the Fairy & the Pumpkin

wooly bully

I have always loved that song. And I clearly remember when I heart it for the first time on high-speed in the "Chipmunk Adventure" movie.  Oh, the days of childhood when a song sung by the Chipmunks was even better than the original.  I'm prit-ty sure you want to hear it (for old time's sake) so hear you go.

Download 10 Wooly Bully

Just about anything wooly is great, be it a bully or a felted ball.  I'm right now watching "Spies Like Us" with the hubby and am loving their wooly outfits.  They're wooly gweat! <insert gratuitious chuckles here>

But I do have a point to make after this very long introduction: felted wool balls.

We finally used up our 7th Generation dryer sheets and I wanted to start utilizing something less expensive and re-usable.  I find myself this year questioning the necessity of shelling out so much money in disposable goods for household maintenance. While researching alternative, you might say traditional or heritage, techniques, I've discovered a new hobby.  I love digging up the answers to the question of "How would our grandmothers or great-grandmothers have done this?"  Although I'm not sure our maternal forebearers would have agreed on the fun-ness factor.

They also obviously did not have washers and dryers and so never had to make dryer sheets.  There was no beyond-the-grave wisdom on this one.  But luckily, some other smart person had the brilliant idea of using felted wool balls to separate drying clothes, decreasing drying time and increasing fluffiness (scientific term), while eliminating static cling.  What?!  Oh, wool, you.  What can't you do?  (By the way, my scientific research concludes that those claims are, in order, true, sort of true, definitely true, and mostly true.  I love all the new fluffy fluffiness of my fluffy clothes!  Static cling is impressively minimal, although I do live in Portland where it's almost unheard of, and the drying time is noticeably, but just barely, shorter.)

Coming back to felting wool.  So, it is an artisan technique and felted goods can be quite pricey!  This beautiful felted bear brooch on etsy is $30 (although worth every cent, in my humble opinion).

Aren't they darling?!  Etsy is full of needle felted wool animals for anyone who has just discovered a new obsession.  But the good news is that those adorable felted wool balls in the photo are much easier to make.  So easy that children can do it with a little parental guidance.

The materials needed are hot water, liquid dish soap, wool roving, two hands, and 10 minutes.  

It was actually a fun activity for the children and our 3 generations of women (my mother, my daughter, and me) huddled around a bowl of hot water together to make our 8 wool balls.  Initially it seemed like it was all a lie and the wool roving would never come together to form a cohesive ball but we gradually got the knack of it and the miracle happened.  After drying them in the dryer, they looked adorable.

Click on the link to learn how to make them.

felted wool dryer balls

You'll need 4-6 balls for your laundry so my mom took four and I kept the remaining.

It was so fun, they turned out soo cute, and I love them sooo much that I already want to make more.  This time I'd like to decorate them with colored wool roving so they look adorable like these Martha Stewart craft ones.

Felted wool balls are bouncy!  They're fun to play with, not just useful.  And they would make fabulous beads for a child-friendly or infant-chewable necklace.  If I were to run for a political office, my platform would be brining back wool felting.  It's just too bad for the world, and for wool, that I have no political aspirations.  Yet.

So check it out.  Click on the link to learn how to make felted wool balls.

strawberry shortcakes

Daughters who turn 7 years old walk the brink of adolescence, precariously leaving behind the safety of childhood.  Mine was no exception.  It's amazing to me that I love her more every year and every day when I thought it wasn't possible to love anything more seven years ago.

(That beautiful dress is from my mother.  You can find it in her etsy store, vintagebaby clothier!)

I think the best thing I can do to comemorate who she is right now is to share a "poem" she wrote in school for poetry month.

I am the one who loves to collect

32 bells, 2 braslits and 3 papper clips.

I am the one who hopes the earth can be clean.

I am the one who somday I will be nothing.

I am the one whos birthday is coming soon.

I am the one whos aferid of long, pouson and biting spiters.

I am teh one who can tiy shoes.

I am the one who is lucky. 

