california dreaming

t.s. eliot writes that april is the cruelest month, but here in california i think fall is pretty wicked.  while the rest of the country marvels at the changing leaves and that crisp autumnal chill out here in the west we get schorching triple digit septembers, choking santa anta octobers, and a bevy of floods and fires for your november.  in this california house fall meant going back to the 3-1 commute after a swedish fidfam summer and a feast-or-famine family time.  but winter, well here's the secret.  winter is what california (and this little house in the ranch) does best.  i know, "dreaming of a white christmas" and that snuggling by the fire.  but give me a desert or beach winter evening, some sand and (as b. put it best) a string of white lights around a palm tree and call it christmas.  this year, this winter, it seems i claimed my little corner of california.

before december slips away, here are some snapshots of the best moments with f&f.

who needs snow when you have wednesday elf hunts in the ooc?

did i say it didn't snow?

if disneyland was magical, spending a few days with the fidlers were "infinity"!

owen showing off his big boy moves at the dana point harbor:

then back to laguna beach for some cliffside, sunset photo ops:

adventure home:

there was no evergreen this year. . . but a whole lot of holiday!

i confess-- we don't have a christmas box, we officially have a christmas cabinet.  (we do have a thanksgiving box, a halloween box, easter, valentines and yes i officially gave in and made a mini st.patty's box).  of course i'm sure this is no big surprise--my own brother exclaimed (peeking in my closet, by the way): you have a lot of stuff!

but i defend my stuff.  true, i have more or less a ribbon and paper cabinet and an ever-encroaching "craft" closet (thanks to a garage that is no longer a garage but a haven for "stuff"). i like to think of our house as defenders of the "reuse" R in the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra.  closing argument:  owen found an empty cardboard wheel of ribbon on the table and said: mom, we should put this in the recycling bin and then we can do a truck project and this could be the wheel!

i mention this because today i was confronted with a whole lot of holiday "stuff" as we continued phase 4.7 (or 12.3?) of re-rorganizing (or re-nesting? really, we haven't technically been "home" a whole heck of a lot in the last few years) closets, shelves, cabinets, and crawl spaces.  and as much as i was eager to live in a simpler aesthetic and box up several dozen glittery and glass bird ornaments, now five artificial trees (none of which look remotely like an evergreen--my rule for "fake"), and a whole herald of angels i was already plotting next year's holiday explosion.  there's a great moment in elf when ed asner santa comes back to santa's workshop and all the elves do a self-congratulatory jig and then quickly get back to work for next christmas.  my elf, of course, is owen and just as the day after thanksgiving he said: ok mom, time to put away "thanksgiving time" and start "christmas time" he kind of tsk-tsked me for "putting away" december when "it's not even JANUARY yet!".  he, of course, is already plotting for "januarytime."

this year, owen took on many more elf duties: he decorated his own mini-tree (complete with paper garlands made with nana, and felt ornaments made with brooke & ellise); wrapped his own presents (ribbon and lots and lots of tape!); painted clothespins for holiday magnets; stamped and stickered our holiday cards; decorated--or ate?--a gingerbread house (with lots of help from gramma & grampa!); and wrote a long letter to accompany cupcakes for santa and rudolph . . .

while we didn't get a "real" evergreen tree we did have a kind of gumdrop forest with unique conifers such as a pink bird tree and a leaning truffula tree.  michael brought back some gorgeous handmade angels from artifex in aalesund; our clothespins dressed up our fridge with a collage of holiday cards; and santa scored with owen's super-sprinkled vanilla cupcakes.

next stop: janumas!!

annual travel total

I had to figure out my number of days on the road for the year, and here are the numbers for 2009:

Home: 137 days (thanks to being home most of Oct, Nov & Dec)
Sweden: 177 days*
Netherlands: 10 days
Norway: 17 days
Travelling (in the air): 24 days

*The numbers for Sweden include the side trips to Finland, France, & Spain.

