Homemade Bread

I've had this book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, checked out from the library and sitting on the passenger seat of my car.  My intention was to read it while waiting in the school car queue for Kate and John, then pop home and, in five minutes, whip up a freshly baked, piping hot, loaf of crusty artisan bread.  Then I started receiving notices from the library that my borrowing due date was approaching.  So, afraid I would lose my chance, I started reading it.

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing."

- Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The book is written by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  I started at the beginning and I didn't skip around.  Yes, I was reading, page by page, a cookbook.  This isn't usually how I approach a cookbook but there was something about making bread that made me want to be sure I really really understood it.  We got home and the kids actually mixed up a batch of dough (literally less less five minutes).  Once you form the dough, you must let it rest and then bake it - so those parts take more than five minutes.  But the batch lasts a full week, just keep in fridge and cut off pieces of dough when you're ready to bake another loaf.  It is delicious.  (Don't request it at my local library though 'cause I'm not finished reading about the variations that can be made from the original recipe!)

We've had it toasted in the morning with cream cheese and honey or jam.  Yesterday with salad and salmon.  And tonight with homemade chicken dumpling soup.  Yummmmm.  It smells warm and toasty in the house but this was the view outside my desk window this morning.  Pretty, yes...but it is April - enough already!!

Early Walk in the Woods

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

I walked this morning and it felt so good.  I'm not sure that I conceived any "great thoughts" though.  The robins are crazy out there - so many.  I read an article discussing Blue Zones (areas in the world where people live longer) and the common lifestyle characteristics of these zones.  One of the identified zones, Sardonia, Italy boasts the importance of walking.  There are many shepherds there, all who walk an average of five miles a day.  I walked three today; not quite a shepherd but...pretty good, I think.

"Walking is man's best medicine."
- Hippocrates

Another article cites the mental health significance of walking in nature.  A Japanese research study even proposes that a walk in the woods exposes one to "wood essential oils" which help immune systems and  lower stress and blood pressure levels.

 “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the heck she is.” ― Ellen DeGeneres

(I've heard humor helps also!)

I found these peeking out of the snow on a south-facing hill!  I think I'll walk again tomorrow.

  "It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching."
- St. Francis of Assisi



Game of Thrones/Winter is Coming?

Last month, for our "Mom's Book Club", we read the first book in the Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin and had our meeting this past weekend.  In the book, the Stark family reigns the northern realm and the saying of their family is "winter is coming".  We drank plenty of wine at the meeting but I swear we didn't do any kind of snow dance.  But look at what is happening outside now!  And it's still snowing.
Anyway, the meeting was great.  In this group, we have pretty loose/open discussion but the hostess usually has some printed questions to keep us on track.  I don't have a copy of the questions but will try to remember them.

-- Each family lives in a different climate of the realm - discuss how the place in which they live affects their strengths/habits/personalities/lifestyles.  (here we compared the Starks to Minnesotans - (little did we know what was coming this week!)
-- Each chapter is told from a perspective of a different main character.  Robb Stark is a fairly main character, why doesn't he have any chapters?  What might this foreshadow going forward?  Eddard Stark has chapters but, by the end of this book, we might wonder why (no spoilers!) - again, what might this foreshadow?
-- Were you surprised by the way the book ended?  Did you see any of this coming?  If so, which parts.  If not, why not?  This is definitely the ending of a series book - discuss.
-- If you didn't know anything about the author, would you assume the author were male or female?  Why or why not?
-- Did you like the addition of supernatural/fantasy in the book?  Did you feel differently about the dragons vs the direwolves vs the white walkers?  Why?  Why do you think the author added these elements to the book?  Could the book/story stand without them?
-- Discuss the author's competence in description: could you clearly picture/imagine the settings, the clothing, the food, the weather?  Obviously this is important in making it into a TV series - if you've seen the HBO series, how accurate to what you had in your head was the TV series?  Discuss, in general, the relationship between book and movie/TV.

