Ruminations on Ukrainian Prairie food and Sick PreSchoolers

Well folks just when we were finally on the road to recovery Abby found herself another virus. March has been the worst month in recent memory for sickness around here, both the kids  had back to back viruses and missed over two weeks of outings and school between the two of them. Then Seth got sick which immediately was an ear infection (also loads of fun should you ever wonder fleetingly about infecting the ears of a man who has a broken ear drum and a compromised immune system- vote yes- vote a total riot.)

And just when we thought that things were looking healthier around here, Kablammo! Abby is sick again. Hopefully Norah can avoid the extreme fever and chills that had Abby ( and subsequently Seth and myself) up until 5am this morning. I do suppose that the one really really good thing about one of us being sick is that it immediately trips my 'soup trigger' and has me thinking steaming bowls of tasty stoup. Oh yes that "t" is in there for a reason, I cannot actually make a soup per say, but I am a master craftsman of the Stew+Soup=Stoup. My Stoup is always intended to be a soup, but alas far more vegetable, meat and rice/noodles/potatoes fit in than I ever expect. If there is room in the broth it just doesn't look full enough to me and so I add, and add, and add until... Stoup. I suppose the only real reason that it isn't just called a Stew is that I intended  it, however briefly, to be a soup when I began.

This particular stoup was a great hit and even had Abby munching away despite the non-appetite of a cold. Let me introduce: Ukrainian Prairie Soup, otherwise known as the best damn soup I have ever made. This was such a great meal, and it immediately reminded Seth and I of growing up in Alberta with the huge Ukrainian population and all the tasty yummy delectable food that should be eaten and available everywhere... but isn't. I must admit that I took it for granted that I could go to the store and buy a 5 kg bag of perogies for 7 dollars, did you hear that 5KG of PEROGIES? Or how about a tray of cabbagerolls, tasty rolls of meat and rice covered with that great tomato sauce, seriously!! I mean the trouble I could get into with that these days!

But alas, not here in warm and rainy Spokane, perogies and cabbagerolls are simply the stuff of harsher winters where the only reason you leave the decently warm bus to walk home in the freezing/windy/icy/snowy/wasteland is because you know that there is 5kgs of perogies waiting for you. Or at least I tell myself this so I won't spend every hungry moment bemoaning the lack of perogies and cabbage rolls. Anyway back to the stoup, here we are folks a stoup that tastes just like cabbage rolls and then some. Granted it lacks ground beef, but I am sorta picky about ground beef in soups and I would have told you I hated that the lovely fatty tasty amazing ground beef that should be a hamburger or a meatloaf is floating in a liquid. BUT then I had some ground beef soup at the lovely Sarah's house and well.... she may have changed my mind a little, or a lot, that was damn good soup too, but I don't have that recipe I have this one:

1 tblsp each of butter and oil

2 large chicken breasts diced with salt and pepper to taste

Half a head of Green cabbage chopped

1 cup of chopped green beans

1 can of diced tomatoes

2 cans of tomato soup

3 cups of chicken broth

1 1/2 cups cooked rice ( remember the stoup, you may want less if you can't handle the STOUP)

1 tblsp of dried dill

Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper, brown in butter and oil, add cabbage and saute until slightly translucent, add beans and tomatoes, soups, broth, rice and dill. Bring to boil and simmer for half and hour or so until the stoup has thickened and you are clamouring for food.

It is seriously good folks!

The best kind ever

This is Real Love

The best kind ever

Just being, and doing, together

Dollhouse interior

 So about three years ago my Mother in Law bought a dollhouse kit for Seth to work on for Abby, at the time it seemed like a really great constructive project for him. It soon becaem apparant that there were way too many instructions that were vague with unlabeled pieces for his brain injury to handle.... Cue Mommy to the rescue. We have been working on this crazy dollhouse for the past year together, it started with wanting to get it done for Abby's Fourth birthday over the summer but that didn't quite happen. And then wanting to get it done for Christmas, but still.. not enough time. So after stalling out on cutting all the little bitty pieces of trim (that really my kids couldn't care less about) an executive decision was made in January that the inside should be finished first. This was based partly on the fact that the kids were loving playing with it and starting to colour the walls with crayons to help mommy finish, and also partly because I am quite worried about the little delicate wooden deck railing spindles surviving the next few years.. so inside won over outside. Above is a shot of the inside all primed with papers laid out for each room.

