Soundbites from the week

"Mommy, you're my pillow." (Nathan)
"Let me see that in pixels." (Nils)
"Mommy, I need my glasses so I can use the sledge hammer." (Nathan)
"Ba-be Fo-na. Ba-be Fo-na. Hug." translation: I want to hug Baby Fiona. (Beatrice)
"Beeee-tris, wanna go on a-venter?!" (Nathan)
"Man-a-moni" translation: macaroni (Beatrice)
"Bring your own potty." (Nathan)
"When I was a baby... and I didn't have mommy. There was a hole in me... and I took my bones out and fell and bumped my head. Then you came back and you picked me up." (Nathan)
"co0-kie, coo-kie" (Bea)
"up-cake, up-cake" (Bea)
"No NayNay, No NayNay" (Bea)
"ah-lu-ya" (Bea on a Sunday afternoon)
"I was holding my poop in all year long" (Nathan)
"Mine. Mine. Mine." (Bea)
"Be-trice, you're my friend." (Nathan)
"It's hard waiting." (Nathan)

Yummy Spring Recipes (that my kids ate)

Here are some winners from our week. Yes, my kids even ate spinach! I have to admit, it may have been because when we made this soup I taught them how to slurp for the first time. I'm still going to assume it was my great cooking until I get proven wrong. Please share your recipe successes in the comments section and we'll never have to wonder what we should eat tonight!

Udon Noodles and Vegetables
(my adaptation from Mooswood Restaurant Cooks at Home)

1 package Udon noodles or rice noodles

Sauce:
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup warm water
1/3 cup sesame oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
Sprinkle of basil (1/4 cup if you have fresh basil... yum!)

1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, chopped
1 tofu cake, cubed
3 carrots, shredded

Cook noodles, drain. Mix sauce ingredients. Combine noodles, sauce and veggies and tofu. Enjoy warm or chilled.

Sausage and Greens Soup
(my adaptation from Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert)

4 Polish sausages chopped small
1 bunch green onions
4 cups chicken broth
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 1/2 cups evaporated milk or whole milk
1 big bunch spinach (can use kale, or other greens)

Brown sausage in soup pot and then take out of pot and set aside. Cook onions and potatoes in sausage drippings for a few minutes. Add broth and spinach and cook until potatoes are soft. Puree. Add milk and sausage. Enjoy!

Little Workers

Nils gave Nathan his own drill for his 3rd birthday. We had a few parenting discussions about when this gift... but in the end decided he was ready for it. Nathan is actually quite good with his tools and Nils is really good about teaching him how to use them. They spend a lot of quality time together with their tools. This drill is lightweight and pretty simple and without the drill bits, its hard to get hurt with it. After realizing that this was a real drill, Nathan got right to work on his fort. The next day he put it to use at the church work day by taking out some screws that were in a place that only he could reach. After the drill present was given, Grammie Martie realized that little Nils was working with real tools when he was 4 (and probably earlier). Maybe this aptitude and interest in tools is genetic.

Mr. Plumbean's House

One day we were driving by this neighbor's house and Nathan gasped, "It's Mr. Plumbean's house!" I think he's right. Nathan was referring to Daniel Pinkwater's book, The Big Orange Splot, in which an accidental splot of paint slowly inspires a community to change their houses to reflect their own personalities. While this house may look like a eyesore of tagging and vandalism at first glance, I think it may actually be closer to Mr. Plumbean's house. A few years ago it did undergo a progression of more interesting paint jobs. There are colorful stripes and patches of bright colors. Then there is the crazy face and the words, "Beware of crazy dud (dude?)!" There is nothing to indicate that it is an abandoned home, no foreclosure sign, no broken windows, and the colorful paint job looks like too much time consuming work for vandals. So... I have to agree with Nathan, it's probably Mr. Plumbean's house... or at least someone who talked to him. If anyone speaks poorly of this house I know what Nathan and I will have to say. Referring to our favorite repeated line in the book we'll chant, "His house is him and he is it. His house is where he likes to be and it looks like all his dreams."

