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).