It’s Her Party and She’ll Cry if She Wants To*
October 19, 2009 at 1:10 am | In Cookery, Crafty, Entertaining, Family, Recipes | 1 Comment
Yesterday we had a birthday party for Tabitha’s 2nd birthday (which is actually still 2 days away.) Last year we had a small brunch, but this year decided to have a few more people, even though we knew that with the iffy weather it was likely everyone would be indoors. They were, but that was fine. In fact, I’d have to say the whole party was a nice big fun raucous success. And cozy, too, because we had a nice fire going. Raucous because there were ten 3-4 year olds running around, not to mention four 1 1/2-2 year olds.
Here was the menu:
Hors d’ouvres: Hummus, Pita and pretzels, Carrot Dip, and pigs in blankets. What is carrot dip, you ask? Only the most delicious dip ever. An old friend of mine used to make this and I swear we could just gobble up a bowl and a bag of pretzels while eating a movie. The recipe is simply 2 carrots in the food processor, then add an 8 oz bar of cream cheese, whiz it around until nice fluffy, add in a dash of garlic powder, a good tablespoon of lemon juice, and 1/2 tsp (or more) of minced dried onion. You can add milk to think it out, but I had some extremely juicy carrots so didn’t add any. It’s a beautiful pale pinky orange color and it is very yummy.
Main food: a ham. Everyone loves a ham. And I had little rolls so you could make little sandwiches. Then I also had macaroni and cheese, sweet spinach salad, oriental salad, deviled eggs, and a green salad. No one touched the plain boring green salad, but they gobbled up the other two. The spinach salad was great-a recipe from Taste of Home and it had an orange poppy seed dressing. The oriental salad was that salad with the broken up ramen noodles in it, shredded cabbage and carrots, and the sweet tangy dressing. (I used a recipe from Cooking Light, but this is a pretty common recipe you could probably find anywhere.) I thought it all went nicely together.
The cake: First, in addition to the cake I made brownies and lemon bars. I tried a new lemon bar recipe-this one had cottage cheese in the filling. They were fantastic. So, on to the cake. This was a decorating thing I saw in a magazine and saved for quite a while. Unfortunately the pictures are not great (we have many wonderful photos of our family, but never great pics from our parties. I guess we are too busy hostessing and I finished the cake so late in the day I didn’t properly photograph it.) Basically it is frosted white and then there is pretzel fencing and little frosted animal crackers grazing on the top (on green coconut grass.) (Also, apparently the lens was slightly smudged. Really this was a cute cake, much cuter than the picture makes it out to be!!!)
Hilariously, it had not occurred to me that the animal crackers would be a huge draw. As soon as the cake came out five little boys started shouting “I WANT ONE OF THOSE!” and reaching out to the flaming cake. Good thing we had extras. The birthday girl enjoyed her cake very much, especially getting to taste frosting and the custard filling at many stages along the way before we actually cut into it.
As for party favors, I made caramel apples and tied them up with red ribbon. They came out beautifully but I will admit that when I went to eat one today it was a huge mess and the caramel was too gooey and I suspect that no one enjoyed theirs at home either. (But hopefully everyone will be too polite to say so. 
My favorite part thing was the “Happy Birthday” display pictured at the top. This was in this month’s Parents magazine as a Thanksgiving decoration (spelling out “Give Thanks”.) I gathered sticks, painted them, and then drew and cut out the circles and letters and hot glued them to the sticks. The vases are filled with split peas. I am so taken with this decoration and indeed going to use it for Thanksgiving and spell out a different message.
*In fact, she did not cry at all, but had a very good time. She celebrated her party day by not taking a nap and instead climbing out of her crib for the first time (and somehow lifting her doll’s stroller up into her crib.) Very pleased with herself about that. Here she is all worn out after the party and opening her presents:
I will have some more pie, please.
