strawberry cream cake + happy birthday to the little man.

Oh, you guys. You need this cake in your life. I hereby resolve to make this cake once every summer until I die. Simple, spongy, flavorful vanilla cake, fresh strawberry halves with more minced strawberries and stovetop-reduced juices hidden inside, and whipped cream/cream cheese/vanilla bean frosting... sigh. It's so good.

The little man is 1 today. He is pulling himself up, getting into everything (especially his sister's toys), cutting more teeth, and being true to his serious little self. I can't believe it's already been a year. How did this happen?

right now: on my radar

My big sister's music. Her arrangements are getting more gorgeous all the time. Case in point.

The Honest Toddler. I don't really go for humor blogs, but this one is hee-larious.

French onion soup sandwiches, aka heaven on a plate.
Southwest-style sweaters in bright colors. This one's sold out, anyone know of something similar?
Seedfolks. A beautiful little morsel of a book. It would be amazing for a book group.
Field Study + simple strip quilt. I need to make this happen.

Safer birth in a barn. Oh yes.
Growing out a pixie cut, month by month. Rachel is my hair muse.
aaaand...
These guys.

it's the great kale, charlie brown

Golly, we've got a lot of kale. Swimming in it. Yesterday we clear cut a ton and froze it, following directions from Not Martha. I like the way she does it, so it's not just a solid block of greens, but a bunch of smaller pieces so you can pull out a handful for soup or whatever.

Also loving:

:: flowers from the garden, looking so happy on my kitchen windowsill

:: The Patron Saint of Liars -- one of those books I wind up snitching off to read during every spare 30 seconds

:: peaches. lean-over-the-sink, juice-to-your-elbow peaches.

:: cool evening breeze

:: baby in 3 weeks or so, trying not to fool myself into thinking he's showing up any earlier than that.

strawberries

Strawberries! The girls and I had the best time (c'mon, how can you beat a tractor ride and limitless strawberries in your tummy?). So far I have made some strawberry-lemon preserves, strawberry frozen yogurt, and also some jam that turned out to be, uhh, dessert sauce instead. Still on the list: fruit leather and some actual jam, if I can keep enough strawberries around for the purpose. Any favorite strawberry recipes I need to know about?

in the garden

* thinned out a few carrots yesterday.
* feeling ready to thin down a bit myself.
* not happening anytime soon.
* loving this canning book and want to make (and eat) everything in it. apricot + vanilla bean preserves? yes please.
* going to the strawberry u-pick next week. so excited.
* have been reading ramona the pest to the girls. they love it, and i love that they are loving it.
* am understanding completely now why my parents picked the single-level house over the two-story house when they knew they'd be having another baby (me).
* clear-cut most of the arugula this week and made a ton of arugula pesto. arugula pesto on grilled cheese = heaven.
* zucchini blossoms! preparing for the deluge.
* happy weekend. i hope it's been a good one. and happy father's day!

garden harvest: kale

It's been rainy for a few days here and we are all going a little bit stir crazy. We did get our first harvest of kale from the garden, though, and that was very exciting. It's incredibly tender and mild, nothing like the kale at the store. It made me think a lot today about how strange it is that we all buy the same varieties of kale, carrots, potatoes, whatever, at every grocery store across the country. It's a small excitement -- an easter egg radish, a royal chantenay carrot, a chioggia beet -- but a happy excitement (and variety!) to add to dinner hour anyway. A good a reason as any to grow a garden.

Last night we put the girls to bed early and I headed out to the garden, "just to hill to potatoes," I told R. He wandered out an hour later, laughing, to find me having torn up another 18 square feet of sod, planting cabbage and cauliflower starts that were just too pretty to leave at the farmer's market, and laying down extra bricks on the garden path. And hilling the potatoes. I had half a rack of baby back ribs at TGI Friday's for dinner, by the way. That may or may not have had something to do with it.

summer food: tabbouleh

It's really summertime when tabbouleh hits the menu. There are million ways to make it; we like ours heavy on the veggies, medium on the herbs, and light on the bulgur. Bulgur is wheat that's been cooked, dried, and crushed; all you have to do is reconstitute it -- in this case, with lemon juice.

I was so giddy that all the green stuff (except the cucumber) came from our garden (eep!). We had this with grilled sausages and some buttered green beans for dinner. It is so crunchy and refreshing. Last year the girls hated it, but this time they gobbled it up -- Maren had 3 helpings!

