Playtime?

The kids have a lot of barbie dolls and they play with them in all sorts of ways.

I do not know which way this is.

Sheperd's Pie

Had some potatoes around the house that were ready to bloom so I decided to use them along with some leftovers to make a quick sheperd's pie for dinner. Nothing especially exciting. What I actually wanted to bring up was that as I was leveling the mashed potatoes on top and getting ready to put it in the oven, I realized that I had no idea how to make those cool peaks with a fork that everyone seems to make that gets all browned and delicious looking. I ended up kind of plowing across them like I was getting ready to plant corn in them or something. Not quite the same. If anyone can show me how to make nifty peaks, please let me know....

Another Helpful Hint

When your parents tell you not to climb on, or jump off of the tree in your backyard, they probably have a good reason. If you don't believe them, you will only find out for yourself, the hard way.

In case you were wondering....

...yes, if you happen to be on the Wii Fit, getting some exercise, and you suddenly feel the urge to go to the bathroom, but you are in the middle of being weighed and couldn't wait and you accidentally pee on the Wii Balance Board....it's ok. The Board can take it. Wipe it up, and it still works.

I'm just saying, in case you were wondering.....

Farmer's Market

When you want to go to a Farmer's Market in the Bay Area, the Ferry Building Farmer's Market is pretty much the gold standard that others are compared to. With Hannah having been freed for the summer from her busy activities, we decided to take a trip out and enjoy the summer harvest of local farmers.



I support being a locavore as much as the next guy. I think Michael Pollan has a lot of very good ideas on how we can be more responsible with our the way we manage of resources. Looking at all of the organically grown food on display (look at those pepper! beautiful), I am definitely inspired to do more to support the local farmer. It is pricier than your local grocery store, but you more than make up for it in quality. I really wasn't looking to do a lot of shopping on this particular trip, but I couldn't resist buying a few tomatoes as thoughts of a BLT swirls in my head. (I LOVE a good ripe tomato. I can eat those things like apples. On the other hand, eating tomatoes in the winter time is one of the saddest experiences that I can think of) Then, amidst the abundant free samples, I also bought some potato-stuffed indian naan, some rhubarb that Britt turned into a crisp, and this love cheese sampler from Cowgirl Creamery. (I mostly took this to sow my friend Tim, who has developed a taste for fancy cheese)



Back to the sampling for a moment... You would think that all the samples of ripe nectarines, artisan cheeses, and even pickled green beans would be a meal in itself. But you know, sometimes the sampling works and it does indeed get you to buy more stuff. Besides what was mentioned above, I also tried a salumi "meat cone" from newly opened Boccalone. Excuse the blurry picture, I was having camera issues, but it's a paper cone with meat. Isn't that exciting enough of an idea?



So on a lovely summer day, I really can't think of anything better than spending the late afternoon/early morning strolling the Ferry Building. If it was inspiring to get me to wake up a little earlier on a Saturday morning, it's certainly worth a visit from you.

My First Souffle

For my last birthday, Britt gave me a strong hint when she got me a souffle dish. Being the strong willed type (and lazy, let's not forget to give credit to...ah whatever), I pretty much left the bowl unused for about a year. Then one day, while perusing some of my favorite blogs in my Google Reader (the greatest time suck mankind has ever known), I run across the Amateur Gourmet's attempt at a simple Ina Garten souffle recipe. What really sealed the deal for me, besides the basic recipe, are the step by step pictures that Adam took along the way. It's one of the easiest recipes that I think I ever followed.

Of course, that means that reprinting the recipes or too many pictures would be highly redundant. So here a just a few of how mine turned out, and I highly encourage you give this a shot. As mentioned in his post, there are kind of a lot of bowls and such involved, so clean up is a bummer, but I found that it was a great way to distract myself while I tried not peeking into that oven.



As promised, a simple recipe with very few ingredients. I had to substitute the cheese choice as all I had on hand was some lovely Swiss Emmenthal. I thought it worked out pretty well.



This was what it looked like before it went into the oven. This is also one of the few times that I get to play with the stand up mixer. Britt is the baker, so she is usually the one mixing things with it. It was great to just put the whisk to the egg whites and walk away to other things.



This was the final product when I took it out of the oven. I was hoping for more rise, but I think when I let Sara help fold the egg whites in the mixture, she was a little heavy handed and mixed everything in. It's OK though, I don't blame her or anything. It was a lot of fun letting both girls help throughout the process. Besides, the pretty rise only lasts a short time before the souffle cools.



See? No hard feelings...

Graduation Day

June is also the time of graduations, and it's no different in our household as Sara celebrated her promotion into kindergarten. It was challenging journey (she did have to repeat the grade), but she was able to buckle down on her studies and passed all of her finals. That finger painting exam had us a little worry for a minute there, but her excellent color composition and organization of her stick fingers really pulled her through.

Of course, all of that is ridiculous. As proud of Sara as I am for her accomplishment of progressing through school, it seems to me we put a little too much pomp and circumstances into this. The parents agreed to buy cap and gowns for their preschoolers, ones that will never be worn again, all for a ceremony that lasted all of 10 minutes. I remember when Hannah finished preschool they made paper caps and I thought they were the cutest thing ever. Why couldn't we do that now? It's preschool? Is there someone out there living on the streets because they were a preschool drop out and can't make art with dry macaroni? (that guy is probably running Microsoft of something)

Ramble all I want, the graduation took place with cap and gown, the kids look cute, and Sara is on her way to kindergarten in th fall. I can't wait to see her in another cap and gown next year for her promotion to first grade. And they say we aren't encouraging our kids enough....