early summer days

Just a few early summer days, in snapshots....

S and H have discovered the joy of using the staple gun and stuffing things to make them 3-dimensional. I have a new appreciation for the seemingly superfluous cotton ball (the stuffing).

We are watering the gardens and watching them grow, ever so slowly this year. We rescued a new (to us) terracotta strawberry pot from the recycling center and then a couple of (2 for 1) boxes of strawberry plants they were clearing out at the garden center. Hopefully this super cheap and easy little project will yield a good little crop of berries for us, maybe even for a few years before the clay eventually crumbles.

Spent the evening, just the kids and I, adventuring along the river of a local park. The longest days of the year are certainly my favorite. The kids agree. The hours of play (and tree hugging) time of each day has been seriously extended!

The art of blanket fort building. It started out small, but this only inspired the kids to go big! It wasn't long before K thought it would be a great idea to set up the tent we use for camping instead!
Since we're heading out for our first camping trip of the season in less than 2 weeks, I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to practice setting it up again (it was easier than I remember it being last year - yay!). Hours of soft toy - pet shop - horse stable play ensued....


We continue to observe for changes in the tadpoles.... We've had reports back from the other families who took some tadpoles from us that theirs are much larger and growing much faster. This has me perplexed (since none are dying and all seem happy and active). I can only deduce that we have too many in too small of space, which is making the water toxic too quickly (too much poop!) to be healthy and there is too much competition for food. This week we'll release a good number and see what happens. We also started sprinkling in fish flakes as I was told they like them. Stay tuned.

Ah, and the Donvier. Grandma scored this hand crank Donvier Chillfast ice cream maker second-hand (I think it was $5) and sent it to us in a parcel. It absolutely rocks! First we made vanilla and it is agreed that it's the best we ever had. The recipe used a perfect combination of milk and cream, rather than all cream (in the ice cream we made with a friend's electric mixer previously we used 100% cream and it was far too rich for me).

This week tried coconut milk ice cream. We are definitely all preferring the dairy as the coconut lends itself to a slimy texture on the tongue but it was an interesting and FUN experiment to say the least....



What can I add to this?
Oh, trips to the water park on the few occasions that it's been warm enough.
Pulling horsetail from the gardens non-stop (K is on a mission and S has also recently joined in the battle!).

Reading Hardy Boys mysteries (currently finishing "What Happened at Midnight?), which keep us all on the edge of our seats in a fun and exciting way without giving anyone nightmares. They're also incredibly rich in vocabulary which I myself find as a welcome change and challenge! We're both getting good at deducing word meanings by paying close attention to the context in which they're being used (because neither of us can stand to interrupt the flow of a suspenseful story with trips through the dictionary!).
Researching and thinking up our own good camping meals and snack ideas.... there are so many great sites for this online so I'll leave you with a few good links:

Camping Food Ideas (Complete Family Guide - recipes and ideas)
Simply Frugal (camping food recipes ideas)
Canadian Canoe Routes (camping food recipes and ideas)

That's enough goodness for now!

a favorite sweet treat

This is a traditional Mennonite treat the kids can make
together very easily. It's delicious but very sweet so we
don't make it too often but when we do, we sure enjoy it!
I love the more tart fruits like plums or sour cherries
which balance out the sweetness perfectly.
Today S and H helped me make it with last  summer's
Italian plums from our freezer.

Batter

1/2 cup    butter
1/2 cup    sugar
2              eggs
1 tsp.       vanilla
2 cups     flour
2 tsp.       baking powder

3/4 cup     milk

2-4 cups  fruit (fresh or frozen, not canned; good ones are Italian plums,
blackberries, peaches, strawberries and rhubarb, sour cherries... )

Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla.
Combine dry ingredients in separate bowl and mix into creamed mixture
alternating with milk. The batter should be thick enough to spread, not pourable.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, spread batter about
1 cm thick covering the whole sheet.
Arrange fruit on top however you like.

Topping (Rübel)

1 cup    flour
1 cup    sugar
1/2 cup  butter

Sprinkle rübel all over fruit and bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
To brown the top, at the end of 30 minutes turn oven on broil and watch carefully.
Broil until golden (only takes a couple of minutes).


Today we had the bonus of having some leftover vanilla ice cream we
made this week to add on the side!
They were perfect together.

My variations and conversions are originally based on a recipe I found online several years ago.

a very good day and a recipe....

