too-may-toe toh-mah-toh

i'm not sure why, but courgette just sounds way sexier than zucchini . . . either way i picked up a handful of little green squash with the intention of actually doing more than fancy sandwiches for dinner this week.

don't get me wrong, the fancy sandwiches were delish! owen has become his own sandwich master which means rather than suspiciously look at what's on his plate he relishes over his avocado-turkey-creamcheese-blackberryjelly creation and says: "mom, do you know why this sandwich is sooooo good? because I made it!" meanwhile my favorite this week has to be the toasted flax seed cibatta (leftover in the freezer from lasagna dinner last week) with some goat's milk creamy cheese (discovered this at ivonne's and it's on my permanent tjoe's list: it's AmAzing and lighter that chevre and tangier and tastier than spreadable cream cheese), sliced heirloom tomato and fresh thyme (my basil was looking pathetic and the thyme was a great compliment to the cheese) with a little flake sea salt (god bless michael for packing this in his suitcase from sweden!). the great thing about sammies all week is that not only do we get creative with fresh ingredients but it's teaching me how to live with a sparser (is that a word??) refrigerator.

but the courgettes-- en route back to cali i picked up a bbc cooking magazine olive which was not only loaded with fresh and inspired seasonal recipes for those british green squash but had some cheeky foodie articles as well (like a "you think your xyz is better than gordon ramsay's" featuring a lasagna-off and a debate over picnics). i tabbed some potentially tasty finds including this cous cous (hopefully i'll be comparing results with a fellow foodie this week!) and this pita pizza. owen is a big fan of cous cous and i thought we could make our own individual crispy pizzas. there is also a go-to jar of pesto in the fridge so i can re-create the inspired wednesday pizzas we had with bw&s with some sauteed squash, feta and kalamata olives. finally, i hope to continue to ravenously devour as many august tomatoes as i possibly can before the hothouse mealy shouldn't-be-allowed-to-call-them-tomatoes fruits appear in the fall--but by then there's squash. . .

tonight, though, i confess to picking up polish dogs at costco. sometimes you just gotta give in. . .

the body is the poem

i'm a late convert to walt -- reading carson's short stories got me interested in his "songs" and i've had this posted above my desk (thanks to another poetic inspiration)--and enjoyed andreas' post of his "facing west from california's shores" and it seemed that poetry is meant to be cut and pasted and shared and constantly re-birthed.

so here's my scrap:

this is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful undeducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all that you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem. . .

end of the week food love

it's been a lovely, lovely week with michael home and it concluded with cafeneio on friday--of course i have neither pictures nor recipes, but i will share this straight-out-of-a-dutch-stilllife plate of home grown figs and grapes we took home. they are as delicious as they are beautiful. owen was smitten with the grapes--so little and sooo sweet! again, the simple and surprising pleasures of in season, fresh grown food. . . michael made his signature lime drops which hadn't been shaken since our DINK days and the fresh lime juice and zesty ginger was a perfect late summer treat. . .

last night owen and i made lasagna together for michael (alas, 3 more weeks until our next family dinner) and i experimented with sweet italian chicken sausage for a lighter version of my more traditional meat sauce (half the saturated fat as pork!) and tried the par-boil trick the trader joe's sample guy suggested--the meat was not missed! the lasagna was hearty and intensely flavorful but didn't leave you with just-ate-too-much-pasta bloat. just the smell of the onions and parsley simmering and the simple pleasure of layering the fresh mozerella and spooning spinach-rich ricotta was worth the experience. owen, of course, was all about cheese and was feeling extra "big" grating a 2lb block of parmigano reggiano. (he "doesn't love" tomato sauce and "will maybe like it when he's five"). owen in action:

here's the final dish (just a phone snapshot--the camera's on holiday) served with proscuitto-wrapped cantaloupe and arugula and shave parmiganno with our prized figs. we will definitely be experimenting with lasagna again--perhaps some late summer veggies next time. . .

