Category Archives: Travel

As summer sweeps by…

Shelling peas! (One of those this-is-what-I-thought-it-would-be-like moments.)
Shelling peas

Here we are, almost at the end of July, and I don’t think I’ve posted one summer meal! We’ve been enjoying the CSA, as always, of course. Tuck has finally gotten on board with corn on the cob, though I haven’t been able to budge his bias against tomatoes yet. We’ve been sticking with the Family Dinner program, though vacations threw things off a bit and my increasing level of exhaustion means that we’ve fallen back on pasta with pesto one too many times already. (Tuck can out-eat us in the tortellini-with-pesto championships.)

Watermelon-lime-mint agua fresca (that color!!) #nofilter #natureispretty
Recommended: Watermelon agua fresca w lime juice and mint. (Blend watermelon in blender. Strain. Add lime juice to taste, squeeze some mint and throw it in the pitcher.)

Another all-local (except feta, olive oil, vinegar) dinner. Summer!
All local!

All-local leftover dinner=panzanella!
All-local leftovers became killer panzanella.

We were lucky enough to spend a long weekend in Maine with some very dear friends earlier in the month, and then a week at our favorite lake in NH with more great friends, and it’s a bit of a let-down to be back in Cambridge and still facing lots of summer. The lakes, though… Oh, summer on lakes:

Sheer joy. #lakelove (I'll try to stop now.)

Not too shabby. #lakelove #nofilter
Maine.

Quiet time. #lakelove
NH

Walking through the woods before dinner.
Happy family walking to dinner through the woods.

Glass. #lakelove #nofilter
Glass.

Tuck is such a *boy* all of a sudden. He had a great time at the lakes, digging in the sand and wading in up to his swimmies. He’s 23 months old, and never stops talking–repeating everything we say with extreme relish and care. As fun as it is, I’m a little heartbroken as he starts saying things correctly instead of using his made up words. He has always called his little orange doll (the beloved Ned; we’re on #4) “Neigh,” but about a month ago moved to “Net,” and now “Netty.” My friend Suzi was “Sitty” and is now…Suzi. I wish I’d shot more video of him talking over the last six months! I need to capture “Itchu” (thank you) before it’s gone. My very favorite thing at the moment is the way he appends “time,” pronounced “Taaahme!” to things. So…”Eating taaaahme!” “Measure taaaahme!” “Screwdriver taaaahme!” Cracks me up every….well, you know.

His current obsession is with our step-stool, which he has decided is a cherry picker (“Chitty Picker Taaaaahme!”). He plays on it every day while I finish my breakfast, and has started concocting complicated schemes where he parks all his trucks on top of it, climbs on with them, and then gestures at them wildly. I’d love to know what he is thinking but he just says “tow truck, dump truck, backhoe, picker.” Sometimes he wears his hardhat for this exercise.

Extremely important pre-nap work.

I’ve also noticed a real shift in his sense of humor over the last month or two. Ages ago he started laughing (or fake laughing) when we said “funny” or “silly,” but now he’ll say “silly,” crack up, and make a funny face or do something goofy. He also runs up to me and makes a crazy face and then starts dying laughing. He has a “silly face,” which he pulls on command or when he’s trying to get out of trouble, and has recently developed some hilarious dance moves (with sound effects) for truly hysterical moods. What a crazy thing, to watch a baby turn into a toddler turn into a boy.

Kind of a terrible idea. #chaos
Thanks for this totally terrible idea, Whole Foods.

He’s also far moodier and more easily heartbroken lately. I know some of it is age, but I wonder if there’s also an element of understanding that things are about to change? We’ve been talking a lot about his baby sister and what it will be like when she arrives. Two weeks till my due date!

Feeding a toddler: I refuse to be beaten

Occupation 3: Fireman!
How can this face be such a troublemaker?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I should be doing with this blog. (Obviously more than nothing, which has been the status for far too long.) Honestly, this pregnancy has been much harder than the first–chasing a very active toddler is incredibly draining, and I’ve been much sicker than I was the first time around. Still, right now I am feeling positive and excited about food, namely food for Tuck. Bear with me while I explain:

As I mentioned in my last post (ahem), months ago, I got fed up with catering to Tuck’s increasing pickiness, and started doing a bit of research. I quickly got to Ellyn Satter, whose dense-but-seminal “Child of Mine” is a classic “good sense” approach to feeding children of all ages. She basically says that parents are responsible for what, when, and where children eat, and the child is responsible for how much (or whether) they eat. Full stop. Family meals, one set of options, control of snacks, no catering, bribing, food as an emotional reward or punishment, etc., also play into it, but all of that fits into those zones of responsibility. According to Satter, if a child refuses what you give them (as long as it’s a reasonable selection; ie. things they can physically eat), they’ll be hungry enough to eat the next meal. No jumping up four times to make a new meal or present a quesadilla because the mac and cheese didn’t pass muster. She recommends having bread and milk on the table at every meal, and otherwise letting the child eat whatever the family is eating.