October 8, 2009 at 12:33 am | In Cookery, Gardening | 1 CommentI read my new Family Fun magazine today (November issue-looking online I don’t see that stuff up yet, hence no link for this recipe) and there was a recipe in it for a “Swedish Apple Pie.” Since I have many pounds of apples from Monday’s apple picking excursion I thought I’d give it a try. I was a little alarmed by how much butter there was in it (and omitted almost 2 T), but there is no such thing as too buttery. The thing was delicious. In fact, to quote Clark after his first bite: “This is NOT disgusting, this is DELICIOUS.” And I agree.
Although our main garden looks like a big mess of weeds (which we aren’t ready to clear out yet because there is a valiant brussels sprout plant, pepper plant, and carrots still growing), a very pleasant autumn surprise has been the raspberry bush. For the past week there have been about 2 ripe berries a day. Not enough to save, just to pop in the mouth. Today there were about a dozen and they were all delicious.
Apple Canning Party!
October 5, 2009 at 2:12 am | In Cookery | 2 Comments
What a delightful day. Liz and Eleanor joined me for apple canning. We made two different kinds, even! Apple Wedges with Red Hot Cinnamon Syrup and also Apples with Dried Cherries and Golden Raisins. We did have a bit of trouble with our initial batch-three jars leaked and didn’t seal!! The Ball guide assured us to try again with new lids and we did and it seems ok. The thing about canning is it’s quite nerve wracking because you really don’t know how it went until you eat it months later and see how you feel! But based on the look of the jars? Beautiful. And the smell? Delicious? Clark remarked “It smells delicious in here. The smell is just drifting to my nose.” Indeed it was. Cinnamon, red hots, cloves, and hand picked apples. The kids ate some of the extra cooked in syrup apples and they pretty much gobbled them up.
It was so nice to have people to do this with. Instead of being a slightly tedious project, it was fun to have kitchen companions and other hands to help. Plus, with Pookie there we had our very own photographer. You must check out her awesome pictures here. Especially because I’m inadvertently channeling Betty Draper in one of them. I think I look quite fetching! So not as many pictures here as usual because frankly the ladies at IPB did a great job taking pictures and describing the process. Here is their post about today.
Tomorrow I’m going apple picking again, and I think next up is a big batch of applesauce.
Gasp! I just realized that one of my categories is “Cookery”, a term I employ because it’s a library thing- a quirky little subject heading that everyone needs but usually only librarians know. Well guess what? The Library of Congress has announced they are changing it! Modernizing! No longer will it be “cookery”, now it will be “cooking”. But it shall live on as cookery here at Sew Buttons.
I Will Never be a Daily Blogger
October 4, 2009 at 1:29 am | In Cookery, Family, Sewing, Wildlife | 1 CommentI’d like to think that I’d cook something or create something and immediately have a photo and a little write up, but that’s never going to happen. I like watching tv after the kids are in bed far too much to write every night (though I do actually think about it every night). This also explains why I am not finishing (or starting) sewing and other projects as much as I might like to. Which brings me to a a few cooking highlights from the past week:
Last week we went apple picking, which was a true autumn delight. (Oh, first we visited Denise and her new baby and she loved the quilt.) We picked many huge apples of the Macintosh and Macoun variety, as well as a whole bunch of delicious peaches (I was suspicious of such late peaches, but they were juicy and sweet.)
What to do with all these apples? Well, the next day I made an apple pie, of course. And if I amy compliment my own baking I will just say that it was fantastic and I made a delicious crust.
For dinner I tried a new butternut squash soup recipe. This was a squash and white bean soup and the seasonings were unusual (not in and of themselves, just for this soup) and spicy: cumin, cloves, cinnamon. Of course I used one of our squashes. Look what a nice color-they were definitely the success of our 2009 garden.
Tomorrow I have plans to can apple slices in a red hot cinnamon syrup. Can’t wait to see how it turns out!