We had another simple birthday celebration.  True to what she's been saying since fall, she asked for homemade gnocchi and strawberry shortcakes.  I realized that I've never shared this recipe before and wanted to make sure and do that!  This is a recipe you will want to try, I promise!  The flavors are impeccable!

strawberry shortcakes

The authentic shortcakes are like a delicious, sweet biscuit and everyone loved eating them plain even.  The strawberry filling is a perfectly flavored amalgumation of the natural strawberry juices mixed with homemade raspberry jam.  My sister has told me that in Italy they use a similar technique of letting the strawberries sit in some sugar and lemon juice to create a syrupy strawberry base.

The simple dessert was perfect for my sweet, pink girl who can clear the skies with her bright smile and clear giggles.  She even lost a tooth on her birthday!  I love her windowed grin.

may day

I often find that lags in blog posting occur when the blogger has been traveling abroad or preparing some of their production for a book, magazine, conference, or to present it in some nationally recognized forum.  Possibly they're off accepting some prize for their amazing blog accomplishments.  

In that spirit, I would like to announce that my long delay in blogging was the result of my charity work in a third-world country where I fed children, goats and butterflies (hand fed, mind you), then traveled to a remote tropical island that nobody in the world has ever heard of but me and built its first city from sustainable coconut hair, and then had to rush home to give a important conference to an eager audience.  And then was crowned with the royal title of Awesome by an elite committee who has power in every planet in this universe.

In a parallel universe, I might say that I have been trampled by allergies, fallen victim to the stress of an upcoming move, and the only conference speech I gave was about proper nose-wiping etiquette to an audience of two children.  Not eager.  And possibly have lost myself in a fantasy series of 13 books, each 1,000 pages long.  (Book 7, people.  6,000 pages under my belt and 7,000 more to go.)

Ah, life!  Isn't it wonderful?!  The continual revolutions of our terrestrial globe stop for no person and life marches on, day after day.  Those things that I dread arrive at my doorstep regardless of how much I resist, then blink out of existence just as quickly and the chaos settles down for a moment.

In the meantime, birthdays and spring come and go, leaving a blur of a memory.  And that's how it came to be that May arrived in Portland and I am just now waking up to that fact.

May Day has to be one of the sweetest traditions and I'm so glad that my daughter got to make a May Day basket at school to leave on the door.  Did any of you do that when you were younger?  I haven't since I was nearly her age and remembered how exciting it is to celebrate May's bounty!

I remembered sharing May Day with my neighbors and leaving baskets on their doors too.  So, naturally, the children wanted to continue the tradition and made a few for our neighbors.

I think it was very obvious where they came from since we are the only family with children in our building and the baskets and writing were very clearly child-made!  It was very nice when one neighbor thanked us for the reminder of childhood.  

I was just grateful for the daily reminders that fill my life, that keep my focus despite the constant whirlwind around us.  Motherhood is a garden where beautiful children are grown, filling the air with scents of innocence, purity, and awe.  Motherhood is an eternal May!

I hope you all had a happy May Day!

silly

Do you remember how I mentioned that I would like to learn how to make soap, like make it from the beginning like our great-grandmothers used to?  Guess what?  I'm going to make soap this week!  Not exactly the same way our ancestors managed it by making lye out of wood ash...I'm going to conveniently skip that step and use food grade lye for more consistent results.  

But the point is that I'm on my way!  My head has been in books and immersed in online discussion forums, trying to decide what to do first, how to create my own formulation, and where to gather all the supplies.  So if you've wondered where I've been, that's where.  Off, busy, metamorphosing myself into a soap-maker.  Hopefully I'll emerge from my chrysallis soon, a full-fledged-and-winged soaper.

Until then, I found these funny pictures of one of our favorite toys.  My mother brought the children this little wooden paddle back when we had our chickens.  We all thought it was so clever to swing the pendulum and make the chickens all peck their food.

We loved our chickens!  We miss our chickens still!  This toy made it through our stringent eliminations and came to Portland with us.  Such a fun and cute one that just never gets old.

It's not a toy you play with for hours, mind you.  But everytime you pull it out, you marvel at how great it is.

Wherever did my mom find this?