My number of actual air miles I think will be close to 150k... Needless to say, I have gold status with Alaska, Northwest/Delta, SAS, and Continental.

the coffee is still nasty

You can buy coffee in Oslo for 3 US dollars today! Apparently someone is getting their Nobel Peace prize tonight.

Cool Dog

I'm not sure what's been more fun on our evening walks-- the running tally of reindeer vs. Santa lights or getting Sierra in his winter coat. I think he'd rather pee on an electric candycane. . .


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sun is almost up

It's 11:20am here at the office in Ålesund, and this is the current view out my window. Only 4 more hours until it goes back to being pitch black!

in search of hermit crabs

around two o'clock this afternoon while we were in san juan capistrano picking up our greens we were hit with a westerly wind and followed it (with a quick detour for cocoa and gingerbread lattes) to dana point past the harbor, past baby beach, past the tall ships, past the ocean institute until we were hanging over the rocky peninsula and noticed something peculiar.  wonderfully peculiar--the tide was at 1.2 (i don't really know what that means but the ocean docent told me it was why we had so many marvellous tide pools--yes he really was an ocean docent with a name tag and everything) thanks to a full harvest moon and the timing of the westerly wind.  really, now that i'm typing this it is sounding like a strange but beautiful dream and it played itself out like that.  we were handed these gorgeous hand-illustrated "low impact" pamphlet to southern california tidepools and went on a scavenger hunt ("mom--do you see this stick?  ok, don't poke it at the sea aneneome.  they don't like it and it's disruptive.").  we found tangerine orange sea stars, gritty sea anenomes, mountains of mussels. . . and searched and searched for hermit crabs.  although owen's curiosity granted us a "hermit crab expert" ("usually they're right under here. . just look for walking shells" explained steve the docent) we didn't find any--but we did spot the resident seal (who doesn't like to get wet "he just curls those flippers up and cringes when the tide comes back in") and the inside tip that december 31 would be the best low tide of the year. i can't think of a better way to spend the last day of the year. . .

here's the mini-slide show:

j

same room, same sites

back at the Radisson in Alesund. Do you like the snow?

spotted in Copenhagen

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev's warning to all the leaders who pass by on their way to the Climate Change Summit next week. Sorry for the blurry shot.

Sunday Squash

After a busy weekend cleaning out the closet under the stairs ( and just in time-- all my Christmas stuff was haphazardly stashed there from last year) and wrapping up a restful family sabbatical (Norway beckons Michael once mire) we enjoyed this bountiful Sunday dinner. I tossed some quinoa and toasted walnuts with brown rice, topped with apple chicken sausage and served with some nutty roasted butternut squash. Wash it down with a little smoky Pinot and call it a good night!


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changing shapes

ever since michael's been home we've all been completely addicted to stockholm band miike snow  and owen especially loves to get a good morning dance of "animal" before breakfast (we haven't had this much fun since "crazy" back in '07).  kcrw gives them a lot of airplay--sylvia, plastic jungle song for no one have had some good remixes and are also fun ones for a solid rumpus.  i posted some videos owen made but i wasn't totally comfortable with the auto-linking to itunes and getting an email from youtube about possible copyright infringment.  it's all "fair use" apparently (i take it on high authority--thanks john!) but i thought these picture collages might be just as fun (for now)...

here's owen marching his own beat to animal:

and here's owen playing the sierradog piano to burial:

fall feasting

today we picked up our last fall basket (michael did a great job spreading the bounty on the counter!) and it seemed a good time to catch up with the snaps i'd been collecting over the last few weeks of everything from october sunflowers to fall tomatoes.  owen and i had fun making the collages (although he did want to include some rocket doodle art from my phone--but that'll be a later post. . .).  i love how the late harvest tomatoes look like squash, and they've been wonderfully robust (not at all mealy).  they're certainly no august tomatoes, and they're especially delish roasted and spread over some whole grain crostini with a bit of creamy goat cheese. . .