Here’s a neat spider web pic I forgot to put up last week:
Two nights ago it was 5 o’clock and I didn’t know what I wanted to make for dinner. I feel like 5 is the “time to decide” time because I aim for dinner to be ready at 6/6:15 and if we’re having brown rice or something that needs to bake I figure it needs to go in by 5:20. Anyway, I decided I wanted fish and am pleased to report a pretty fabulous dinner was on the table quite on time. But what was best about it was that I made a dinner that was a childhood favorite. I didn’t have a recipe, but it turned out delicious. In fact, it was better than I remembered. Which either means it was just better than I remembered, or the way I made it was actually better than my mom! Clark called this “Fish Muffins” because the dish gets made in a muffin tin. When I was a kid that was also the appeal to me. So novel! Dinner in a muffin tin! Here’s how I made it:
Sauteed mushrooms and the 2 small shallots I had, as well as a green pepper from the garden. Took two pieces white bread out of the freezer and toasted them and the chopped them up. Took all the frozen shrimp I had (about 5 or 6) out of the freezer, ran them under warm water, chopped them up and added them to the pan. When they were cooked I put the sauteed stuff, the bread crumbs, a drained can of crabmeat, some lemon juice, and Old Bay Seasoning all in a bowl and tossed it around well. Meanwhile, I had been defrosting some frozen tilapia fillets. So, you take a piece of fillet and wrap it in a circle in a muffin tin. I used my giant muffin tin so it didn’t make a solid cup, as it would if you used the smaller muffin tin. Then fill the center with your mixture. Drizzle a little bit of melted butter over the top of each and then bake until done. I think I did 400 degrees for 15 minutes. It came out great!
As for sewing, well the fifth expected baby arrived over a month early this week, so now I have that gift lined up as well as another gift for my cousin’s baby (born the preceding week.) I did not work on those thing today, though, instead I finally got around to making Clark his flannel pants. The fabric is a lovely soft flannel, not of a pattern I would have chosen, but he is in love with it–army green airplanes against a cloudy beige background. It’s a very military looking pattern and he just has not clue at all about camouflage or soldiers or anything like that, he just loves the planes. After the last disastrous pants I made him (I think I sewed them upside down so that the inseam ended up being like 8 inches long) I was kind of worried about these. But they came out great! He put them on immediately and wore them for the rest of the afternoon and to bed. I didn’t get to take a good picture of them close up, but here is playing in them:
So there’s the big catchup. Tomorrow is canning and I know I’ll have great pictures because Eleanor will be our photographer for the event!
Squashes Galore
August 27, 2009 at 5:42 pm | In Cookery, Gardening | 3 CommentsThe garden is looking a bit beaten down and desolate in these last hot days of summer, but amidst the withered and yellow vines there are plenty of butternut squashes and tomatoes ripening away. Here’s the squashes I’ve picked so far:
I did eat one before this and the flavor not particularly outstanding-not bad tasting, just not as rich and sweet a taste as I would have liked.
The tomatillo yield is extremely small, but they are tasty. I chopped up four yesterday, along with a red tomato, cilantro, and added a can of black beans and couple ears of zipped corn. A delicious salad! I had the leftover today for lunch, along with this other leftover dinner–a frittata with potatoes, green pepper, and onion (potatoes from the garden, eggs from the hens.) Altogether it was like having lunch out, even though I was at home eating leftovers.
Hello Mr. Cicada!
August 13, 2009 at 1:04 am | In Cookery, Sewing | 1 CommentAs I mentioned the other day I love the late summer sound of insects. Check out who we found in the sandbox this morning:
Isn’t he spectacular? Alas, one of his wings was folded under (did he emerge from his shell, damp, and that one was folded under and dried like that??) so I felt all sad for him because I doubt he can really fly like that.
