My favorite sighting

We heard and saw a lot of Mr. Red Eyed Vireo on our birdwalk this morning. REVs are said to be the most numerous summer species in Wisconsin. It was good to (re) acquaint ourselves with this little bird - unassuming and pert and hard to see amongst the tree canopy that grows denser each day.



Mose seems to have an affinity for this little guy - the rufous-sided towhee. He says it looks like a S'more. What's not to love? Dapper and cheery, encouraging us to indulge in our favorite beverage - 'Drink your tea!', or, as the folks at the Reserve interpret it - 'Beaver Creek!' Either way, he's a charmer and he sits still long enough so you can get a good look at him.


But my favorite sighting today was the interrupted fern - Osmunda claytoniana. It it possible I've never seen this before? Perhaps or maybe I just thought it was a fern with some kind of condition. Anyway, it really registered for the first time today and I was struck by it's odd beauty - the dusty gray of the spore bearing fronds against the vivid new green.




The best part of all though, was spending time with Mose and sharing the modest joys of birdwatching with him. Thank you, Mose, for being my birdwatching companion this spring.

Friday 5: Five in a Row

1. Name one thing you do everyday.

2. Name two things you wish you could learn.

3. Name three things that remind you of your childhood.

4. Name four things you love to eat but rarely do.

5. Name five things that make you feel good.

courtesy of http://friday.criminalgrace.com/

50 Virtuous Meals: early summer steak dinner: base recipes

Here are the recipes I used as inspiration
shrimp gazpacho
grilled cheese casserole
green bean and bell pepper salad
strawberry shortcake
lemonade

Variations:
I almost ditched the gazpacho because I was running out of time but I'm glad I served it. I used 1 whole cuke and 4 cups chilled V-8 (the low sodium kind). Skipped the garlic and the tomatoes and the onion. Mixed in salt, pepper and vinegar and chilled in fridge in 2 quart casserole until ready to serve. Spooned into soup bowls, topped with shrimp, LF sour cream and cilantro.

I made the casserole, salad and lemonade just as written.

I modified the shortcake quite a bit. Used 3 lbs of strawberries. Doubles the recipe. Used regular muffin tin lined with liners. Uses 8T butter, 1/2 c sugar, 1/4 c oat flour and 1 cup cornmeal (per batch). Skipped the almonds. Mixed each batch seperately but baked them at the same time.

50 Virtuous Meals: early summer steak dinner: intro & prep

This is the first post in a series I'm labeling '50 Virtuous Meals'. The idea is to plan, prepare and post 50 meals (including dessert) that have virtues that appeal to me. For example: something that freezes well or something that can be made with ingredients usually on hand or something that my family can't get enough of or, in the case of this VM (Virtuous Meal), something that's festive enough for company. These posts may not always be meals, but could be a collection of tried and true cookies recipes, for example, or my favorite things to take to potlucks.
Enough background information, let's get to the meal at hand.
Menu
shrimp gazpacho
steak baked in the oven
grilled cheese casserole
green bean and bell pepper salad
strawberry shortcake with frozen yogurt
iced tea
lemonade
Sounds yummy, no? My mouth is watering even now!
Steps that can be done ahead
shortcake

• place butter in bowl to soften
• mix dry ingredients
• clean & slice strawberries
• mash & sweeten strawberries

casserole

• slice & butter & cube bread
• grate cheese
• butter 9 x 13 glass dish
  

salad

• slice pepper
• clean beans
• steam beans
• slice onion and marinate in dressing

lemonade

• make ginger syrup
• squeeze 7 lemons
• squeeze 2 limes

gazpacho

• defrost shrimp and remove tails
• put V-8 in fridge
• chop cucumber
• chop roasted red pepper

Summer is here

You know how I know summer is here? Not because of the temperature, since today's high was 56F with a cool wind and overcast skies. Nope, summer is officially here because I found the first tick of the season on my person today. Only one so far, but now I feel like they're all over. My skin is just crawling.

Tree Planting Slideshow

Friday 5: Trees

Since mid afternoon yesterday, we've added 9 beautiful trees to our yard. Look for an upcoming post with pictures soon.
In the meantime, let's talk about trees:
1. What trees do you have in your yard or on your street?
2. Have you ever hugged a tree? Why or why not?
3. Do you have a tree-related memory?
4. When building our new house, we skipped the fancy granite countertops and planted trees instead. If you were building a new house, would you make a similar choice? Explain.
5. If you knew you were going to be stranded on a desert island, what 5 trees would you take with you?

DaVinci lives!

