Happy Saturday

from Nina (and Evan)

little yogis

Eric finished the little workout room in the barn recently and ever since the kids have been dying to do "exercises." Here they are trying some yoga moves. They really love all the animal names for the poses. Everytime a new pose comes up, they all say it looks so easy and then they struggle to hold the pose. It's pretty fun to watch them try so hard though.












Namaste

Green Papaya Salad with Shrimp

I order a Green Papaya Salad everytime we eat at a Thai restaurant and I always eat every last bite. I LOVE this salad. I tried to re-create this dish once before and it was a miserable failure, but this time I found a loose recipe to follow, and with some tweaking it turned out very pretty close to the salad I love. The trick is finding an unripe green papaya. The one I found could have been crunchier and greener (less ripe), but it's all they had at PCC so I went ahead.



Here is the recipe I used from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express:

Cook a dozen or so shrimp in oil. Meanwhile, combine a tablespoon of brown sugar, juice of a lime, garlic clove, a tablespoon of fish or soy sauce, one half teaspoon chile flakes and some peeled ginger in a blender or food processor and puree. Grate a peeled and seeded green papaya (not one the size of a football) and two carrots. Toss with shrimp (I used baby shrimp), sliced fresh tomatoes and dressing. Season to taste, and top with chopped peanuts. Yum!

Evan is ONE!

What a year! And a fast one at that! We love our little Evan like crazy and we totally celebrate the day this precious child joined our family! He has brought so much joy that just thinking about it makes my heart swell. He is so adored.

I debated having a bunch of friends over to celebrate his birthday, but at the end opted for just our little family. And it was wonderful. We took turns going around the table saying the things we love about Evan and everyone kept wanting another turn and another turn. So much to love. One of the things everyone loves is the way Evan starts bobbing his head everytime we turn the music on in the kitchen. Sometimes he gets going so much I'm afraid he might pull something. But I guess that doesn't happen to babies, thankfully!

For dinner we had a new soup recipe I tried several weeks ago that I remember Evan loving...Sengalese Peanut Soup. It's incredible and I will post the recipe this week. Evan ate so much I was afraid he might not be interested in cake. Sela helped make his little cake. We made a Tropical Carrot Cake. Oh man. Let's not kid ourselves, what could possibly be better than a spicy carrot cake with coconut, pineapple, macadamia nuts and ginger?! We put little pieces of champagne mangoes all around Evan's cake...he loves mangos just like his mama. I had to wrap the leftover cake up fast after Zig and I ate ours or we would have both eaten ourselves into a sugar coma!

There are way too many pictures, but I wanted to include a bunch for the grandmas so they can feel like they were almost here.

Happy 1st Birthday, Evan! Sweet baby, you are so dear to us.


a quick shot on the way out the door for church


wow, this sure looks like A LOT of children!



Such a happy day!

Sengalese Peanut Soup..that's kale and sweet potatoes in there. yum.

hmm, what the heck is this?



Evan ate lots of the mangos, a bit of frosting and then started a game of throwing the cake on the floor.

oh boy do these girls love their baby brother!

smoochies..I can never have enough!



all done.


lucky dog

Jay Jay

Sela found a baby Blue Jay yesterday in the brush struggling to fly. She rescued "Jay Jay" and last night their babysitter, Kiwi, helped them find some worms to feed him. Oh boy did they get a kick out of having the little bird open wide for a worm! He actually flew up on the table in the sunroom this morning so he seems to be getting stronger. They're going to move him to the greenhouse and hopefully release him tonight or tomorrow.

nina & froggy

Nina was pretty excited to find this little frog. She now thinks she has a gift with frogs (like her bee gift) and it's true, the frog keeps swimming back to her. He lives in our little pond and I find it quite amazing that something so tiny makes such a loud croaking sound. I love listening to the frogs at night so I sure hope froggy sticks around. Isn't this an amazing world we live in?

Sergeant Soil: We put our worms in charge!

Sela's 3rd grade class has a little business to pay for the food and supplies for their class pet, a guinea pig named Loopers. All year long they save their food scraps from lunch as well as shredded paper and all of this goes in a box with earthworms. The worms break it down and the end product is what is called worm castings. It is an excellent, nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and soil conditioner. They sold their big bags of worm castings last weekend at a University of Washington Garden Fair. By the end of the Garden Fair,they had made about $130 and had sold out. Loopers will be living the good life. I really enjoyed watching the children very enthusiastically explain the process to the people who approached their booth. When business slowed down, they took to the streets and tried to steer people to their table. And who can resist a child selling a $6 dollar bag of worm poop? And if worm poop isn't enough, well, they offered a free gummy worm with every purchase.
Sold.