dancing with seaweed

if this doesn't make you want to spend dusk with owen at the san clemente pier...

"go round and round!"

thanks to n&p's camera we finally have a video clip of owen in action--here he is singing his favorite song while driving along in toontown:

now we're slow cookin'!

so when i was watching the next installment of jamie's kitchen a couple of weeks ago and saw him make a steak & guinness pie i thought it would be exactly the kind of homecoming slow cooked meal i wanted to make for michael. but alas, the recipe was nowhere to be found. luckily, i obsessively dvr my favorite cooking shows and have a community of eager cooks. that is to say--(following our literary food foray) m. and a.m. and i watched the episode no less than four times and took note of how many "knobs" of butter or "handfulls" of cheese got thrown in the dutch oven (the big winner of the kitchen covet tool, by the way, by the winter cooks!). then in a true stone soup kind of moment there we were chopping up bushels of organic carrots, whizzing crimini mushrooms in the food processor and even doing a quick dash in the alley to pick rosemary.

here it is, then, our recipe as translated and executed:

the ingredient list:

• olive oil, salt & pepper
• 3 red onions
• fresh rosemary
• 3 garlic cloves
• 2 ribs of celery
• 2 carrots
• handful of portabello or crimini mushrooms
• 1 1/2-2 lbs. chopped brisket of beef
• 1 can guinness
• beef broth (but perhaps this could have been eliminated? or just very little used)
• flour
• butter (we indulged by using irish butter--avail. at trader joe's)
• frozen puff pastry
• egg for brushing pastry
• 2-3 generous handfuls cheddar cheese (we used a combination of tilamook sharp and irish cheddar--you can get a hearty chunk from costco)
  

the simmer down:
using our le creuset(s) dutch oven we sautéd the onions with a generous drizzle of olive oil (we also added butter for richness--i have been quoted btw as saying "something magical happens when you combine olive oil and butter"), fresh ground pepper, sea salt (i think kosher would work fine) and with a few cloves of garlic (j. used a zester to grate the garlic in the mixture but this quickly got tiresome and i resorted to a press) until carmelized. this truly is the heart of the recipe--the pungency of the raw red onions take on such an intensely savory sweet flavor and turn a deep, near burgundy-black color. since we were cooking for three pies we spent a good 30-45 minutes slowly cooking the onions down before adding the veggies. but the sweet, rich, savory flavor of the onions was well worth it.

add the good stuff
with the onions ready we added our diced celery, chopped carrots, sliced mushrooms and cubed beef to the pot. then we poured in the guinness, scraping up the savory browned bits from the onions (nb.--you do not brown or sear the beef--it will stew in the oven). then we added 1 T of flour and enough stock to top but not cover the meat. the pot was covered and we baked the stew at 350 for about 2 hours.

roll it up
we reconvened and rolled out our puff pastry. we used a full sheet until it was the right size for our pan with the extra dough hanging over the sides--we had a variety of vessels: an emile henry ceramic pie dish, a white corningware oval baker, and a glazed ceramic rectangular bowl. i'm pretty sure j. would support this ecclecticism here: it's rustic so just go with what you have. since we were actually assembling three pies we divvyed up 4 rolls--splititng the fourth into thirds for the top but one roll would be fine split 2/3; 1/3. the top sheet we scored diagonally and set aside.

the improvised roux
now, we watched j. take the stew out of the oven at least three times and his was coated in a thick gravy and looked mostly meaty. in order to make the pie work, he stressed you needed a dry stew. our stew was pretty soupy--which wasn't surprising after all the veggies broke down--so we strained the meat and veggie mixture and divided it among our pies along with a handful or so of grated cheese. then we looked at that rich, savory goodness and had an inspired moment of and whipped up a roux by by mixing a couple of T of butter with about equal amounts of flour and then slowly added enough liquid back until we had a gravy which we drizzled in our meat/veggie filled pies. finally, we added another handful of cheese and the top pastry sheet. to seal the sides and ensure a golden top we brushed (like literally with a paint brush) the pastry with a whisked egg.

last bake and voilá
the pies then went home to our respective ovens, were baked at 350 for 30-40 minutes at which point the pastry was golden and crisp and the pie was bubbling and the cheese was melting. we served ours in generous spoonfulls over peas. mmmmmmm.

on holding on

. . . people tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming inward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top if it. If you don't you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.