I miss my chickens!

a kitchen bewitching: 3 warm dinners + appetizer

The recipes I'm sharing today are dinners that we tremendously enjoyed.  Like I said in my last post, lots of great recipes in the last two months' issues of cooking magazines!  There are moments where dinnertime is my favorite time of day; you know, having warm food in the belly, (for us) the busiest parts of our days are over, and if the meal is really really good, the children might actually start shoveling food into their faces causing the most content silence to occur.  If you know my children, you know that there is never silence in our home.  Never.  So when a dinner hits home and they're so intent on eating that they're actually quiet, I feel like I've won.  I've just won!  And I feel like a champion.

Lately we've really been enjoying meals made out of quinoa.  It took the children a little time to come around to it but now we all enjoy what is really a very simple meal.  (Take this one, for example, also from Cooking Light.  It's so simple but explodes with classic Tuscan flavor, making it a satisfying meal.)  

This recipe that I wanted to share uses a delicious basil-lemon dressing that is a good one to have on hand because it would be equally fabulous with any salad or vegetable.  The night I took this photo, we happened to be out of quinoa so we used short-grain brown rice.  The good news is that if I cook my quinoa the same way I cook my short-grain brown rice (in a rice cooker), it's super easy and comes out with just a little crunch to it.  We're not fans of mushy quinoa so this suits us just fine!

how to cook quinoa

black bean-quinoa salad with basil-lemon dressing

This next recipe I've actually shared before.  Who doesn't love these Swedish meatballs from MarthaStewart.com?  We've modified it to eat it over short grain brown rice instead of noodles and I've added a teaspoon of crushed thyme to the sauce that rounds out the flavor in an amazingly subtle way.  As I said the first time I shared this recipe, the meatballs are so easy to prepare and baking instead of sauteeing them takes out all of the stress.  My children absolutely love this dinner.  And plus, how easy are meatballs to freeze?  I like to make a double batch of just the meatballs when I make this recipe and freeze half after baking.  That way all I need to prepare for a quick dinner the next time is some sauce and rice.

swedish meatballs with brown rice

This recipe for Greek Chicken Bread Salad from Cooking Light is phenomenal.  I've posted recipes for bread salad before and it always hits the spot.  I looove the combination of olives, sharp feta, and fragrant bread that has a moist crumb.  This version was even easier because more salad means less chopping.

greek chicken bread salad

And last, althought it should be first, is the appetizer.  Hot spinach and artichoke dip.  Do I have your attention, yet.  It's fabulous and I could eat all of it just on my own.  Warm, crusty bread to scoop it up with would be ideal but tortilla chips worked out fine for us when the bread ran out!  

I intended to make it entirely from scratch, starting with whole artichokes, but I'd have to buy a whole lotta' 'chokes since only the hearts are used for this recipe (and any other dip recipe).  Instead I found bags of frozen artichoke hearts from Trader Joe's and saved myself that extra cost and work.  Maybe it's not as creamy as the commercial mass-produced version (like Applebee's) but I think it scores higher on flavor.  You will definitely become a very valuable asset to your friends and family after you walk into the room with this.

hot spinach and artichoke dip

You will be relieved to know, I'm sure, that Operation Recipe Overload has come to an end.  And I think you'll enjoy any of these recipes in today's post.  Our bellies and tastebuds sure did!

3 asian one-bowl meals

I don't know about you, but I've really been enjoying my last two issues of Cooking Light and Bon Appetit.  If any of you subscribe to them, have they been making you as hungry as they are me??  We've enjoyed so many delicious dinners prepared from their ideas and pages that eating at home as become a real treat for us (as long as Oberon does the dishes for me, of course).

It was while perusing Yahoo! that I found a recipe for Vietnamese pho made in a slow-cooker.  How great is that?  We really loved it but I have to say that the noodles and bok choy get mushy in the leftovers.  Pho is a favorite of ours because it's always so delicious and comforting while still invigorating, unlike chicken noodle soup.  I think it's because of the exciting star anise that is the backbone to the flavor.  Mmmm.  When I make this again, I will keep cooked noodles separate and add bok choy to the hot soup once it's in the bowls and let it sit for a couple of minutes before serving.  