since we bought a salad spinner (thank you home goods-- $19 for a kitchen aid pump spinner!) prepping our greens has been lots more fun.  owen washed, rinsed and spun these beet greens all by himself!  we enjoyed these in a simple foil steam pouch thrown on the grill with some onion, salt, pepper and EVOO.

before i put these root veggies int he oven to roast i couldn't resist taking a snapshot--i parboiled the potatoes with the beets and everything turned a lovely lavender.  on the right are the pictures of my first ratatouille effort--i came across an old cooks illustrated that had a recipe for roasting the zucchini and eggplant and it was well worth the effort!  next time i'll make a double batch!

finally, the best part of the harvest has been sharing it with friends. . . we had some of our favorite people over for a "fancy food" dinner party and were gifted with the most gorgeous persimmons and pomegranates (fallen right off the tree).  michael and i made our favorite spatchocked grilled chicken and opened up our "swedish" red quinoa--a first for all of us and apparently we have an insider who can get his hands on this amazing grain (i'm not even sure if that's the right classification?) so watch for it in trader joes!  i followed the swedish directions (more or less) to cook and tossed with some couscous, toasted walnuts and dried apricots.  very tasty!  of course the "fancy" wasn't over until we savoured the "fancy quince" dessert and michael and i knew it was time to open our bottle of harvest reisling we'd been saving.  i knew it was a good evening when the next morning lined up next to the sink was a water xylophone of all of our "fancy" glasses. . .

and this is all but a prelude to thanksgiving!

Update: I came downstairs to find Sierra had figured out if he knocked the back cushions down he could outsmart the cardboard (or us) and still sleep in feathered luxury


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a place in the sun

i'm in my morning spot and sierradog is out on the little balcony next to my desk.  he has an old dogbed out there which started as a measure to keep him off the futon/couch in the office but it's become a morning ritual for us these last few weeks--he enjoys the sun and i enjoy the writing companion.

but we've been having trouble keeping sierradog off the couch--in his old dog age not only is he getting more stubborn but demanding less dog-ish accommodations and more princely places to rest . . so lately we've taken to leaving a flattened cardboard box on the cushions when we leave the house and at night (sometime around 2 am he sneaks downstairs and cozies up until he pokes michael out of bed at quarter to 6 for his morning walk).  owen has eagerly joined the crusade: "NO! sierradog THIS [pointing to sdog's new ortho dog bed fluffed up with a velour blanket] is YOUR couch!)" and has enjoying policing someone besides himself (i  know i know he needs a younger brother).

so yesterday we went out for some errands and decided to stop for lunch before heading home.  right when we were getting to leave owen said smiling : "oh, mom, dad, don't worry.  sierra is NOT on the couch.  i locked him on the patio so he can just stay on his bed outside!". my little problem solver. . .

(at that point michael said "oh YOU locked him in there?" and he had, indeed, been let back inside before we left...)

PJC

We're driving back from Nana & Papa's place and Owen (who had a bath and is wearing flannel-y pants and a tee shirt) just explained the following useful distinction:

I'm not wearing pajamas but these clothes FEEL like pajamas so they're Pajama Clothes. You can just call them PJC.

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Mmmmmm

Reason #73 why we love trader joe's: proof & bake chocolate croissants.


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haunting halloween highlights!

while i baked my favorite orange chocolate cupcakes (with limoncello frosting delish!) the boys worked on carving up some super spooky jack-o-lanterns.  jack is my favorite and well, the spider is just eeek!  we learned that owen LOVES toasted pumpkin seeds but isn't such a big fan of the slimy prep work (he makes a much better cupcake helper!).