-- elizabeth gilbert, eat pray love

last week the ladies from 7 to 33 walbert lane drank limoncello and indulged in antipasto and shared our words from optimism to heart from balance to competition and launched our first book club meeting. liz's journey was a good place to begin--to bring together a group of ecclectic women that seemingly had little in common other than geography and a desire to talk. of course what we found that we could all learn from liz was not that we needed talk/prayer but that we could learn so much from listening/meditation. from this lady at number 17 the above passage resonated most beautifully and insistently--somewhere (see blog archives from april-may) in a little fishing village in norway, this part of fidfam realized happiness snuggled up with her two boys away from the competing rigeurs of academic life and ocmommyism and found balance (my word). somehow, while not exactly indulging in canollis in rome or seeking ascetism in india, literally distincing myself from what seemed like an impossiblity to balance i realized the simplicity of my happiness--and indeed the absolute fervor with which i would fight to keep it. and for me it necessitates a balance and a daily thankfulness--for the love cultivated with neighbors, friends, family and above all my boys and for the self contentment cultivated from writing and reading. the optimist of our group said it most eloquently--you might look at me and think i have everything; i do, and i'm so thankful. and i think the beautiful thing about that statement is that it comes from a gorgeous soulful woman who would be thankful for anything despite the circumstance and has learned to fight for it, insist upon it, and above all else believe in it. there is real strength in identifying happiness--indeed, my beautiful clarissa dalloway pinpoints the exact moment of her happiness in her memories of bourton and uses that to realize that a day in london, simply, life, is what she loved. we talked of keeping a thankfulness journal and how difficult it was to meditate and i realized that this blog has become, for me, a kind of thankfulness meditation-- a space where i pause and celebrate the daily delights and absurdities. it began as a way to share with michael those daily moments, to keep us connected (and hence retain that balance--for if anything michael is truly my balance) and somehow i think it's grown from there and become a larger means of reaching out and stashing our horcruxes, what i take as our essential cherished bits of ourselves in secret, safe, places--with, of course, those who we celebrate with and share love. wow, it's definitely time for someone to shout "digression!" (and to cease this geekiness) and with that i will return to my writing and clarissa (the boys have gone to see mickey so mommy could work--ah, balance! and i'm definitely in a writing mode now!) and continue to meditate on happiness.
but first one last oh--for our next meeting i'm thinking we ladies are ready to go american literary and seek some hemingway--any suggestions out there? i love the sun also rises (and i'm not sure we're ready for garden of eden) but i wonder if for whom the bell tolls might be a good begin? (the boys i think might also enjoy this read). would love some readerly advice!

we just said farewell to the old jetta--ryan drove it away an hour or so ago on his way up to san francisco and as he was pulling away owen shouted: "RYAN! Go get on the FIVE FREEWAY!". ah, my little road warrior.

it was a great, if brief visit-- we went straight from SNA to crystal cove which i keep returning to for the tide pools and spectacular cliffs. owen marched up and down the beach playing his seaweed trombone, sat knee deep in tide pools and sang to anenomes, and searched for sea creatures and pretty rocks with uncle ryan.

we then went back to the ranch where sierradog was nothing short of ecstatic to see his old master and hoped for more squireling adventures. after a busy day in the sunshine we joined the beals for some yummy sushi. today was a lazy sunday and we made sure to send ryan off with some homemade winter minestrone soup--a perfect way to use up the remaining butternut squash from our muffins last week! (i substituted celery for fennel and spinach for swiss chard and the tj's quattro fromagio is always a superb soup-topper)--and now we're just left counting days until michael returns home. it has definitely been a bittersweet weekend--our neighbors thought m. came back early when they saw his twin bro walking the dog and owen kept asking "and daddy is going to be at the airport too?". don't worry sweetie, we're saving up the best sunshine and the most beautiful sea rocks for you!

owen's teensy cousin lily

friday already?

so it must be time for the owen fabulous friday five!

5. i love our juice party! said with the zest that only comes from pomegrante juice.

4. don't worry, i scratched my itchy off. ummm, not really sure what happened here. this was explained to me while taking our morning walk. hope it all worked out.

3. i am a fixer guy! again, it's all about screwdrivers, batteries and scotch tape.

2. let's set the timer for one minute. what happens when the timer goes off owen? it goes DING!

1. i'm cracking yourself up! yes, owen, you are indeed ;)

looking smart!

owen styling in his new digs auntie jenni sent down for christmas:

the joy-s of cooking

so all of this cooking has given me a renewed love for all things in my cupboards. i confess to feeling nothing short of pleasure when i can throw everything into my food processor, or utilize my dualit scale, or put my chopping block to work--so i thought i'd throw a quiz out there to see what the must-haves or cant-do-withouts or even covets are in your kitchen.

oh, and if you're in a chopping mood and haven't pulled that dutch oven out lately we just finished the last of this fragrant, light but hearty chicken noodle soup with vegetables (thanks to mom and dad for sharing this one in their renewed vigour in healthful recipes!)-- it makes me ask: why aren't we putting more parsnips in our food!

"taste and have a think about it"

you've got to love a recipe that instructs you to pause and stick a spoon in whatever you're making. tonight owen and i baked these scrumptous butternut squash muffins we saw jamie whipping up on his new down-home-getting-dirty -in-the-garden -then-plonking-it-all-together -for-some-really-pukka -grub foodtv show. the show's a return to his pared down philosophy from nakedchef and so far so good-- we made the cupcakes for our picnic tomorrow at the irvine railroad and i confess to sneaking a taste after owen went to bed (just to be sure, of course, that it wasn't a horrid concotion of raw squash) and it was delish! the "frosty top" is a surprising must as the zest of fresh citrus (from n&p's little orchard out in riverside) and savory sweetness of the vanilla bean paired with sourcream really brings out the nutty, earthy flavors in the muffin. we'll see what the boys think tomorrow!

i took some fun video that i'm convinced will serve as future "bonus features" on the "in the kitchen with owen" dvd--the only real postitive outcome to dropping the camera in the ocean. i'm not quite sure how to upload clips yet--but imagine owen in the kitchen weighing chunks of "butter and squash" and going "zzzzt zzzzt" on the food proccessor and using measuring spoons to scoop batter into muffin cups all the time singing "we're making muffins! oh oh muffins! we're making muffins!" ( a respite from singing "row row row your boat" all day).

so today was a good day all around--the muffins were a reward for me and owen after a good work day (don't worry n&p i've saved some batter so we'll bake some fresh for thursday!). nana's been so awesome about keeping our tuesday/thursday dates and the consistent momentum has really helped with progress on the big D--i kind of made m. the deal that if he went off to work for a few weeks then i would work for a few weeks and we'd both be rewarded with family time. so i set my deadlines around his schedule and this next trip home i'm sending off what i have to my chair and moving on to the next chapter. anyway, not only does having a couple of days to plan around uninterrupted writing really help me actually write but it makes the time fly by. so when i'm not officially working i feel like my "job" then is to nurture owen and follow his lead in finding a little J-O-Y every day. i know, as m. used to say--it doesn't suck.

