Two in one

When I was growing up in Chicago, in the mid 1960s, at Easter time you could go to the regular grocery store and buy lamb butter -- that is, butter in the shape of a lamb. Lamb cakes, too, were readily available; vanilla pound cake baked in a lamb-shaped mold with white frosting from a star tip artfully applied. There was kind of a resurgence in lamb cakes -- or at least in the availability of the molds -- probably thanks to Martha. But lamb butter is a bit more elusive. My mold came from here, should you be wishing for one yourself (scroll down the page to find the lamb). And in the spirit of true disclosure: none of us has yet had the heart to cut in to the lamb, so here we are nearly 2 weeks past the holiday and he's still living in the fridge.

Also thanks to Martha, now that I think about it, is our tradition of buying two packages of Easter egg dye. For years we have been making brighter colors by putting 2 tablets in each cup instead of one. The wrinkle this time was that Dean didn't want to put 2 of the same color in each cup but instead he wanted to mix his own colors. I admit that this is still one of those times when I have to take a deep breath, think about who it is we're coloring eggs for in the first place, and let go of "how it should be." Sure! Mix away! I did feebly recommend that he think about what colors he'd be creating before putting the tablets in, knowing that this wouldn't be his approach. He's a process guy, not a product guy.

So we had two of the same mix, and some pretty intense mixes, and found interestingly that the dyes don't combine consistently with each other the way they do with two of the same.




And his favorite part, still, is playing with the colors afterward. Success, then!

Easter was also Dean's birthday this year, so we had an elaborate plan for celebrating both -- starting with a morning that was all about the eggs and the basket.

THEN it was birthday time.

Followed by an outing to spend some gift cards that were burning a hole in his pocket.




A sweet and successful day. Twelve seems at the same time an impossibly big number and exactly right. We celebrate who this amazing person is, how much his arrival changed our lives, how unimaginable life without him would be. He enjoys hearing stories on his birthday about how his birth day unfolded -- all those hours of labor, all that joy when he finally arrived, all the attention that our beautiful little boy received from the hospital staff, how very sweet he was right from the start. I do feel that we're turning a corner as a family as Dean steps into this new, older self. We struggle sometimes to find the balance, the flow -- to readjust our relationships and yet hold on to what's core for us. I try not to think ahead but to revel in the now.

Voila!

And so it was! I took Ali Edward's weekend creativity challenge to use PhotoShop to add type to a photo -- nothing earth-shattering, but I thought it worked in this case so there you go. And despite the softness of this picture, I love it for the purity of Dean's joy that it shows.

Whew! Birthday party was yesterday, and while we'll be finishing up cake and extending birthday leniency for a few more days this one is a wrap. All good. We now re-join our usual lives, already in progress. Lots of housework to catch up on (always) and projects to get back to.

I tried a new recipe that gave amazing results for very little effort (my favorite kind) and can tell you honestly that if you or someone you feed is NOT a green bean fan, this preparation just might change everything. The original recipe calls for this to be a room temperature salad, but you could easily leave out the radicchio and serve the vegetables hot as a side dish.

Roasted Green Bean and Potato [Salad or Side] With {or Without} Radicchio (Adapted from Cook's illustrated magazine of March 2008)

1 lb. green beans washed and trimmed and cut to about 1 inch pieces
1 lb. red bliss or other small red new potatoes, scrubbed and cut in half or quarters
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 small minced garlic clove
1 small head radicchio, washed in cut into strips (optional)

Place an oven rack at the lowest point in oven, place large rimmed baking sheet on rack, and preheat oven to 500 f. Mix up the oil, salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar, and garlic in a large bowl, and toss beans and potatoes in there until they are coated. Use a slotted spoon to carefully transfer the vegetables on to the now blazing hot baking sheet and save the bowl with the bit of oil mix left in it. Spread the vegetables to a single layer and roast about 20 minutes (do not stir them once on the sheet). Keep a watch -- mine were totally done at 20 minutes.