What a wonderful day we all had today.

I had my first bike ride of the season with kids in tow in the bike trailer, and it was GOOD. So good! K stayed home and built with Lego as he had a bout of the stomach flu yesterday and wasn't feeling quite back to his energetic self this morning.

H and S always run and eagerly hop in the trailer at the mere mention of a ride, they love whisking up and down the streets of our town and looking at everything (cats, dogs, people, interesting houses, trees, flowers...) we pass by. They also like it when I go fast!

Then I spent half of the day unpacking from storage, dusting off and setting up the deck furniture and sun canopy that enable us to extend our living space out onto the deck for the next several months. It really does make our small house feel much bigger when the door is always open and we eat most of our meals (and make most of our messes) outside! Ahhh, I love it!

While I worked on that, the boys built and played with Lego Bionicles (and periodically asked me to take pictures).

a Bionicle fort

These Bionicles were my oldest son A's (who collected them more than ten years ago now and brought many back from when we lived in New Zealand). He handed them down to his little brothers a couple of years ago and they've loved them since. Sometimes they will play with them and almost nothing else for days on end.

so dramatic looking, isn't it?

It was so fun watching them use the outdoor landscape as their battle terrain today. These are the same boys who, on another given day, would spend hours building fairy houses out of nature objects, or pretending to rescue and nurse baby animals, so for me it all balances out ;-)

these ones have rock powers

Even though the play is "supposed" to be all about the "battle", I'd say easily 95% of the time spent with this toy is about the building, snapping together different configurations of body parts, bartering with each other for pieces (nonviolent communication!), testing out new color schemes, naming the new characters, introducing them to the other ones, setting them up in cool poses and asking me to take pictures! I don't actually recall much battling going on come to think of it! It's definitely a creative outlet for them and a whole lot of fun.

scouting and surveying

setting up for more shots

After many, many hours of Bionicle play, running around the yard, bouncing on a new (to us) rebounder I found at the recycling exchange (for free) and much gardening, putting in our sunflower transplants and checking out their very healthy root systems,

mammoth sunflower

planting more carrots, lettuces, peas...

our first round of peas are looking good

we had our first meal on the deck and strawberry lassis for dessert to celebrate a perfect day.

cheers to our first sunny and warm evening on the deck!

Here's generally how we enjoy our lassis, which we love to make together:

1. In a blender or with a hand blender in a large container, add a handful of fresh (or we use our locally picked frozen from last summer) strawberries, mango, peach... whatever fruit you like.
2. Add to that about a cup or two of ice cubes (we have a tray that makes very little ice cubes which are much easier on the blender) and about a cup and a half of plain yogurt. I love Saugeen Country organic whole yogurt, which makes a creamy, full-flavored and super-nutritious lassi.
3. Sweeten to taste with honey, maple syrup or sugar. Add a little to start and adjust if needed. This is not supposed to be very sweet, more tangy still from the yogurt.
4. If you like, add a touch (1/4 tsp. or so) of powdered cardamom for a more authentic and delicious flavor.

Pulse and then blend until smooth. And just try not to get addicted!


Sometimes lassis are made without fruit and with a little salt for a savory experience but we're all about the fruit over here.

sweet violet jelly

sweet violets

Very shortly after my recent post about not picking enough violets to make jelly, we were pleasantly surprised by a friend dropping off a container-full at our door that he'd harvested for us while out harvesting nettle; 2 lightly-packed cups' worth. It was just the right amount to make the jelly!

Hillary packed them all into a quart jar

Because the violets are so tender, we set to using them right away.

fitting in every last one

we filled the jar with boiling water, to cover

topped with a lid, we set them aside to soak

Generally you only need to soak them overnight to get a good amount of color and flavor from them but we soaked about 24 hours which gave us a very deep purple infusion...

violet liquid after 24 hours

Kale enjoyed the next step: measuring off 2 cups of the beautiful liquid (discard any extra) and adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, then watching it instantly react and change color...

a chemical reaction

After that, with jelly-making being such a rapid process, things moved too quickly to take photos. We poured the liquid into a pot, added a packet of pectin and brought to a boil. Once boiling, we added 4 cups of sugar and brought it back to boil hard for one minute and removed from heat. I'd like to experiment with honey and Pomona's pectin next time which is what I normally use for all my jams and jellies to avoid the refined sugar.

sweet violet jelly foam

Kale had the next job of skimming the foam off the top with a large spoon. It tasted like sweet violet mousse! Delicious!

skimmed jelly on fresh from the oven yam biscuits

The last job was to pull our sterilized quarter-pint and half-pint jars (this recipe makes approximately 3 half-pint or 6 quarter-pint jars) and their lids and rings out of the boiling water bath where they were sterilizing.