We always have a potluck dinner at our meetings but we don't always theme it to the book.  This time we did - all centered around a delicious brisket smoked on the grill.  One of the Stark daughters, Sansa, is always stealing lemon cakes from the kitchen in the book so I brought these lemon bars for dessert.  I'd never made them before but this recipe turned out great:

What I Like About You

We still had snow for Easter.  Then it rained.  Then it snowed a little.  Got real muddy.  And now, last night, it really snowed.  It's melting already but everything is covered in a thick blanket of white.  As we discussed this wonderful state we live in on the way to school, I explained how resilient it makes us, how tough are we Minnesotans.  I mean, it's just snow.  It's not when we want snow but it isn't a hurricane or a Tsunami or anything destructive (other than mental health).  So, we discussed why we like Minnesota.  And then The Romantics came on the radio singing What I Like About You.  Perfect.  That'll be my theme song for today. 
My super tall grass died while we were on spring break, so I cleaned out the jars and decided that April will be a month of fresh flowers.  I'm going to keep fresh flowers on my table all of this month.  It does't melt the snow but...it helps.  See, we learn to deal with it.  We find tools to get through.
I think I've mentioned this before, but during my late high school years and all through college, I worked at a media distribution center, typing library catalog cards for elementary school library books.  Could get kinda boring sometimes.  But the people were fun and one of the tools we invented to break up our day was reading the funniest/craziest/stupidest books aloud to each other during lunch break.  (I know, major nerdy but, hey...)   I remember one favorite series of ours, one that we would read everytime it came across our desks, was The Cut-Ups by James Marshall.

I checked one out from the library (looking for some comedy relief) and read it.  Hmmm.  It really isn't that funny.  And yet we used to read them, snort laughing.  Maybe being a college student, bored out of your mind, using funny voices to read a picture book to similar fellow college students during the middle of your summer break makes it more funny.  Probably.

Anyway, the table runner under the vase (above) is my most recent project - denim cut-up from a pairs of old jeans and stitched back together.  Here's another picture of it:

Pablo Neruda

I was out Sunday evening when I received a text from Kate asking if we have any Pablo Neruda in our basement library.  I let her know that we did (the little book on the left) and she read it that night.  When I picked her up from school yesterday afternoon, she asked to go to the bookstore to get more Neruda.  Kate loves poetry (any literature really) but she's also always been passionate about political revolution so it didn't surprise that she'd find interest in Neruda.  So we bought the big thick middle volume.  I found my old DVD copy of Il Postino when we got home.  Such a good movie and...with much of Neruda in it.  We'll watch it later in the week.
But then, as I was reading online during lunch today, I saw these articles about...Pablo Neruda.  They exhumed his his body yesterday (with tuxedoed musicians playing graveside) to run tests, hoping to determine whether he was poisoned by political adversaries or died of cancer as has been believed these past 40 years.  His foundation and his family were against it but willing to cooperate.  Varying articles have varying takes on the story and offer varying bits of information to support their take.  And I wonder if Kate knew any of this - she didn't mention it.  I can't wait till she gets home from school - what great conversation re: the implication of ethics, morality, politics, revolution, journalism and, of course, the POWER of poetry!  Here are links to the articles I read:
Star Tribune
Chicago Tribune
New York Times
Los Angeles Times

Spring Break

Last week was spring break and a lot of people went south.  We went north.  But there was sun (and lots of snow!)  The river is still frozen, although starting to break open in a few places.

We walked along the logging trail which smells heavenly!

En route from the river to the lake, we spent a day at the Paul Bunyan waterpark.  The hot tub has a little "doggy door" that you can swim through and sit outside in the snow surrounded hot tub - we liked that!  We sat at our favorite coffe shop near the lake to watch the Twins baseball game.

The lake still had 4 feet of ice on it so we were able to take a walk out to the island.  Mark and John tried a little ice fishing but everyone seemed most happy just laying in the warmth of the sun!

We had an extra day when we returned home and spent it at the MN Zoo.  My favorite exhibit is the Grizzly Bears - this one just sat and watched me take her picture.  Such a massive creature!

And then it felt good to be back home, ordering a pizza and watching movies together.

Happy Easter Monday

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!  We had almost the whole crowd at our house - 43 at final count - so fun!  The date was a little early this year, though, and we still have snow and mud in the yard.  So, the egg hunt happened indoors and was limited to only the littlest kids - 6 and under.  As I filled the golden egg this, anticipating the competitive fight for it's location and the inevitable disappointment of those unlucky ones who don't find it, I wondered...why exactly did I start this golden egg thing to begin with?  But it was found, by a first time golden egg finder, and there were no tears.

Kate and John plant a tray of grass every year to use as a center piece on our Easter table.  I think my neice and nephew must have started their earlier than we did - look at the grass they brought me!: