they call him “Da Tig”

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Oliver has rediscovered his white helmet with the green visor, it had been out of circulation for a while, and has been put back into action with great enthusiasm. Last night, had donned “wace hat” and informed me “me Tig mommy!” “to car me!” “vooooom!”

I posted the photo on twitter, and one of my friends tweeted back:

“some say his favorite snack is Cheerios, and all of his race suits are made by Garanimals. All we know is he’s called the Stig!”

Later O gave the helmet to P, and then we had Baby Stig. His race suit is from Hannah Anderson.

Continue reading →

6 Egg white Cake, Hurray for the Internet

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Yesterday I made another batch of ice-cream. The chocolate was fabulous, but I wanted some vanilla as well, and I still had seven free-range organic vegetarian eggs in the fridge. The vanilla ice-cream called for six eggs, which would leave one leftover, so I started separating yolks until I came across an egg that bounced back.

Apparently some hens lay hardboiled eggs.

I digress, this is not a post about ice-cream, this is a post about what to do with the leftover egg whites that come when you take away the yolks to make ice-cream: they sit in a measuring cup in the fridge and look lonely. Very lonely.

Six is too many to make Mexican Chocolate Chewies, five pushed that limit to the brink, and I’m pretty sure six would’ve pushed it over the edge. So I did the only logical thing, I googled around the internet for a solution.

There were not many to be found, until I came across Self-Frosting Angel Cake at the Cookie Baker Lynn blog: it used six egg whites, I had those. It used cake flour, I used to have some, but it went out with last weekend’s pantry purge (the box said it expired in 2008). I don’t use cake flour very often, but I am not one to be easily deterred. You can fake cake flour, and I had cornstarch on hand.

Once I had the necessary faux cake flour, the recipe and directions were delightfully simple… I didn’t have any almond extract, so I added more vanilla. I also used an 8×8 pan, lined with a parchment paper sling.

27 minutes in the oven and a little time cooling later, we cut some small sample pieces. Gavin and Patrick liked the cake, Oliver got sidetracked by the ice-cream.

This is by far the best way to use up egg whites that I have ever come across.  Continue reading →

May Day

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In both 2002 and 2005 I had the pleasure of being in one of the little towns near Augsburg for May Day. Instead of workers rights and civil unrest, the Germans celebrated the arrival of spring, erecting a giant may pole, serving lots of food and getting quite drunk.

Today we opted to celebrate more in line with the German tradition (minus all the beer): we grilled burgers, ate outside for the first time since last year, and the boys got played in water table.

It was Patrick’s first time at the water table (and outside on the patio without being held) and with the help of Oliver, he got soaked to the skin. Oliver also helped to “wash Baby har!” and make a “road!” of water all over the patio.

    

I suspect this is going to be come a recurring theme over the summer, so I need to find Patrick some shoes that can hold up well to getting wet a lot. Hopefully I can find some in the box of shoes O’s outgrown (although P has larger pudgier feet than O did at this age and O was 11 months in the dead of winter). I suspect there will be a pair or two from last summer, or the summer before that fit, I just need to figure out the American vs. European sizing and find all the size-labels.

Ice-cream without Assistants

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This evening, the conclusion of the free-range, organic, non-vegetarian eggs and ice-cream making saga.

After yesterday’s failed attempt and extra assistance I decided to wait until the boys were tucked into bed before I tried again. The bowl had been freezing for well over 24 hours, and with no extra helpers to stick their fingers in the soupy mess I was sure things would go smoothly.

About five minutes into the process Oliver started wailing – I am still not entirely sure why. We rushed up stairs, leaving the mixer to do it’s thing, settled Oliver back into bed, and returned to gloriously creamily churned ice-cream.

Ok, it wasn’t quite that easy, I had to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice before the hollering started, and the churned ice-cream didn’t all fit in my up-cycled yogurt container, but aside from that, things went very smoothly.

It tastes amazing. I think the local, free-range, organic, non-vegetarian eggs helped, as did the local, organic heavy cream and milk. The least local-organic-free-range things I used were the Ghirardelli coco powder and chocolate chips, and the salt (it is sea salt fromCostco), I’m ok with that.

Most of it made it to the freezer.

I also found a use for the five unused egg whites. I made Mexican Chocolate Chewies (a friend gave me the Homesick Texan Cookbook for my birthday, sadly the recipe does not appear to be posted on her blog).

The recipe called for three egg whites, but I had five leftover, I figured the eggs I’d been using were a little smaller than the average off-the-grocery-store-shelf egg (the chickens just started laying) so I used them all.

Next time I do that I’m going to up the chopped pecans from 2 to 3 cups. Other than spreading a LOT more than the previous batch (those are scant 1-tablespoon sized drops of cookie dough), they taste pretty AMAZING too (I think the Ghirardelli helped there too).

Next time, after Bedtime

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It has been a while since I made ice-cream. The last blog post about it is from 2008, and then I cheated and made my amazing hazel nut gelato. It has been even longer since I’ve last attempted a custard-based ice-cream recipe, but the hardest part is usually separating some eggs with out getting egg-shell bits in the yolk.

Armed with my dozen free range, organic, not-so-vegetarian-diet eggs, I set about finding a recipe that would use almost half of them, but was still simple enough to manage with my two assistants.

I turned to my oft-flipped-through-with-great-longing-but-never-yet-used cookbook devoted to ice-cream: “The Perfect Scoop” and cleared space in our freezer for our kitchenaid ice-cream maker.

