Have a couple of the girl's friends over after school today. When I asked them what they wanted to drink, they yelled "spritzers!" This is a drink that gets served here regularly to visiting children. They mostly love them and it sounds very exotic. If there is a new child, they will ask, very intrigued "What is it?" It's simply half juice, half soda water mixed together. We've tried all sorts of juices- orange, apple, cranberry, those veggie/fruit mixes- they all taste good. I started concocting these when I was pregnant and craving too much soda. They are great for kids, it cuts down on the juice and gives them the bubbly satisfaction. They can even be a little more grown up, cutting down on the juice and adding more soda- which can look very sophisticated to the other kids. I served them up with my locally famous popcorn, popped in my 50+ year old electric popcorn popper. Really, it is the best popcorn, you can ask anyone who's had it. And if you are at my house at some point in this lifetime- you will eat popcorn. And, I'll make you a spritzer too.
Friday, September 03, 2010
How to ruin perfectly good food.
This is a post from March 22, I hadn't posted it, but thought it was okay, so here's to more content!
I have been very sick the last three days with an awful cold virus. Feeling better, but feel like I've experienced that proverbial lost weekend. Still have a heinous gut rattling cough, but at least I have some energy again. So I decided we needed to eat a good meal tonight. Poor Mark has been hobbling together meals, ordering out, etc. I set out to make a homemade tummy pleaser.
With no plan in mind, I decided to boil new potatoes. Then I racked my brain for a new way to cook broccoli so that my picky children would eat it. I decided some sort of whipped up, creamy broccoli would please them. So I found a recipe for pureed broccoli on the internet and promptly ignored the instructions. Oh, I can do that, just cook it, puree it in the food processor and voila! Except, I guess the florets never completely disappear, or I just did something wrong, because it was still grainy. Plus I was out of real butter and had to use margarine, which I'm sure took the flavor down a few notches. Okay. So I decide to make a mash potato mix with the broccoli. That'll fool them! Hey! Why don't I just throw the potatoes in the food processor too? Easy cleanup, less work! Except, why don't I ever remember that you should never, ever, ever, put potatoes in the processor! They turn to glue pretty quickly. So as I'm scraping out the gluey mess, I decide, okay I will mix this all up and bake it and it will come out like a soufflé! Yeah! So I start putting a base of gluey potatoes, to which I have added basil, milk, and margarine into the bottom of glass baking pan. But as I'm looking at it, I think, this looks like potato pancake material (sort of) so- I know! I'll mix the broccoli, potato, shredded cheese, some panko bread crumbs and I'll fry them up! Except that does not even begin to work. They are too mushy and they just sit there in the pan, spreading out and getting crispy on one side that refuses to be lifted from the pan. Oh! I should have added an egg. So I do that next. This one turns out slightly better, but the inside is still a gooey mess. Not very appetizing. Then I decide to scrape it all together, add 2 more eggs, more cheese- put it back in the square baking pan and put it in the oven.
The kids did not eat it, nor did anyone else.
I have been very sick the last three days with an awful cold virus. Feeling better, but feel like I've experienced that proverbial lost weekend. Still have a heinous gut rattling cough, but at least I have some energy again. So I decided we needed to eat a good meal tonight. Poor Mark has been hobbling together meals, ordering out, etc. I set out to make a homemade tummy pleaser.
With no plan in mind, I decided to boil new potatoes. Then I racked my brain for a new way to cook broccoli so that my picky children would eat it. I decided some sort of whipped up, creamy broccoli would please them. So I found a recipe for pureed broccoli on the internet and promptly ignored the instructions. Oh, I can do that, just cook it, puree it in the food processor and voila! Except, I guess the florets never completely disappear, or I just did something wrong, because it was still grainy. Plus I was out of real butter and had to use margarine, which I'm sure took the flavor down a few notches. Okay. So I decide to make a mash potato mix with the broccoli. That'll fool them! Hey! Why don't I just throw the potatoes in the food processor too? Easy cleanup, less work! Except, why don't I ever remember that you should never, ever, ever, put potatoes in the processor! They turn to glue pretty quickly. So as I'm scraping out the gluey mess, I decide, okay I will mix this all up and bake it and it will come out like a soufflé! Yeah! So I start putting a base of gluey potatoes, to which I have added basil, milk, and margarine into the bottom of glass baking pan. But as I'm looking at it, I think, this looks like potato pancake material (sort of) so- I know! I'll mix the broccoli, potato, shredded cheese, some panko bread crumbs and I'll fry them up! Except that does not even begin to work. They are too mushy and they just sit there in the pan, spreading out and getting crispy on one side that refuses to be lifted from the pan. Oh! I should have added an egg. So I do that next. This one turns out slightly better, but the inside is still a gooey mess. Not very appetizing. Then I decide to scrape it all together, add 2 more eggs, more cheese- put it back in the square baking pan and put it in the oven.
The kids did not eat it, nor did anyone else.
Finds of the day
I don't remember how I found this. Oh, yes, via the Real Simple newsletter that's where! These absolutely adorable and exquisite prints by Susie Ghahremani. They are full of lively animals and musical instruments, sweet and lovely and full of color. She has a fabulous website called girlboyparty where she sells many items adorned with her art among a lot of other things, including her original music, which I haven't had a chance to listen to. Please click on the link to see, her art isn't reproducible in other blogs. Oh to be young and just out of art school! At her webpage I also discovered this book- which she is featured in:
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| The Exquisite Book |
To be involved in something like this would have been so incredible. Artists would make art, then send it on to the next artist who would continue the art, having only seen the very edge of the previous work. The book puts all the pieces together as one. The pages will fold out so that the viewer can see them at once. Exquisite, indeed. This will be a must for our home library!
Monday, August 30, 2010
GIft of Summer
This weekend found us in the yard actually gardening. It has been insufferably hot this summer and we rarely went out there. As a result our yard had become completely overgrown. It's going to take a few weeks to get it all back in shape. In the meantime, I found this pot with this lovely plant growing in it, hiding in the brush. I had something to do with it, but not much. Last year, I found the tiniest elephant ear growing wild in the yard. I didn't want it to grow where it was (can you imagine- I have elephant ears as weeds?) so, I put it in this pot and forgot about it. It was such a nice surprise to find it had gotten so big! I decided to bring it indoors to see how it does. I have recently added houseplants to the house and the cats have graciously left them alone. For such a garden freak, I had an embarrassing lack of plants inside the house. That is remedied now! I did have a fear that first night, that something (snake?) might crawl out of the pot and surprise us. Thankfully, that did not happen.
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