Here is the upper floor of the dollhouse, the two girl's rooms. Not surprisingly the older girl gets the biggest room and when ABby is playing she also gets all the blankets, food, pets and toys... :)

Baby's room, the wallpaper is also sparkly in a lot of these rooms which really put Abby over the top

The Bathroom which I am thinking that i am totally in love with and I wonder if they could make scrapbooking paper 10 feet tall for my bathroom :) lol

Mom and Dad's room, yes we did use vinyl flooring in the whole dollhouse, yes I did cut it out to fit each room from large tiles, no I am not crazy. My thinking was this: it is super durable and meant for real people to walk in so therefore it should survive the doll family and the two little girls manipulating them.... right?

Two angles of the living/dining room

And two angles of the kitchen

 It may have been the most fun I have ever had making something for the kids, and I thought seriously about starting a dollhouse renovation company.. but you know.. time :)

Lastly we have a few shots of Baby Raccoon and Baby Kitty who came to play a few days ago. They were masks cut out from a cutting crafts book ABby got for Xmas, and they provided hours of playtime. :)

Finally... keeping up with the Jones's

Finally! Finally I have my brand new shiny red camera, and I finally got some time to work with it and take a few new pictures of the girls that aren't all grayed out. Finally I can select shots that are really the ones that I want and not just have to settle for the half decent ones. So I celebrated by trying to take a few shots of what we did today.

It was such a lovely warm day above freezing, mostly all the snow has melted and so the kids were itching to get the bikes out for the first time in months. Norah is still too short for the real bikes, or even the tricycles, but she can scoot. And she's pretty darn fast at it too!

Not as fast as Abby though, so she settled with yelling "Abby!" over and over while her big sister lapped her around the driveway.

Abby was delighted she still knew how to ride her bike and spent at least a half an hour riding in circles and giving me a play by play whenever she got close to the flower bed.

Abby and I made homemade turkey soup and homemade buns for supper. Whenever I make homemade bread or buns I always ponder why I don't make them all the time. Unfortunately with Seth on a low-carb diet buns aren't really a staple food but once in a while they really hit the spot. And my kids love homemade soup so much! More than pizza, more than chicken nuggests, and only slightly less then french fries. (seriously, french fries are the most sought after food for my kids, but not the crappy ones, they have to be big nicely seasoned Steak fries.) Abby is really good at eating the soup broth and the bits, but really Norah is a broth girl through and through. So tonight HandDog came to visit and help Norah eat her bits so she wouldn't be all full of liquid and hungry in two hours.

At first HandDog was such an anomaly that she wasn't too sure, that silly handdog masquerading as Daddy's hand this whole time had her stumped for only a few seconds.

Then they were best of friends and HandDog quickly helped Norah eat some bits from the soup bowl by trying them first and proving without a doubt that the bits were indeed edible. She was very upset when Hand Dog had to say goodbye and help Daddy do the dishes and walk the dogs. Ultimately HandCat that tried to help Mommy do the bath was not nearly as popular and very nearly drowned via angry toddler.

Sometimes when we're tired or just plain wanting the kids to "do what we say when we say it," it's easy to forget that a lot of parenting has to be creative. A situation where we struggle to get the obstinent child to comply can be easily diffused with something as simple as HandDog. Even though today ended well I am still struggling with trying to balance time between the kids and things that I want/need to do. But when all else fails looking at the world through the imagination of a little girl can really change your perspective.

NaBloPoWha?

It is so awesome that all my friends are on this crazy post everyday thing. Awesome that each morning I get to stall even longer upstairs and look into this house, or that house, and sometimes that house, and not often enough that house. Lately I have been struggling with the concept of this blog, how much is too much and how little is not enough. I am an intrinsically honest person... to a fault, if you've had a conversation with me you'll know that I am generally well meaning but blatantly honest. ( For future reference this is not always the easiest and most tactful way to be.. just sayin'). And it does provide a slight problem with this space as I am never sure how much information is okay and how much is too much insight into our lives, where we live, what we do, how to find us... But it is fun reading blogs of other people,. specifically people that I know in real life, then there is this teeny tiny glimpse into the background. The set as they say, the part in the dress rehearsal when they just leave the curtain up for the stage change and you can see the blank concrete back wall, the hanging wires, the old unused sets in the wings, new props waiting to be brought out. The way it really works, I like seeing that, a "How it's Made" of a family I know.

And it is even better that some of these great gals are doing it everyday, I mean when else can you work into conversation "Soooo what was a completely banal thing that happened today that spurred a memory that made you rethink your entire parenting style," yeah I know that's not really an icebreaker is it? So then really why the heck did competitive overacheiver me not jump on this NaBloPo thing? WEll for one, I didn't know what the hell it was until Ivory explained it to me. I don't feel like I have time..... but that's a lie, because I do have time. If I have time for daily puzzle, then I have time for this.