We quickly and very carefully filled them, leaving a half-inch space at the top, topped with lids and rings (the jars were too hot to touch so I did all of this part) and set them aside to self-seal. No further processing necessary!

the sweet results!

While a shorter soaking time usually yields a fainter, more delicate looking purple jelly, our jelly turned out to be a jewel-like ruby red in the jars. On a background of cream cheese on crackers it looks more pinkish-purple.

Kale and I both describe the flavor of the jelly as an "in your head" experience, literally. You don't really taste the violet immediately with your tongue but rather as a subtle and sweet floral scent in the back of your mouth and in your nose as you swallow. It's simply delightful! We'll be making this every spring now, for sure.

good times at home

Today we ventured into the land of ice cream day-dreaming (coming up with our own imagined flavors), ice cream making, ice cream eating...

Watching the first batch of mango ice cream churn round and round

While we waited for the ice cream to harden, I prepared chicken and salad stuffed pitas and lentil soup for dinner. When I asked Sam if he was willing to help with setting the table, his answer to that was "Sure! I'll get the scissors and go across the street and cut some fresh daffodils for the vase." Our neighbor welcomes Sam to come and cut a fresh bunch each week and last week's were looking tired. So I guess to Sam, replacing them was the most important part of setting the table.

Once he snipped some, he brought them home and trimmed them all to just the right length to look nice

...and brought a hyacinth for our little bunny vase.

After dinner... time to test our finished batches of mango and strawberry (chocolate still hardening in the freezer)

digging in!

it was rich and decadent and we can't wait to experiment some more

After dinner Hillary, Sam and Kale and I joined Aden out in the driveway to burn off some of that ice cream with some skateboarding. Kale is studying Aden's moves and trying really hard to figure out how to ollie. Since he hasn't quite gotten it, his next favorite thing to do is stack items and obstacles in the way for Aden to ollie. Then he watches, inspired to work toward it himself.

Sam has recently figured out how to balance while rolling downhill and is so proud and excited to learn more. These kids have nerves of steel and will try anything. To me, the pavement just looks way to hard.

Kale and Sam look up to their biggest brother Aden (who is 17) admiringly and will eagerly eat up any tips or suggestions he offers them.

Aden is one of those really cool (loving, caring, full of sound advice) big brothers that I think any kid would want and is such a positive influence in their lives. I'm so glad they have the relationship that they do.

Sam's extra-special proud moment tonight was this: standing on the wheels of his upside down skateboard while balancing on an old pop crate. Yup, the kid's got skillz, that's fer sure.

Sam makes tortillas!

Sam is one step closer to claiming the the title of "Tortilla Maker" in our home.


I had measured and mixed the dough ingredients and was just about to proceed with the rolling and frying when Sam came in and asked if he could help. I said "sure", handed him the rolling pin and (with one ear toward him in case he needed help) I went and turned the heat on the pan.

We make tortillas pretty regularly and I usually am the one to juggle the rolling and frying, running to and fro between the oven and the table to roll more as they cook. It was so lovely to have a willing helper methodically roll out one ball after another into a beautiful tortilla while I casually stood at the stove tending to the one in the pan.

As he was working, I asked him to hold one of his just-rolled tortillas up for me so I could take a picture and he said "no mama, I'm afraid it will tear!". And he's probably right. After 15 minutes or so, as a result of our teamwork, we had a delicious stack of fresh tortillas to go with our tortilla soup.


Sam knew he could do it; and he was pleased with his new skill and proud to contribute to the making of a family meal.


I am excited about the idea of relinquishing more of the process of making tortillas to Sam next time, so long as he is keen and interested. From measuring ingredients to mixing the dough just right, to setting the timer to let the dough rest, to rolling out and then frying.

Knowing Sam, it would likely fulfill his need to feel valued and capable; for learning and autonomy; and for contributing to the whole family. For me, I'm happy that I may soon be free to just concentrate on making the soup and I do so enjoy watching little hands work. Who doesn't like a little help in the kitchen?