Baking with Julia

Every Christmas, since I can remember, my dad has given me a cookbook.  In all those years I have only requested two, The Joy of Cooking and Baking with Julia.

The Joy of Cooking has become our bible or manual to cooking.  It truly has every basic recipe or how to guide you could ever need.  Not that you can’t go all fancy pants with it, but you know, if you were to only have one cookbook on your shelf, this is the one to get.

Baking with Julia, which is based on a PBS series Julia Child hosted with other great bakers as her guests, has become my own in home class.

Once the kids all went to school, I decided to take it and walk through each recipe.  Learning the foundations of baking.  I’m not a bad baker, in fact I’m pretty good, but again there are basics to learn and master before you hit brilliance.

Our Family Dinner’s have afforded me a venue to bake and to get feedback.  And feedback I get.  My family indulges me by going around the table and offering up their thoughts, which then get written into the cookbook, along with the date.

This week’s baking class was the perfect Genoise, in which I chose to make a French Strawberry Cake.

Family Feedback:  delicious, dry-coarse, not too sweet, like the strawberry shortcake my mom use to make

Midnight and beyond

To be honest, I am normally sound asleep before 10:30 pm.

But who could resist hitting the theater with a bunch of crazy woman for the midnight showing of New Moon?

And by the way, we were not the oldest people there but we may have had the most fun.

Climbing out

Good golly, I’m sot sure what has happened over the past few weeks or was it just a week or maybe a day?  Ok, I guess I might know what has gone on, but it is a little hazy so bare with me.

The trip to Ohio was great!  The highlight for the kids was the pool at the hotel on either side of the trip and the artificial hips and pace makers they got from my cousin who owns five funeral homes.  There was a good amount of time spent at funeral homes.  Oh yeah and then there was “Clyde’s Funeral” that the kids (and my parents) played out and we got it on CD.  How do you get that on CD do you ask? Well, I come to find out that people steel stuff off of dead bodies during wakes.  So what is a funeral director to do, but put in hidden cameras to catch all the sheenangens.

In all my great smugness of being THE BEST DAUGHTER ON THE FACE OF THE PANET for having brought my parents and three children on a 28 hour car trip to see The Relatives, on the way home I got sick.  And I remained sick, with fever and cough, for SEVEN days.  I just know it was God’s way of taking me down a peg or two, you know that smugness I referred to earlier?  However, PJ got sick too.  Upon reflection, she does need to work off some of her evil ways, so she wasn’t spared either.

During my week of ill, I was crawling out of bed trying to help Omar plan a fairly substantial event called Darkness Day at Surly Brewing Company.  If you did not make it out this year, you should certainly try it out next year.  The food, bands and of course beer were amazing.  So by Saturday, the sick was gone and the party was on!

This week has been filled with catching up on all the other things that happen when three weeks of your life have vanished and you actually forget what your name is and what day it is.

Hi I’m Mary and today is Wednesday Thursday.

Not even on the bucket list

Tomorrow I am leaving to go out of town.  I will be heading to Madison, Wisconsin to volunteer for the Ford Wisconsin Ironman.

Five years ago, as a stay at home mom, I decided I needed to find something for myself.  I was surfing the internet and decided I would try my hand at triathlons.  I just had baby number three and I needed something for myself.  So why not.  That was in January.

By June I was deep into training for my first sprint triathlon.  My mom would come over and watch the kids while I went running or biking or swimming.

There was one particular run on a path near my house that I clearly remember.  I was day dreaming that I was doing an Ironman race.  As soon as that day dream was over, I assured myself that THAT was never going to happen, because who in their right mind would do that?

Five years and several triathlons later, I find myself going to volunteer at the Ironman race ONLY because it will solidify a space for me in the 2010 Wisconsin Ironman.

Sunday I will volunteer.

Monday I will register.

Tuesday I will question my sanity.

First week

KP has been handling the adjustment to all day Chinese Kindergarten with a tremendous amount of grace.  Granted, he must go to sleep around 7:00 pm and if you push his buttons it is OVER, for everyone!

That all said, the cutest thing happened yesterday.

KP came running off the bus and ran into my arms for a big hug.  He turned his head and whispered in my ear, “Mom, I cried at school today.”

Me:  Oh noooo, what happened?

KP:  I wanted YOU!

And then I welled up.

Off to school

This was yesterday.

CT had just rolled out of bed and wasn’t ready yet.

PJ is set and ready to roll.  In fact, she ran onto the bus so fast that I had to go on after her to kiss her goodbye.

KP was all ready but had to wait another day for school to begin, but got to visit for an hour and hang out with his new class mates.