Who knows, I do know for sure that we have to go out soon, stop and pick up the pottery that Abby and I painted last week for Xmas gifts, get a new coffeemaker ( life giver) and then buy a snowblower, or shall I say budget blower for all the snow from the *&(^%& global warming trend. It is ironic that to combat the effects of global warming I need to buy something that uses non renewable resources and makes noxious exhaust.... but I'm sure I could write a college course on the amount of irony in life.

I also know that Norah is incredibly adorable in her 6-12 month sweater that fits great, and her 18 months pants that fall down because she no longer wears diapers and she is super dinky skinny. lol, and I also know that Abby is sick as a dog and has a terrible croup thing but insists complete with tears and hystrionics that she will go pick up the pottery. So off we go! maybe you'll hear from me tomorrow, but probably not, the pathological need to forge my own path and disregard all other rules is pretty strong.

Hallowe'en

I think that this Hallowe'en was my most favorite to date. Abby was amped up for a good two weeks beforehand, literally vibrating with excitement. And Norah was finally old enough to really appreciate the fact that simply walking up to someone's door and being her unbearable cute self saying "twitck o weeet" was enough for scads of candy. :) She spend the evening hefting her pumpkin bucket around all by herself smiling a cat-that-got-the-cream grin and saying "I got wots o candy!" It was marvelous. I ended up vetoing the Ponyo cotsumes that were originally requested mostly because Ponyo didn't really dress for October this far north, (a Miyazaki film about the far arctic would really help me out next year). And so the girls went as princesses, which was a sure bet with Abby as long as the costume has lots of sparkly Diva going on.

 

 We followed up Hallowe'en with Abby starting Ballet lessons, she is completely delighted as a couple of the girls in her class take ballet and now she is just like them. She had a marvelous time at her first class despite the fact that her mom ahem.. missed the right time and she was in with the 5 year olds being slightly bamboozled by instructions she did not understand. But I have to admit that Abby is so good at being easy

going she did great and followed the best she could. So next week we'll be there at the right time and she'll do even better. The best news is that she asked to go to ballet again the very next day so I guess she really likes it.

The Calm Before

 Did anyone notice that September was a blazingly fast month? That it was over nearly before it began, and the onset of school was this amazing re-entry into a decently structured shedule that has my children acting more normal than the carefree days of summer ever allowed? We've been so busy and yet had nowhere to go and nothing to do other than the sweet nothings of everyday. Fabulous mornings filled with oatmeal, cool rainy weather, fading leaves and school afternoons. I had a number of projects due last month as well as a few deadlines for submissions and looming Christmas gift knitting so my hands have been occupied which is always a good thing to do. We started September with our annual trip to the State Fair. I always feel like this is my Americanization ritual that I must pass to remain in the country. We had a great time as always, and this year Norah got to have a Llama ride which was not only the highlight of her day but possibly the highlight of her life. :) She ended up having two rides that day both of which were punctuated by her delighted cries of "Llama ride! I'm having a Llama ride! Yay!, Yehaw Llama ride!." It was enough to make me regard my 4 city lots as Llama worthy pasture for the time it took her to ride around the llama circle a few times. 

And of course there were the giant carrots from our garden. Funny thing about carrots, if you leave them in the groud with a water supply they keep growing. Felt a bit like the scene from Lord of the Rings with Farmer Maggots crop being stolen, but my little hobbits are cuter than those ones, albeit still with curly hair.

 Then we had a nice trip to our favorite Fruit Ranch with Abby's school, Norah wasn't too sure why she could eat an apple right off the tree but not a pumpkin. I wasn't reallt able to explain it to her satisfaction either so she knawed on the skin for a while :)

And we cam home the other day to find this little guy on the porch. Apparantly an Orb Weaver spider it is quite frankly the coolest spider I've ever seen and I kind of hope he sticks around simply for interest factor :)

Now we have busy busy October with lots of visiting and trips for weddings and getting ready for Halloween and at least one birthday to celebrate.

Harvest update

I feel a bit guilty for neglecting this space so badly, I'm pretty sure that it has something to do with being fairly busy, and deciding to give the kids the attention they deserve. However I have a few garden updates: Above you see my 2.5 gallons of green beans that I picked from the garden the other day. These little guys found their way into the freezer. Please ignore the dirty dishes and vitamins and if you are saying "wha? dirty dishes and vitamins.. where?" then don't look for them, your house must be well loved and seasoned with clutter as is mine.

And at the risk of making someone too hungry I will only post one picture of one of our many fabulous stir-fry's that we've had in the past while. All veggies that have come from my garden, I think the only thing I bought was the garlic, but that will change next year.