Last Friday, I had the fun and excitement of observing a "robot-assisted donor nephrectomy" (kidney removal for transplantation into someone with kidney failure) by live feed at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The million-dollar machine is called the DaVinci, and is an amazing piece of machinery. After the surgery, the surgeon, Enrico Benedetti, spoke to the group of dialysis nurses, dietitians and social workers at UIC Transplant Update about the machine and its capabilities.

The highlight, however, came after the end, when I was in a group that accompanied Dr. Benedetti to the training room for the DaVinci, and actually got to try it out myself -- It was astonishing! Looking into the screen, I thought I was working removing rubber rings about the size of a quarter from cones a couple inches tall. When I got off the machine, I saw that the real items I practiced on were tiny! Plus the "hands" can rotate 360 degrees. Such a fascinating experience.

THEN Dr. Benedetti took us onto the transplant floor and we saw the recipient, coming out of anesthesia, and we met the donor, who was pretty alert.

Altogether a great day.

On youtube, you can find demonstrations of the surgery, if you're interested and can stomach it.

Conor and Theresa get married, May 15, 2008!

It was a lovely, cool evening, and a small group of family and friends gathered in Ed and Paula's backyard to wish them well. May they have many years of love and happiness!

See the photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/lorraine.antieau/ConorTheresaMay1508

Homemade Pizza 2: Postponed

For several reasons, our Saturday night supper of homemade pizza did not **pan** out. The dough is still in the fridge so I'll either make something else with it or make pizza on another night.

Homemade Pizza 2: The dough

In the last episode of Homemade Pizza, you'll recall that I vowed to cut back on the volume of dough. So here's the recipe I'm going to try today:

Dough (adapted from the Olive Oil Dough recipe from this really good book)
2 1/4 cups lukewarm water (push the tap all the way back and a little to the left of center)
1 generous T yeast
1 generous T salt
2 t sugar
1/4 scant cup EVOO
5 1/2 cups flour (this time, I used closed to 4 cups of whole grain spelt; the rest all purpose)

Let the water, yeast, salt and sugar brew for about 5 minutes before putting in the oil and flour. Mix with a spoon and hands and put it to rest on the counter for 2 hours. Knead for about 3 minutes, adding barely enough flour to make it workable. Put it in the refrigerator until ready to form and rest again before prebaking and topping.

Friday 5: High School

The boys and I just got back from a high school graduation ceremony honoring the first-ever graduates from the school Mose attends. Because there were only 3 graduates and because the school families are a bunch of warm and wonderful people, it was less about ceremony and more about celebrating.
How different for my own graduation...or so I suppose, because frankly, I don't remember anything about the event. Which is worthy material for a blog post, but not tonight :)
But still it got me thinking about high school and graduation. Here are five questions in keeping with the theme:
1. What did you plan to do after high school and did your actual life turn out anything like that?
2. How much would I have to pay you to go back - for just a day?
3. If you could sit down for dinner with just one person from your high school life who would it be and why and what would you talk about?
4. What did the fashionable kids wear when you were in high school? What did you wear?
5. What did you learn in high school that has stood you in good stead?

50 years and still goin' strong!!

 

Sisters are truly a gift from God, and 50 years ago today, God gave me such a gift, fellow-blogger and sister extraordinaire, SUE!! Many blessings to you this day and always: health and happiness and a beautiful garden, love of family and friends, good work, strong faith, great tea, delicious food, small moments of beauty each day! Here's to another 50 years of sisterhood!! With love, Lorraine

Mother's Day: for the birds

Yesterday was a very nice day for me. The boys gave me some really nice skin care items (Kiss My Face soap, bath gel and Nature's Gate tea tree lotion) in a cute basket and Dan gave me a bouquet of roses (and I'm not even his mother). But the real Mother's Day treat for me came the day before when Mose went birdwatching with me. This was a real sacrifice because it meant leaving the house by 5:20 on a morning when he would have much rather slept in.
The walk was sponsored by Beaver Creek Reserve. We met a small group of birders at Putnam Park on the U-W Eau Claire campus. Not exactly a birding hot bed, but Mose and I figure we saw and heard 20 species in the course of the next 2 hours. We weren't focused on list making or on seeing a particular species. It was a good introduction/reintroduction to the modest joys of spring birdwatching close to home. And if we had to pick a favorite, we would go with the great crested flycatcher, AKA the 'weep bird'.

Do they read this blog?

Shortly after I wrote the post about the new arrivals, another family of geese appeared on the green space stage. At first I thought it was the same family wandering a little farther afield, until they started hightailing it back to the brush. That's when I noticed the adults of family #1, pursuing them. Such drama!

Happy Mother's Day

I've made a little album of pictures I've taken of Mom the last couple years. She's not a camera hog! Notice how in most pictures, she is surrounded by people who love her? Especially Dad. Here's the link.

