Raspberries!

This is what Brynna and I picked from our raspberry bushes this evening - about 3/4 quart. It might have been a full quart all told, but a great many ended up in Brynna's mouth before reaching the basket. I don't mind: this is a very fine time of year, and picking berries off the bush is about as good as it gets! Yesterday we got about one cup. There is a great bounty beyond that will gradually ripen over the next few weeks, and one or two smaller bushes that will put out fruit later in the summer.

Local Mushrooms

Here's a great find at the Farmer's Market yesterday: exotic mushrooms cultivated in New Hampshire. The NH Mushroom Company churns out a few hundred pounds each week from their facility in Tamworth, NH. They sell to restaurants and wholesalers, and this past week made an appearance at the Concord Farmer's Market. Chestnut (the brownish ones - like shiitakes, but with a less-chewy stem) and Oyster. Not terribly expensive either at $12-14/lb. A half pound of the chestnut mushrooms, combined with asparagus and tofu, will offer up one of our favorite springtime dishes.

WMUR profiled the company over the winter. Video here, including great video of how they do their growing (bags and bags of woodchips and sawdust!).

Spring is Here!

In great contrast to my last post (oh so many weeks ago, I know), there are some signs of Spring around Concord. Despite the fact that it has been pretty cold this past week - the first week of April - we are well on our way:

1. Maple Syrup season is just about wrapped up. After reading Maple Syrup Season by Ann Purmell about twenty times in February and March, we went out to see sugaring in action a few weeks back during NH's official maple syrup weekend. The season was already pretty far long, because we sampled some hot Grade B fresh from the evaporator. In other news


2. I sent off an order form for seedlings for our vegetable garden. Sure, we won't pick them up until Memorial Day weekend, but it is a comfort, looking over the strawa-covered raised beds on a grey morning - to know that our tomato, pepper, tomatillo, and brocolli plants are at that moment growing in a greenhouse a two towns away.


3. The raised beds may be looking a bit forlorn and have nothing but old straw to show at the moment, but there are twinges of green to be seen as well: garlic popping up


4. Although it's been chilly when we do it, Hilary and I have been able to do some outdoor bike rides in the last few weeks. We even did a 30-miler last weekend coming back from an Easter get together in Amherst.


5. Easter! We aren't particularly observant, but Easter is always a fun holiday for us. At the said family get-together, Brynna's easter egg hunt was a real crowd pleaser. Picture one adorable and giggling 4-year old chasing through a yard with 9 adults trailing behind with cameras. Or, better yet, observe:

source: Bill R.


6. The end of snow. Enjoy it while it lasts, Jasper!
source: Bill R.


7. March Madness. Go UConn Huskies! What do you mean "men play basketball, too"?


8. Changing wardrobes. We have bins of hand-me-down girl clothes from our former neighbors. Just today Brynna and Hilary did a grand changing of the wardrobe: culling the extra warm and increasingly small clothes and replacing them with sundresses and shirtsleeves for the coming summer.


9. Ice cream. Sure, it was hovering around freezing when we got it, but the neighborhood ice cream shop opened for the season on April 1st - and we made a point to be there! Not that we sat around outside to eat it through.

Fresh Pasta with Chestnut Sauce

Behold my culinary prowess!

At Saturday's farmer's market, we picked up this lovely green spinach fettucini from a local vendor. From another: chestnuts. From our local food co-op I snagged some dried exotic mushrooms. From the grocery store: white button mushrooms. Following this recipe from the Minimalist, I whipped up a savory chestnut and mushroom sauce to put overtop it all. Delicious. Between Hilary, B, and I, we finished off a whole pound of pasta and all of the sauce in a single sitting. Thankfully, the spinach pasta had inspired me to break out the pasta mill and make some of my own, which when combined with ordinary store-bough red sauce made for a delicious lunch today.

Nutmeg

This hardened kernel, about the size of a large grape, is the dried seed of a tree. This is what I buy at the grocery store. After scraping it against the grater shown next to it, I have a pile of small bits that, collectively, I call nutmeg. The tree it comes from is called a nutmeg tree.

But can anyone tell me what to call this little guy? The nutmeg nut? The nut of meg?

Garlic

This was a good year for the garlic. These pictures are from when I yanked it out, back in early July. They've been spending the weeks since then hanging up in the garage, curing, so that they now have papery husks and should keep for at least a couple of months.

Kickstarting a Bakery

There are several places downtown to get baked goods of one sort or another. However, the hours are a bit spotty (compared to our hectic schedule), and one could always use more choices. A new bakery, which had been using rented kitchen space north of Concord and selling through retail outlets, it looking to move into a vacated storefront on Main St. To do this, they have secured financing in a variety of ways, including raising over $4000 through Kickstarter.

Can't wait for our delicious brownies and bars!

Chocolate Milk!

In a glass bottle, no less. God bless the farmers' market!

With a hint of iron and nickel...

Oenophiles, rejoice! If you've found your current palette to be a little cramped, expand your horizons by escaping the bounds of what Earth alone has to offer. Yes, you too can now enjoy a wine that has been aged in a cask containing a meteorite!

The slight infusion of out-of-this-world minerals should definitely be refreshing, but only if you remember to swirl it in the right direction. And to think that all this time I've been doing it wrong!

But whatever will I pair it with?

Little foodie

I was on "short call" this evening in the hospital, and arrived home just after 9:00.

B, instead of being fast asleep, was just climbing down from her footboard after turning on the lamp. After restoring soothing darkness, I asked her about her day, and then inquired about what she had eaten for dinner.

"We had beets. And keen-wa" [which is indeed the proper pronunciation of quinoa, a South American grain]

"And pistachios," she continued. "I gave one to M. He's not a fan of pistachios, but I gave him one anyway."

At this rate, she's going to be ordering in fancy French restaurants pretty soon...

Slice, Chop, Repeat

Although we try to eat with the seasons, and eat locally where possible, we still use 1-4 peppers a week for much of the year. In winter, they come from greenhouses in Mexico and Holland, and that just doesn't sit right with us.

But it's not quite winter yet: it's harvest time. Even though peppers are supposed to be a summer crop, here in New Hampshire they don't start turning colors until mid-September. We've still got a whole slew that are racing the end of the season with lots of green still showing. But, amazingly enough, we have gotten some from our garden already, and have stocked up when possible at the Farmer's Market. We cut them and freeze them for later use. Break out the whetstone - I like a sharp blade for this kind of work!

Before:

After:

The Girls Were All Right

Here's the 10-point update on what B and I were up to while Alex was off gallivanting in Europe. We sure are glad to have him home!

1. Doggies, doggies everywhere
Cee Lo the dog joined us for an overnight shortly after Alex left. Cee Lo belongs to one of my classmates, who was on call. The most remarkable thing about this dog is that even though I had never met him before, he let me waltz into his apartment and take him home with me! The pups had a great time together, but Jasper did spend much of the night humping Cee Lo. Brynna kept running over to me and saying, "Mommy, Jasper's on top of our new friend again!"

Jasper unfortunately celebrated his visitor by having an episode of gastrointestinal distress during the night. On the carpet. (WHY always on the carpet???) And yes, I know it was him. Because the fun continued after Cee Lo left the next day.

2. This is NOT an emergency room!
The day Alex left, I sent two patients from the clinic to the emergency room. In a row. Both via ambulance (which is a little funny since the ER is right on the other side of the hospital campus). It was the same EMT crew both times! And they were from the firehouse right behind our house. As they were wheeling the second patient out, one of them called back, "see you in five minutes, doc!" I still owe them some cookies.

3. Good friends are priceless
Two weekend mornings in a row, P and N from down the street knocked on the door and whisked B away to play with her friend C, allowing me a couple of hours of rest. Well, sort-of-rest...I spent most of that time triaging patient phone calls for the clinic, earning a little extra money.

4. One-trick cooking
Our garden was very busy producing tomatoes and basil, and I was too tired to do much complex cooking, so mostly Brynna and I ate tomatoes and basil and mozzarella on varying carbs: sometimes with noodles, sometimes with rice (she LOVES risotto), sometimes just on bread. Adorably, B refers to mozzarella cheese as "gorilla cheese." I would like to proudly announce that we only ordered out ONCE in the twelve days that Alex was gone.

5. Mini-reunions
My dear friend Sara came to stay for five days. This was awesome in many ways—I got to hang out with her, Brynna got to hang out with her, and the day that Brynna slept until 1 PM (yes, really, 1 PM...I didn't realize she'd suddenly become a teenager!) Sara was able to keep an eye on her at home so that I could see my clinic patients. In the end, we decided that she was super-over-tired rather than actually sick.