The prettiest greens, from our CSA
Greens from our spring CSA

Now. Obviously family meals are a wonderful thing, something we’d all love to do, but modern life dictates that timing can be a bit tricky. So for a couple months I got stricter with sticking to one set of offerings at each meal (he even went to bed without dinner a couple times), but since I was still cooking a meal for Tuck separate from our own dinner, we kept falling back on quesadillas, grilled cheese, or bread with hummus, always with some vegetables offered first but never with much success. He wouldn’t eat pasta. No rice. NO BREAD, except sometimes toast. He stopped eating meat at around 14 months (maybe earlier?), so his protein came from hummus, peanut butter and cheese, and his iron came from the fortified oatmeal we stir into his breakfast yogurt with applesauce.

Occupation 2: Competitive pie-eater (the layered bibs were his idea)
He does like pie.

After a few spurts of obsession with fruit, he wouldn’t even eat that, aside from applesauce or Plum Organics packets. I hated that his diet was comprised of carbs, cheese and snacks like raisins and Annie’s Cheddar bunnies. This was not what I envisioned; I’d always sworn to myself that I wouldn’t fall into the trap and allow my child to live on “kid” food.

Before our recent trip to the West Coast (about which, much more in a minute) I read that “Bringing up Bébé,” and then “French Kids Eat Everything.” I much preferred the latter, which is basically a memoir version of Satter’s wisdom (though she’s only mentioned by name once) with a few variations to fit French society (only an afternoon snack, kids *are* required to taste things, though not to finish them). It reminded me of how much I wanted to beat this thing, and the approach of our trip, combined with the increasingly obvious need to push Tuck’s bedtime a bit later, made me think it might be time to start sitting down together at the table.

Well.

We started in San Francisco for four nights, where we rented an apartment and Tuck ate hummus. But he did grab a few mandarin oranges in the grocery store, and try to eat them whole.

SF at sunset #nofilter
View from the roof of our friends’ building. I mean, honestly.

We went on to Carmel for a couple nights. Tuck ate grilled cheese (made with gruyère, on one occasion) and french fries. He refused plain pizza. I knew better than to try buttered pasta.

Carmel
Carmel

Enjoying the view. (oh dear.)
Distracted by the view (um) at dinner in Carmel.

Then we landed in Eugene for six nights with my parents. My mom and I had been discussing this for ages, and she was strongly in favor of a shock-therapy approach, letting the sudden influx of new foods and timing be part of being at Nama and Poppa’s house. I mostly cut his morning snack, so he was hungry for lunch. The afternoon snack was small but a real treat, like toast with the all-natural version of nutella. Every night we all sat down at 6:30 and ate appetizers–crudités, cheese and crackers, olives–while Tuck ate dinner. On night two he wanted the goat cheese, and then decimated it.

Goat cheese
Goat cheese is an excellent facial toner, you know. (I don’t know that. I made that up.)

On night three he grabbed for the carrot sticks and gnawed on them a bit before using them to scoop up more goat cheese. He picked out and tried a bell pepper, though he didn’t like it. One night I gave him some pieces of mandarin and he mushed them around for a while; the next night he ate the whole thing so fast I couldn’t get the peel off quickly enough. He wanted apples, and ate them. He ate almost an entire mango over two days. He ate gruyère, manchego and cheddar in slices and chunks (he’d previously refused any cheese that wasn’t grated, of all things).

Perhaps my favorite photo ever

He ate THAI FOOD.

Thai food

Here’s my theory (I always have theories):

Around 12-18 months, babies develop “neophobia,” or fear of the new. I think it’s probably a leftover self-preservation instinct from our hunter-gatherer days. They’re old enough to get around by themselves, which means that in the bush they’d have had the opportunity to pick berries or find mushrooms or whatever. The babies most successful at not being poisoned would probably stop eating anything they hadn’t eaten before, until they were old enough to do a bit more research (neophobia is usually gone by age 3, though of course by that point many children have been taught that being “picky” means “being catered to” and stick with the refusal to try). But what if the baby watches a trusted adult eat something? They might wait until they’ve seen it a few times, but then maybe it will seem like a safe idea to give it a little try–at least a poke or prod or lick. And after a few cautious attempts, that food will be added to the no-longer-new list and get into the regular rotation. [Note: I can’t wait to read my friend Stephanie’s book about REAL picky eaters (my brother was the pickiest ever until he was a teen, despite NO catering at all in our house), due out this July. Pre-order Suffering Succotash (hee!) now!]

