October = baseball. I love the wild card play off games, the league championship series. The sold out crowds are electric, you can hear it in the constant chants, cheers, fans standing up the entire game. The announcer booth chatter is reserved excitement. It doesn't matter who plays, though it is more fun when the Cardinals or Yankees are playing.

Things to look forward to over the next couple of months...

My sister and her family coming to town
A new nephew due any day now!
Pumpkin patch with the girls
DaVinci dinner date with my honey
Voting (don't forget!)

Over the course of 2010 I have gradually become more of a Locavore. My spell check says that is not a real word, I beg to differ. The term describes a person that eats locally grown food and such, likely a word rooted in some sort of hippy-liberal-vegan source. I kid, of course, who knows who thought that one up and I am the exact opposite as a boring-middle of the road-omnivore.

This has been a gradual process and yet one that is logical to me – it would have to be logical and economical or it just wouldn’t work. I love the Downtown Farmer’s Market for the locally grown produce, meat, bread and cheese. I love the produce section of Hy-Vee on Fleur Drive, they are pros at marketing what is locally or regionally grown. It’s not a political stance, I’m not going to hop up on a soapbox and proclaim it to the world, it just makes sense to me – kind of a ‘how did it take me so long to realize that buying local food is a such good thing’.

There really is no excuse for not buying locally available in-season vegetables. They are going to be fresher and taste better, buying them is supporting area growers and farmers and it is fun to talk to the vendor about how to cook the vegetables that they grow. Our girls love to go to the Farmer’s Market and pick out fruit and vegetables and I am happy to give in.

I’ll give you an example of something that I buy locally – I doubt that I will ever go back to store bought chicken. There are two vendors that I know of at the Farmer’s Market that have whole frozen chickens for sale. One is Fox Hollow Farms and the other is the one that I buy from and the name escapes me. They are expensive and they are delicious. If I spend $10 on a chicken, roast it, pull the meat and spread it out over 4 meals - the cooked meat freezes nicely – it is absolutely worth it. I prefer to roast the chicken whole but it could be cut up if you know how to do that. I do not know how and am perfectly happy with roasted chicken.

I recently learned about the Iowa Food Cooperative http://iowafood.org/shop/. It completely fascinates me. A lot of the same vendors are at the Downtown Farmer’s Market so I see no reason to join the coop when I can wander around the Farmer’s Market to shop and people watch at the same time. :-)

It's official, school has started. Yes, school started 3 weeks ago, but the germs have just now arrived. Hundreds of children sharing one building, one lunch room, they are bound to share germs. Round one has started with sniffly noses and coughs but so far no fevers. Colds make for a long week and on this Friday night Erik is working so the girls and I will be snuggling in for dinner and a movie and what I hope is an early bedtime.

First Day of School

Ah, the first day of school. Katie, Gretchen, Erik and I were all excited for school to start, albeit for different reasons. The girls were ready to meet their teachers, see their friends and meet new ones and while they each admitted to being nervous, they couldn't wait to go. Erik and I were ready for them to be back in the routine of the school year.

Both girls were up by 6:30 this morning, before I even had a chance to shake their little shoulders. Katie rode the bus today from one side of Norwalk to the other to and we all stood in the garage/driveway waiting for the bus. I dropped off Gretchen at school, returned to my car and breathed a sigh of relief and stopped at Starbucks for a back to school treat.


Our big Kindergartener. No, she was not instructed to pose, she just did. It was chilly so her favorite sundress made friends with her favorite zip-up hooded sweatshirt. Gretchen had a great first day and said that she only cried once, when she bit her finger during lunch. She did not cry to her teacher about her bit finger, she found our neighbor, Donna the lunch lady instead.

Our big fourth grader. Once again, she was not instructed to pose, she just did, she always does. Just one of the many awesome things about Katie, she's always camera-ready. Katie had an awesome day and went on and on about how huge everything was at school - the lunchroom, the library, her locker. She went to bed saying that she couldn't wait to go back!

Recently, it dawned on me that some of my favorite restaurant meals are really quite easy to make at home. Example #1, Chicken Fried Rice. Make sure to have a timer on hand, I use the microwave above the stove. The recipe goes together pretty fast once all of the ingredients are lined up so at that point I kick everyone out of the kitchen until it’s time to wash their hands and set the table.

Just wait, those of you with younger children than mine, one day the clouds will open, the heavens will shine down on you and angels will sing when your children are old enough to set and clear the table, then rinse plates and load the dishwasher. It is truly a glorious moment in motherhood.

The original recipe was found on the website www.tastykitchen.com, and was called Garlic Fried Rice. I made the recipe and included all 6 cloves of garlic - yes, 6. My skin smelled like garlic the next day and as much as we loved the recipe, some changes were definitley in order! Feel free to add or substitute your favorite veggies, whatever you like. I'm making this for dinner tonight!