Kristin also came up to visit while Sara was in town, and she brought her Great Dane Poe. He walked into the kitchen and immediately swung his head over to the center of the island, sniffing out the stick of butter I'd laid out. Yikes! Great Danes apparently require an entirely new level of dog-proofing. Here's a photo of him drinking from the kitchen sink. Amazing!

Jasper was in awe—though he eventually ventured out for some tentative sniffs.

And finally, our friend Katie came to visit while Sara was in town, too. These fabulous college reunions are going to continue shortly, as we're all headed to a wedding this weekend!

6. Good times on a Saturday morning
Brynna and I had a lovely, chill time doing our regular Saturday morning thing. We biked downtown and left our bike and trailer with the farmers' market bike valet parking (yes, seriously). We went to the coffee store, the bagel store, and did our sweep through the market. Brynna enjoyed one of the first apples of the season:

And then played in the wonderful climbing tree on the State House lawn:

We ended the morning with a library trip, where we found some Madeline and Frances books that we didn't already have at home. Sadly, the copy of Toy Story that we checked out had scratches all over it, so I still haven't seen the movie.

7. Swimming and biking and running, oh my!
Our YMCA puts on a triathlon every year, and though it was a bit lonely to race without Alex, there were a bunch of people there from our tri club. And even more people from the hospital—I was walking over to the sign-in area with one of the ER guys, when we heard someone shout for a doctor. We both ran over, and then a few seconds later I looked over my shoulder to see one of the ER docs joining the crowd, and a couple minutes later another ER provider showed up. I left to sign in for the race at that point!

This has not been a great summer for training, but the race was lots of fun anyway. I left right afterward to take Brynna to her swim lesson (which was awesome!), and while we were in the locker room a nice lady came up to me to tell me that I had finished third in my age group...turns out she was the wife of one of my team members, who had called her from the race and asked her to let me know about the results. Concord really does function like a small town!

8. Doctors have to go to the dentist too
Finally got to the dentist for a checkup. Was told that "it looks like you're one of those people who needs to floss twice a day." Once I stopped laughing, I vowed to try to floss ONCE a day. So far, so good.

9. Ice cream!
There was one night that Brynna and I were having so much fun that I let her stay up late and we ended up going for ice cream around 9:00. Here's a photo I took of Brynna with her ice-cream moustache:

And one that she took of me:

10. Party time

I had forgotten that when you take a toddler to a party, there's very little grown-up time. I also hadn't realized that there was a pool, so Brynna ended up swimming in her underpants, and then running around the yard naked to dry off. The hammock was a particular hit. 

Finally, my favorite Brynna quotes:

"I wish we lived in the ice cream store!" (So do I, kid, so do I.)

"Am I still wearing pants?" (She was wearing a tutu over leggings, and I took the tutu off so she could ride her bike.)

Double Fortune

Behold, a double fortune cookie!

Scapes

Here's the first product of this year's garden: garlic scapes. These are the immature flowering stalks of a garlic plant. Snipping these off before they are more fully formed encourages the plant to put its energy into developing the bulb. Plus, they make for an interesting cooking ingredient. The most adventurous can use them as a 1:1 replacement for asparagus or green beans in some dishes.


I chopped these and used them in place of most of the garlic in the sofrito base for a cuban black bean soup earlier this week.

Spring Planting

We got some pepper plant seedlings a little while back, and have only just now gotten them into the ground. They did alright sitting on the back steps, but really need some space to grow. They look small next to the enormous spreading leaves of our garlic, but they should catch up before long. B enjoyed helping:


This weekend is the first of the season for the Concord Farmer's market. We hope to score some nice tomato seedlings to put in alongside.

Ice Cream

As the weather has turned warmer, we've found ourselves drawn inexorably to the ice cream stand in the neighborhood. We don't make a frequent habit of it, but some days it just seems like the right thing to do. Our first outing of the year was about a month ago, when it was all of 55 degrees:


Mint chocolate chip - just like Mama. Good thing we went for the "baby" size - small is twice as big!

Hot Chocolate

We've been traveling, and had breakfast with friends in Chicago yesterday at our favorite place for such things: Tweets. It's a diner, more or less, but a very hip one that has vegetarian fare displayed prominently on their menu. Three of us had a round of coffee; Hilary asked for a hot chocolate. She was not quite expecting to get this:

Good thing B is staying with grandparents this weekend: she would be quite eager to "share" (i.e., chug) that with Mama.

