blue cheese souffle for one, please

We had a great day on Saturday. The weather was amazing at a balmy 65 degrees with the sun blazing down. We pretended it was summer and stayed outside all day, ate watermelon, had ice cream cones and grilled some BBQ chicken. Today, however, the weather is less than desirable. Cold, dreary, rainy and all-around depressing.

To pep me up from the dreary day, I was craving a meal that's comforting and flavorful, but relatively light given my recent gorging spree on these. Drawing inspiration from one of my favorite TV cooking personalities, I settled on a blue cheese souffle alongside some lightly dressed arugula and baby spinach. I had to adjust the recipe down to one serving since Tim is slaving away for work in sunny California (poor guy).

While I was preparing the souffle, I couldn't help indulge in one of my all-time favorite snacks. (So much for the light dinner!) If you haven't yet tried this one, you need to stop what you're doing and go get some honey, crackers, and your favorite blue cheese (one of my recent faves is Point Reyes). All I can say is this is a little slice of heaven right here, mm hmm.

The souffle itself was pretty good, but not nearly as rich and satisfying as my appetizer. It did, however, fit the bill for a light but savory meal. I might play around with some other flavors next time I venture into non-dessert souffle territory. I recently saw a blog post for a cheddar and roasted green chili souffle, which sounds delicious.

speak your mind

A favorite recreational activity here is running in a big loop through the house. All three of them--Mira, Abby and Mickey (the dog)--run around and around. It never seems to get old. (Yes, I know. "No running in the house!" My mom did teach me that one but we don't consistently enforce the rule here.)

This afternoon, everyone was doing laps with a choice kitchen tool in hand. Abby had a big serving spoon and Mira had some plastic tongs. Oh and Mickey, well he didn't have anything. Suddenly I hear Mira yelp from the other room and this is the exchange that followed:

Mira: "Mommy, Abby whapped me with the spoon!"

Me: "Abby, that's not nice. We don't hit people. What do you say to Mira?" (expecting her to say the obligatory "I'm sorry, Mira" in response)

Abby (turns to Mira): "I wanna whap you!"

Well, I guess you should expect a 2 year old to speak her mind. Tim and I could hardly stop ourselves from exploding in hysterical laughter.

I don't have a photo of this incident, but here's a picture of Abby being a kook.

spring fever

Every year around this time, when the snow finally melts and we get a couple teaser days of tolerable temperatures and sun, I start to construct this magnificent fantasy garden in my head. This year is no different. After some serious on-line shopping, this fantasy garden moved from my head to my bank card.

This imaginary Eden is the source of my love/hate relationship with gardening. In early spring I always forget how much work it is and how my garden never seems to achieve the pinnacle of production I had envisioned. Well, I suppose the optimist in me has won out again, because this year I've really gone and done it. I ordered 50 strawberry plants, 4 blueberry bushes, 3 rhubarb plants, 25 asparagus plants, and 8 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes.

Ah, tomatoes. My garden nemesis. Last year had to be the absolute worst year ever because of all the wet weather. Fungus took over and I had virtually nothing to show for all 12 plants. Last year I tried a couple heirloom varieties in addition to my old favorite, Brandywine. These oldies but goodies can be tricky and I never seem to have the stamina to keep them healthy and fight off the blight. 

A notable heirloom variety I tried was the Cherokee Purple. One of these fruits will sell for $6 at my farmers' market, so naturally I wanted to grow them myself. The plant started out great, setting the first fruits of all other plants in my garden. One tomato got huge and was almost ready to pick when... we left for a week of vacation! After vacation, disease set in and it all went downhill fast. So what ended up being the ONLY Cherokee Purple to appear in my garden last year was snagged by my mother in law who was graciously tending our garden while we were out of town. Sigh...

Well I'm determined that this year will be different and I'll have a stunning crop of tomatoes. I couldn't resist ordering the "Mortgage Lifter" (the creator of the variety apparently paid off his mortgage by selling the popular seeds). Mmm... I can almost taste the tomato sandwiches, caprese salads, and bruschetta already.

hangin' with our man Stanley

Cousin Emaleigh mailed us a guy named Flat Stanley a few weeks ago. So I'm told, he likes to travel around in an envelope and visit different places. Flat Stanley had a nice time visiting us, but now he's on his way back to Emaleigh's school. Our friendly postal carrier picked him up around 11:23 am today! But before he left, we were able to snap a photo of him with the girls:

 

I'm also trying my hand at recording sound bites and posting them here. So here's my first attempt. When Abby is going about her business stacking blocks or stealthily unloading a whole box of tissues, she often hums this little ditty to herself over and over:

leprechauns go swimming

The leprechauns came to Mira's preschool and got into all sorts of shenanigans. Apparently, they left footprints all over, hung out in the dollhouse and trashed the place, went swimming in the john (leaving the water green) and ran outside, disrobed, and left their wee-little clothing strewn all around the yard. 

So when Mira got home yesterday, she promptly broke out these bad boys which apparently enable the wearer to spot a leprechaun.   

After an hour or so of searching every nook and cranny for the little buggers, she finally relented. Well, it appears that last night the wee-men decided to take a dip in our toilet because this morning the water was bright green. Mira's discovery of this crazy green swimming pool prompted another desperate search with her special goggles. Too funny.

Today we'll also be gettin' our Irish on by cooking up a pot of corned beef and cabbage finished with these yummy looking 'thin mint' cupcakes. Let's hope the leprechauns don't pull any more mischief.

 

Abby's Irish eyes are smilin' too.

taking the plunge

Ok, so I've decided to start a blog. And I know that banana is spelled with an "a", but couldn't help use one of Abby's latest vocal treasures. With her it's always bonana no matter how many times we try to gently correct her. Other recent favorites in the phrase category include "Hey! Gimme back!" (for example, used when someone tries to get a sip from her vanilla milkshake) and "No, I no wannit."

And now that Mira just polished off half a box of Thin Mints, proclaiming them "one hundred and thousand times better than candy" (I'd have to agree), I suppose it's time for our next plunge into the bathtub.