Chicken Fried Rice
serves 4-6

6 T. butter, divided
2 cloves minced garlic
1 t. lemon juice
3 cups cooked rice, chilled (that's 1 1/2 cups before you cook it!)
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1/2 c. carrots, chopped, more to taste
1/2 c. other vegetable, chopped, more to taste
1 pre-cooked chicken breast, chopped into small pieces
2 eggs, beaten
2 T. soy sauce, more to taste
2 green onions, chopped
salt and pepper, to taste

Melt 2 T. of butter, add the minced garlic and lemon juice and set aside to let the flavors combine. Cook the rice as directed on the package and set aside or in the fridge to cool.

Chop the onion, carrots and other vegetable, chicken and place each ingredient in it's own bowl so it's easy to drop into the pan. The original recipe called for 1 cup of frozen peas and carrots which I never have on hand, tonight I'm using fresh carrots and broccoli so will steam them in the microwave until they are about half-cooked. Also, I like to pre-cook a couple chicken breasts and freeze them so they are ready for dinners like this - or bbq chicken pizza, or chicken salad, etc. You could easily substitute leftover roast, pork chop, ham, shrimp, whatever meat you have on hand, or use no meat and increase your vegetable amount. Finally, beat the eggs in a small bowl. Line up everything within reach of the stove, this goes together quickly.

In a large, non-stick skillet melt 4 T. of butter over medium heat. Add onions and saute until soft, about 5 minutes. Add vegetables and the butter-garlic-lemon mix and cook for about 3 minutes. Add meat and cook for 1 minute. Push all ingredients over to one side of the skillet and on the empty side add the eggs. Salt and pepper the eggs and scramble them until just set. Then move the rest of the ingredients back over and stir the eggs into the mixture.

Add the cold rice and the soy sauce, stir to combine and cook for another 3-4 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds to nothing burns. Add green onions and stir, taste for seasonings and add more soy sauce, salt and pepper if needed.

We are learning lots on our trip to NYC, here are a few tidbits, I will probably have several more throughout the week.

- check the weather in advance, more than just the morning than you leave, you know, after you are all packed and ready to go, forecast was for low 80s until the morning we left when it quickly changed to 100s

- do not, I repeat do not, go into a restaurant that is not a well known chain and does not post it's prices outside the restaurant, prime example a $14 blt at Roxy Diner. Boo!

- do not believe the counter person at the Des Moines "International" Airport, Delta window, when they say, "hurry up, you'll miss your flight, I'll make sure your bag makes it". Ours made it alright, 14 hours after we did

- do think that just because you are the only two non-Caribbean or non-Hasidic Jews in the six block area, that you will get along just fine and only get random odd stares

- 100 degrees in NYC = 148 degree sidewalks

- eat at Dim Sum Go Go in Chinatown, be a little bit frightened, and come to terms with the fact that you are really bad at chopsticks when the waiter brings you a knife and fork

- waiters at Dim Sum Go Go believe that Chinese food in Iowa is served with potatoes and gravy

- residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant are more frightened that you are walking through your neighborhood than you are when you are while walking through their neighborhood - pushing the limits of your comfort zone can be good for your soul (so they say)

- walking from Manhattan, across the Brooklyn Bridge and to your rented apartment at 14 Virginia Place, Brooklyn is a really long walk, through the before-mentioned Bed-Stuy neighborhood

- tourists are really easy to spot, they are looking up at the massive buildings instead of watching where they are going

- museums take up multiple city blocks and take 4 hours to get through the first floor and absolutely worth the steep price of admission

- there is really good NY cheesecake (Lansky's Deli on the upper west side) and really bad NY cheesecake (some pizza place on the upper east side where the pizza was really great)

It seems impossible that June is almost halfway over. We wait and wait for summer to arrive and it goes by so fast that we barely have time to enjoy the warm sunshine. The girls will be spending a lot of quality time with Daddy this summer as his work schedule is flexible enough to not require day care. There are days that I wish that the tables were turned and I had the flexible schedule. Then there are days that the girls are acting like sisters and cannot stand to be around each other. Those are the days I happily skip off to work or class.

Here's hoping that the summer slows down a little and that we all have time to enjoy our friends and families, bbqs, smores, guacamole and salsa dinners, fireworks, cold beer, parades, fireflies, sun tea, garden fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, homemade ice cream, and picnics.

Rommel update

Here is a list of non-dog food items the 95 pound pup has eaten in the past 4 months or so. Rommel is quite adept at tearing open ziplocs, plastic sacks and tupperwear-style containers. The vet is convinced he's part German Shepard, based on his coloring, long nose and apparently he doesn't walk like a Lab. He's 47 inches long from the tip of his nose to the base of his tail and will be 1 at the end of July.


tomato
package of hot dog buns, minus the plastic
flarp -- pink stuff found in the Target dollar bins, minus the container
6 chocolate chip cookies
4 blueberry muffins, minus the ziploc
3 raw marinating pork chops
carpet - just a couple inches worth
2 pair of underwear, one at a time
protective cover from a wii remote


Here are a couple pictures of the big lug. Notice how he likes to hang out near the spot where he tore up the carpet.