 

halloween morning owen was proud to put on his "science guy" costume-- with a donated lab coat (thanks janae!), some carefully applied rit dye (thanks nana!), a serious bowtie search (who knew? jcrew!), and plenty of fun science-y scrapbook stickers we assembled a costume i think bill nye would be proud of! ("i am NOT a doctor, i'm a SCIENCE guy")

then off to owen's first costume party--blake's 4th birthday bash where owen had a fine time with the princesses.  my favorite snap here is the special "lab goggle" wearing for eating pizza.

and finally, all hallow's eve.  this was by far the best halloween i can remember (there was that taxi ride in seattle and those parties up on campus view...).  a progressive party with my awesome neighbors--note the fancy "appletini" drinks, pumpkin cupcakes and father-son spooky hide and seek; trick or treating with lily and stella; and just enjoying the holidays at home with my family (nana, sal, jenn & lily joined us too!).

"This is no ordinary island"

last night owen & i finished reading our first chapter book together-- moominpapa at sea.  we had run into moominmania over in scandanavia and got our first moomin book at junibacken along with some other treasure tomes.  when we were in helsinki, finland in july we made the pilgirmage to the moomin shop and decided to get something we'd all enjoy this as a bedtime saga-- after all, moominpapa at sea is about how the  funny little moomin  family gets on their boat the adventurer (insert plane here) and sets sail for a dot on the map where there's nothing but a lighthouse and the sea and the weather, with boats in the far distance.  it reminded us of our norwegian "boat" room, watching the hurtigurten dock outside our window, snuggling up in one big bed and where the rain came every day and the sun never set. . .

but enough nostalgia, owen is clamoring over me to tell his side of the story, and to keep me focused on the story.  here's the book as owen explains it (he's making sure i write every word):

[warning! spoiler alert!]

there are three moomins: moominmama, moominpapa and moomintroll.  there is also little my.  moominmama paints flowers on the lighthouse walls.  moominpapa is writing about the sea in his notebook.  moomintroll he gives the groke the lamp outside. the groke loves the lantern outside.  and the fisherman is really the lighthouse keeper!  my favorite part is the sea horses because moomintroll watches them dance.  the funniest part is when the ligthouse keeper puts on moominpapa's hat! oh, and i love the part with the ocean gives them a gift (what are those sticks of wood called?) oh driftwood!  that was magic!

and here's my summary with some thoughts as well-- the moomins leave their grove because life has gotten too easy, too predictable.  moominpapa in particular feels unimportant and that his family doesn't need him.  they find an island on a map and set out on this adventure.  the island and the sea work their hardest to make life inhabitable--the roses moominmama brought won't grow (so she paints a garden inside the stark lighthouse walls instead), the peaceful hollow moomintroll finds is inhabited by red ants, and the sea washes devastates any attempt at making the island home.  they are utterly alone on the island with a few exceptions--the beautiful sea horses that moomintroll wants to befriend (but he learns they are  vain creatures who are only meant to exist in his imagination), the icy groke that is drawn to moomintroll's lantern and freezes everything in his path out of fear (but becomes his unexpected friend and the better dancer after all) and the fisherman who avoids the lighthouse and the moomins with nothing short of hostility (but he too isn't what he seems!).  the lighthouse has been abandoned and all traces of the lighthouse keeper show a lonely, and at times, terrified man who has mysteriously vanished.  and to top it all off, the lighthouse won't light.

so, the driftwood and the magic--the sea (which has been terrorizing the island so much that all of the plants and bushes literally up and move away from the shore until they are clinging to the walls of the lighthouse so that the moomins can barely get in and out) finally destroys the fisherman's home and leads to a (i think this is the denoument if i remember my book reporting) a confrontation between moominpapa and the sea.  moominpapa has been obsessively keeping a notebook to "understand" the sea (conducting all kinds of experiments and trying to devise equations that lead only to more questions) and not until the angry storm does he lay down and realize  the island has a heartbeat.  moominpapa approaches the sea, not in hopes of mastery but in defense of the entire island:

You've pestered us in every way you can, but it hasn't worked.  We're getting along somehow, in spite of you.  I've learnt to understand you, and that's what you don't like, do you?  And we haven't given up, have we?  By the way. . . to be perfectly fair, it was jolly jecent of you to give us that crate of whisky.  I know why you did: you knwo when you're beaten, don't you?  But to get your own back by taking it out of the island was a petty thing to do.  Now, I'm only saying all this because--well-because I like you.