All in all, the day went pretty smoothly.

And today…KP headed off to his first day of ALL DAY Chinese Immersion Kindergarten (didn’t even want to stop for a photo-can you tell by the blur?).

With his big brother giving him ample instructions before leaving the door, his big sister taking his hand as they stepped onto the bus together and his wide anxious eyes waiting for all the new adventures to begin, I am sure this day too will be great.

Unless he goes insane because he has no idea what the teacher is talking about.

I’ll let you know if that happens.

Another vacation of sorts

This cancer thing my dad has, doesn’t seem to be getting the picture that we don’t want it around anymore.  That said, my mom, dad and I are heading down to the Mayo Clinic to get a second opinion or better options or different options or another option or something that might stick.

Seeing that my dad is on his Chemo Holiday, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to just see what else was out there, so we are.

The kicker came last weekend for he and my mom as they fought off mind blowing pain and sleepless nights.  So with a visit to the doctor earlier in the week, new and/or increased pain meds and radiation, he is on a better playing field.  Or, at least we can make the trip down to Rochester without him losing his mind.

Birthday trip to Stillwater

Here’s to hoping our Mayo Vacation (that’s what we’ve decided to call it) will be fruitful.  If nothing else, it will give us peace of mind that the very competent Dr. that is in charge now, is doing all that is humanly possible to ward off what she can of this intruder into our lives.

I’ll be back, sometime.

Long weekends

Today we leave for our annual trip up to Camp Fritz.

This year will include:

3 moms
9 kids
3 dogs (one black lab puppy, one bull mastiff puppy and Lucy)
4 days
fishing
swimming
tick removal
6 bottles 9 bottles of wine
and few margaritas for Jen

See ya on the flip.

What do you think Adam will do with four days of silence?

Quiet Dawn

This morning around 7:00, the house was very still, everyone asleep but me. Then KP came walking down the steps, still stretching the sleep out of his body.

As the sunlight from the bathroom lit up half his little body I looked at him in his quiet state, in the quiet of the morning and a flood of emotion washed over me.  How big his little body had gotten, how cute he was, how funny was his hair splayed in all directions, and than that crooked smile that turned into a shy “oh no you’re looking at me” look.

At that moment I fell in love with him all over again.

No…I am not dead

I’m just kid free for one solid week due to them ALL being at camp.  A sweet glimpse into my future this fall.

Whenever I skip blogging for large chunks of time I feel like we need to sit down, have a cup of coffee and catch-up.  That said, get your coffee…here’s what has been going on in my world.

Last Saturday was the Lifetime Triathlon.  I actually got my packet this year with virtually no problems, with the exception I could not find my ID, that would have been a problem had I not found it in the bank envelope at the bottom of my purse.

It was a GREAT day for a race.  All the planets came into alignment for me at just the right time and I ended up probably racing my best race to date.  I ended up 5th in my age group, 22nd out of all the woman with a time of 2:34:41, almost 5 minutes faster than two years ago.

Many of my Tri buddies where there and also knocked it out of the park! 

• Sleeper Cell Courtney took 7th in her age group.
• Nathan, did a great job considering her DIDN’T train.  The best part was when everyone was setting up their transition areas and Nathan is yelling, “I’M GONNA WIN THIS RACE!!!”
• Then there is Speedy Jon, he took first in his age group, son of a bitch cyclist turned triathlete, did I just say that out loud?  Great job!
• T-odd had a great race as well (read his account of the race here) but still had a hard time getting that racing top on.
• Then there is Fast Matt…he raced in the elite division this race just so he could be done early to cheer Nathan on.  Had he raced in his age group, he would have taken 1st by over 3 minutes.

I’m so lucky to have such great talented friends…nice work everyone!

Sunday was Adam’s 39th Birthday…Happy belated birthday love.

Then Monday rolled around…kids off to camp!  It is KP’s first time to camp so everyone was very excited.  As they were sitting at the breakfast table KP says, “Finally, a break from this house!”  I feel the same was little buddy.  Really, I do.

Phoebe had her last soccer game Monday night and Tuesday morning found Lou Lou dead.  I feel only slightly guilty that I wished it was dead while I was cleaning the tank the day before.  I didn’t really mean for it to die.

And today, I’m feeling a little anxiety only having two days left to get everything done that I wanted to do.  On the top of that list, shampooing the carpet.  Have you done that?  I just finished, and there is something REALLY satisfying about watching all that dirt, dust and sand come up out of the carpet.

Unless that is only how dirty MY carpet is.

That’s it…now you’re up to date.