D O G (and the boy who loves him)

welcome dc-24!

let me preface this by saying my stairs hadn't been vacuumed in months. and for the amount of traffic our 8x8 foot family room gets the carpet is well, worn. and no matter how often i changed the bag our hoover windtunnel with its duct-taped power cord despite picking up popcorn kernels and mightymachine dirt actually made the room feel less clean. . .

i even took it to a vacuum repair shop and the vacuum salesman scoffed and offered me a $200 trade in for a $900 miele (and not the pretty one in the back of hte w-s catalouge either) or $90 to clean it and make it usable. i rolled my hoover back out of the sew & vac and spent an hour carefully disassembling and cleaning that red hoover. i felt damn handy and i had used power tools. but the vacuum still sucked. (hmmm. hadn't meant to be punny.)

. . . anyhow, i'd been dreaming of a dyson for some time and was determined to hold out for a vacuum cleaner that was as beautiful as it was functional. three best buy gift cards (the "perks" of michael living at a best western for 3 weeks at a time) and one visa check card (the last of the radisson points) later and we are pleased to announce the newest member of our family:

the dc--24

you can check out the reviews for yourself--amazon, target, best buy. . . it's a

love or hate kind of deal. we got the "ultra lightweight" dyson and. . . i'll let the pictures do the talking. ok let me just say that after vacuuming the living room (twice already this week), our bedroom and the hallway owen exclaimed: "ok mommy now i'll go pick up my room so we can vacuum it next!". oh, and unlike the airblade (which is soo worth a trip to the san clemente beach bathroom despite it's jet engine sonics) it is gloriously quiet--a key bonus if you refuse to use restrooms that have automatic flushers because they are too loud (fixed, by the way with a bandaid--but that's another story). now the pictures:

here owen's actually dancing with a mop. that's right--vacuuming is so fun that all cleaning is exciting! and below he's wiping down our blinds.

tomorrow: the stairs.

"movin' to the country" ... gonna eat a lot of tomatoes (and oranges and carrots)

on sunday we went to south coast farms and picked up our produce for the week-

-i planned our menu to highlight the best of late summer: tomatoes!! as i confessed earlier, i could easily live on caprese sandwiches but since michael's home this week i thought it would be fun to plan a menu and try some new recipes. my goal is still to eat seasonally and simply so i turned again to the"summer" section in my everyday food.

here's an update of some delish finds so far:

on sunday we grilled the "favorite turkey burger" which incorpriates gruyere cheese and mustard in the patty for extra flavor and were surprised at how tasty they were! we topped with thickly sliced beefsteak tomatoes and avocado. we'll definitley incorporate this into our regular rotation. . .

yesterday we made the flank steak with lime marinade and i had planned to make the mellon & boccocini salad but after a mozerella shortage at tj's (not that there was any melon left anyway--we had devoured the sweet stuff with our burgers) i thawed some bread crusts left from our simple's wheat seed loaf and made tomato & grilled bread salad instead. the steak was tender and zesty and the salad highlighted the heirloom yellow, green, and rich red tomatoes. yum again! i saved half of the steak and tonight it'll star in vietnamese steak sandwiches at our disney picnic (going to get bread at cali adventure and watch the electric parade tonight!!). . .

oh, and we've been eating those peaches too. . .

know your dinosaurs: take the quiz!

i've just been googling for some good dinosaur crafts to do--and i realized that not only has owen's comprehension surpassed dinosaur sock puppets (which are regular button-eyed sock guys with mohawks) and dinosaur oragami (which does look cool--but not quite a pachycephalasaurus) but that i've become quite dinosaur saavy myself. all i remember from grade school was that boys liked trexes and i was partial to the not-spiny brontosaurus (who i think is now a generic term for the saurapods liek brachi- and apata- . . .). but i've found myself intrigued both the scientific mystery of it all and the nomenclature. so looking around i even had a go at a dinosaur quiz (which i can proudly say i scored a perfect ten). anyhow, i think we'll just make our own dinosaur book using watercolors, markers and construction paper.
so the question is will this be a book about the jurrasic or the cretaceous. . .

another recent development in the dinosaur obsession has been taking pictures of his dinosaurs (hmmm wonder where the obsessive archiving comes from??)--owen poses them (like getting pteranodon to sit on top of brachiasaurus' head which is actually pretty impressive) and plays with angle and perspective (let's get just red trex's head or stand back and get all of dinosaur land). i personally think he needs his own lacma exhibit (kind of like the edouard sautai exhibit we saw at gallerie des enfants at the pompidou). his best work is still the snaps from dino mountain posted below but here are a few more he took with my phone at home: