pretending it's spring

Despite what our pretty, floral wall calendar tells us, we are still looking at a sea of white in our yard. All that snow is still lingering and today, while sunny, was a whopping 27 degrees accompanied by 20 mph winds. We are all a bit stir crazy and wishing spring would actually show its face around these parts.

In a bid to lift our spirits, tonight we had a quintessential upstate/western NY spring-summer BBQ. We grilled chicken leg quarters using the perennial favorite Cornell Chicken recipe and boiled us up some Syracuse salt potatoes that we dipped in a melted butter/parsley mixture. (Recipes for both the chicken and potatoes can be found here.) If you have yet to try these regional New York State favorites, you are truly missing out. Around here, this is your standard church or fire department barbecue fundraiser and a long time staple at the State Fair. Alongside we had watermelon wedges (way out of season courtesy of Costa Rica and our local grocery store) and a simple arugula salad dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. To drink, of course it was lemonade. To finish it all off, it had to be strawberry shortcake.

The girls are so desperate for spring, they were outside burying fallen branches in the ground in the hopes that they will suddenly sprout blossoms or leaves.

dutch baby

We ate a Dutch Baby for breakfast. It was delicious! And no, this isn't some kind of cannabalistic ritual. A Dutch Baby is an egg-based oven pancake that you top with powdered sugar and a good squirt of fresh lemon juice.

I used this recipe from the folks over at Cooks Country. The basic concept is you mix together eggs, milk, and flour. Pour this very loose batter into a pre-heated skilled (I used my cast iron skillet) and bake. While baking, it puffs up and starts to climb out of the pan, which makes it kind on fun to watch.

After you take it out, and begin its sugar and lemon juice treatment, the baby shrinks a bit. The texture and taste is somewhat like a thick crepe. We ate ours with fresh sliced strawberries!

In related news, we are cooking up another kind of baby here, too. Not a Dutch baby, but an American baby with a pinch of Irish, Welch, English and a sprinkle of Italian and French. And no, we won't eat this baby. He or she is expected to arrive in mid September. The girls are hoping for a little brother (and so is Tim, secretly, though he claims he has no preference). Me, I'm partial to girls.

snOMG!

Another snowstorm is coming for us tomorrow. The weatherpeople are calling for 12-18 inches more. We already have plenty, thank you. The girls are outside now enjoying the 3 feet of white stuff in our front yard while Daddy snowblows (yes, we got about 4 inches today). Mira wanted me to come to her ice museum, but I had to take a raincheck since I was in my slippers.

In other news, Abby turned four last week!

On her birthday on Thursday, we had a little ice cream cake as a warm up for the bigger extended family birthday party on Saturday.

The birthday cake this year was what is known as the Elvis Cake around the internet. Banana cake layers spread with chocolate ganache and filled and iced with fluffy peanut butter frosting. The flavor combination was really different in a good way. The peanut butter frosting was a standout. (You can make it  by creaming together 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup cream cheese, 1 cup peanut butter and about 3 cups powdered sugar. Then you beat in about 1/4 cup of heavy cream and whip until you get a fluffy spreadable consistency.) It would be really good on a chocolate cake.

i believe you have my stapler

Mira put this sign on my office door a few weeks ago. In case you can't read 1st grade English, it says, "Do not come in. I am frustrated. But you can talk to me." She put it there when she retreated to my office for some alone time after something upset her.

I've decided to leave it up because the message pretty much applies to me on a regular basis while I'm working: I'm frustrated, but you can still talk to me. In fact, I'm sure you can relate to this message too and you should probably post a similar sign on your office door to serve as fair warning to unwitting coworkers. I like the way the note conveys one's current state of mind in a straightforward way, but also says "I'm dealing with it. I'll take your calls anyway and we'll have a civil discourse." I like it a lot.

apples, pumpkins, costumes

I've got a lot of ground to cover to make up for my blog-slacking, so here is a photo-narrative of the last several weeks' activity.

We went to Hick's Orchard in Granville, NY for some apples, cider, and of course the donuts. Did I mention the donuts??! This is really the main reason why we make the 45 minute trek and they are so phenomenal - totally worth the drive. We can take or leave the apples, but we cannot leave without a few dozen of these bad boys:

As you can see, the girls really enjoyed them.

Mira thought a good chomp into an apple could get that loose tooth to come out. But it hung on for a few more days.

(I was playing around with some photo effects using Picnik. Fun stuff, you should check it out.)

We had to do the tractor ride through the orchard. It's mandatory.

A few weeks later we went to pick out our Halloween pumpkins.

They always have plenty of wooden backdrops to stick your faces in.

Tim and Abby drank too much cider and had to use the facilities while we were there.

Then we went home and carved the pumpkins.

And this shady group of hooligans went out terrorizing our neighborhood in search of candy.



raspberries gone wild

The raspberries we planted a few years ago are out of control and have no boundaries. They've spread around the back of the garage, harassing the hostas that live there and threatening to take up residence in the strawberry bed. But the upshot to letting them do their thang is now we've got a boat load of raspberries. We picked over six pounds the other day in about 15 minutes. I froze three quarts for later and produced a raspberry & honeycrisp apple pie that was really tasty.

Speaking of harvests... Today I plucked the giant tomato in the picture off my "Mortgage Lifter" plant. Weighing in at 1 lb, 10.5 oz it is the largest tomato I've ever grown. While not a spectacular year for my tomatoes-- largely due to the early-season tomato snatcher (who stole and ate half of every tomato as soon as it started to ripen)-- we did not have the late blight this year so I have gotten a few good fruits. 

Side note: Physical evidence observed at the crime scene (teeth marks) gave me reason to believe the early-season tomato snatchers to be a band of rodents, probably squirrels or chipmunks. Even though I assigned the dog to guard the tomatoes, sprayed the fruits with Tabasco, and a put a "Repels-All" barrier around the garden composed of granulated wolf urine/garlic/putrefied eggs, the snatching continued. Subsequently, I dispatched my trusty feline to address the issue as part of her weight loss regimen. In spite of her morbidly obese status, she did manage to infiltrate the gang and brought me its leader, a chipmunk with crazy eyes who now sleeps with the fishes. I think the gang got the message because the tomato snatching ceased.

rediffricated

Rediffricated. Pronounced ree-dif-ri-kay-ted. This is Abby's own word meaning "not to Abby's liking". She applies the term liberally, sometimes to a too-flowery shirt of which she's not a fan: "This shirt is rediffricated. I want to wear the other one." Other times the word refers to another's (mostly Mira's) behavior: "Mira! You are being rediffricated!" It's fair to say that after a long day last week, Abby would have found this situation to be rediffricated as well:

Abby's long day was spent fishing and swimming and canoeing and roasting marshmallows. It was enough to wipe a girl out -- so much so that she fell asleep in the midst of her late-night snack (strawberry mini wheats).

We spent a few days relaxing on Lake Chautauqua with my family and rocked some canoes, kayaks, power boats, and s'mores.

The girls were enthralled with fishing from the dock. Well, except the time Abby fell backwards off the end and into the drink. But we fished her out soon enough and she got right back up on the horse, as they say.

The fish were usually biting and they pulled in plenty of perch and sunfish. Mira even managed to hook a bass, but unfortunately my camera wasn't nearby for that photo op.

The lucky ladies also had Daddy and Uncle D there to take care of the rediffricated aspects of fishing, like putting worms on hooks and releasing each catch (eew!).