Baking With Young Children, AKA It's Okay To Eat the Dough.

Yesterday, Astrid and I made cookies from one of those packaged cookie mixes. We'll get around to "from scratch" eventually, but I wanted her first experience to be fast and easy. She's had the Paula Deen Child's Baking Kit for a while now and loves to "play" stir, mix, etc. She's 17 months old now.

No. 1 doesn't garden or bake, so Astrid's experiences in these things come on my watch, which is still M-W-F from (roughly) 11-2. Her swimming experience is mostly while she's here, too, simply because our housing development has a pool, but No. 1 joins us for that. She's quite good at swimming now with the exception of remembering to keep her mouth shut, as she loves to laugh at the fun of it all.

I got all the baking stuff laid out before she came, set out an egg and a stick of butter to warm up, and pulled over to the island the two stools that typically stand at the counter between the kitchen and living room. I removed their "hats" to provide more friction.

We had fun. She was very interested in the process, using her Paula Deen utensils to beat the egg and mix the butter, egg and batter. Of course everything got tasted individually first and she finished up the mixing with her hands (which I do myself on occasion).

She's one of those bakers who likes to eat the dough as much as the cookies. I was a little worried about that (as well as the raw egg), but it turns out that both are myths unless the egg is "bad", which we'd probably notice.











Since it's WAY too hot to bake, I used the convection oven's bake feature and small pans. I was afraid to let Astrid near the hot pans, so laid out the cookies on cooling racks where she could test each for proper temperature by giving them a lick.

Gardener in Training.

Planting petunia seeds in window boxes.

Step 1: Wash the window boxes. Astrid LOVES any activity that involves washing (or water).



She got them "squeaky" clean.



Step 2: Add soil.



Step 3: Add seeds.




Step 4: Water.

Garden 2011 has begun.

Actually, I'm hoping to complete it tomorrow morning.

Local stores didn't get seed starter in time to do peppers and tomatoes this year, so I chose to order transplants from Seed Savers Exchange.

I ordered 12 tomatoes and 6 peppers. My very first planting this morning was a Mexico Midget tomato ... which BROKE while transplanting. Quite the send-off to the day. I left the plant in the ground and left room for it to continue to grow as though garden fairies would bless my intent.

I ordered 6 tomatoes I thought I wanted and ordered a surprise 6 as well. Oddly enough, I didn't get any duplicates ... meaning I broke my ONLY Mexico Midget. For peppers, I ordered a surprise 6, too.
I have one raised bed this year and space around the fences for gardening purposes. I hired Ken to help me clean up last year's mess and dig in the raised bed. Em helped me amend the soil along the fences.

I bought some heirloom seeds which included round carrots, long red carrots, patty-pan squash, AKA early white bush scallop squash and a few other things. The garden will only have patty-pan squash this year in the squash family. I'm just not into the squash bug problems and these things don't seem to suffer from them.

Spent some $$ on red tomato towers from Gardener's Supply Company and also bought some red recycled rubber edging for everything so Em doesn't have to trim and can just mow the grass in the yard. These things should last as long as I last.

STILL using some seeds that Diane sent me through the years, too. Thanks, Diane!

Pictures will be coming in future gardening posts. I have high hopes for this year.

End of Astrid's First Year. BIRTHDAY!

Astrid's 1st year birthday was held here yesterday. Fortunately, it was the ONE day where milder weather allowed folks to get around easily outside. We'd had ice storms followed by snow the past week. We're even scheduled to have more snow today and even more this week. This is NOT normal weather for Texas. Her birthday is tomorrow, but Em says her birthday will always be Superbowl Day (as it was when she was born).

She started off by showing Grandpa Blue "her" room.



No. 1 was looking exceptionally cute, I thought.



She helped open the birthday gifts while daddy took pictures. The popper was my gift to Astrid. Em made it clear that it was to go home with her, but that was the plan all along.



We had lunch before dessert and most everyone wore silly hats. As expected, Astrid didn't like the feel of the hat.



Ba Ba Blue (her other grandmother) made a lovely centerpiece that was also fun to play with.



