The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

First Harvest, Two Ways

All of our gardens this year seem, at this point, to be more lush and productive than they were at this time last year.  Maybe it's the weather.  Maybe it's the super awesome compost we put down.  Maybe my husband's green thumb grew THREE SIZES that day.  I don't know.  But we've got a lot of green stuff out there.

We've been picking asparagus for several weeks now, and here and there a leaf of something, but yesterday, we actually harvested some things.  In a collander (so you know we mean business).

Here's the take:

Four pak choi, two more asparagus, and about 6 broccoli rabe plants.  Part of the reason we pulled these (except the asparagus) was because they had grown so tall they were blocking light from some smaller plants behind them.  The broccoli rabe can really go a bit longer, but, again, they were blocking light, and I was hungry.

My initial plan was to cook all the greens together, probably in some kind of pasta dish.  But something in me resisted that plan and so I figured, okay, I'll make two dishes.  I thought it would be fun to make these two dishes kind of similar, but with different ethnic influences.

No real recipe - I didn't measure things - but here's what I did:

Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe and Asparagus

I poured some olive oil in a pan, added two crushed, sliced cloves of garlic, and about two tablespoons of tomato paste.

To that I added a good slug of Blueberry Wine (yes, blueberry) from Cellardoor Vineyard in Lincolnville, ME (not far from Camden).  Why Blueberry Wine?  The bottle was already uncorked.  And it's red.

I whisked all that together and let it simmer for a bit, and sprinkled some oregano in there, too.  While all that was going on, I also had a big pot of water on the stove, coming to a boil, for the spaghetti.

I rinsed the rabe (and trimmed off the roots) and the asparagus...

I also thawed some shrimp and sliced them in half, lengthwise.

Once the spaghetti was cooking, I sliced the rabe, broke the asparagus into pieces, and added them to the tomato paste and garlic mixture.  When that had cooked down, I added the shrimp pieces, and then, when the spaghetti was cooked, I combined the spaghetti with the sauce/shrimp/greens mixture and served.

A little freshly grated parmesan on top, and my kids were both quite happy to eat this for dinner.

While I was doing all that, I was also concocting this:

Thai Style Rice Noodles with Baby Pac Choi

 

First up, I trimmed the roots from the pak choi leaves.

And then I rinsed the dirt off...

And sliced the leaves cross-wise, about an inch wide, and set them aside while I assembled some other ingredients...

And they are:  ban pho (rice noodles about half an ince wide), zest and eventually juice of one lime, 3 dried thai chilis (sliced later), sliced fresh ginger, two cloves of garlic, and some shrimp. 

I also had on hand some fish sauce (nuoc mam) and soy sauce.  I think that was everything.

I immersed the noodles in a large bowl of boiling water to soak for about ten minutes.

Once the spaghetti had been added to the sauce in the first recipe, I had my power burner free and set the wok above that.  I poured some vegetable oil in the wok and heated it until it started to smoke.

To that I added the garlic and ginger, sauteed them briefly, then added the chopped chilis, and the lime zest, and the fish and soy sauces.  I'd say to taste, but it was more to see and to smell.

Next in went the shrimp, and on top of that, the sliced pak choi, and the lime juice.

After the pak choi was wilted, I drained the rice noodles and added them into the wok and tossed the mixture together. 

Because of the heat from the thai chilis, Bill and I ate this and didn't give any to the kids.

Both dishes were good, though there is certainly room for improvement.  But for a quick, impromptu pair of noodle and fresh greens dishes, they were pretty tasty.

I love spring.

   

A Closer Look at Meringue

Just because.

At Joe and Em's

Last Saturday we went to a surprise 25th birthday party/housewarming party for our nephew, Joe.  (The housewarming part of this also included his girlfriend, Emily.  Hi Em!)

Anyway, I am mildly jealous about WHERE their house is - the back of the property ends at the edge of a pond - the western end of the property, which means not only a beautiful view of water, but also a beautiful view at sunset.  We weren't there when the sun set, so I don't have anything like that.  I just have images like this:

and this:

   

And while we were there, not one, but two families of Canada geese stopped by to collect the bits of rolls my kids and another little girl (one of Em's little cousins)

were throwing into the water.