The sea responds by sending a plank of driftwood--and then another, and another.  This was one of our favorite parts--and then we started to suspect the fisherman was really the lighthouse keeper all along.  It ends with the fisherman-lighthouse keeper's birthday and the moomins give him a party.  The cycle of loneliness and isolation is broken and the now-named lighthouse keeper goes up to the lighthouse loft, moomintroll goes to see the groke even though he doesn't have any more parrafin in the lamp, moominpapa goes out on his ledge and they see the lighthouse lit for the first time. . .

And I'll stop here because owen wants me to write:

Moominpapa is just a sea guy.


tonight we began James and The Giant Peach!


(funny enough, we read Roald Dahl's Boy on our first stay in Norway--it was one of the few English books at the ark bookshop--where he talks about growing up in Norway and eating pickled herring for breakfast!) 

"science rules!"

"my gab and my loitering"

i confess to doing more of that internal blogging lately... i've spent very little time here, in my corner, at my desk, with the laptop fired up and far too much time running in circles- and i confess to relying on "tweet"ish updates from my phone.  so i want to both to narrativize owen's swim lesson from tuesday and to offer a photoessay of why salad greens make tj's "diner style" macaroni and cheese a healthy dinner and write up why we love DK books (and which are our favorites) and feature our october arts & crafts (lots of glue and scissor work).

instead i'll repeat the process of bookmarking (and initiate that familiar clickclacking of the keys) as a mid-day marker to my working day (thanks to nana and a bucketfull of dinosaurs) as i return  to my mccullers chapter

(ok i have to interject real time owen here who keeps flinging open the door to check how my "working" is going and asking if i've found corthyasaurus yet or if i know the difference between a coral snake and a milk snake. . . who says: "don't tell me i have a surprise for you, remember the trader joe's bread mix we bought? the new one? well i'm not telling you it's a surprise and nana and i are making it for you but don't ask me until i'm finished and then it's a suprise for you."  which reminds me that as much as 4 year olds are a constant distraction they're a necessary one. . .)

dissertation and chapters (and dinosaurs oh my!)-- oh nevermind that. . .so that this is  not just another placeholder--here's a bit more walt whitman.  because he's the songbird that keeps returning to my window--and i think we always return to "song of myself" (even if only in pieces)

. . .

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains
 of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

. . .

(that last line haunts me every time. . .)

coffee in AMS

Having coffee with Jamo in Amsterdam.

improvement to the coffee scene

Familiar landscape at Utrecht Central train station:


Those yellow dutch trains, taken at Amsterdam South station:

saturday spatchcocking

jamie does it, nigella does it, and now we do it!  saturday we incorporated this simple method for a perfect grilled chicken--simply cut down the backbone with some kitchen sears and whack it flat and

voilà you have a chicken suitable for throwing on the barbie.  

first we made the "best barbecue sauce"  using everything in our pantry from hungarian paprika to fennel seeds.  the recipe calls for a mortal & pestle techinique (going on my christmas list!) but owen & i improvised by first toasting (worth it!) the whole spices then using our "spice grinder" (a repurposed old coffee grinder) and finally using our mini-prep to blend together everything from the orange rind to the rosemary and the olive oil to the ketchup.  

next it was time to spatchcock our chicken and slather with sauce.  we used a technique my dad applies to his bbq ribs and i'd never thought of applying to chicken-- just a slow cook for an hour or so in the oven which cooked the meat tenderly then we were able to throw the chicken on the grill for some searing and literal flaming of the sauce.