Oberon, a pho connoisseur, says this rates high on his pho rankings for flavor.  (His favorite pho is the one served with paper-thin slices of flank steak added just at the end, pho bo tai nam.  The hot pho cooks the tender beef on contact.)  He would suggest more broth, less noodles and I think I agree with him on this.  Just make sure to have your  hot sriracha sauce on hand to liven up the pho. 

slow-cooker chicken pho

In Oklahoma, there was a restaurant playing on the pronunciation of "pho" (sounds like the "fuh" in "fudge") named "Pho-bulous".  (It's actually really good.)  Sadly, success for ethnic food restaurants in Oklahoma depended on corny names.  But it got Oberon and I thinking about other possibilities like "Pho-nomenal" or "What the Pho!"    

The second soup we tried was an extremely tasty Thai-inspired soup from Bon Appetit.  The blend of curry and turmeric gave it a very bold flavor, odor, and stain that stayed with us for several days.  Not a great dish for young children who are prone to spilling but the intriguing taste is definitely worth a try.  I think our apartment smelled like this soup for nearly a week.  It was a good kind of smell though.

chicken khao soi

The last dish was such a great hit with everyone that I'm sure we'll be using the recipe frequently.  A Cooking Light recipe, it does not disappoint in flavor.  In fact, if you've ever had a Vietnamese vermicelli salad (one of my favorite meals), you'll recognize this as a salad-heavy derivative.  As far as I can tell vermicelli salads begin with "bun" and the following two words describe the meat and how it's prepared.  I am just now looking at this photo and realizing two things: the photo looks unappealing and therefore does not do justice to how tasty this dish is and second, I forgot the chopped peanuts.

vietnamese salt and pepper shrimp rice noodle bowl (bun tom xao)

What I love about these dinners is that they seem to fit right in with the changing of season from winter to spring with their bright citrus notes and biting flavors like cilantro or basil.  It feels kind of silly to be cooking Thai or Vietnamese style dinners since there are Vietnamese and Thai restaurants at every corner where we live,  but at least we save ourselves the cost of eating out this way.

a happy bunny easter to you too

Of course you all know that my mother has an etsy store, Vintage Baby Clothier, and that she makes the most lovely vintage creations for little children.  This spring she designed and created a short, delicate cape (also called a mantelet) for my daughter to wear for Easter.  After getting a smocked dress from Little Wooden Soldier (and son's clothes from Janie and Jack, hat from fall H&M), I was very excited for Easter photos.  But I wanted photos that captured the vintage saccharine and innocent look their outfits encapsulated.  

Of course that only meant one thing: we needed a bunny.  (The logic reasoning is sound here, folks.)  So we bought a bunny from a breeder in Aloha and we loved him with all our hearts for 2 weeks.  The children named him Captain Kangaroo and he was such a sweetheart!  (Don't worry; he did not meet his demise.  We agreed to take him back after taking photos because indoor bunnies are a lot of work.)  And don't you love that they named him Captain Kangaroo.  They've never even heard of the show but Oberon and I got such a kick out of it!

I don't know why more people don't keep rabbits because they make such lovely pets!  Captain Kangaroo was a mix of California and New Zealand breeds and had a wonderful, mellow and inquisitive temperament.  He would escape his box and come over to my lap looking for a treat whenever he felt underfed.  Before we brought him home, he hadn't been handled by the breeder so we were delighted with how quickly he became accustomed to our company and interaction.  He even let all of the Joy School children hold him Velveteen-Rabbit-style, body hanging and all!

Here he is, beloved by all (but Oberon, who was "kind of okay with him").

This cute, fluffy guy is going to grow to be 14+ pounds.  I've heard it said that those big rabbits, excellent for breeding and meat, are particularly gentle and easily handled.

Here are the shots we got of him in our Easter photos.  This sweet guy never once hopped out of the basket the entire time.

Do you love her cape or mantelet?  Isn't it to die for??

If anyone is thinking that a rabbit might be a fun pet, I have to say that yes, they are!  His breeder uses hers to mow her lawn; she just has to make sure they are contained and safe from predators by using a puppy pen with a corrugated roof.  I don't know that I would recommend rabbits as indoor pets because their litter does develop a distinct odor, but an outdoor hutch would allow you to collect their droppings for manure.  Their droppings don't need to be composted and are twice as concentrated as chicken droppings for fertilization purposes.  (I know you probably think this is the grossest topic and wonder why I keep coming back to this, but there are serious gardeners out there who appreciate the added help of a really good soil enhancement.)  Plus rabbits are so soft and so great to hold!  I wish I had a voice recording of my girl explaining how Captain Kangaroo made her feel so much love, like her heart was going to burst.

