Wheat berries, coffee in bed, and time spent without the children.

I love our weekday mornings. Along with his breakfast Neil brings coffee into our room in the morning, he is ready for work and has made his standard eggs and potatoes. He pours two cups of coffee and I struggle to sit up with out waking up baby Mia (who always cuddles as close as she is able). This time of year the sun is up as well brightening our room with a warm light. I love these few sleepy minutes with Neil eating breakfast in bed next to me and a hot coffee before I have even considered getting out of bed. He kisses us all before leaving for work, and if Kiki is up she directs who needs a kiss and how many each person needs.

The morning gets significantly more hectic soon after Neil leaves, the kids and dogs wake up and everyone is hungry. Most mornings the kids and I eat granola with fruit, but once and a while we have left over rice, and when we do they are always more than happy to have a steaming bowl of rice pudding. I don't make it all that often but when I do Kiki can barely wait.  Asking over and over if I am making it, and peaking up over the chair to see if the pudding is any closer to being done. Mia on the other hand is just as impatient but more because she just wants anything to eat. We add raisins, apples, bananas, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, sesame seeds, or coconut, it just depends on what is at hand. I know its not proper rice pudding, the uncooked rice simmered in milk, for the better part of an hour, but this quick version is always welcome, and fills us all up just the same.

Moms are often told they need time for themselves, time away from the kids, time to just be an adult. This is something I have always been sort of bad at. Kiki is getting close to three and Mia is more than one now and I can honestly say there have been maybe four times now that I have been with out the children for more than 15 minutes? This is entirely my own fault though. Its not that I could not take time for myself if I wanted to and the couple times I have Neil is more than happy to help with the kids while I go out for a short walk or just stay home while they have gone on a drive. But when it comes down to it, I just end up feeling bad, or worrying. My husband works hard all week as well and also deserves time alone or to rest. And when I am out while my family is all home I just find myself wondering what they are up to and realizing I would rather be home participating in what they are doing.

That is until last week. A friend and I decided that it would be a lot more fun and a lot less stressful to do the grocery shopping together and leave the children to play while a dad or two watched them. It was wonderful. There were no tiny baby bites out of the apples, no little fingers trying to poke holes into the bags of flour, and no requests for things not on the grocery list. As well as giving me significantly more relaxed shopping trip it also allowed me some time away from he children. Time that I didn't not think of what they were up, or worry my husbanded needed a break. We have decided to continue and as often as possible do our shopping together.

It was during this last grocery trip that while looking through the bulk section I decided to get wheat berries. Having not tried them before I spent a fair amount of time reading recipes and different suggestions for cooking (I did not try it this time but a few places I read toasting them in the oven a bit first helps increase the nutty flavor) but settled on this below. Perhaps based more on what I had at hand than what I would have picked but in the end it turned out quiet well, and the next morning I cooked a fried egg up and ate it with the leftovers and some siracha.

Also really just as an aside I love these

Warm wheat berries and roasted veggies

1.5 cups wheat berries
4.5 cups water

2 carrots peel and chopped
1 sweet potato peel and chopped
1/2 a leek chopped
1/2 onion chopped
3 stalks celery rinsed and chopped

3 Tbls olive oil
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp fennel
1 tsp sage
1 tsp nutritional yeast
salt and pepper to taste.

chopped green onion

Begin by preparing the wheat berries, bringing the water to a boil and simmering with the wheat berries immersed till the water has dissolved around an hour-ish? once done mix a bit of olive oil and some salt in with the still hot berries. Set aside to cool

While the wheat berries are bubbling away pre heat oven to 375 degrees. Put the chopped veggies (carrot, sweet potato, leek, onion, and celery) into a glass baking dish.

mix together garlic, olive oil, sage, fennel, nutritional yeast, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour the mixture over the veggies and use hands to make sure all the veggies are covered well with the oil mixture.

Bake for around 45 minutes.

remove from oven let cool a bit.

mix with cooked wheat berries and top with chopped green scallions.

Rice with eggies and soy sauce.

12 cubic yards is a lot of dirt. It seems like even more when its put in the wrong place.