but the payoffs are good all around. this morning o. was looking for lego spencer lost in the garage and needed nana's help finding him--so he brought the lego box cutout with a picture of spencer and pointed to him. i guess he's discovered the inherent rewards in the "show me what you need" so after lunch he went and pulled an entire quart of pomegrante juice out of the fridge and brought it to nana in the living room. but the best part is that he's making a connection between sign language and communicating with those he loves--last night we watched signing time together and he was literally dancing on the couch doing the signs along with rachel and then said to me: "mama, i know ALL the signs!"

cut from sicko

Here's an interesting clip that was cut from Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" about Norway's health care system:



"Moore also filmed scenes in Norway, whose health care system is supervised by the Norwegian Board of Health Supervision. Norway was removed from the film because its health care system possess numerous benefits similar to the French system. For example, Norwegian patients treated for an illness like psoriasis or rheumatism are eligible for two weeks paid vacation at a spa in the Canary Islands.[52] Norway hires a government ethicist to determine who they should spend their money on, because they want to do it in an ethical way.[53]

A scene in which Moore visits a Norwegian island prison, in which inmates reside in small group homes and focus on rehabilitation through manual labor and farming, was also cut." - Wikipedia

the magical stick

overheard on our morning walk:

look mommy, i found a stick. here's one for you.

my stick is a violin. dooo dooo dooo lala.

now my stick is a guitar.

babababa my stick is a drum.

look! my stick is pointing down the hill. let's go to the tree park!

radisson

since the Scandic hotel stopped giving Hilton points, I switched hotels to the Radisson. the rooms are smaller, and there are other aspects of the hotel I don't like as much as the Scandic... but it is close to the ferry docks where I catch my 8am to Longva, so that's nice. Here's the view from my room with the Hurtigruten in town:



You can tell that it can get pretty loud outside when the ships pull into town.

squash

my exercise routine when I am in Norway consists of going to the local gym and playing some squash with a few of the guys here. I started out probably the worst player since it is not very popular west coast sport, but during x-mas I bought a racket and some eye protection as long as proper indoor shoes, and I seem to be getting a bit better. Since the week was pretty easy work-wise, I've gone to the gym five times to play... so maybe by the end of this project I'll go pro.

"not in anyone's backyard"

this morning owen and i joined some of our neighbors to attend the community volunteer meeting regarding the power plant that the county is trying to literally sneak into our backyard (a belated christmas present of toxic ammonia and a turbine jet engine across the street)--a few hundred feet from homes and about 1200 feet from a montessori school (and a mile or so from 7 other schools). say what you want about real housewives trying to out-hot each other or suburban bunko parties--the volunteer organization ladera hope made of residents like myself have succeeded in suing the county for its shady and disturbingly reckless process.

and i'm proud that this morning team fidler managed to canvas nearly two dozen homes. i thought we'd only get to five or six and owen would abandon the cause. but as always he was a trooper-- he loved ringing doorbells, handing out papers and picking the next "number" of the house. our goal was just to get people informed and increase the numbers behind laderahope-- and yes, it does as our neighbor pointed out sound a bit like a newagey oc church (please feel free to follow the link and sign the petition as well as concerned loved ones of owen!). because for whatever stupid things people say when they're trying to "preserve a way of life" i can't think of any reason why anyone would support building a spewing smokestack of toxins anywhere near where anyone had to breathe, or sing, or dance, or skip rope.

the friday five is back!

5. look, i found a big, old, crusty boogie! ok, it's not the most appealing of modifiers but i was so impressed by his apt use of adjectives--i spend an entire quarter trying to get 18 year olds to write with such detail. the boogie, by the way, was in fact a morsel of dry dog food.

4. were you a good girl mommy? owen is busy doing his garbage truck puzzle and says aloud, "hmmm, i have a garbage truck. mmmm san-san-yes!-santa brought it to me!" and i say, wow, you must have been a good boy, do you think so? "hmmm. yes, i think i was!" and then he pauses and asks me the above ;)

3. so this one sounds more like this--
at nana & papa's house owen found my old recorder (yes, i never quite progressed beyond that plastic flute primer) and immediately picked it up and marched around the house tooting away. everything eventually morphs into a song--he gives new life to the "whistle while you work" mantra as he humms and lalas and makes up words to go with every aspect of his day. i think uncle sal perhaps needs to get him going on music lessons--or at least i need to learn something other than mary had a little lamb (although owen was still quite impressed at my recorder ability).