Took me two days to get the cupcakes right (never trust a recipe!), but they came out tasty and even pretty good looking after some research. With healthier eating/less sugar in mind, I made whole wheat carrot cupcakes with a whipped cream/cream cheese frosting. Ba Ba Blue brought ice cream which Astrid thought much too cold to eat. She thought the cupcake was fun, though, and even good enough to eat.



We did a little reading of one of the new books, but there was SO MUCH TO DO and so little time.





Grandpa Blue helped out with new puzzles and other toys.



She's a lucky girl with two sets of grandparents who love her and regularly spend time with her.



Never thought I was the type, but I'm really enjoying this gig as Mormor.

Fall comes to North Texas.

I sometimes forget while reading the blogs of northern friends, who months ago showed pictures of kids playing in fallen leaves, that winter takes longer to get to North Texas.

Yesterday was 72 degrees outside and Astrid enjoyed playing in the fallen leaves. Having sprained my ankle early last month, I hadn't even noticed the leaves changing color. Children have a way of directing our attention to the important stuff in life.

Meet Birke Baehr.

Thanksgiving Cooking.

I'm FINALLY (TODAY) getting lists made and reviewing recipes I want to use Thursday. We're having dinner at our house this year and I suppose the guest list is about 17.

For Astrid's sake, I ordered a turkey and prime rib from Whole Food that haven't been given any antibiotics or hormones in their lives. I'm hoping to use the leftovers to freeze some turkey and beef for her.

There are SO many considerations. *I* prefer one thing, the kids prefer another, Astrid can't have TOO MANY variations on a theme yet, and that's part of the reason why I always make enough food for 200 people. Each dish may only feed 6 or 8, but I make enough of them to feed more than I'll have.

I have to stop myself (MAYBE) from making a brussel sprout dish that just looked SO appealing and I know my kids love brussel sprouts. We're already having a huge salad, carrots, green beans, broccoli loaf, and a creamed corn dish and sweet potato dish provided by Dave's mom, so I don't NEED another veggie dish, but (then again) I remember one Thanksgiving where Em's brother said, "but I don't like any of those".

Em gets mad at me every time: "You make too much; we'll have leftovers through the next year!" Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Not too interested in posting of late.

My vermiposting experiment absolutely SUCKED. Turns out that the worms need to be covered from sun and/or rain and we don't have any outside coverage. So, they stayed in the house (along with their fruit-fly groupies) until cooler weather came and I could move them out to the garage (which only stays reasonably cool during the winter). By summer of next year, I need to figure out a way to keep them outside covered from the sun and rain. I need a vermiposter HUT.

STILL trying to control the fruit flies in the house! I have traps EVERYWHERE.

Em got the raised garden bed I ordered put together except for digging holes to place the "feet" in the ground.

Thanksgiving is at my house this year, so I'm trying to get that plan done (to the exclusion of others). Today, I ordered an organic turkey and roast. I make babyfood for Astrid and it's all organic; I don't think new people should be eating things containing hormones or antibiotics. So, whatever the guests invited don't eat will be cut up and frozen for Astrid.

Sorry to say that my son won't be coming for Thanksgiving this year. It'll be just Em's family and my two daughters with their families. I really don't know what happened to my son, but he's been unwilling to have his picture posted online for many years now, and has recently just grown apart from his entire family. I love him and wish him well, but it's pretty hard to take the dismissal. A cousin of mine has a brother with whom he hasn't communicated in over 30 years; he doesn't even know if he's alive or not. I hope my son's not moving in that direction because *I* still want to see him even if no one else does, but my grandfather used to hide in the basement when company came, so it's not like there aren't genetic precedents.
Hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving if I don't get back here to post before then.

10-10-10 and Three-Fifty (350)

Yesterday was the day of action for 350. I'd thought about what to do on this day for about a year and when the day came I did NOTHING ... unless stirring and spraying my vermiposter counts. I'm still worried about the 2010 midterm elections, so called people a) to ask if they could volunteer and b) ask if they would PLEASE vote.

Here are some results from people who actually did something: 350 on 10-10-10.

I also took two naps during the day yesterday. My resistance is down and I seem to have been chasing off a cold.

What did you do for 350 day this year?

Don't forget to vote in the midterm elections. Avoid the rush and vote early.