When we bought our house there was an old falling apart shed in the backyard, the terms of the sale included the removal of that shed. This left us with a rather large low spot in the yard, and I know in my last post I mentioned how it rained less in this part of the state, but that does not mean it doesn't rain. The combination of the spring rain, and the sump pump hose emptying into the low area meant  a regularly flooded yard. To solve this problem one sunny day my husband ordered the 12 cubic yards of dirt, unfortunately he was driving one child somewhere and I was busy with another so the neighbor was nice enough to move the fence for the dirt company. This left the placement of the dirt up to the driver of the truck, and in the end we needed to move the entire pile about 15 feet.

After a bit of debate, and a slightly less than enthusiastic husband (who in the end turned out o be more hungry than grumpy)we decided the next day would be perfect for spending a whole lot of time shoveling dirt. So we ate dinner, settled in to watch some M.A.S.H and fell asleep.

The next morning was sunny at first and with a less than pleased volunteer (gwen) watching the little ones Neil and I set out with a wheel barrow (with a flat tire), two shovels, and two metal rakes to level out the yard. As the morning wore on the wheel barrows tire became more flat, Gwen cried, it rained and hailed, but after four or five hours we got the pile moved, the dirt raked, fenced off, and seeded with grass seed.

Now we just wait, dreaming of a large lawn, and a soon to be garden area.

Some what more recently and more importantly, baby Mia got her first love letter.

Once a week we go to the library for story hour. My kids are some of the worst at sitting still, but at least right now that is not the topic. Not every week but most weeks there is a mom that brings her one little girl and three little boys. The middle boy, who must be about four is head over heals for baby Mia. He runs to her each week as soon as he sees her. The little boy always has the biggest smile for her, and often tells me how cute she is. He sits with her while she does puzzles and follows to make sure she doesn't put little bits of things off the floor in her mouth. All in all its pretty adorable. And Mia seems to like him just fine, but does not favor him in the same way.

I suppose that today I am not really putting down a recipe but more just sharing Kiki's favorite lunch.

Rice with eggies and soy sauce (and sometimes veggies if I cut them up really really small)

Cooked white rice
minced ginger
chopped scallions
toasted sesame seed
cooked eggs (we usually go with scrambled or fried, or sometimes sunnyside up)
cooking oil
soy sauce

I tend to like all of the above on my rice, but kiki prefers just the eggies and soy sauce.

We probably eat this a least three times a week for lunch theses days, we all love it.

Really when it comes down to it though, this whole post was really just to share and document baby Mia's first love letter.

A Polish Easter Lamb cake.

 Growing up in Vermont, March meant very little ( beyond my father's birthday and praying for snow days). The snow was still there, we were lucky if the weather was in the 30's and if it did happen to rise above freezing everyone was happy to wear only a long sleeve shirt or for some a t-shirt. Wyoming was similar. Living at the base of the Tetons meant we usually got our last snow of the season sometimes around June.

But here in the Willamette Valley I started line drying our clothes mostly out doors in February and by the end of March both my babies already have a bit of a tan. The daffodils have come and gone, and we are enjoying tulips now. When I think of all the reasons that I miss Vermont the spring in Oregon makes up for each and every one (now that we have settled a little farther south that is). People tend to think of Portland or the coast (the notably rainy areas) when imagining Oregon, yet moving only about 80 miles south and a bit west of where we were has left us in a part of the state that gets significantly more sun and much less rain.

Spring's arrival has moved us out doors. Projects, activities, meals and pretty much anything we can do we try to do outside. My husband has built a wonderful fence for the front yard, putting a very necessary barrier between the children and the railroad tracks that run near the house, and should be bringing home a shed for the back yard soon as well. With clothes to dry,, a lawn to mow, and in general a yard to make wonderful, we seem to run out of daylight much sooner than energy.

We spent a morning at the coast with friends and let the dogs run all over the beach. Langston loved it and has proved to be a very well-behaved dog now that he has passed his puppy years. Henry on the other hand (our 12 year old grump) stayed true to his nature and barked at anyone who bothered to come anywhere near him, dogs and people alike. Our ambitions might have been a bit high, trying to bbq with four children, three dogs, and only four adults. I think next time flat bread and salad might be a much better option. Cookies would probably improve the general experience as well.