2. and where can doggies go? this was his response when i told him that no, sierradog could not go with us to gymnastics class.

1. i feel like smiles! this is my favorite of hte week and in truth owen did not say this but was told this by his buddy w. while we decorated carrot cake train muffins with blueberries and mango slices (all b's genius here).

funny

sitting on the couch, owen grabs my hair (in a ponytail) and puts it under his chin, up against his neck.
after taking my hair back only to have him do the same thing again i irritatingly demand:
"owen! stop grabbing mommy's hair!"
owen stops, bursts into a fit of giggles, grabs my hair again and explains: "but mommy, it's a hair undershirt!"
seriously. then i laugh too.

farewell ode to the pink christmas tree

there's something so wonderfully zen about putting away christmas. i think it's the calm and order of wrapping up ornaments, sorting through christmas cards, assembling boxes of angels and glitterly stars jenga-like into labeled bins. but there's this spring-cleaning kind of renewal that happens when you redecorate the mantle into the colors of everyday living. i know, that all sounds so martha and i confess that the new pottery barn catalog was thrilling reading--finally! my greens and yellows and twigs and leaves are part of a color revolution (of course ikea has been urging us all along to banish beige!). and birds, birds everywhere. before the storm came i found myself in a most peaceful frenzy pruning my rosebushes and there was no more satisfying mommy-and-me moment than owen and i sifting through terra cotta pots of disused soil with plastic shovels for river rocks to cover our plants. i'm a christmas junkie, no secret i know, and i have an obscenely high tolerance for jingle bells (and all of its versions from jingle bell rock to the boogie) and get giddy over garish displays of holiday light shows. and i believe steadfastly in a christmas spirit--how else do you explain inexplicable bouts of weepy, thankful, joy and the strong desire to hug everyone and infuse everything with cinnamon? but i love the peace that follows. i love the shuffle that comes after you try to find places for all of the christmas "loot" because it demands a kind of purging as well. or at the least a reshuffling, an inclination to minimalize. and the peace is a key accompaniement to the quiet this year--because it is really really quiet right now. m. is starting back to work on the other side of the globe--probably riding the ferry right now in the darkness of the norwegian morning; owen is sleeping like a big boy in his bed and there are no carols playing, just the rain of the long awaited storm. i miss m. already, i missed him already last week when we stayed up to watch the talksoup countdown and groan at the local news, and i missed him when owen showed him how to put together a racecar from his gearsgearsgears toy. but i miss him in this in-between moment, the quiet between holiday buzz and newyearsresolution momentum. soon the buzz will fade and then the gears will move on their own--but for now, a little poetic melancholy and thankfulness.

happy janu-mas!

i hope the joy and merriment found in pistachio cranberry biscotti (dipped in dark norwegian--belgian chocolate of course) and tins of walnut fudge has carried over into 2008 for everyone. things have been a bit quiet here on the e-fidfam but out here in the southcoast soil the fam was in full swing. in no particular order here's a standstill slideshow of some of our favorite moments from snow in snow white's castle to coffee on the san clemente pier--we enjoyed an awesome visit with michael's parents: "gramma and granpaw" (and of course had to indulge in cupcakes, coffee, and blackened calamari) had play time with "nana and papa", chilled and grilled on new year's day with sal and jenn (and of course baked these italian treats with jenn), shared ravioli on christmas day with edy and jerry, stole peanut brittle from papa ron while visiting my grandparents and other family "favorites" (of course we all had to order in from paul's). and then just enjoyed drinking our stumptown coffee while feasting on rhubarb muffins and watching owen revel in the joy that is "christmastime". overall, it was a holiday love fest of food and family.