Satter says it takes up to 20 exposures to a food for a child to accept it. She says to just keep putting it out, not forcing them to try, just letting them see it. As far as I can tell she’s right. We got home on Saturday morning, and he’s been eating everything from peaches to fig-almond cake with stinky cheese on the sample tray at Whole Foods. After never once getting him to eat eggs, he’s now a fan of “pancakes” made from leftover rice or pasta (it’s a frittata, honestly) and beaten egg. We haven’t figured this out completely, but I feel like his mind is open now, and he’s ready to try. It makes me excited to cook and share meals with him, and to have Ben at the table with him as well.

I just can’t believe it could work so quickly! Fingers crossed that we don’t backslide.

Spring treat share from the farm!!

So I hope to start recording our family meals here. Not every meal, but the ones I’m happy with. I already find myself thinking about dinner differently, knowing I need to try to get it on the table at 6:30 instead of after Tuck is in bed. And maybe we will find that it’s not feasible, that Ben can’t be home, that the compromise of vegetables and cheese while he eats is what we can handle right now. That was enough to make him fascinated by radishes while we were in Oregon! It’s fun to go grocery shopping and choose lots of different fruits for him to try for dessert (he fell in love with blackberries last night, but refused to taste raspberries). Our last Spring Treat CSA share is this week, and the weekly shares start the first week of June–I can’t wait to take Tuck to help pick out the vegetables. The new baby is due in early August, and hopefully by the time she comes along to rock the boat, we’ll have a decent routine figured out.

Will you come along for the ride? Do you have any questions? I feel like I poured out a lot there, and I’m not sure if it makes any sense!

Tuck’s food glossary, partial, May 2012:
Apple – Appoo
Pineapple – Appoo
Cheese – Chees
Grilled cheese – Chees
Pancake – Cake
Peach – Peachy
Blueberry – Blueboo
Milk – Mack
Crackers – Crackah
Pizza – Pizzie
Pasta – Pahttie
Yogurt – Yogi
Applesauce – Sauce
Water – Wahttie
Strawberries – Stawboo

By the way, food isn’t the only thing we’re up to! Look who was a cool customer helping assemble our new patio table after we got back this weekend:

Very, very helpful.

Ok, that’s still kind of food-related. More house stuff to come, though. The curtains have been made, the new doors are in, and I just need a curtain rod installed in the dining room!

France: First stop, Giverny

We seem to have plunged straight into summer here on the East Coast (mid-90s today? really?), but I’m still longing for spring. We got back from our annual vacation a couple weeks ago; this year we spent a little more than two weeks in France. It was Tuck’s fourth experience with air travel, but his first time overseas, and he did so well.

We visited Giverny for two nights–I had longed to go ever since reading Linnea in Monet’s Garden as a little girl–and while Monet’s grounds were beautiful, I preferred the many other amazing gardens all over the town, simply because the crowds overwhelmed me a bit.

Monet’s gardens:

Monet's Garden

Monet's Garden

Monet's Garden

Monet's Garden

Giverny:

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Above, the setting for a dinner al fresco at our wonderful B&B, Le Moulin de Giverny. A lovely evening with guests from all over Europe:

Dinner at the inn in Giverny

Dinner at the inn in Giverny

Dinner at the inn in Giverny

Dinner at the inn in Giverny

The amazing window in our room:

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This was my dinner another night. Yes, it’s a big melted cheese. On some bread. It was amazing.

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I have lots more to share–we spent a week in the Loire Valley, and six nights in Paris. All my garden pictures are in a set here, and food pictures are here. The whole kit and caboodle (hundreds) are here. Of course, I have to grab my moments on the computer when I can; there’s a lot of this sort of thing happening here at home:

It's official: T is growing up. Lowered crib mattress today. See pic for favorite activity.

CSA Week 6: Oh, right. Zucchini season.

We were at the lake for the first part of last week, thanks to many of you fabulous people. More on that after the vegetables.

