Two Recipes That MUST Be Shared

Rustic Strawberry Tart
(I halved the recipe when I made it, but this is the full original version. There are some great pictures on the website I found the recipe from. )


1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 tsp salt
4 tbsp chilled butter, cut into small pieces, divided
3 1/2 tbsp ice water
2 cups sliced strawberries
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp corn starch
pinch of salt
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1 tbsp raw sugar (I didn't have any and just used regular instead.)


To prepare crust, lightly spoon 1 cup flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour and 1/8 tsp salt in a medium bowl; cut in 3 tbsp butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse meal. (I find that a stiff metal spatula works best.) Add 3 1/2 tbsp ice water; stir just until moist. Turn dough out onto a heavily floured surface; knead lightly 5 times. Divide dough into 2 equal portions. Place each dough portion between 2 sheets of plastic wrap; roll each dough portion, still covered, into an 8-inch circle. Chill 20 to 30 minutes (until the plastic wrap peels easily away from the dough). (I just made one dough circle because I halved it.)


Meanwhile, in a medium bowl combine the berries, sugar, lemon juice, corn starch and salt. Stir to combine. 


Preheat oven to 350*F. Uncover dough; place dough circles on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Arrange half of the strawberries in a pinwheel pattern in one of the dough circles, starting in the middle and forming concentric circles of strawberries, leaving a 2-inch border. Repeat with the second dough circle and remaining berries. 


Fold up the edges of the dough circles over the berries, crimping to seal. Lightly brush the pastry with the beaten egg white. Sprinkle the two rounds with the raw sugar. 


Bake for 45 minutes or until golden brown. 


Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuits
(This recipe is AMAZING. They totally taste just like the Red Lobster ones. This will make 12 large biscuits.)


Biscuits:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp shortening
3 tbsp butter, cold
1 cup buttermilk (Or 1 cup milk and 1 1/2 tsp vinegar, let them sit together until little bubbles appear on the top, about 10 minutes.)
1 1/4 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese


Buttery Topping:
3 tbsp melted butter
1/4 tsp dried parsley flakes
3/4 tsp garlic powder
pinch of salt


Preheat oven to 425*F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, garlic powder and salt. Cut in shortening and butter until coarse crumbs are formed. Lightly mix in grated cheese. Mix in buttermilk just until moist (dry spots here and there are ok - the biscuits will be tough if they are over mixed). Drop the biscuits onto a greased or lined baking sheet. Bake for 12-14 minutes, until browned and golden. While the biscuits are baking, in a small bowl combine butter, parsley, garlic powder and salt. Right when the biscuits come out of the oven, brush the butter-herb mixture over the biscuits evenly or dip the biscuits directly in the butter mixture. Serve immediately. (I reheated a couple in the toaster oven the next night after being in the fridge and they were still pretty good.)

Low Gear

I'm the kind of person that if I'm going to bother doing something, then I'm going to do it well, dammit. Or at least get the greatest calorie burn I can out of it. I've never been that interested in being the fastest or the strongest, just the fittest I can be. I've tried running, biking, swimming, triathlons, biathlons, and lifting. And with everything, I try my hardest. 


I've been riding my bike with Lily in the front bike seat for a while now. And usually I consider it part of my exercise for the day, so I try to make it count. I'll go up a few hills, pedal fairly quickly, and use higher gears so I'm working harder the whole way. 


But it was starting to feel like hard work. Really hard work. So much so that I wouldn't ride the bike. I would walk, or worse, drive, instead. Which is so stupid. So with rising gas prices and rising temperatures I've embraced the lower gears on my bike. 


It turns out I'm loving it. Riding the bike is fun again. When Lily yells "Weeeeee!" as the wind is blowing through her hair (through the helmet of course), I feel the same. Turns out I can go farther, have more energy for more frequent trips, and I don't dread it. And I'm doing it more often. 


This seems like just the thing I need to focus on this summer: Do it in low gear. I try so hard to make every moment count or be productive, and in reality, I don't have to. In fact I probably get more done because I'm less tired, less stressed, and more open to possibilities. 


Here's to kickin' it in low gear and coasting through the summer!

Fairy House

In one of the parks near our apartment, Lily and I are building a fairy house. It's this wonderfully twisted, knotted old tree just off the path. Every time we walk through the park we pick up a stick or a rock and add it to the house. 

First, we started by just clearing out the alcove so the fairies could have a place to stay dry when it rains. Then we added some stone we picked up from the beach as something for the fairies to sit on. They obviously needed a little wood chip table so they could eat. Now that the alcove was filled with furniture, they needed a place to sleep, so we added a little lean-to for a bedroom. The floor is covered in soft pine needles. 

The picture is at sort of a weird angle, but the furniture is actually sheltered in the little alcove and the bedroom is just around the corner and also partially sheltered by a different little recess. It's pretty cute. And Lily loves to add things to it. I would put some pretty flowers in, but one of the rules of fairy houses is that you can't take anything living to put in it. Therefore, you can't pick flowers. I'm thinking about making a little path to it with some fallen leaves and smaller twigs like little tiki torches. 