The first family on the scene had 6 goslings...

 

And the second family brought 4...

And at some point, amid the carb frenzy...

The goslings got a little confused...and instead of six and four, there were five and five...

And then there were three and seven...

But eventually they sorted things out...

And the 4-gosling family went on their way first...and then the 6-gosling family went off in the opposite direction...

And we trooped, through a mine field of goose droppings, back to the party.

Some more pictures from that afternoon can be found right here.

Camera-Happy X 3

Okay, I've set up a couple of flickr badges over on the left so I can share my kids' photos.

The first sets (and, like their mother, these children are not hesitant picture-takers, so the sets are rather large) are from this past weekend - Saturday, when they first got their cameras, and Bill and Joe caught some awesome fish, and then Sunday when we took the kids fishing in the morning and to Southwick's Zoo in the afternoon.

I still haven't posted my own pictures from the zoo or the fishing trips - yeah, I'm a slacker.

But - I have to share this - the coolest creature we saw at the zoo on Sunday?  An albino peacock.  Tail feathers on full display.  Stunning.  Just stunning.  Just wandering around outside the zoo.  With an albino hen and a couple of guinnea hens. 

And so now we have three sets of shots of the same bird.

Here's one of Alex's:

And one of Julia's:

And one of mine:

Okay, make that two of mine.  It's my blog.

Amazing, isn't he?

Snap Happy

Yes.  They've each got a Nikon Coolpix.  Julia's got the Coolpix L11, Alex has the Coolpix L14.

They have each snapped about a hundred pictures this morning.  And yeah, I spent a bit of money on the cameras and memory cards.  And yeah, my kids are little.

But.

They can fill the memory cards and if the pictures aren't worth printing, I don't have to print them.  I don't have to pay to have a disposable camera processed and printed, only to find out all the pictures were of the rail on a fencepost right at Julia's eye level.

So the way I'm looking at it, these cameras will have paid for themselves by the end of the summer, what with trips to the zoo and just happy kids snapping endless shots of the cat.

So you know what?  We're ALL happy.

And the kids know the deal - if they break the cameras, then that's it. 

Later on today I'm going to make neck straps for both of them.  Those wrist things don't really impress me at all.

Know what else?  It's been fun to see what they take pictures of.  They've been all over the house this morning, shooting pictures of the lizard as he sheds his skin...the cat, each other, their stuffed animals...books...Alex took a picture of a pancake on a plate...and so on.  It's really interesting and fun...looking through the lens through the eyes of my children.

Treasure

Yesterday, completely on a whim, I decided to bring the kids to the beach.  Alex is in the middle of a 4-week study of the oceans and sea creatures of all kinds, so I figured this would be especially cool for him.  It was a gorgeous day, too.  And the best part was, I didn't tell the kids where we were going.  Just bundled them up, gave them rubber gardening gloves to wear in case it was cold (and because we'd be collecting sandy, wet treasures along the shoreline) and off we went. 

We went to Oakland Beach, in Warwick, because it was close by.  We drove past the little house that Bill and I rented for a few years way back when, and we got chowder and clamcakes and lemonade at Iggy's.

We filled my deep coat pocket with all sorts of shells and rocks and crab claws, and I took a bunch of pictures.  The kids chased seagulls...we climbed on rocks...we saw 4 dead jellyfish...and we were out in the fresh air for a couple of hours. 

The kids see our collection of shells as their bounty, but I look through the pictures and see our time spent together as the real treasure.  I've included a few shots in this post, but if you want to see the rest of them, you can go here.

 

(and I didn't put that little starburst highlight on the shell - it just came out that way.)

and lastly - a bit of dabbling with artistic effects...we saw a pair of swans on the way home...here's one shot:

and here's what happened after I played with it a bit:

Fun stuff, huh?

Anyway, like I said, if you want to see all of them, you can go to my Oakland Beach set on flickr.