Ben went to pick up the share after we got home on Tuesday, while I lay flat in the air conditioned bedroom and bemoaned the lack of lake outside our apartment. He took these photos, too, and I guess he saw the flower-like gorgeousness of the lettuce and thought a purple pepper would make a nice accent!

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-Lettuce
-Bell pepper
-2 ears of corn
-Cucumbers
-Zucchini
-Green beans
-Kale

I still had a bunch of zucchini from the week before, and we are WAY backlogged with eggs, so I decided to make a frittata for dinner and use up some of each. I got rid of my much-hated Oxo mandoline a while ago (HATE HATE HATE) so I just sliced the zucchini thin with a vegetable peeler. (Also Oxo. Not hated.)

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Salted the slices a bit to draw out some of the water:

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Softened shallots and then sauteed the zucchini briefly:

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Added in six eggs, which I’d beaten with salt, pepper and a big handful of grated parmesan.

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So to cook a frittata you start by sort of pulling the edges back gently to get the raw egg to run under the cooked. Eventually if you’re my mom you flip it onto a plate (she never splashes egg everywhere doing this, but I always do) and slide it back in the pan to finish cooking, or if you’re less brave and more traditional, you slip it into the over to finish that way. I opted for the oven because I could tell I had some sticking problems.

Before going into the oven:

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After (check with a knife in the middle to make sure it has set all the way through):

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I also made green beans with shallots:

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And steamed the corn from the farm.

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The beans were amazing, so fresh and small and delicious. The corn was awful; I took one bite and spit it out. Starchy and mushy and flavorless; I guess it wasn’t really ready to harvest? I don’t know. Blech. I made sandwiches with the leftover frittata; it is delicious cold or at room temp.

Before we left for the lake I used half of a little CSA cabbage and a kohlrabi, plus a non-CSA carrot, to make slaw:

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We ate it with burgers so fully loaded you can’t see the burger in the photo!

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Ah, Squam. Thanks to the many of you who voted for me in the Rockywold-Deephaven Camp‘s contest, we spent the weekend in the wooded/watery bliss of the lake.

The weather was gorgeous:

Squam

The lake is always amazing:

Squam

I love everything from the rustic rooms (box fans provided plenty of cool air at night, even though it was steamy in the city) to the birch trees.

Squam

We were generally blissed-out and water-logged, and both got pretty tan (as evidenced by my freckles). (Tan, for us, is relative.)

Squam

Thanks to all of you who voted, and to John and Becky at RDC, for the fantastic visit!

Trip report: Sweet tooth

I’m in a major blogging rut, having lots of trouble writing anything up. But I have tons of photos from the trip that I always planned to share with you, so how about I just jump back in and share a few tasty experiences per post until I can bear to actually write about what I’m cooking?

Today’s offering: Sweets

In Dingle, the town in Ireland where we stayed for the first couple nights (and near where my mom’s family came from), we fell for a fantastic local ice cream shop. The staff members had clearly been told to encourage tasting, and they had lots of ideas on fun flavors to combine with each other. Our favorite lady is in the background here, behind the cutest darn cones in history.

Wonderful local ice cream shop

My combo was a scoop each of sea salt and caramel. This is not surprising if you know how I feel about last year’s trendiest flavor, salted caramel. I’ve been wolfing those french fleur de sel caramels whenever I could get my mitts on them since I first tried them at 13 or so.

Wonderful local ice cream shop

The same shop sold these gorgeous lollipops, which I didn’t buy:

Wonderful local ice cream shop

Up in Plockton, in Scotland, at the Plockton Inn (home of the first edamame/pea salad), we had the best sticky toffee pudding I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve tasted them anywhere they are on the menu, which in the UK is everywhere.

Best sticky toffee pudding ever

This winter I really do need to finally start making that at home.

A block or two down the road in Plockton, the next night, we ate a lovely meal at the Plockton Shores restaurant, and finished it off with rhubarb pie. Wow, we’re hitting all my weak spots! Salted caramel, sticky toffee, rhubarb…

On the left in the photo is whipped double cream. You could have spread it on toast.

Rhubarb pie!

In France our sugar came mostly from breakfast pain au chocolat, nutella, jam and fruit. These little palm-sized melons came from Morocco and were forcefully chosen for me by the man in the market stand. (“No! Do not pick by smell! Choose by weight! Heavy is ripe!”)

Breakfast melon

One after-dinner exception came from a really cool bakery near the town where we were staying, about which I will write more later. In addition to a regional specialty that I’m dying to recreate, they made Parisian-style macarons, and acquitted themselves quite well.