We come back to check on it about once a week, and it's been there about a month. It's holding up remarkably well. I managed to pick a spot that's pretty sheltered from the wind, and because it's off the path and on the opposite side of the tree, no people have messed with it, at least as far as we can tell. Our most recent visit was this evening. I can't wait for the weather to warm up a little more and go a little later in the evening when the fireflies will be out. Maybe we'll see some fairies then. 

Mother's Day Woes

So Mother's Day was a little rough this year. And from what I can tell from other friends' blogs and facebook updates it was rough for everyone. Maybe it was something in the air, or just that we expect it to be an easier day and it never is. I wasn't planning on writing about it, but since everyone else was miserable I figured I'd show a little solidarity. 


We skipped church because Lily had been sick the day before, and was still a little sniffly with a pretty nasty cough. We thought it would be particularly cruel to send her off to spread her germs on Mother's Day. Joe made 'special breakfast' at home (eggs, bacon, toast and delicious, delicious coffee). We took our time getting ready and had lunch with Joe's parents. Afterwards his parents watched Lily while Joe and I went to see 'The Avengers'. It's awesome and totally worth seeing in the theater. Go now. After picking Lily up, we made it home in time to heat up some Thai take-out leftovers and crash to watch the season finale of 'Once Upon a Time'. 


Then chaos broke out. Lily's cough had been getting worse throughout the day and her nap schedule was different so she was kind of cranky all evening. Bath time was a complete disaster. There was screaming and crying and shampoo in MY hair. Joe managed to wrangle her into an angry sleep and I laid down on the couch because now I was getting the sniffles and the cough and the fever. Great. A couple hours later we go to bed and between my coughing and Lily's coughing pretty much none of us got any sleep. At about 1:30 I gave up and went to sleep on the couch. Joe is a pretty heavy sleeper so I figured he'd be okay with Lily's coughing/crying/thrashing cycles, and he did. 


So Mother's Day itself wasn't bad so much as Mother's night. Needless to say we were all exhausted the next morning. Lily and I skipped music class, took two naps during the day, and generally wallowed in our sick and tiredness. Thankfully last night was better, not stellar, but good enough so that I can function today. Maybe we'll just skip Mother's Day next year. 

Gardening

The garden has been growing like gang busters. We've got strawberries, radishes, spinach and chard all set to harvest. Lily LOVES to go to the garden. She likes to dig in the dirt, point to weeds for me to pull out (she's usually wrong), and just generally run around and get dirty. Oh, and how could I forget watering. I got her a tiny little watering can that she thinks is the greatest thing in the world. 

Here she is clutching the strawberries we picked last week. This week we got twice as many. I'm probably being a little impatient and picking them one day too early, but I'd rather have a slightly less ripe strawberry than a rotten or bug/rat nibbled one. And they taste GOOD. They're small and oddly shaped, but juicy and oh-so-strawberry-tasting. Every one we saw Lily shouted "Ooohhhh!" and then "Mine!". She would have gobbled them all up right there if I had let her.

Radishes are so fun to grow. They grow quick, they're delicious to toss in salads, and they're really fun for little hands to dig out of the ground. We have a million of them, so if anyone wants some I will gladly bring you some. We planted these along with some carrots, and not a single one of the carrots has sprouted. We even did a second planting of carrots. I don't get it, last year the carrots went crazy, this year nothing? We'll keep trying.

I also sort of hap-hazardly planted some spinach and it's coming up pretty well. I harvested some today to put on my sandwich for lunch and throw in with salad for dinner. 

I haven't been doing a good job of going down to the garden to water regularly enough. I've mostly been relying on rainfall, which there hasn't been a whole lot of. I'm going to try to get down there more than once a week to see if that helps the next batch of carrots and maybe some more spinach. I'm really excited to plant some watermelon seeds soon and I can't WAIT to get tomato plants in the ground. 

And I am apparently a terrible house plant gardener. We started some broccoli and pepper plants in peat pots, and they're all dead now. First they grew okay, then they covered themselves in mold, then I forgot to water them for three days in a row. So we might try that again, or not. I'll probably do what I did last year and buy the pepper plants, and plant broccoli seeds in the ground along with one broccoli plant so I know what it's supposed to look like and how it should be growing. As much fun as I have in the garden, I actually know very little about plants and sometimes have a hard time telling which are my plants and which are weeds. 

Hooray for growing things and eating them!

Resolution Check-In 4

1) Exercise for 20 minutes per day. I did so-so, 24 out of 30 days. And the days I didn't I was usually working or doing something else fairly active. Still chugging along at 160.    

2) Send one letter per week. This month was rather spastic in terms of letter writing. Two of the weeks I sent out 4+ letters both times, and then no letters the other weeks. That averages out to at least one per week, right?   

3) Bake and decorate one thing outside of work per month. Well, I baked vanilla lemon cupcakes for Easter and decorated them with a classic cupcake swirl. Then I made oatmeal cookies with Lily, which is quite an undertaking. And the last week in April I was making decorations for a cake that was delivered during the first week of May. I forgot to take a picture, but I may be getting one from the client soon.  

4) Stop comparing myself to other moms. This mama who goes and does was exhausted this month. We did go a few fun places, but truthfully I was a weather wimp. We watched more TV than I'd like to admit and we took full advantage of the large common room on the second floor. We made some new friends while running off steam and getting out of the apartment for a while each afternoon.