Nature or Nurture?

Yes... that's my son hanging on to the door frame. If you know Nils pretty well, you also know that this is one of his special talents- climbing into small, high, and strange places. Nathan actually can get up there pretty much by himself, but we spot him for now. Is this unique aptitude genetic or is he influenced by watching his dad's special talents?

The garden is growing and it's almost magical to me! Above are the snap pea sprouts and below is the lettuce/ spinach/ chard with a few cauliflower and broccoli plants at the end. What used to be a big dark pile of dirt with some tiny seeds is now sprouting up and starting to look like vegetable plants. Even if we don't produce a very big crop this year, our garden is connecting me to food production in a new way.

I planted these seeds and seedlings with a sentiment of mystery, wondering if the food we rely on from the grocery store could really grow up in our own backyard. I know, I know, we all learned this concept in kindergarten, while watching our pumpkin seed sprout in a cup. But it's not the plant biology that's a mystery to me, its the 'growing food because you want to eat it' concept that is still new to me. When I started trying to plan out a vegetable garden that might actually produce a lot of the things we eat on a regular basis, I had the feeling that it couldn't be that easy. Surely there were complicated processes and procedures and technologies that were necessary to produce the kind of veggies I buy at the store. Maybe my soil wouldn't be right or the sun wouldn't shine just so or the seeds would require special heat lamps or something.

So far... there have been no complicated technologies or expert procedures taking place and the seeds are becoming vegetables! In fact, all of the garden work has been done with my 3 year old and 1 1/2 year old working by my side, poking seeds in not-so-straight lines, digging things up when I'm not looking and then re-planting them together, watering one seedling a lot and dashing a sprinkle past the others. So when I look at the new snap pea plants with their spindly vines starting to reach out, I just kind of giggle with a sense of nature's amazing strength. When I inspect the shiny lettuce leaves, I feel little bit of empowerment well-up inside me as a small kitchen-garden farmer who might be able to provide veggies for my family even if we lived in a place that didn't have a giant supermarket nearby. And when I pull out a few weeds from around the onions, I feel a little more of a sense of freedom because I'm a tad bit less dependent on a large farm industry that's not always so fair to farmers or to the environment or to consumers.

In an over-eager and excited moment the other day, I even pulled a few lettuce and spinach leaves off for a salad... and they were good.

Our New Pets!

We have pet worms! Nathan and Bea like to check on them, spray water in their tub when it looks dry and dump in some fruit and veggie scraps about once a week. Nathan also decorated their bin with stickers and informed me that they like it when he stirs them up. Worms are pretty easy pets to have and this project should result in great home-made fertilizer for the garden. I really like this concept since it reduces our landfill contribution and gives us cheep, organic and safe fertilizer. This is actually my 3rd attempt and I hope I have learned something from my first so-so result and my second frozen worm tragedy. This time I also know a few things not to do:

• Don't let them get too wet or dry. Too wet will get stinky and too dry will dehydrate and kill the worms. You can monitor this by spraying water or adding more bedding (newspaper or egg carton shreds)
  
• Don't put in more food scraps than they can eat. While I was once told that red wigglers will multiply to handle the quantity you add... I found this not to be entirely true. Maybe it was because we added a ton of scraps brought in from the kitchens of all 28 of my students... hummm, probably needed more space to handle that. I got flies and smelly compost from having more food than my worms could eat. Now I add only a cookie jar-full a week and put the rest in the regular compost. I like to see the food getting chewed up by worms and bacteria before I add more.
• Don't leave the worms out in freezing weather. They will freeze and die! I went to my garage one winter to check on my worms and found a frozen block of compost and worms. It was sad. Now I know that worms like warm tropical weather. So when winter rolls around I may have to bring them into the basement if I want to keep it going.
  

Dancing

Bubbles

Beatrice discovered how to blow bubbles in her smoothie.