I soon settled on basic chocolate ice-cream (although rocky road with homemade marshmallow looked very good too), and once I acquired heavy cream at the store we were set to go.

That was Thursday afternoon. Thursday night and early into Friday morning, Patrick decided to wake up several times to remind me he was CUTTING A TOOTH!! and he NEEDED COMFORT (and a boobie, and to kick me in the ribs) NOW!!

Friday morning, more than a little exhausted, and with a constant stream of three-year old chatter in the back ground “make dis ice-keem mommy! make dis ice-keem! me help mommy! make dis-ice-keem” I assembled the necessary ingredients, hauled the me-help-mommy tower from the garage, and loaded up Patrick’s tray with finger snacks so he’d be somewhat occupied.

Both the recipe and directions were simple, keeping Oliver from touching the hot pot, splashing simmering liquid everywhere, and grabbing things because it was “me turn mommy!” was less easy. He also kept scooting his tower within inches of me, pinning me between the stove, tower and Patrick’s chair.

     

After the custard had chilled in an ice-bath, and then in the fridge, we poured it into our ice-cream maker. After a few minutes I realized we probably hadn’t frozen the bowl long enough, and the custard wasn’t thickening, and it was all soupy.

By this point Patrick wanted to participate too. He had launched his banana off his tray and Oliver had taken his crackers. He wailed in dismay from his vantage point, firmly strapped into his booster seat. I sat him on the counter, only to snatch him back up again as he reached his fingers into the bowl while the machine was running. He was unharmed, just cold and sticky-fingered.

"NO! BABY!"

Next time I am going to wait until after they’ve gone to bed.

Realizing it wasn’t going to solidify any time soon, I did the only logical thing to do, I poured the soupy custard into a repurposed yogurt container and stuck it back in the fridge, cleaned out the ice-cream maker bowl and put it back in the freezer.

We will try making solid ice-cream tomorrow afternoon, once the bowl has frozen for 24+ hours, and then perhaps I will come up with a use for the five egg whites that were left behind.

 

*I had initially embedded links in this post, but for some reason they did not publish. I am not pleased. 

free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs

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On Thursday one of the mother’s in Oliver’s waldorf group approached me and asked if I had chickens. Some days I think we are the only family in West County with a chicken-less backyard. I’m OK with that. I like chickens, they’re great, I like to roast them, bake them, fry them, have them on sandwiches, but running around my back yard/over-sized flagstone patio? No thanks, I’ll pass.

She looked very relived to find I was chicken-less, and then asked if I would like some chickens. Not so much. She explained they had ten chickens (they’d over-bought assuming they’d loose some to predators – and they hadn’t), and the chickens had started laying eggs, by laying eggs, there were “50 this morning” and she had some eggs in the car, would I like some eggs?

Eggs, yes. Chickens, no.

Thankfully the chickens are not going to new homes, just their eggs. So I came home with a carton of free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs (the carton said vegetarian diet, but her husband made her scratch it out because the chickens ate organic, free-range worms and bugs, they were bad vegetarians).

While I was thrilled by the gift of a dozen free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs, I usually buy them in cartons of six because I don’t use eggs very often. I didn’t want the eggs to bad (although Gavin has since assured me they’re likely to last for quite some time as they were freshly collected Wednesday and Thursday morning and grocery store eggs are at least a month or two old), so I did what any logical person with small children who like to “help” and who needs to use up a few eggs does: I decided to make custard-based ice cream.

Yep.

some of the remaining eggs

P at 11 months

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*photo coming eventually*

After 11 months of waiting, Patrick finally has a tooth. He won’t show it to you, but if you’re unlucky enough for him to suck on your chin you’re in for a VERY sharp surprise.

update: 4/27/12, now with photo!

a long weekend in Houston

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We spent this past weekend (Thursday-Monday) in Houston visiting the boys grandparents and great-grandmother. The trip went smoothly except for weather-and-maintenance delays getting out of Houston on Monday (it was a 10:30 am flight, we didn’t leave until 3 pm).

We got into Houston late Thursday evening, and saw the Grandparents Trudell and Great-Grandma Oma first thing Friday morning. Friday we took the ferry at Bolivar and had lunch on the Bolivar peninsula. Oliver loved the ferry ride and seeing all the boats.

Saturday we had a lovely morning at the park, followed by lunch our favorite greek deli and cafe. Saturday afternoon, friends stopped by for tea and cake (Oma made a fabulous cake… I need to get the recipe).

Sunday morning we had breakfast at Panera with a long-time church friend, followed by church, lunch with more church friends, and an afternoon with yet more friends. We had dinner at Tookies (previous site of my rather sedate bachelorette luncheon).

Monday morning we said good bye to the grandparents and Oma, returned our rental car, got to the airport, checked in, got through security and then started getting updates about how our flight would be delayed… and then delayed again, and then delayed some more.

Both flights were fairly uneventful. On the return flight, the men in the row behind us complimented us on our boys good behavior (we’d tired them out in the airport), and one of the guys on the van back to the long-term parking lot mentioned he’d never seen a baby crawl as fast as Patrick.

The boys had a good time and Oliver is looking forward to flying back to visit “Tom-ah” (Thomas the Cat), “Omo” (Oma), “Ganma!” and “Ganma’s friend” (my parents) again soon.

Photos will be forthcoming as soon as I can get them off my phone onto my computer without crashing iPhoto.