At the end of our Captain Kangaroo high, we celebrated Easter with a nice, simple dinner of glazed ham, roasted asparagus and roasted garlic mashed potatoes.  The day was sunny and 81F.  Who wanted to be cooking a big meal all day?  Not me.

glazed ham

garlic mashed potatoes

roasted asparagus

Of course my daughter needed Easter-themed fingernails so we made quick work of it using Sally Hansen's nail strips.

And for the first time I tried making hot cross buns.  I absolutely love them, but the family are not quite as big of fans.  I love the spice combined with the citrus and dried fruit; it just tastes so quintessentially old-English.  I prefered the ones baked with the cross paste as opposed to baking them plain and then icing a cross on top.

hot cross buns

What I loved most about them is knowing that they are entirely presented so as to remind us of why we celebrate Easter.  I think this will be a favorite tradition of mine in years to come!

And finally, just because you know that I know that you want me to, here is a trove of Captain Kangaroo photos.

I am telling you that this rabbit liked to be pet.

Oh, he's soo cute!  My voice goes into high-pitch bunny mode just looking at his photos.  Winston (our dog) recognizes this voice and would get all excited at the prospect of getting to sniff and play with the bunny.  Even Winston couldn't bear the bunny-cuteness, I kid you not!

Who can resist playing with those adorable, ridiculously long ears?

You children can be this happy and cute if you get a rabbit.

 

I don't know why I said "those grass."  I was under bunny-enchantment I guess.

playing with food

Kitchen chemistry has to be one of the coolest things ever.  Along with the discovery of new subatomic particles, children's umbrellas with eyes on the top, and "Foyle's War".  I was so excited to come across this really awesome blog all about kitchen chemistry, Curious Cook by New York Times contributor, Harold McGee!

We did one of my favorite experiments in kitchem chemistry this week, dyeing easter eggs using food.  I did this once in college and was so pleased with the results.  But, this time the results were a littl weak, probably because I only had a vague memory of how to do it.  The ideas I found online on how to do this were highly varied, suggesting cold or hot, little or lots of vinegar, no salt or use salt, etc.

Once again, I turned to Martha Stewart and found a very helpful video (here) that shows adding 1/4 cup salt and 1/4 cup vinegar to the dye that is extracted from food.  That was, for me, the turning point.  After changing my homemade food dyes, the eggs colored much better.  When using food-based colors, however, the variety and range of hues is obviously limited.

I used ideas from various online resources, like this one, and they all somewhat offered the same suggestions for color sources.  But either I did it wrong, or they're flat out mistaken.  Boiling spinach will give you a very weak muddy color, not green.  I tried boiling juices and herbal teas and the colors just came out tan and less tan.  The only colors I consider successes were turmeric for yellow and red cabbage for blue (a beautiful pale or caribbean blue!).  It was still fun and we'll definitely do it next year, trying for that elusive pink and green.  We can only improve from here!  Kitchen chemistry is both fascinating and frustrating in its complexity, but I have faith in the prevailing power of science!  It will just take patience and many years of trial and error!  Nobel prize for egg dyeing, here I come??

For more discussion on my how to use food to dye eggs or on blowing out to hollow the eggs, clink on the links.  The white stripes on the eggs are from using rubber bands to make designs.  Which only sort of worked.

food egg dyes

blowing out eggs

In case you're wondering why anyone would want to blow out their eggs, here are my reasons: first, there is zero waste involved; second, you can hide treats or prizes inside the real eggs, making the children actually crack the egg to get to the prize; third; the egg shells can go to compost or be reused as cute little seedling planters.  The second reason is my favorite.  When I was younger, my parents would blow out eggs and hide our treats inside.  It was so much fun to break open real eggs, and a much stronger connection to how hatching eggs symbolize new life and Easter.

hint: using red tissue makes it look like an olive.  No es bueno.

Happy Easter!!