The Good [Neighborhood] Stuff: Grow Where You're Planted

Say you live in China.  Then, say your grown son and wife get accepted to highly competitive programs at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, where they will move, along with their baby (whom you dote on ceaselessly).  Then, say, you and your spouse move with them, and agree to care for this grandbaby, while mom and dad go to school, and you all move into a two-bedroom apartment.  Then, say, you are alone in this strange land, where you do not speak a smidgen of English, have no interest in the foodstuffs sold at your local Stop and Shop, and have no car.  What would YOU do?

Well, this is a very common scenario; in our neighborhood, there are probably 75 families that share this circumstance, and seem to thrive very, very well. From all I can tell, the Asian grandparent community just grows where they are planted.  Literally.  

A group of Chinese grandparents took land that looked like this:

[this actually looks pretty nice, but it's just random grass and weeds]

And turned it into this:

A beautiful garden, brimming with peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, lettuce, and, well, a lot of Chinese plants that they can't find here.  There is so much ingenuity in the garden maintenance: no wheelbarrows?  Fine, just use a baby stroller!  Ran out of buckets?  Just use a food cooler.   As I've watched our Chinese neighbors over the years, I've noticed how resourceful they are, making use of everything they have and I really admire that.  

If we ever leave New Haven, I'll miss this tight-knit Chinese community.  Not that we really hang out, but they remind me of my own LDS friends--we all love families, we stick together, we are [more or less] quiet and responsible neighbors (although I think our neighbors below us have had it up to here with our bouncy balls).  And, when I'm strolling Pete around, I probably pass five or six grandparents with their babies, and we both give a knowing smile to each other that says "Your baby is beautiful.  And isn't mine, too?"  

  

The Good [Handmade] Stuff: Peter's ABCs

Pete's second birthday is fast approaching--What?! My baby is two! I've been working on a few things for this greatly anticipated day; not only do handmade gifts have a lot of heart, but, it's a great excuse to finally get a few projects DONE forever. A finished project is a little like a miracle to me. So, without further ado, here's the little alphabet book I put together for Pete:





these abcs are just Pete's style, full of his favorites, like bananas and horses and Aunt Anne (a great name to know!). I tried to include family and friends, so he can get all the names with the faces, even if we don't get to see all the faces as much as we'd like. And, I'm counting this as my lifetime scrapbooking endeavor. You hear that, Peter and my future children? This is as good as it gets.

I love a good party: General Conference PARTAY

I love General Conference. I come away inspired every time. Listening to Conference has changed substantially in the last couple of years: less note-taking, pondering, reflecting, and much more chasing, disaster preventing, and redirecting little bodies away from the laptop. It's always nice to hang around in our loungers and nestle in for a long stretch of great talks. I remember, as a kid, watching conference was kind of magical--you mean, we watch church at home? Woah!  Many times during my childhood, my family would go to my grandma's house to watch conference; the adults watched the talks on tv and we ran around, like the crazy kids we were. Then, we had a very traditional Sunday supper prepared by my Grandma. This last weekend, I invited some friends over for the Sunday afternoon session and dinner afterwards, in honor of those family memories that come with Conference weekend.



Really, what would a family Sunday dinner be without the old pot roast in the slow cooker all day? Here's the recipe:

Italian Pot Roast

3 pounds beef chuck roast, trimmed and halved crosswise

4 garlic cloves

1 Tablespoon olive oil

Coarse Salt and Pepper

1 large onion, cut into 8 wedges

1 1/2 pounds small waxy potatoes

1 can whole tomatoes in puree (28 ounces)

1 Tablespoon Fresh Rosemary, chopped (or 1 teaspoon dried and crumbled)

1.  With a sharp paring knife, cut 4 slits in beef roast; stuff slits with half the garlic. Generously season beef with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. In a large skillet, heat oil over high heat, swirling to coat bottom of pan. Cook beef until browned on all sides, about 5 minutes.
   
2. In a 5-quart slow cooker, combine beef, onion, potatoes, tomatoes (with puree), rosemary, and remaining garlic.  Cover; cook on high setting until meat is fork-tender, about 6 hours (do not uncover while cooking).  
3. Transfer meat to a cutting board; thinly slice, and discard any gristle.  Skim fat from top of sauce, and spoon sauce generously over deliciously tender meat and veggies.

Also, we inhaled these these biscuits. For extra tastiness, I added 1/2 cup of fresh thyme, rosemary, and parsley.

And friends brought salad and a pumpkin pie. A pie, do you believe it? I finally got to eat a slice of pie that I didn't have to make. It was delicious.

Good Taste: Butternut Squash Soup

Fall, I embrace you!  While we don't have the summer days at the beach anymore, we now have pumpkin picking and brisk morning runs.  There is something about fall breezes that makes me excited!  We can't wait for school to start (even though it always starts in the hot humid August days...but, isn't it much more fun keep pretending that it starts in the fall?), we can't wait for the harvest time of apples, pears, peaches, squash and the smells of cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg that accompany these foods and, admit it--we can't wait for Christmas. All the good times are ahead of us in the autumn season, and I'm totally not thinking about that January/February/March stretch.  Just put that right out of my mind.  