How Not to Make Oatmeal

Brynna occassionally enjoys having oatmeal for breakfast. She particularly enjoys it with Deen - it's one of the things they do together. Sometimes I attempt it, and Brynna is, usually, receptive.

When I do it, here's what's in it and how I make it:

1. Oats, about 1/3 cup dry


2. A few raisins or craisins for taste


3. boiling hot water


4. stir


5. If using rolled oats (not instant), cook in the microwave for about 20 seconds


6. 1/2 tsp maple syrup


7. 3 T unsweetened soy milk to cool things off and get the consistency right

Mark Bittman, who used to write minimalist recipes and cooking techniques for the NYTimes, has a weekly opinion piece on food policy. This might seem a dry subject, but what we eat, where it comes from, how it's made, and how we eat it is no small matter. In today's piece, Bittman describes the travesty that is McDonald's take on oatmeal. Some of the highlights:

They’ve made it more expensive than a double-cheeseburger: $2.38 per serving in New York.

I use oats from the bulk food section, possible five cents' worth. My other ingredients are pricier, but the infallable back-of-the-envelope tells me I'm still below $0.40.

“Cream” (which contains seven ingredients, two of them actual dairy) is automatically added; brown sugar is ostensibly optional, but it’s also added routinely unless a customer specifically requests otherwise. There are also diced apples, dried cranberries and raisins, the least processed of the ingredients (even the oatmeal contains seven ingredients, including “natural flavor”).

I'll admit that soy milk is hardly a naturally occurring product: it takes some work to turn raw soybeans into a healthful beverage. Even so, I can follow and understand the ingredient list, and the first two are filtered water and organic soybeans. Our maple syrup comes, unsurprisingly, from NH. The cranberries are sweetened, but it's with orange juice.

Incredibly, the McDonald’s product contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin. (Even without the brown sugar it has more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger.)

When Brynna and I want to get crazy, we'll add some chopped walnuts.

Thanksgiving in CT

Another anecdote from our backlog of holiday postings. This one from Thanksgiving. Hilary actually had most of that week off, including Thanksgiving day, but did have to work Friday. So, she spent most of that week with her folks in CT, drove back here to NH to see me (the working stiff) on Thanksgiving day (and take in Harry Potter 7), then drove back to CT with me on Friday, so that we could all have a proper thanksgiving with her family and my family on Saturday.

A highlight of the dinner itself were the headgear that Brynna and Deen has craftily made in the preceeding days. Some wore pilgrim hats, and others wore Indian headbands.

She had also made a turkey centerpiece with Miss A. a few days earlier. It was a hit!

Just Us Girls

This past Saturday, Alex headed up north at an obscenely early hour (3 AM!) to volunteer at a triathlon, and Brynna and I had the morning to ourselves. We slept in, then lolled about in bed, nursing and making a tent out of the blankets.

After Brynna's breakfast, we packed up and headed out via bicycle and trailer.

First stop was our bank down the street, where I got some cash and Brynna was very excited to receive a red lollipop.

Then we headed downtown and stopped at the bagel shop for my breakfast, where several people thought it was important to point out to me that it was awfully early in the day for my sweet little girl to have a lollipop. (My unspoken response: Stuff it, people. She ate tofu and vegetables in peanut sauce last night. Did you?)

After that, it was onward to the farmers' market. There was a huge dog ("pony!" said Brynna) and a huge variety of fruits and veggies, including some late blueberries and early apples. And of course, the most critical part, according to Brynna: the chocolate milk that comes in the glass bottle. We said jolly hellos to a couple of my patients and a couple of faculty members.

Once we'd collected enough food that I was concerned about how transport it all, we sat down in front of the State House to do some people-watching. Brynna started in on one of the apples.



Eventually we pedaled up to the park with the best playground in town. Brynna had a wonderful time exploring, and met up with some slightly older girls who showed her the fastest route to climb up to the twistiest slide. Eventually Alex returned to town and met us at the park to play for awhile.

A delightful morning, all round.

Then this morning, when I went to get Brynna ready for daycare and explained that Dada was already at work, and that it was just the two of us, she looked up at me and said, "lollipop?" So apparently that's our mother-daughter thing.