Tabbouleh
adapted from Cook's Illustrated

1/2 c bulgur wheat, rinsed and drained
1/4 c lemon juice
1/4 to 1/3 c olive oil
salt, to taste
1-2 c minced fresh parsley (cilantro is a nice supplement)
2 medium tomatoes, diced, or 1 can diced tomatoes, drained well
1 bell pepper, chopped
1 cucumber, chopped
4 medium scallions, sliced
2 T minced fresh mint leaves

Combine the bulgur and lemon juice in a medium bowl. If you're using a fresh lemon, dump in the pulp leftover from juicing (yum). Set aside until bulgur grains are tender, 20-40 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and toss. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

summer food: strawberry-rhubarb crisp

I hope your Memorial Day weekend has been fantastic. We've been loving good weather, good friends & neighbors, good fun, good work, and some doggone good desserts. It is high rhubarb season here in the North Country, and the $6 worth of gorgeous red stalks I bought at the roadside stand could probably feed our entire neighborhood ad infinitum.

And so, I give you my neighbor Helen's uh-mazing recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp. Crisp topping, I'm finding, is an intensely personal preference -- some like it thinly spread and crunchy, like granola; some like it soft and fluffy, like a biscuit -- and a thousand variations in between. This crisp topping is a thick layer of rich and buttery goodness, slightly crisp when you first bite into it, then soft and crumbly as you keep chewing, a little like a huge, supersoft butter-oatmeal cookie. And the ratio of crisp to fruit is, in my opinion anyway, perfect -- nearly 1 to 1.

It's a lot of butter. To quote Rapunzel, Don't freak out! Totally worth it.

Helen's Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

For the topping:
1 1/2 c flour
1 c packed brown sugar
1 c rolled oats
1 c butter, melted

For the fruit:
4 c diced strawberries
4 c diced rhubarb
1 c sugar

3 T flour

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine dry ingredients for topping. Stir in melted butter. Stick it in the fridge while you prepare the fruit. Combine all the fruit ingredients, adjusting fruit ratios and sugar to taste. Pour fruit into a 9x12 (or similarly-sized -- I used an 8x10 and it was perfect) casserole dish. Crumble the topping over the fruit. Bake for 45 minutes, until richly golden brown and bubbly. Cool for a few hours before devouring.

Postscript: like this dessert wasn't enough... we made s'mores, too.

at dusk on a wednesday

* maren floated down the stairs one day with this wig on her head. my friend helen & i laughed forever.
* the girls have started randomly yelling "whu-BAM!" at appropriate (and inappropriate) moments.
* i just started the last book of the zion covenant series. i've liked it a lot.
* i am gardening with bliss and abandon.
* the baby will show up about the same time as the tomatoes.
* the garden primer and square foot gardening make me feel like i have an inkling what i am doing.
* we started composting again. holes drilled into a garbage can with a locking lid, rolled around in the yard every few days.
* there is a doorway of juniper that leads from one part of the backyard to another. it makes me think of narnia.
* i started making my to-do lists in pencil. that way i can erase the stuff that didn't get done and i don't care about at the end of the day anyway.
* i am making a ridiculous cake for book group tomorrow.
* i am getting huge.
* this is not an exaggeration.
* if this is what a third pregnancy is like, i'm a little nervous about the fourth.
* i don't believe anyone who tells me it's just because it's a boy this time.
* i loved michelle duggar's post on letting go of expectations.
 * we finally caved and bought a blender.
* this has thrown us into the daily quest for smoothie nirvana.
* have you tried putting an avocado in a smoothie? it's incredible.
* i am burying myself in books until nice weather comes back: organic body care, simple modern sewing, natural health, last child in the woods.
* i totally pre-ordered some ed emberley to make some pants for the boy. kid needs clothes, right? that's what i thought.
* i think we're all caught up now. how are you?

eat healthy // feel better

Whenever my husband is gone, I have a bad habit of lapsing into kid/junk food mode. Kraft Mac n Cheese for lunch. Spaghetti for dinner, a can of mushy green beans if you're lucky. I also have a bad habit of indulging in way too many mommy treats. Cookies and chocolate are at the top of the list, and I justify them easily because I need them to keep my sanity while he's gone. Right? Right.

Compound all that with a second-trimester appetite and you have one great big tummy ache. After 3 weeks of this nonsense I started feeling like serious crap and decided enough was enough. So, after a deal-sealing dinner of greasy Chinese takeout one night, I sat down and made a list. Because for me, half the battle is knowing what to eat while the other half of the battle is having it prepared and available.

It's been all of 5 days since I quit eating crap and started eating real food again, and I feel so much better already.