And we finally bought some lumber to put together our yard bin that Seth received from his mom ... maybe two years ago... :) I guess the blog isn't the only neglected thing going on here :) lol

And finally Abby did turn four last month. I decided that I wasn't going to do a blog post about it as it makes me cry to think of her getting older and being away from me at some point. And she has been having a great deal of anxiety about getting big enough to move out and be away from us lately and so since she is such a perceptive little thing I decided not to dwell on the emotion. Here was her totally fabulous Cheesecake a La Splenda so her dad could eat it too :) It turned out super delicious :)

Lunch with Ponyo

We rented Ponyo from the Library this week; hardcore Miyazaki fans we have most all of his other movies but had been putting off purchasing this one mostly because of poor reviews. However, what a surprising delight this movie turned out to be! Abigail was completely in love with it and we have watched it everyday, sometimes twice a day for the entire week. Long story short it is a retelling of The Little Mermaid, but way more adorable and with typical Miyazaki charm and strange Japanese references that still elude understanding but remain quirky and enjoyable. 

As in all Miyazaki movies he never forgets to include the food ( and I have a theory about his love of cold fried eggs because he uses them a lot) but in this movie Ponyo and Soske have a bowl of Noodle soup with Eggs, Ham, and Green Onion.  So imagine Abby's squeal of delight when she managed to locate the last two packages of Ichiban ( that's Ramen for the American readers) that were lurking in the cuboard. "just like Ponyo!!!!!" So off we went to recreate the noodle soup that Ponyo and Soske eat after the big storm in the movie.

Eggs, Ham and Green Onion were easy to recreate and I was delighted that Ponyo had enough good sense to mix some hefty protein in with her carbs. Also the fact that before Ponyo Abby would never ever ever have even entertained the idea of eating Ham, Green Onions or Eggs in soup, these are all things that she east separately and does enjoy but in a soup? really? well Ponyo does!

And this really took me back to being a kid, those crunchy noodles just waiting for the hot water, and the salty salty broth..mmm....

Then there was  the moment I had to pretend to be the mom from Ponyo and cover the soup telling Abby to close her eyes while slipping in the eggs, ham and onion. then SURPRISE! 

I guess there is such a thing as universal soup surprise look , lol.

I never got to eat my soup as Norah woke up just in time to partake in the meal. Which she also immediately knew was from Ponyo, I guess I know what Santa is bringing for Christmas:) And I hope we can last Ponyo-less until then. And one thing for sure : there were definite threats hurled against those dang Librarians who wanted their movie back today.

Good Gravy, where has it all gone?

who knows, I remember when summer was this long drawn out ridiculous affair that was so devastatingly awesome at the beginning of July when there was no school, and then by the end of August we were bored out of our skulls and begging to go back to school. ANd really at the moment it is only the beginning of August with a good solid three weeks left until September creeps up and cooler winds crisp the air. We have birthday's coming up, successive planting to accomplish, more weeding to do, patterns to write, and we did have fun in July having a holiday with family and splashing in the pool. But I  can't help but have no clue as to where the time in July actually went as it went so fast I didn't take stock.

We started the month out with some exchange students from CHina who visited with us and stayed in the house for ten days or so. Talk about culture shock, I think we had a tremendous amount of fun and it was seriously thrilling to convey the word 'cholesterol' to Meng Jiang after trying to discuss it for 38 minutes including drawings, miming and a Chinese/English dictionary. But there were a few things that definitely made me realize we live in very different places from one another, for one the utter terror that my dogs instilled in our guests. Of course I know that the Chinese do not keep dogs, for pets anyway and that they are not used to them but really who couldn't love a cute bundle of fuzzy cuddly fur that wants to lick you up one side and down the other, well the CHINESE that's who. So we started the trip with our poor young gal Tian Yu crying her eyes out in giant wracking sobs and refusing to allow the dogs into the house for the entire trip. After explaining that our dogs were part of our family we headed down the arduous road of trying to keep them contained in their own house so as not to completely terrify Tian Yu with a glance of fur. It did all come out in the wash as by the end of the visit she was petting and feeding them treats.

In the middle of July we went up to Scotch Creek with mom and dad which was a total riot of course, had lots of fun in the sun on the beach and watched Abby swim it up hardcore. That girl is going into swim lessons at the end of August because truly she can jump off a diving board into the deep water of the pool surface and swim to the edge by herself. She's not yet four and she may be part fish.

Other than that I've been gardening up a storm, lots of zuchinni, swiss chard, lettuce, peas, carrots, and beets have been eaten in the past few weeks and there are beans, tomatos, calabaza squash, buttercup squash, cucumbers, cabbage and kale to come... yummmm.....