversary

Yesterday was our 13th anniversary. It seems like both a long and short time. This was the first year we didn't have any special plans. I did take off work, Jason wasn't teaching, and Nora went to daycare as scheduled, so we did spend the day together. We had a big breakfast at Chris' pancake house after we dropped of Nora and then we spent the rest of the day catching up on our Netflix and Toddflix (all the shows Todd tapes for us - thanks Todd!). We're still wayyyyyy behind, but it was fun to spend the rainy day on the couch, just the two of us. It was also nice to pick up and drop off Nora together. I think we finally manged to do all of our check in and check out parental duties (sign in, fill out daily form, make sure she has her lunch box, backpack & Meowy, pay, etc.). Then we ordered dinner from the King and I, tried to get Nora to run all of her excess energy off inside, and then we shuffled off to bed. We're such an old married couple. It's nice.

Final Days Of Summer

It's fall already, and it's felt like fall for awhile, given the lack of oppressive heat that summer usually brings us and all the back to school business. But these last few days of summer have brought out the inner squirrel in me. Last weekend, I decided I needed to do something to mark the end of the season so Mom and I put up a bunch of pints of Jason's mom's pepper sauce. This may or may not be the fabled sauce of Miss Dixie, Jason's childhood neighbor, I suspect it is, since it has more of her hallmarks than Kathy's, in any case, it is a delicious sauce. This isn't something I do every year, but I really love the taste of it on beans (black eyed peas, pintos, butter beans, and the like), and the recipe is easy (well, I have to use gloves for the hot peppers, but other than that it's easy) and putting up a dozen pints really doesn't take that much time, especially when Mom is is there to lead my through it.

I had plenty of tomatoes left over (since I lost my battle with the evil squirrels, I had to buy a peck at the farmer's market and we only used half for the pepper sauce). And I was desperately in need of another can of olive oil, so the logical thing was to pick some at Viviano's along with some buffalo mozzarella and make a big sloppy caprice salad. I love so many things about Viviano's. The price of olive oil is astronomical (I can remember when it was about $12-$15 for a 3L can not that long ago), I was
dithering between a new can that they had predominately displayed for about 5$ less than my normal Celio brand. In the checkout I point to the new brand and ask "Am I going to be happy with this?" The two people behind the counter (one has been working there for more years than I've been coming to the store) say without hesitation, in unison and with a tone that is definitive: "no", I scoot out and exchange it for the Celio and the long standing employee looks at me with approval and tells me that's what she always uses. I exit Viviano's looking forward to my salad and the hunk of Marconi's bakery bread. We are not a white bread family. I mean that literally. We don't eat white bread usually - lots of rye and whole wheat and I'm constantly guilt tripping myself over the fact that we eat too much of the processed sandwich bread that has all that corn syrup in it. But, occasionally, I like a crusty Italian style loaf and Marconi's is always perfect. We scarfed it down with the salad and then the next morning I ate it with the last of the gooseberry preserves from Sunflower Savannah a vendor at the Tower Grove Farmer's Market. I had bought this earlier this summer and I'm completely enthralled with it. We had gooseberry bushes when I was a kid and while I remember there being lots of gooseberry pie (I wasn't fond of it, but my grandparent's generation was), I have no memories of jam that tasted like this! And the color is really pretty too. Here's a picture:
I'm sorry I haven't done as much canning as I would have liked this year. It's hard to do with Nora in the house, unless there's a team looking after her, and really I always think it's going to be more labor intensive than it is.