Carefully transfer your beautifully browned, roasted vegetables back into the bowl and toss in whatever remains in the bottom of the bowl. Now here's where you have options. You could add in the radicchio and stir it up so that the heat of the vegetables wilts the radicchio, and then you could serve it hot or let it cool down to room temp. You could just serve the potatoes and beans without the radicchio. The original recipe calls for letting the vegetables cool and THEN adding the radicchio, but we found this weird (the lettuce was way too crispy to pair with the vegetables) -- the radicchio needs to wilt down and "cook" by the heat of the roasted stuff in our opinion.

Regardless, though, if you've never roasted a green bean I do believe you are in for a treat.

Another successful "turn off" week under our collective belts, we return today to our t.v., computers, and video games knowing that we can happily exist without those things and full of ideas about what to do with our time instead of going with electronic entertainment. Take a break yourself when you can and see if it doesn't revive you.

Dean's birthday party was yesterday and our dance to the sun god paid off -- lovely weather despite a questionable forecast. This game, Odd or Even, from the 1964 "Betty Crocker's Parties for Children" book (reprinted many times and still pretty readily available) was a big hit. It's one of those great games that works indoors or out and with any number of players (click on the image to see a bigger, more legible version if you're interested). Weirdly, the games that didn't go as well were the games that Dean and his classmates love playing at school. I'm guessing that's because the different venue threw them off their routines -- Capture the Flag in an entirely different environment left them uncertain of things that they count on knowing when they play during recess. But still a good time had by all, no injuries, and everyone picked up pretty much on time. Can't ask for more than that!

I didn't get a single bit of sewing or crafting done this week. Between party preparations and a very busy week at work it just wasn't possible. Also, the room where all my stuff is becomes the "shove everything in here" room during a clean-up for any kind of event at home, so even if I'd had the time it would have been tough to get at anything. Today I'll sort that back out and try to accomplish something. The rains that held off yesterday are falling now, so it's a perfect day to be indoors catching up. I'd made Dean's party date such a milestone in my head, putting off even thinking about a lot of things until "after the party," that I need to collect myself now and think more about plans for the spring and summer. It seems especially easy to let this time of year just slip away because suddenly every weekend has an array of activities (soccer games, other birthday parties to attend, the local fishing derby, fundraising events, gardening, cookouts) -- the great rush to do it all before it gets too hot to do much of anything. Maybe making a list will help.

Feel the power

A significant amount of time was spent today nailing down the details for Dean's upcoming 9th birthday party, and then getting the invitations made. He'd had an uncharacteristically hard time making up his mind about where to have the party (bowling alley or home, bowling alley or home?); last year was indeed a bowling party and past years' had been at home. Ken was rallying for another bowling (or other, 3rd party location) party, since he doesn't like dealing with the whole thing at home. But I was pleased with Dean's choice, being partial to home birthday parties myself (and I do take on the preparations regardless). I also like having the excuse to get the yard and house all cleaned up since it is, alas, a rarity for us to have the yard AND the house all looking good at the same time. And my gosh, to have the basement and basement bathroom, the first floor, AND the second floor all clean at the same time -- we don't even manage that at Christmas! Dean picked a Power Ranger theme and I was fortunate to have taken a picture of him with a Power Ranger at Disney World so that made the invitations pretty easy. Gotta love Photo Shop! You can laugh at me now, since the date of the party is April 28 and yet I just HAD to get this taken care of today or I wouldn't be able to sleep well with it hanging over me.... Priorities.

While printing out the invitations I sewed the bias trim around the neckline of Dean's dashiki. It was pickier a job than I was picturing and I now regret so quickly volunteering to help with getting the other children's done, but perhaps if we split it up among the other sewing moms it won't be too bad. I just wouldn't really want to have to do the remaining 13. But maybe then I'd really be a pro at it by the end.... Again, having no quick option other than to put it on my scanner, I'm hardly showing it to its best advantage, but you get the general idea. I will get some pictures of Dean wearing it, which will give better credit to his batik work and his sewing (the children hand sewed the seams for the sleeves and sides). I'm going to use some of the pieces of leftover fabric from the children's cloths to make a small quilt for their teacher as a memento of the project and the year and will post how that comes out.

I've packaged up by two swap boxes and intend to mail them out tomorrow; I think I'm more eager to hear how the recipients like what I've sent than I am, even, to receive my own mystery packages (although that will be quite wonderful, I'm sure!).