New arrivals

Yesterday, 5 goslings appeared on the scene, flanked by their protective parents. This is a smaller hatch than last year, when the pair that lives in the pond at the other end of the green space fledged 11. But, this year, at least one egg was taken by a predator (Abe and I found the shell a couple weeks ago) and perhaps more were taken as well. I found this darling picture of goslings here.

I strolled down last night hoping to get a closer look, but the family hid in the reeds, with the youngsters behind the adults. I'm sure we'll get see lots of them this summer as they get older and more adventurous and as the adults get less wary. Two other pair live in the larger pond but we haven't seen their nests. Likely there will be more newcomers over the next several weeks.

Friday 5: Celebrate your Mom!!

In anticipation of Sunday's big day:

1. What ways are you VERY like your mother?
2. What ways are you NOT like your mother?
3. How do you wish you were MORE like your mother?
4. What life lessons have you learned from your mother?
5. What is a favorite "Mom" memory?

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms, Aunts, Sisters!

Grilled Cheese Casserole

I promise I will do posts on topics besides food, but this recipe is from a book I need to return to the library.

Adapted from Reeve Lindbergh's Forward From Here an excellent book that is not a cookbook but contains a recipe she calls Aunt Ellie's Cheese Puff. We've dubbed it:

Grilled Cheese Casserole
5 eggs
2 1/2 cups milk
8 slices sourdough - buttered and diced (these are hefty slices)
8 oz sharp cheddar - grated
salt, pepper and dry mustard

Preheat oven to 400/375 convect. Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish. Place half the diced bread in the dish, cover with cheese, sprinkle with mustard, a liberal amount of pepper and a bit of salt. Repeat. Beat the eggs and add the milk to them. (I used my quart-sized Pyrex measuring cup for this which made the next step easy). Pour evenly over the baking dish. Put in oven and bake 45 minutes (conventional oven will take longer) or until nicely puffed and browned.

Added captions to our NYC photos

see the album

Material Monday: Brown Betty Teapot

My Brown Betty Teapot was a Christmas gift from Dan's children. Or can I say 'It IS a gift - still'? It makes me happy every time I use it because it truly brews the best tea. I use it only for black tea; somehow I just don't think green tea would taste well brewed in this pot. But for Orange Pekoe and Breakfast Teas, it can't be beat.

Here's what the English Tea Store has to say:
This little teapot has quite a history. Its origins date back to the end of the 17th Century and the birth of the British Ceramic Teapot.The original unglazed teapot was made out of red clay from the Bradell Woods area in Stoke-on-Trent. Today the Brown Betty teapot is still made in Stoke-on-Trent with the same clay from the original area. British people believe the Brown betty makes the best pot of tea because of the type of clay that is used and the shape of the pot. This teapot is lovingly hand-made in Staffordshire England.

Don't you just love that 'Stoke-on-Trent'?

The English Tea Store web site has a complete selection of Brown Betty tea pots and other pots, tea accessories, etc. You can see all they have on offer here.

Sunday Muffins

Abe is now back in my good graces since he said he gives my muffins an '11". Or did he mean that's how many he's eaten today?

Anyway, I don't agonize over muffins the same way I do pizza. Because my muffins are just good. I make them differently every time. Muffins are very forgiving.

Here's the way I made them this morning.

Sunday Muffins (makes 22)
1 c Fiber One cereal
1 c whole grain spelt flour
1/2 c all purpose flour
1/2 c oat flour
1/2 c sugar
1 T baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
3 smashed bananas
2 eggs
4 T canola oil
1/2 milk
1/2 c chocolate chips
1/2 raisins

Mix the dry. Mix the wet. Combine the wet with the dry. Add the bananas, chips and raisins. Glop into muffins cups lined with muffin cup liners, what else? Bake in preheated 350/325 convect oven for 18 minutes. Beat the boys off with a stick until they (the muffins) have had a chance to cool.

Photos from our Smokies trip

 

Well, technical difficulties notwithstanding, here is at least one great picture from the Smokies! I'm going to see what else I can do before consulting Sue, our technical guru. To view the rest of our pictures click on this link: web album

Homemade pizza, part 5: The assessment

The world wants to know: Was it good?

Yes, it was good and not that much work. Abe gave it a 6.5 on a scale of 10. I'm no longer speaking to him. Mose gave it an 8. There's a young man who knows pizza.

As for me, I'd give it an 8, too. It all comes down to the crust and while this crust was pretty good, there was too much of it and it got toooo crispy. Maybe a shorter prebake.

The sauce recipe is definitely a keeper and the toppings too. But those parts are easy. It's the darn crust that keeps me up at night.