Tabitha wore her new bee outfit today. I think it looked smashing:
This afternoon I did a little baking. Actually, Clark and I did it together. He really is a good helper in the kitchen now-accurately measuring flour and other things, carefully stirring, and he’s great at cracking eggs without even getting any shell in or breaking the yolk! (I always have him crack his eggs into a bowl first.) And of course, he’s a champion spoon and beaters licker. We made a peach cake recipe that was suspiciously low in fat (only 1 T butter??), but ended up delicious. Very juicy from the peaches, so probably was best fresh from the oven. I’m sure that won’t stop me from eating more tomorrow though!
What’s the Buzz?
August 3, 2009 at 6:46 pm | In Chickens, Cookery, Family, Gardening, Sewing | 3 Comments
Saturday night we had a babysitter and went out to dinner. We followed up dinner out with an exciting trip to Wal-Mart-yes, this is what parents do when they get a few hours to themselves! I picked up a little bit of fabric and Paul chose some bee fabric for Tabitha for me to make her shorts. Yesterday afternoon I sewed them up and I think they came out great! I was really so pleased with them. Paul liked them because he thought they would keep her so busy pointing at all the bees and saying “bee! bee!”, which is indeed true. Here she is in them:
Our chickens are laying like crazy. Now that we are getting NINE eggs a day we see that is a huge difference from a mere 3 eggs a day, even given that two of them automatically go to my friend Jen, who actually owns two of the comets. We need an Egg-O-Mat in front of our house! For those of you who didn’t grow up in Warren, NJ, that would be this.
We have also harvest a bunch of potatoes (why didn’t I take a picture?), the butternut squash are ripening beautifully, the tomatoes are coming in, and for dinner tonight I’m making a tiella-a layered casserole of zucchini, potato, and tomato puree. But I am not Michael Chiarello and so my version is to mix everything up in a bowl and then layer it out, rather than doing his endless step recipe. Check out the far reach of the squash plants:
I’m excited about these bird’s egg gourds:
I am suprised at myself that this month I have much more time to myself than last year, yet last year I did all that canning! Still, this summer I am doing more sewing. I am also looking at my garden a lot in terms of what I’d like to do next year: more flowers, do whatever it takes to get sunflowers and morning glories along the fence, put the herbs in the raised bed with the asparagus, plant more larger perennials in the front, do better with lettuce. I am pleased with what we are producing, though, don’t mean to complain about it!
Yesterday a water lily was blooming and it was lovely. The comets are really enjoying spending time perched in the Japanese maple:
We’ve started work on Clark’s 4th birthday movie. So far we’re in the “selecting photos and videos” phase, which takes a while. We’ve reviewed photos from July, Aug, Sept, and Oct of 2008. If you asked me how Clark is different today as a four year old from a year ago as a three year old, I would have said not at all. But looking at pictures I see that I am wrong-last year his hair was practically a different color, his face looked so much more babyish, and his voice was higher and more babyish. And as for Tabby, well my goodness! First no hair, then finally hair that stood straight up, and now it’s flat and long. Also, when she was a baby she had such a round face with big cheeks. Amazing how easy it is to forget these things. Reviewing the summer photos also has let me see how our yard/garden is different and the same as last year.
OK, must go bring in the two day old laundry from the line (curse you unexpected thunderstorm!).
But wait…You know who else grew up in a year? Our black chickens! I had completely forgotten that when we got them they were small, had tiny combs, and were the same size as our little Comets are now.
BOOOOO! As I was typing this I watched one of them walk up onto our porch, over to the cherry tomatoes, and pluck a ripe one right off the plant!!
When we got them:
And now:
Hot, Wet, Hot, Wet
July 31, 2009 at 1:09 am | In Chickens, Cookery, Family, Gardening, Housekeeping (or Lack Thereof), Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Seems everyone is having weather woes, and here in New Jersey it’s been torrential rains, revolting humidity, and freak tornadoes and storms. We were lucky to have just one tree down in our yard (and not a beloved tree), but many of our neighbors had full mature trees uprooted. It’s been quite spectacular driving around and seeing it all. The upside of our fallen tree is that it has become, of course, a piece of playground equipment for us! We’ve all had so much fun walking up and down it that we want to make a little obstacle course for the kids. Every time the kids play in our yard like this (hitting sticks against a tree, for example) and they look a bit grubby I feel like they are Appalachian kids and we now have an Appalachian playground.
