Picnic Food
Peanut Dressing for Noodles or Dipping, adapted from the rebar cookbook
Mix together: 1/4 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth); 2 garlic cloves, minced; a hunk of fresh ginger, to taste, chopped (I freeze fresh ginger and saw off flakes, as needed); 2 tbsp honey; the juice of one lime; 1/4 cup tamari sauce; 2 tbsp cider vinegar; 1/4 cup coconut milk, or stock, or water. This mixture can be whirled in a blender, or heated together in a pot on the stove till smooth and combined.
Toss with hot whole wheat spaghetti noodles, 1 tbsp sesame oil, and chopped veggies for an instant picnic salad. (Well, almost instant; you might prefer to cool it in the fridge before eating).
If you are using the sauce for dipping veggies or tofu, you may want to skip adding the coconut milk/stock/water, which thins it out a bit. Also note that hot sauce or red pepper flakes can be added directly to the mix if you are lucky enough to have an entire family who will agree to eat spicy food (ours won’t).
Father’s Day Firepit
Weekend in Pictures
Why Have I Not Felt Like Blogging?
Why have I not felt like blogging, this past week? I’ve had a moment, here or there, that could have been turned into time to blog. But I chose not to.
Crumb Central
I got tired yesterday. Or, woke tired. Saturday was productive: I made yogurt (4 litres of yogurt!), and baked a batch of bread. I also made almond milk from scratch. But yesterday I felt weary of kitchen work. So I baked a rhubarb crisp for supper (dessert) and left it at that. Our fridge is full of homemade. Our house is in disarray, and thank heavens for my crocs (which I wear as slippers) because the floor is crumb central. (“You don’t have to work all the time, you know,” Kevin told me yesterday, as I was confessing an overwhelming desire to do NOTHING AT ALL.) Yesterday evening, the whole family went into a fugue state: Fooey went off to sleep, CJ puttered with Little People, Albus played piano in order to figure out a song on the guitar with Kevin (and Kevin was amazed by everything Albus knew about music–his ear, his rhythm, his understanding of musical theory; I just knew putting in all those years of early childhood music, and this past year of piano lessons, would be worth it! yay! I truly believe in giving kids the rudiments, so they can take them and develop on them; I’m so excited by Albus’s new enthusiasm); and AppleApple and I worked on her school project (that child has an extremely organized mind!). Time passed. Soon, it was 9:30 and we were like … um, responsible parents, bedtime, sheesh. So, children all put to bed, Kevin and I collapsed in the living-room with a beer, and I said, you won’t believe this, but I swear I spent a lot of time tidying this room today. He said, you won’t believe this, but so did I. It was a puzzle/games disaster, and mixed-up puzzle/game pieces are just endlessly frustrating to sort. The things I found under the couch. But the kids had a fun morning playing restaurant (at least, it was fun till they called me to be their customer, and I showed up and went, AAAAAGHGHG! Mommy has to leave the restaurant right now or she will make you start cleaning all this up!). Anyway, by the time Kevin and I wandered to the kitchen, post-beer, it was past 11. I did not try very hard to set my internal alarm for early morning yoga. And my internal alarm did not go off. Here’s the thing about the early mornings: I love them. But I have to go to bed early. There is no compromising on this. My body makes darn sure of it. So, if I have to choose between quiet early morning and hanging out with my husband, I generally choose the latter. I’ll get a wee bit of exercise right about now (though hardly a zen moment) as I walk to school to pick up the kids.
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PS That photo above is my boys this morning: my biggest and my littlest. One off to work, the other off to nursery school … leaving me alone in a quiet house for a couple of blissful hours.