Macarons

Finally, in Dublin, we followed the strong advice of my friend Laura and visited the famed Queen of Tarts café for lunch one day. Oh yum.

We shared a sandwich and salad, plus a pot of tea, and then in a fit of gluttony each got a dessert.

Queen of Tarts

Ben got a sticky and enormous chocolate cake:

Queen of Tarts

And I, sucked in by a lifetime of reading English novels and salivating over desserts I’d never seen, finally got to try a slice of Victoria Sponge. In this case it was filled with strawberries and cream. It was luscious and I was glad I didn’t have to share.

Queen of Tarts

I know this is kind of a mean set of photos to post, especially in the late afternoon. I know I’m going to go attempt to eat a healthy snack instead of rifling through the pantry for something sweet!

Travel inspiration: Pea salads for spring

Hi! We’re back. We got back a week ago, but you know how that always goes. If you want to take a look at where we were and what we were doing, from my perspective (which means with very few pictures of me!), check out this Flickr set.

One lucky thing about this pregnancy is that it hasn’t changed my vegetable obsession, it’s just made me a bit lazier about cooking things myself. Salads, especially those that don’t rely too heavily on lettuce, make me very, very happy these days, and we ran into a brilliant combination several times on the Scotland leg of the trip: Peas, edamame, some sort of greens and a bit of cheese.

The first (and best) encounter was in the charming town of Plockton, near the Isle of Skye, which despite a tiny population is blessed with a handful of very good restaurants. At the Plockton Inn (needs redecorating but the food was excellent), we ordered the pea/edamame/asparagus salad as a starter, and then I tried to eat as much of it as I could without Ben noticing. Sadly, I’d already divided it between two plates before realizing how great it was.

Pea/edamame salad

Super, super simple, but incredibly tasty. The sweet English peas and earthier edamame are a great pairing.

Later, in a random pub in Edinburgh, we ordered something similar, this time with rocket (arugula) as the green, no asparagus, and with the addition of chunks of feta. This photo is truly terrible, but it was very dark and the one light was coming straight over my shoulder, making big shadows!

Pub grub

When we got to France, I was still thinking about those salads, so on our first night in the house we’d rented I made my own version, using little fava beans instead of edamame.

Market

Market spoils:

Produce

We just don’t have local produce like this here yet. It was luxurious.

Fava, pea, asparagus salad

Ben had never prepped fava beans before. He was taken aback by the layers of steps, but was an instant pro, especially at getting the pods open in one fell swoop. He cut the prep time by well more than half.

Fava, pea, asparagus salad

I popped a steamer basket in a pan of boiling water so I could use the same water to blanch the favas and the peas separately. Then I used it to steam the asparagus.

Fava, pea, asparagus salad

Fava, pea, asparagus salad

Such a tiny number of favas. I ALWAYS forget that you have to buy them by the kilo to have enough.

Fava, pea, asparagus salad

I mixed the blanched/cooled vegetables (I shocked everything in the coldest water I could get after cooking; I didn’t have any ice!) together with a mustard vinaigrette. That was a mistake; the mustard overwhelmed the little fava beans. But it was nice with the peas and asparagus.

Fava, pea, asparagus salad

Quiche for me, pizza for Ben, and bread, to go with the salad.

First night dinner

Last night I went for it again, this time using frozen shelled edamame from Trader Joe’s, and a handful of rather elderly-looking English peas from Whole Foods (via god knows where; LOCAL VEGETABLES, PLEASE ARRIVE).

Once again, I cooked the vegetables separately (the peas need 30 seconds, max, and the frozen edamame closer to 5 minutes), then shocked them in ice water to stop the cooking.

Pea and Edamame Salad

This time I just dressed them with lemon juice and good olive oil, salt and pepper (same for the salad greens, in a different bowl):

Pea and Edamame Salad

When Ben got home, I topped the greens with the peas/beans, to which I had added a bit of marinated feta from the WF antipasto bar.

Pea and Edamame Salad

And we ate on the porch—hurray!

Pea and Edamame Salad

With a handful of cherries for dessert:

Cherries

I hope Ben doesn’t get sick of this anytime soon, because I’m planning on making a million versions of it this summer. Slightly mashed and spread on bruschetta! Served with buffalo mozzarella! On top of fish!

P.S. Vote for Renee‘s community garden grant proposal! Vote here.

Quick hello from Scotland

I’m in a library in a wee little town by the bridge to the Isle of Skye… Just wanted to check in, say hello, and thank everyone who voted in the Rockywold contest. We got 2nd place, so we’ll get to have a quick weekend at the lake over the summer!