Our corn got knocked down again yesterday. It must be very frustrating being a corn farmer! Paul thinks that their corn grows closer together so it doesn’t tip over so easily as ours. I’m hoping we’ll be able to eat some corn soon. In the meantime we just picked a bunch of lovely tomatoes. (and update: for dinner I cooked a couple with basil, garlic, zucchini, and had it with pasta.)
The day’s haul:
The brown hens are all laying now, which means we are getting maximum egg output: 9 eggs a day! (two of those eggs go to my friend who actually owns two of the brown hens). As I’ve mentioned the comets’ eggs are small and dark brown, but they are getting larger. Today two of their eggs were the size of the black hens’!
Last night I stepped outside and felt something wet on my shirt. My immediate reaction was, “SLUG!” and then I thought “that’s a stupid thing to think-how would a slug get up on your shirt? why not think just wet spot from hand washing or a booger from a kid (which is also gross, but more likely)?” I looked down and apparently my instincts were spot on because it was a teeny tiny slug.
Nothing has made me feel quite so old-fashioned/housewifey/homesteady as this: this week we began line drying our clothes. I’ve wanted to for a while since I read constantly about how the electric clothes dryer really uses so much electricity. I couldn’t figure out a good place for a clothesline, though. A broken fan belt of the dryer force me into action. With two wet loads of mildewing laundry I had to go out to Home Depot and buy a clothespole (and my request for one seemed to cause a lot of confusion-is it really such an odd thing??). I was delighted with the results. The clothes dried way faster than I would have thought and I got three loads dried and folded before we had yet another storm that made everything soggy and wet and knocked the pole over. With pole repaired I headed out again today. It’s definitely not a speedy process but there was something inantely soothing about hanging each piece of clothing (and strategically arranging the underwear on the inside lines so no one sees it, as well as distributing the weight evenly) just so. I have to say I’m enjoying it.
Went to the beach yesterday:
Tonight Pippin was barking and barking and it turns out it was at this lovely large Toad:
Great summer days!
Dinner from the Garden
July 22, 2009 at 12:56 pm | In Cookery, Gardening | Leave a Comment
Bruschetta made with tomatoes and basil from the garden. Salad made of chicken, big toasted croutons, parmesan, olive oil, white wine vinegar, and cucumber and lettuce from the garden. All delicious, and actually the bruschetta topping was delicious on top of the salad, too.
And, completely unrelated, we went to a local fair the other night. Wonderful and fascinating people watching, including this “tattooed” prosthetic:
Happy Birthday Clark!
July 7, 2009 at 4:28 am | In Cookery, Entertaining, Family | 3 Comments
Sunday was Clark’s 4th birthday. I can’t believe what a big boy he is-it’s almost hard to remember what it was like before he is the way he is now. We had a nice party for him and, unlike last year, the weather was absolutely perfect. A hot sunny day. Happily, I felt very relaxed about the whole thing. It was just a really enjoyable weekend getting ready for his special day, seeing him so happy and excited, and celebrating with friends and family. Paul has written a guest post about it! The only thing I will add is that the menu was:
Hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken strips on skewers grilled
Black bean, corn, mango salad
Macaroni and Cheese (the awesome Everyday Food recipe)
A salad comprised of Israeli cous cous, feta, basil and parsley, yellow and green zucchini, tomato, white wine vinegar and olive oil.
Three Bean Salad – which I’ve never made before and think it came out fantastic. I loved it. I’m crazy for those sugary-vinegary dressings. I used fresh green beans, which I blanched, red kidney beans, and chick peas.