 The girls did get to enjoy fruit smoothies on the drive there, and we might have had to bribe Kiki with a doughnut to get her to leave the parking lot and actually venture down onto the beach. The child is terrified of the ocean. I spent the better part of the first half an hour assuring her she didn't need to go anywhere near the water and as long as she stayed where we were on the blanket the water would not come anywhere near her.

With Easter having come and gone looking back I am so happy with how the girls easter bunnies came out, and also that we found a good eastern European deli near by to get Polish kielbasa for Easter morning. There are a few Easter traditions we have decided to carry on from my husband's childhood for our own children Easter breakfast with Kielbasa being one and the Lamb cake maybe the most important.

I am pretty sure I have mentioned the lamb cake before, but in case I am wrong I should probably explain. It's (thankfully) not made from lamb but instead shaped like one, along with cookies, babka, and other sweets, the lamb cake is a traditional polish Easter treat. Neil remembers his mother making the lamb cake every year and the various ways it was decorated (though he always lobbied for raspberry filling and still does), the cake mold though was passed on to his sister.

 Our first easter together, I was around 5 months pregnant with Kiki and much like my pregnancy with Mia all I wanted to do was bake (and cook too). He mentioned the tradition of the Lamb cake, and after a little looking around we managed to find a cast iron mold on Amazon. That same year I did more Easter cooking than I probably ever will again, and made far more food than our then small family could possible eat. We were lucky enough to have a few friends over to share the massive amount of food my pregnant self made.

I think one of the things I enjoyed most about the Polish Easter food traditions is that most of the food is made a day or two ahead of time. Leaving Easter morning and most of the day free to enjoy with everyone else, and not just spent in the kitchen. Now we tend to do a bit more of a mix and I do still cook a bit on easter but the ahead-of-time preparation is a nice change if I can manage it. This year I did not even come close. The only preparation was the Lamb cake and buying the Kielbasa. Otherwise I found myself were I normal do, in the kitchen.

Kiki absolutely loved searching for the Easter eggs out in our front yard though we only made about 12 eggs, and even that was a stretch. We ran our of energy late on Saturday evening and I ended up just dying one big batch of all blue eggs. Significantly less time consuming and messy, with Gwen opting to be at her mothers this year I did not feel so bad about the kids missing out on the egg dying experience. Easter morning is really just like any other morning for a one and two year old. There is no anticipation, and really just a bit of shock that they are allowed to eat candy so early in the day (or at all) and a first a bit of confusion as you try to explain that its time to go and find the blue eggs from yesterday. It took Kiki a minute but once she got going she was an egg hunting machine. Since at two holding a basket of a dozen eggs or even half a dozen can be a bit taxing we held the basket while she did the collecting. Which gave us the chance to re-hide her found eggs while she was busy finding more.

With all of that now said  I suppose a good thing to share would be the recipe I use for the Lamb cake. As I said when I first made this cake I was rather pregnant with Kiki, and at the time I am sure I poured over recipes till I found this one. I am under the impression that it is a more traditional version, but who knows I could be completely wrong. Oh and at least for our house hold I had to change the milk and butter to our dairy free options but the recipe here will not reflect those changes.

Polish Easter Lamb cake

1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup rather warm water
1 1/4 tsp yeast
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
Zest of one lemon
mixed dried fruits and nuts ( we used dried cherries.)

Heat the milk to just before a boil. Turn off heat and stir in sugar, salt, and butter.

Separately  dissolve yeast in the 1/4 cup rather warm water. Once completely dissolved add to the milk mixture, next pour in flour and eggs and beat vigorously for 5 minutes. Cover and let rest in a warm place for around an hour and a half.

punch down dough, if using Lamb cake mold grease well and divide batter into each half, if using a regular cake pan grease well and pour in batter. Let rest 45 minutes. In the mean time pre-heat the over to 350. Bake for about 50 minutes. remove from oven and let cool before removing from mold.

You can really use any sort of frosting or simple glaze for this cake. We made just a quick lemon glaze to hold ours together and cover it.  Again Neil always champions for the raspberry filling but until the girls are a bit older that will have to wait.