What would make a perfect crust?
-chewy, with a moist interior. Like good ciabatta
-pretty thin
-made of 1/2 whole grain
-not at all doughy

Using pizza stones might fetch me the chewy but not crisp exterior and flavorful interior that I crave. I have one pizza stone, but seldom use it for pizza because I always make two and I can't stand the asymmetry of baking one on a metal pan and one on stone.

So I won't do that. But next time I will cut the volume of dough in each pan by 1/4, will reduce the prebake to 7 minutes, will brush the edges with olive oil after the prebake and will raise the proportion of all purpose flour. These small changes will bring me one step farther down the road to Pizza Heaven.

Homemade pizza, part 4

Once the oven was heated, I stretched the continuing-to-rise crusts into the corners and put them in the oven to prebake for 5 minutes; turned and shuffled and baked for another 5.

There was a bit too much sauce or too little pan, depending on your perspective. I topped Dan's & my pizza with 2 sweet Italian chicken sausages (sliced thin), a handful of spinach, 4 oz mushrooms. On Abe's half of the boys' pizza, I put one sliced sausage. Lots of cheese on top: 4 oz shredded mozz and 6 slices provolone on each pan.

These babies were pretty heavy when I put them in the oven. Baked for 12 minutes then turned and shuffled and baked for another 2.

Let them sit for 5 minutes (10 would be better but who wants to wait that long?) before slicing.

Homemade pizza, part 3

I'll credit the brief kneading with the way the dough turned out - elastic and dense. Last time, I wrestled for half an hour to get the dough stretched onto the pans. This time, it went quickly with enough coverage for turned up edging along all sides of the pan.

After I stretched the dough, I made the sauce. It's a combination/variation of two recipes from allrecipes.com
Pizza Sauce - for two pizzas (but looks like there will be some left over)
2 6oz cans tomato paste
2 8 oz cans tomato sauce
1 T sugar
3 T parmesan
1 t Italian seasoning

Mix altogether and let sit for 1/2 hour.

Which is what it's doing now.

Meanwhile, the oven is heating 450/425 convect.

I'm also conducting a taste test. I split the 2 cans of paste and sauce and all the other ingredients. One bowl contains Contadina and the other Hunts. The latter tastes and looks way better.

Homemade Pizza, part 2

Deviating again from the method outlined in the book, I took the dough out of the container at about 1:15 and kneaded it with floury hands on a floury surface, adding a bit more flour as I went. Didn't knead a ton - maybe 3 minutes. Just enough to get the dough smooth and to work the flour in. Then, back into the container with the dough, back on with the 'cover' and then...

Well, normally, I would put the dough in the fridge at this point, but since our nice new refrigerator decided to stop working on Thursday, I put it on the front porch instead. It's a cool day and with the wind chill, the temp may be around fridge level.

And there I'll let it sit all afternoon.

Homemade Pizza - part 1

We like to eat pizza once a week, usually on Friday or Saturday night. If it's a Saturday when I'm home without a pile of work (i.e., 3M work) to do, I like to make it from scratch.

From scratch pizza is so much better than anything you can buy, but like many better- than-store-bought-things, it takes time and is subject to variation. In other words, sometimes you can work really hard and end up with pizza that wasn't worth it. When this happens to me, I often think it's because I make it differently every time.

To address this vexing problem, I'm blogging the nitty gritty details of today's pizza attempt so I can refer back next time and be reminded what worked and what didn't.

Dough (adapted from the Olive Oil Dough recipe from this really good book)
2 3/4 cups lukewarm water (push the tap all the way back and a little to the left of center)
1 1/2 T yeast
1 1/2 T salt
1 T sugar
1/4 cup EVOO
6 1/2 cups flour (this time, I used closed to 4 cups of whole grain spelt; the rest all purpose)

So far, I've stuck pretty close to the recipe but varied the method, letting the water, yeast, salt and sugar brew for about 5 minutes before putting in the oil and flour.

Mixed it with a spoon and my hands and put it to rest around 10:45. Around 12:45 or thereabouts, I'll put it in the refrigerator to foment slowly until I'm ready to knead and form and rest again.

Friday 5: Imagine

Scenarios such as this are always fun to ponder:

You are invited to join a group of people forming an experiment in community living. Each person will bring certain things to the group and they will build a library, movie theater, art museum and concert hall and restaurant.

1. What 5 (or 10?) books would you bring to make sure they are included?
2. What 5 (or 10?) movies would you contribute?
3. What 5 (or 10?) great pieces of art would you want to bring? (Maybe not originals, but good reproductions.)
4. What 5 (or 10?) artists or recordings or compositions would you include?
5. What 5 of your favorite recipes would you bring to the menu of the restaurant?

Bonus question: What 5 practical skills and/or personal attributes would you add to the mix that would make the success of your venture likely?