Having thrown four birthday barbecues I feel like I’m getting quite good at coming up with different side salads every year!
Here’s Paul’s take on the day:
Sunday was Clark’s 4th birthday! Sarah pulled out all the stops with ideas, cooking and general theme-ness. We usually do a vague theme, as we don’t want to go too over-the-top with whatever the idea is. In this case, four-years-old equals dinosaurs. But I’m delighted to say we didn’t turn our house into Jurassic Park or anything crazy like that, just a nice balloon, a cool cake and the soon-to-be-mentioned games. Oh, and since Clark’s favorite color is purple, we liberally sprinkled purple bits around the yard.
Sarah joked about the brazenness of 4 year olds, as quite a few children tried to unveil our first game before it was officially ready to begin. (We’re not sticklers for too many things, but you’ll soon see why timing was important.] Our first game was a dinosaur dig. About two years ago I built Clark a 5 foot by 5 foot sandbox. The day before his party we filled it with 1000 pounds of sand (I know because I hefted all twenty of the 50 pound bags into the box). We then stuffed about 50 small plastic dinosaurs into the sand. We then made a zen pattern in the sand with a rake, write Clark’s name and covered it up (evidently foxes like using sand as a litter box).
When we unveiled the game, the kids (about ten in all) were tentative, slowly reaching their hands in. But after several dinos were uncovered (and we surreptitiously added more (it’s actually not that hard to fool 4 year olds)) the kids all piled in and had a blast. Pretty soon there were construction vehicles uncovering dinos and sand being flung about. And, I also got to hear a lot of the parents’ muttered approval of what a great idea it was,
An even bigger highlight, and one that almost didn’t come off at all, happened shortly thereafter. Sarah had ordered a dinosaur pinata from some online shop. I don’t know the name, but she can say right here what the company was and how displeased she was with them, as the pinata did not arrive on time. So, thank you Party City for having a T-Rex balloon and a T-Rex pinata. I didn’t really know if a pinata was such a good idea, as ten 4 year olds wielding sticks seemed like it might get hairy. Well, they loved it. And they were all quite well behaved. Each one took a turn and not a single one did any damage to the dino. We didn;t even have to blindfold or spin them. But they enjoyed whacking that thing. And it was very cute seeing the little kids (a couple of two year olds) wielding sticks and gently tapping the dino. Eventually Sarah had to step in. I played a cruel trick on her (which I’ll let her describe).[Sarah: This would be the classic thing where I swung at it just as Paul yanked the rope up and made the pinata fly up and out of reach. Very funny!] And we then learned just how tough the pinata was. First, she broke a fairly large stick in half on it, and then she broken her mother’s cane (okay it’s a collapsible cane, but it made a spectacular photo!).
When the dino went flying, so did the kids! Candy was snatched up and consumed…we didn’t even need goodie bags with all the stuff the kids got to take home.[Sarah: though, of course, there were goody bags. And I was crafty and painted dinosaur shapes fanciful colors and hot glued magnets to the back and added those to the bags.]
I also went into our chicken coop and brought Mrs Hen (I think) out for the kids to pet. It was about 50/50 with those who wanted to and those who didn’t (parents included). Mrs Hen didn’t seem all that thrilled by it either frankly.
Then came cake and cupcakes. Sarah made a cute dinosaur (which I got to do the black piping on) and it was delicious. With the cupcakes, there was purple frosting everywhere! Yum!
And then we all crashed.
Clark did quite well with presents. But nothing could compare to his very first present of the morning. His first two-wheeler! He was so excited. And after about 20 minutes he was riding like a pro. (okay, there were training wheels). We didn’t think ahead that a new bike would mean he’d want to ride it ALL THE TIME, so Sarah has already been to the park once, with plans to do some more ASAP.
It was quite a delightful birthday party. We feel that everyone left rather satisfied.
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