A Belated Birthday Greeting

On June 2 Eliza turned 4 (I know she looks likes she is 2). We decided this year was just going to be a family party because I spent a lot of time and effort on last year's friend party. But at the last minute I decided to invite the neighbors over for cake and ice cream. The perfect party: no planning, no gifts, and just casual fun and eating.



The snake cake was her idea and came from familyfun.com. I wanted to make the sand castle cake, but it the snake shortcake turned out cute.

She was too scared to blow out her candles, so the rest of the kids did it for her. I usually forget the candles on birthdays so she hasn't had much experience with them. We love you because you are so kind to James. You love to play princesses, house, and playmobil. You are a great help in the kitchen. You unload the dishwasher so well. You are opinionated. You are beautiful. You are Porter's best friend. You love to have dad read to you. You love salad.

Happy birthday Eliza!

Happy Father's Day

Just wanted to say happy father's day to my three favorite dads: Tom, Stan and Elbert.
Tom and my dad got to be a little pampered by me on Sunday where we enjoyed some new recipes (recipe posts to follow. think of stuffed french toast, grilled mahi-mahi, grilled new potatoes and apricot upside down cake.)

I am very grateful for the wonderful fathers in my life.

Elbert is such a great dad to Thomas and a super fun grandpa. I think he raised the perfect man. He is such a selfless man. He always looks out for our needs. He is the best pediatrician especially when I don't want to call the real one.


Stan is such a wonderful man as well. I think he did a pretty fine job in raising me and he continues to be such a wonderful part of our lives. I look forward our sunday dinners together and the fun conversations we have regarding running or politics or even the environment. He is such a motivation to me to stay fit. He continues to run and hike every day. He still runs marathons and skis black diamonds in his 70s. I hope to be half as fit as he is when I am 70.

But the best dad in my life is of course, Tom. He is such a great father to our kids. He is so kind, so patient, so fun, such an example, and he even cleans, cooks and rarely complains. I couldn't have asked for a better dad for my kids. And it doesn't hurt that he gave them all his stunning good looks.

Happy Father's Day!

Apricots and more Apricots

I was driving down main street the other day and saw a sign for apricots. I called the number and the man offered to sell me apricots for 75 cents a pound. Fresh, local apricots for 75 cents a pound! I was so excited, I bought 40 pounds. And he will have them for about three more weeks. So, if I use up all of these, I'll buy more. Later in the summer, he'll have peaches, too. I can't wait!

Now I need help figuring out what to do with them. I thought I would make apricot jam and Porter wants to make an apricot cake for father's day.

What else can I do with 40 pounds of apricots?
And does anyone have a tried and true apricot jam recipe, canned not freezer jam?

Reducing my Carbon Footprint, Part II

Another thing we do is a simple one. It takes very little effort and actually saves us money.

Use Less Electricity

It sounds simple and obvious, but how many of us leave our phone chargers plugged in and are still using regular light bulbs?

Here are a few of our electricity saving tips we use:

• Unplug phone chargers when not in use. They keep using energy when not in use.
  
• Have TV and computer and accessories plugged into power strips and turn off power strips at night. 10% of the power is used when they are off, but plugged in, otherwise known as standby mode. And my satellite receiver is always on, unless I unplug it. I compared March and April of 2007 and 2008. I used 5% less electricity in March and 15% in April, this year compared to last year.
  
• Use compact fluorescent lights. We actually need to replace the bathrooms and closets with these ones. We bought the bulbs a while ago and yet, they still sit in the closet. And incidentally, these are the lights that are left on the most often.
• Set my thermostat to 82 in the summer and 66 in the winter. Anyone who comes to our house in winter or summer suffers, but spring and fall are great. My parents, who keep their house at 76 in the winter, wear their winter coats to our house. And we even turn it up to 70 for them. At night, we turn the heat down to 62. And for much of the summer, we use our ceiling fans and open windows at night instead of AC.

What do you do to save electricity and what more could I be doing?

Reducing my Carbon Footprint, Part I

Topics much discussed in our house: global warming. is it real? or is Al Gore just trying to get attention? carbon footprints. what should we do if anything? and man, is gas expensive.

So, we do try do our part some of the time. Here is part I in a series of posts of what we do to reduce our carbon footprint.

Buy Local and Organic.

Buying local I think is more important than buying organic and I wish I could buy local more often, but when the local melons, peaches, apricots, apples come around, I am excited! I can't rationalize the 25 mile drive on a Saturday to Springdale to buy local produce at the Farmer's Market. But I am growing my own tomatoes, peppers, basil, cilantro, and parsley. I wish we could buy farm shares (CSAs) here. If we ever move to a town where that is an option, I will be the first in line to buy a share.

But thanks to Costco, I do buy a lot more organic food. Has anyone else noticed how many organic groceries Costco now carries? Luckily, they have made it easy and cheap for me to buy organic. Here are a few of the yummy organics I love from Costco:

• Harvest Medley Wild Rice (Really yummy rice with great texture and flavor. And much better for you than plain white rice. Make it with onion soup mix and some fresh herbs.)
• Kirkland Soy Milk (I prefer the plain, tom and the kids like the vanilla. Even James loves it. We started to buy it as food storage since it is shelf stable, but then we discovered we love it. We drink it by choice now. Tom even uses it on his cereal regularly.).
  
• Garofalo Whole Wheat Pasta (This pasta has the best texture for 100% whole wheat. The best I have tasted)
• Disney Crackers (These are only an occasional treat. They are still pretty expensive).
• Tree Top Apple Sauce (I discovered last week that Costco's Tree Top apple sauce is now organic. That is in addition to being naturally sweetened.)
• Raisins (next time I need them I will give the organic ones a try)

What are your favorite organic groceries and where do you get them?
What is better: local or organic?

Our Little Graduate

Yea for Kindergarten Graduation!
Porter's graduation program included the whole school and the whole evening (2 hours is a bit long, when your kindergartener takes part in the first 10 minutes). The bulk of the evening was devoted to some fun music by the 1st through 5th graders.

Ginger was his reading buddy at school. They were they only two in his class who read. So, they got to sit in the reading corner and read together often.

All nine kindergarteners sang "Would You Like to Swing on a Star." The basic gist of the song is go to school or you'll be mule with long ears, who kicks up at anything he hears, has a brawny back and a weak brain. Luckily, that is not our Porter except for the kicking up at anything he hears.

Our perfect little reader. Porter loves reading so much. He goes to bed every night with a pile of books (except for the week he had nightmares books were eating him).

We enjoyed Dairy Queen before and after the graduation.

Sorbet Attempt # 2

So I decided to give sorbet another try. Mangoes were cheap and my kids love them, so I decided to try a mango sorbet. I decided to add pineapple to the mix. It was delicious, but I didn't like the texture. The pineapple was too stringy. So in retrospect, I should have kept it simple. Like most things in my life, I always try to over-complicate things. Next time I will try this recipe. But I do like the pineapple addition, maybe I'll just use pineapple juice instead of the actual fruit.

Mango-Pineapple Sorbet

1 c. water
1 1/2 c. sugar
4 ripe mangoes
1 can pineapple chunks, drained reserving juice
1/4 lime juice

Boil sugar and water to make simple syrup. Cool. Blend mangoes and pineapple in food processor, in batches if necessary. Pour in large bowl. Stir in lime juice, simple syrup and 1/2 cup or more of pineapple juice. Process in ice cream maker.