D and G’s cousins from Buffalo came to visit with us this week. We had an awesome time with the three calves and their parents. They might have done a little better as a traveling pod of Dolphins with all the rain we had this last week but a trip to the Providence Childrens Museum and New Bedford Whaling Museum did seem to tide them over.
As many traveling herds, they often were in search of food. This being the case, we fed them a New England style feast of Lobster and Steamers followed by a few hand picked delicacies from Federal Hill (the “little Italy” of Providence) We aren’t bad to visit, I swear! As you can see here they could only be contained for a short period of time before heading for the green pastures of NH to visit with more family. (We have a LOT of family)
Archive for June, 2009
Bison as houseguests
Someday I will make my own.
I spent some of yesterday working out some final edits for an album that has been way to long in the making. Harley and Joe had a gorgeous summer wedding and have had so much on their plates that this album has been a long time overdue. But I think it is just about ready to be sent out to the printers. Every time I sit down with an album for design, I always get a pang of guilt that I don’t have one of my own. Embarrassing. I keep telling myself that this is the year that I will have one for our anniversary, but always work, some pesky but cute kid or a project seem to come first. Sigh.
unboxed lasagna
Pasta making has become a favorite of D’s. And this week with all of our new CSA shares to experiment with, we decided to try making some lasagna from scratch (or from knead, squeeze, pinch, roll, and shape) Pasta is incredibly easy to make. Flour and eggs. That’s it. I tend to be a little wishy-washy when it comes to measurements (why I seem unable to bake) so I included a real pasta recipe from Jamie Oliver
Basically what I do is have D put some flour in a bowl (about 2 cups) and then 2-3 eggs and combine, then kneed. If it is crumbly add a few drops of water, if it is sticky add a bit more flour. Then there is a resting phase. 30 min covered to let the glutens do what glutens may when they are left unsupervised. I don’t ask questions.
After we emptied the dishwasher (love that D still thinks it is a great game-how long can this last?) I split dough up into 4-5 pieces and hand to D to do the rest. She puts it through machine. Cranks it, mushes it back together, repeats until I loose patience and encourage her move on to making it thinner and thinner. Then we cut the pasta it into longish squarish pieces and throw into boiling water to parboil. 2 min and drain. By the time one was done the next was be ready to go in. We laid them out on a plate and started arranging the other ingredients. The greens (spinach and chard) were sauteed with onion and garlic and pinch of salt. D put some layers of cheese on. Then we repeated with more pasta and some mushroomy layers. We luckily had more dough than we needed, so D made it into her favorite activity- play doh. She spent 40 minutes with same little piece and G was working on his train set unencumbered by any meddlesome siblings. This allowed for the rest of dinner to come together quite nicely. This is not the usual scenario in our home for dinner prep.
I made the mushroom layer with a number of dried and fresh mushrooms reduced with wine and tomatoes. The kids liked everything but the greens. I didn’t chop them small enough. But they did eat most of it regardless.