So, in case you could use some inspiration or just some different ideas, here's the list I put on my fridge:

Breakfast

cooked grains with milk, honey/brown sugar, and butter/coconut oil -- quinoa, wheat, farro, barley, oats (I cooked a big pot of quinoa this morning and plan to use it for breakfast for several days)

yogurt + granola

fruit + toast with nut butter

NO packaged cereal

Snack

cheese + apple slices

smoothie or fresh juice

popcorn

granola wrap

hard-boiled eggs with s+p

NO packaged junk

Lunch (usually my achilles' heel)

brown rice + beans with roast veggies + salsa (this one requires planning, but a batch of each will last all week)

simple egg salad -- mash a hard-boiled egg with mayo, relish, s+p, herbs

grilled cheese with sliced apple or caramelized onions or bacon

fancy wrap -- cream cheese + turkey + cranberry + spinach (my fave this week -- I've had at least 2 a day)

-- turkey + avocado + fruit salsa + cheese

-- turkey + hard boiled egg + bacon + avocado + blue cheese

-- chicken + spinach + feta + craisins + poppy seed dressing

NO mac n cheese

Dinner

beans + rice with grilled chicken + salsa

broiled or seared tofu + simple fresh veggie + grain 

sausages + polenta + simple fresh veggie

tabbouleh + pita + grilled chicken

butternut soup + chef's salad

real tacos

grilled flank steak + szechwan slaw

chicken salad in pitas + fruit salad

lentil soup + homemade bread

There's lots more dinner ideas over here from when I was the private cook for a sorority house for a year (didn't see that one coming, did you). What about you? What are your go-to real foods that taste good + don't cost a fortune?

at home

my neighbor brought over a 1 week old boxer named alice. eeeeeeee

i love opening the fridge and seeing all kinds of homemade deliciousness in jars.

{don't go thinking i'm all high and mighty, let's notice the reddi whip in the back}

our first sticker chart, and it works! for now.

hello, spring, we've been waiting.

PB&H Breakfast Wrap with Yogurt, Granola, & Bananas

This may fall squarely into the realm of Weird Foods I Loved Growing Up, but I don't care, because I remembered this wrap today, made one, and it was so insanely good that I had to share it. I got the recipe from a sandwich cookbook, can't remember the name of it. I worked at a bookstore in high school and loved to sneak on-the-clock reads in the cookbook section. This wrap makes an equally awesome breakfast or mid-afternoon pick-me-up.

It's simple, it's healthy, it's filling, and it's really, really tasty. 

I even made homemade granola AND homemade yogurt this week, can't get much better than that

 {except maybe harvesting your own honey?? hmm}.

PB&H Breakfast Wrap with Yogurt, Granola, & Bananas
serves 1

1 flour tortilla
Peanut butter
1/2 banana, sliced
Plain yogurt, about 1/4 cup
Granola, about 1/4 cup
Honey

Smear peanut butter on the tortilla. Distribute banana slices over the middle third of the tortilla. Top with yogurt, granola, and a generous drizzle of honey. Wrap that baby tight and nosh it up.

blimey, it's lemony and limey!

I have had a big thing for citrus lately. That bright, tart-sweet loveliness that fills your mouth and your memory with warmer days. This winter has been unbelievably mild around these parts, but I am starting to itch a little bit for some bare feet in the grass, know what I mean?

Two recipes I've been loving this week: lemon poppy seed muffins and lime marmalade.

Now that I think of it, I haven't tried eating them together. Time to remedy that?

Some notes on both...

I never use tin liners for muffins, but in this case I should have. They are pretty delicate. I made a couple of changes to the recipe -- I rubbed the lemon zest into the sugar before creaming, and then at the end, I poked lots of holes into each muffin top with a fork before applying the glaze with a pastry brush. That way the glaze gets really deep into the muffin {yum}. 

The marmalade was a total impulse thing {hmm, it's 3 pm, let's can!}. The last time I made this was in like 2005 in Ramona's little basement apartment that we rented FOR FREE. Those were the days. You can eat it on muffins or scones or whatever, but we eat it almost exclusively on corn muffins {you seriously will not find a better recipe than this one; your grandma is really nice, but this kicks her cornbread's trash} when we're having chili or taco soup.

Muffin time for this mama. Again.  

pinned: delicious

It's funny to look backwards through what I've pinned over the past few months, especially in the food department. There's a sudden shift from decadent, rich, celebratory recipes in December to simpler, fresher, lighter recipes in January. {well, some of it, anyway.} What about you, been having any fantastic cravings lately? Because I for one am not one to say no to a craving. And I always like to have a new one. Or two or three.

Some of my faves...

baked grapefruit >> eat sleep cuddle

quinoa salad >> eating for england

tangled thai salad >> canadian gift guide

guacamole grilled cheese >> two peas and their pod

16-minute beef and bean burritos >> the pioneer woman

orange push-up smoothie >> love veggies and yoga

peach crisp with maple cream sauce >> the pioneer woman

{suspend that statement about craving lighter.}