This weekend I also got around to testing the alternative to rice crispy treats in Vegan Lunchbox. While Nora has no problems eating marshmallows and I can make them with Earth Balance instead of butter, there are a couple of people in our orbit who don't eat them due to the gelatin in marshmallows, including Jason. So I thought I'd give these a try since they use corn syrup & peanut butter (I subbed soynut butter) instead. I make the jumped up version with chocolate chips. Once I got over that these were not rice crispy treats, I actually liked them and Jason and Nora gave them two thumbs up too. Nora has taken to calling these "Snack". They are way sweet (they are after all listed in the dessert section) and they tasted quite a bit like store bought quaker granola bars as well as a treat Mom made for us when we were kids - Special K bars. The soynut butter/chocolate combo is a real winner and I like the crispiness of the rice crispies. I think I will make them again and add oats as well and try to find the brown puffed rice that the recipe originally suggested.

Finally here are the lunchboxes from this week so far:This is my lunch from Monday, Jason had a similar one, but I didn't get a photo: blackeyed peas with tomatoes and spinach (Sunday's leftovers), turkey sausage (Jason had the last of the cornbread muffins instead), a pluot, and we both had a side of Snack. I also sampled one of Nora's Vanilla Silk pouches and it was actually good (I'm not a huge fan of the regular Silk, but I find the Chocolate quite tolerable as well). Here's Nora's lunch from today:
Macaroni and meat sauce, carrot sticks and zuchini stars and hearts with hummus dip, a pack of raisins, and Vanilla Silk pouch. I'm suffering from some guilt because I forgot to include my usually notes in her lunch.

That's all for today, but I did want to remind folks about the Strange Folk Festival this weekend. Go check it out!

First Day

Nora's first day of preschool was yesterday. Here are the obligatory first day photos. Notice Nora's lack of smile. In fact she seems almost put out. Actually she seemed to enjoy preschool, even if she wasn't intially enthusiastic. Jason went with her for this first day and stayed for a while with her. Then he left. Then he came back, then he left, and then he came back and then he left, and then he came back again when it was time for her to go home. Jason has gotten to know the staff at WCCC very well. I get to go with her on Friday. I'm sure the staff will come to believe we are the most clingy parents ever. Jason and I think they are amazing because they actually got Nora to nap on her first day.

In her backpack is her lunch box, a change of clothes, and Meowy Boom-D-aye who got to go to preschool too.
Here's photo's of Nora's lunch. I made salami and soy cream cheese roll ups, peas, and added some fruit gummies and alphabet cookies (they spelled NORA)
Here it's packed with her juice box, ice pack and a small snack box of raisins. And I added a note to her on top from me (I was inspired by Bob and Sarah's wall of notes that have been included in Zelda's lunch forever).

While I'm sure I'll never inspire the artistic and creative bento box creations of Japanese moms, I am inspired by them and I hope that I can keep up the pace of packing lunches for Nora, me and also Jason this fall. Here's Nora's lunch box (which she informed me was "kinda too heavy"). It's actually smaller than a typical school lunch bag and it unzips into a place mat. And it's a dog, so Nora can ask her new favorite question: "Where's the Woof?"

Owls of Autumn

It's October 8 and today it reached 90+ degrees. This is insane. I have been ready for fall for several weeks and it looks like I'm not to have it. Well possibly later this week. But anyway, Nora is all ready for crisp weather to begin. A trip to our fabulous children's used clothing store, Kangaroo Kids netted us some fun tights. Then I got too happy on hyena cart and bought her a very cute owl hoodie dress that would really only be comfortable in cooler weather, but I'm dying to put her in it. Here's some pics, but they don't really do justice to the dress since she won't stand still.

It's long enough that she'll be able to wear it next fall too, so it's not like I'm worried she'll grow out of it, but I'm just anxious to dress her up like the little elf she is:

And then there's the Halloween costume. Jason was pretty insistent that this year she go as little red riding hood, so Etsy helped me locate an appropriate cloak and Karl will be standing in as the big bad wolf. But again this isn't going to work in hot weather, so it better cool off by the end of the month.

And then there's me. What's the use of having fabulous boots if you can't wear them. Have I mentioned how sick I am of shaving my legs? How about how ready I am for some hearty chili or soup? This heat wave really needs to end so I can enjoy my favorite time of year, October.