To get in the mood, I made some butternut squash soup. It was delicious.  I like this recipe, because I only needed to make one cut down the length of the squash prior to roasting.  I like this because cutting up butternut squash, to me, is risky business, and I'd like to keep all of my fingers intact, thank you very much.  There is quite a bit of handling in this recipe--roasting and stewing and blending.  At one point, I was ladling boiling squashy liquid into my blender, half of it dripping all over everything, while Pete was pulling at my pants and yelling "MAMA!  Mama, I need that" and everything was spilling all around and life seemed pretty nutso for about 15 minutes.  One of these definitely would have come in handy. But, the beauty of this soup is it tastes even better a day or two later, so, today, when the boys were out playing, I sat down by myself to a beautiful bowl of homemade soup and read a magazine and felt really, really happy.

Here's the recipe adapted from Joy of Cooking:

Butternut Squash Soup

1 medium butternut squash, halved lengthwise and seeded

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 large leeks, cleaned thoroughly and chopped

4 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger

6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cup whipping cream

chopped fresh parsley or cilantro

croutons

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place squash cut side down on oiled baking sheet. Bake until the squash can easily be pierced with a fork, about 1 hour.  Let cool, then scoop the pulp from the squash skin and discard the skin.  
2. Melt butter in a soup pot over medium-low heat.  Add leeks and ginger and cook, stirring, until tender but not browned, 5 to 10 minutes.
3. Stir in 4 cups of stock and the squash pulp.  Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring and breaking up the squash with a spoon, for 20 minutes.  Puree until smooth.  Return soup to the pot.
4. Stir in cream, and thin with stock, a little at a time, until you reach the desired consistency of soup.  Heat soup through and ladle into warmed bowls.  Garnish with herbs and/or croutons.

Creativeness is next to Godliness

Did anyone else out there almost jump out of your seat while listening to this this talk by President Uchtdorf? I was particularly inspired by this quote:


"As you take the normal opportunities of your daily life and create something of beauty and helpfulness, you improve not only the world around you but also the

world within you."

The Good [Home] Stuff: Kind of extreme makeover

Here's the before:

[I think the blurry nature of this photo really adds to the abysmal state of my poor pantry.]

And here is the after:


ha ha, just kidding. Here is the real after:
Well, this may not be the most dramatic makeover, but I talked myself into cleaning out all of my closets this past week as a goal to report here on the ol' blog.  This blog is about betterment, and I feel much better.  I learned a few things as I purged and tidied up:  

1. No matter how much I love the idea of lotion, I just don't really love it. I don't think I really smell good when I smell like peach-flavored lotion.  It kind of makes me feel sick.  I had maybe 50 various tubes and bottles hanging out in a bag on the shelf, calling for me to set them free.  Goodbye, goodbye, my lotion!  
   
2. Maybe I don't really need Costco in the end.  For most stuff.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all about food storage, but how much mustard, for reals, can we eat?  I'm trying to really pinpoint what is worth buying at Costco, instead of bringing home the whole store and feeling guilty that I couldn't quite get to all of that Romaine lettuce before it started rotting in the back of my fridge. [right now, the list is milk, gas, butter, pineapples, and those irreplaceable rotisserie chickens.  I could never live without them]  By the way, has anyone seen The King of California?  I thought it was sweet and it had some awesome scenes in Costco.
3. If the cage ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.  We apartment dwellers do not have much storage, but we are allotted a cage, which is a space in the freaky unfinished basement, partitioned off with chicken fence and a door with a lock on it.  It's not the most relaxing place to be, because I constantly imagine a mix of spiders crawling all over me and mysterious toxic drops falling from the pipes as I clean out and organize.  But, lesson be learned, it is our largest storage space, and needs order, so the rest of our more pleasant living space is less overwhelmed with stuff.
4. Good containers are everywhere.  I like these baskets and they were FREE!  My favorite price!  I picked up some of these baskets at the produce market before they made their way to the dumpster.  
   
   
5. The best lesson learned, yet again, was the good stuff is not really stuff. Duh! Yes, I know. But sometimes clearing out the clutter sure gets sentimental, and it is hard to say goodbye. After a few days of sitting with my organized closets, I don't remember a thing thrown away and feel excited to welcome the real good stuff that I've made room for. Let the good times roll!

When I was cleaning out the bathroom cabinets, I found this, and laughed my head off. Oh man, I love being a mom.

Good Taste: Bagels and Schmears

I'm trying to make my breakfasts a bit more respectable. It has proven quite the challenge to break my college routine of cold cereal for days and months and years in a row. So, we're exploring many *quick* morning meals and this veggie spread just made our breakfast list!  

From the November 2007 Everyday Food:

Creamy Vegetable Spread on Whole-Wheat Bagel

1 package (8 ounces) reduced-fat cream cheese

1 medium carrot, grated or finely chopped

1 red bell pepper (ribs and seeds removed), finely chopped

1 scallion, thinly sliced

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

coarse salt and pepper

small whole-wheat bagels, split and toasted for serving

In a medium bowl, stir together cream cheese, carrot, bell pepper, scallion, and parsley.  Season with salt and pepper.  Spread bagel halves with vegetable spread, and serve.  (Store remaining spread in an airtight container, up to 5 days.)