Good thing we went yesterday...it's pouring rain today.

First Day of T-Ball Practice

Alex had his first T-Ball practice this afternoon.  Bill helped him get his gear together, and the two of them headed to the field while I stayed home with Julia and made dinner.  It's cold and windy today, and we just didn't think Julia would be all that thrilled to sit on the bleachers for 45 minutes.

Anyway, I took a few pictures of Alex before he and Bill took off....

And then I thought it would be fun to try to get him to do the Papelbon stare.

I told him to look mean, and glare up at me just below the brim of his cap.

This was the look he gave me.

I told him to keep the mean eyes, but to lose the snarl.

We ended up laughing at each other as we made mean faces, and I had to look away so he could get his face under control.

You can see the little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  He fought it pretty well.

Then it was time to go...

      

(Sure, NOW he's serious.)

And off they went.

They got back around an hour later, and Alex had had a great time.  They learned to run the bases, practiced catching ground balls, and teamed up in twos to play catch. 

They have team pictures in a couple of weeks, and his first game is the weekend after that. 

It kind of blows my mind that I have a son old enough to participate in organized sports. 

But at the same time - it's so cool.

P.S.  There was another shot I took of Alex that I decided to play around with a bit.  You can see it below.

My Dad, the Young Photographer

I've had this monstrous project looming over my head.  Well, maybe not looming, because it's not a scary evil project.  Just a long-overdue one.  And it's big.  VERY big.

I have not put pictures in photo albums (with the exception of small albums of my kids' photo shoots when we go to the zoo) since, oh, before Bill and I started dating.  Which is going on eleven years ago.  Actually, since, oh, since my sister's son - her firstborn - was born.  So that's fifteen and a half (sorry, Mere) years ago.  So you may or may not be able to imagine the tons and tons of photos throughout the house, just sitting in their envelopes, chatting with their negatives, waiting patiently for me to get my act together and put them some place where people (including myself) could actually sit and look at them from time to time. 

And now that I've gone digital, which is going on...wow, two years this July...there are also all sorts of images in my laptop and the external hard drive I bought JUST SO I'D HAVE SOMEWHERE TO STORE THE PICTURES BECAUSE MY LAPTOP IS CONSTANTLY FULL that no one looks at but me because I don't print enough of them or upload to flickr on a regular enough basis, because I am disorganized or lazy or something.

Oh, and in addition to the pictures in all their envelopes, there is a good-sized box full of a huge melange of pictures and negatives that were caught in the flood in our basement in August of 2003.  Yes.  Four and a half years ago.  There were pictures down near the floor - a box of them or something - oh, yes, I think I had begun to attempt to try to think about to hope to organize them back THEN.  And they got wet along with anything else on or close to the floor.  So I spent a bunch of that afternoon/evening laying out all those pictures on the furniture and floor in the living room and our bedroom, and fortunately they really didn't get too badly damaged...but they did get totally mixed together.

So anyway.  On Sunday, I started working on this.  I sat down on the floor in my bedroom and started just sorting envelopes of prints and negatives into boxes loosely categorized thusly:  Before Bill.  With Bill But Before Kids.  With Kids.  Black and White.  Bill's Family Way Before My Time.  They're broad categories, but it was the easiest way to begin, rather than with years, for example.  And so far that's all I've done.

But while I was going through things, I came across a small envelope of some black and white prints my father gave me - copies of prints someone sent him, actually, of him (my dad) when he was a young photographer with a big ol' camera and before he had a wife or daughters. 

Here's one:

 

And here's the other:

 

Aren't they cool? 

Anyway, I just wanted to share them.   

I'll probably be posting other pictures, too, as I go through the mess.  So be warned!

Little Thinker

Haircuts

Alex's hair had been getting rather shaggy lately, so last week I brought him to my sister's house so she could trim it.  To save time, she was just going to use the electric clippers on the longest setting (so he'd at least HAVE some hair left at the end) and, knowing how expressive Alex's face can be during these events, I sat there and took pictures through the whole thing. 

If you're interested, here's how it went....