I’m seriously working on how we could arrange to move here and run a small inn or something. We’re staying here, and I never want to leave. Don’t you think it would be wholesome to raise the baby by the sea?

Off we go!

Ok, kids. I’m headed off on this epic last-trip-before-baby. We’re driving around Ireland and Scotland for a week (I bought a new umbrella for the occasion), then flying down and renting a place just north of the Spanish-French border for another week. I cannot wait! (But I should really go finish packing.)

I’ve lined up a few things to post while I’m gone, and don’t forget to vote in the Rockywold contest (link in the box on the left sidebar). The voting is pretty out of control since there’s no IP address limiter in place, so I doubt I have much of a chance of winning, but never give up, right?

Finally, this is random but too cute not to share. Ben brought home this tiny container of my favorite local milk for me, since I wouldn’t use up the big container before we left:

Cutest milk!

Heeeee!

Have a great couple weeks! I’ll check in if I can, and will be back online in mid-May.

Rockywold-Deephaven contest: Please vote for me!

Squam Lake in NH is perhaps my favorite place in the world, and there is a very amazing and wonderful camp there, Rockywold-Deephaven, that we fell in love with last summer. It’s an old school (founded in 1897), rustic place, and I just love it. They are having an Earth Day essay contest to win a stay there this summer, and I’m one of the five finalists!

To win I need to get the most votes between noon on April 28 and noon on May 4. And I need your help, big time: I’m going to be out of the country for more than half of the voting, so it will be harder for me to spread the word towards the end.

Here’s my essay, which had to be fewer than 140 words and answer the the question, “What is one of your best moments or memories in nature?”:

I grew up in Oregon during the bitter battle to save the spotted owls from logging, and when I was 10 I was lucky enough to see the owls in the wild. We hiked deep into the forest, an emerald-green cathedral with a carpet of moss and ferns. When we stopped, the leader handed me a live mouse and I clambered to the end of an enormous fallen tree. I stood, holding the mouse out by its tail, and the owl swooped out of nowhere, so silent I barely registered it until the mouse had vanished. I never forgot that golden-green moment, the speckled owl whooshing past, the trees looming up overhead. I’m grateful that the logging trucks of my childhood–each holding one huge tree–have vanished, but that forest and those owls have held on.

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Voting is now!! Please share with as many people as you can. Email it around! I am not ashamed to ask for help, here!

Vote here:

PLEASE vote for me, and please ask your friends to vote? We didn’t think we’d make it to the lake this summer because of preparations for the baby, and it would mean so much to either make one last trip before he’s born, or to go up and relax with him at the tail end of the season. Thank you, thank you, and please excuse the re-posts I will be putting up until the contest ends…

And so you understand why I’m so excited, here are some postcards from our weekend at Deephaven Camp last summer:

Squam 2009

Squam 2009

Squam 2009

Squam 2009

Squam 2009

Squam 2009

Don’t forget meatloaf!

I know, it’s going to be 70 degrees this weekend, and all you want to eat are salads. I’m just going to put this out there: Consider making a meatloaf for the leftovers alone. Meatloaf is America’s pâté! Cold meatloaf makes one of the world’s best sandwiches for your celebratory Spring picnic.

I use my mother-in-law’s recipe, which she cooks in a pyrex instead of a loaf pan. It makes all the difference in the world. Recipe is here.

We ate it for dinner on one of this week’s final disgusting sopping wet days, when warm food felt just right. Roasted broccoli and mashed rutabaga (yum!!) on the side:

Meatloaf, rutabaga, broccoli

I smugly ate sandwiches for the remainder of the week. The last piece awaits today, but since Ben has the day off of work I might have to fight him for it.

Enjoy the gorgeous weekend if you’re out here on the East Coast! I think we earned it, after all this awful rain. And last time there was that crazy 70-degree Saturday, Ben and I drove up to Dixville Notch, in Northern NH, and went snowshoeing. Oops.

There were some rough bits towards the bottom:

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

But for the most part, plenty of only-slightly-squishy snow:

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

I was obsessed with this gorgeous shelf fungi; look at those soft shades of mink brown! (Grace, avert your eyes for two pictures.)

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

We were told to take a route that would take us past this crazy ice “sculpture,” formed by water spraying out of a pipe punched full of holes, all winter long.

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

Snowshoeing at The Balsams

I hope those are the last pictures I post of snow until next January. From my mouth to God’s ears.