we reduced the sauce and then michael expertly used some rosemary to baste more sauce on our bird.  while grilling i cooked up some quick harvest grains with some dried fruit, pistachios and blood orange EVOO and plated up with the rest of our salad greens, feta and more EVOO and balsamic.  while the chicken legs and thighs were much more aesthetically appealing (gorgeous grill marks and a kind of medieval-times appearance which owen thought his dinosaur carnivores would love!) the succulent (yes, i must say succulent here) chicken breasts were by far tastier and the "prize" of this dish.  overall: delish!

so, mission accomplished: we successfully finished off the last of the csa basket and i'm happy to report that despite the red curry setback (shrimp paste? whither shrimp paste?) we were able to enjoy a week of produce-centered meals.  tonight we will use the last of the heirloom tomatoes in our turkey burgers tonight (making the good food recipe an official "regular" in our rotation) and look forward to a new bountiful basket on wedensday.  

now i must go and find a suitable place in my dissertation to incorporate the word spatchcocked (it does seem ripe for a footnote, no? or perhaps the act of writing is a kind of spatchcocking as in def. no. 3). 

dolphin in the pool!

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"Goodness, greatness, great balls of . . . squash . . ."

wednesday we picked up our first csa basket from southcoast farms and i have to confess that i nearly burst into tears seeing these gorgeous baskets overflowing with fresh herbs, squash, peaches, plums, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes. . . and sunflowers.  the sunflowers did it.  the greens and a few stone fruits i expected, anticipated--but the flowers seemed sow onderfully but necessarily  indulgent.  

to start out we signed up for the every-other-week option for the fall quarter and since nana & papa come out on wednesdays they joined in to share in the bounty (hurrah papa for his healthy commitment!).  i anticipated it would be more fun to share recipes and ideas and was warned by sarah at the farm that they were a lot of work--and once i was finished marvelling at our basket i was glad to have help lugging the 50 pound (i swear!) basket in t he car and then sorting, washing, and storing the produce.  (note to self: break down and get a salad spinner!).  

in the midst of a highly emotional week  (see post below) , though, the entire ritual was wonderfully calming.  it was like yoga for vegetables.  there i was with a pile of dirt crusted, rubberband-bound greens, swishing them in the sink full of cold water while owen devoured all the fruit he could find (michael asked if there was any fruit in the basket today--but it only lasted about 20 minutes in the house) and my dad divvyed our stash--making a rainbow spread across my dining room table while my mom distinguished between kale and chard.  

this morning with michael home we looked up recipes (love the epicrurious app!) over coffee and made our shopping list to round out our fridge then had a family jaunt to trader joe's with owen in charge of the list--and he doesn't mess around ("mom! i don't see bananas on the list.  i'd better add it" and of course we have to break into gwen stephani to spell b-a-n-a. . . well you know how it goes). and i have to add that not only have i never felt so wonderfully nourished--the baskets are full of organic, local produce; rather than buy a giant slab of raide salmon we bought smaller portions of wild alaskan. . . it seems we've managed to trim our grocery bill down considerably.  i'm used to a more sparse refrigerator, buy thoughtful pantry items and with the basket can get wholesale prices on otherwise pricey organic produce.  (mind you all of this menu planning is a gift with michael here but i'm hoping the practice of ingredient-centered meal planning will stick!)

anyhow, we had planned a ricotta-greens salad to go with our grilled salmon (oh! check out this monterey bay app as well: seafood watch) but after watching jamie at home have a "genius barbecue" we were inspired to try his salmon loaded with fresh herbs (he used fennel but i just snipped whatever was growing in my pots--some thyme, purple basil, chives, and parsley) and was excited to use the cucumbers, kale and chard from our basket for the accompanying yogurt sauce and foil-pouch steamed greens.  the salmon was tender and the herbs worked wonderfully across the menu making this a satisfying, healthy and delish sunday night dinner!  we've already decided to add jamie's herb-citrus bbq sauce to our menu next weekend (michael won't leave until monday so we're going to make the most of our weekend together at home. . .).

tomorrow we'll shop for our red curry ingredients while we're in riverside and spend the rest of the week working  our way through our harvest and down the chalkboard!