he loves me

omar got back from a quick trip to miami yesterday and pulled these babies out of his bag.  lychees.  love them.  and they make me miss miami.

there is a bit of missing miami going on around here.  the other night omar was flipping through the channels and landed on cops: miami.  he actually lingered on it for a moment.  just yesterday i actually thought it would be a good thing to get caught up with the shows csi: miami and burn notice (filmed in miami).  but then i realized i might as well just watch travel shows about miami and not get addicted to yet another series.

omar was also impressed with my library music selection – a putumayo puerto rico cd.  the boys have been bopping around to bembe de plena and pa’ mantener tradicion like the little latin boys they indeed are. 

gifted

for me :: from my brother and sister-in-law
a bracelet from wrecords by monkey in brooklyn made of an old vinyl record. love it.

a box of chocolates from fine & raw.  i’ve come to the conclusion i’ll enjoy just about anything made with coconut oil and agave nectar.

for my camera :: from me
a desperately needed camera bag.  fear of having it thrown out of the diaper bag by little hands looking for animal crackers prevented me from taking it far from the house.  no longer.  though because of my animal crackers and diaper stage of life, a bag that could feasibly carry all of the above was kind of a requirement. crumpler bags fit the bill.  and perhaps best of all it doesn’t look like it carries cameras or diapers.

musical cake

while cleaning out my mom’s cupboards i noticed a little paper stuffed margarine tub that i always remembered seeing next to the sprinkles, toothpicks, and muffin papers.  but i’d never looked in it and when i did i found the sweetest little musician candleholders that my dad’s mom used for his birthdays as a kid.  elisha kept wanting to look at them and talk about them so i decided a cake was in order. orangette’s everyday cake made perhaps a bit less everyday looking with these guys on top.  kind of reminds me a bit of a german style mariachi group.

elisha perks up pretty quickly when he notices musical instruments.  for the last couple of months in miami, he pleaded with omar almost daily to pull out the guitars and sing.  today while listening to baroque music in the car, he told me he heard cellos.    

zin! zin! zin! a violin is a current favorite book of his.  there is a picture of an orchestra in the book with ten instruments.  he loves to point at the instruments and name them for me.  at this point he’s wrong about 9 times out of 10 but it’s sweet.

he’s been crawling up on the piano bench the past few days and picks out some notes with his fingers.  almost like he is thinking about it.  asher inevitably crashes the party and just wants to pound keys and turn pages.

porch roast

needed:  
55-ish degree weather (minus wind) 
fire (in a pit)
marshmallow turner (automatic)
fingers (to make sticky)
horses (miniature)

 

kitchen clicks

my mom’s spice cabinet is the source of some friendly familial joking.  but yesterday she bestowed upon me the title of “ridder of all expired spices.”  i jumped at the chance to organize and use the spice websites’ “fresh tester” programs – enter the code from your spice jar into the appropriate field and voila, the date that your spice was packaged pops up.  that pumpkin pie spice? 1982. evidently it made the moves with us to italy, florida, alaska, and north carolina.  perhaps we should save it for nostalgia’s sake. the chervil?  the company that produced those glass jars of spices was sold years ago and now you can find those bottles on ebay. 

the spice islands site also has cool video showing their artists making “spice art” that perhaps you’ve seen in some print ads.  the “curry heat” one is my favorite.

we’re also working on clearing out the ice cream stash.  we introduced my mom to haagen-dazs’ new line of ice creams and the coffee ice cream has now been a staple around here.  the two best flavors are ginger and passion fruit. unfortunately, north carolina supermarkets must think there isn’t a market for ginger ice cream eaters.  such a shame.  perhaps i can add “stocks ginger ice cream” to the pro “move back to florida” list.

blurred perfection

this afternoon we raided the fridge and the pantry and came up with monday’s menu:  beet risotto, bread, and chocolate cake from molly wizenberg’s a homemade life.  holy cow, it’s good.   

and that cake needed to be good.  when we started out this afternoon i thought, hey, this will be good!  we’ve got some extra time on our hands (ahem, understatement) so we should spend good quality family time in the kitchen honing our cooking and baking skills and just enjoy each other.  2.5 hours later flour was scattered, beet shreds were turning up in odd places, the kitchen sink was piled so it looked like we could hike up it, and two little boys were weaving around us – sometimes laughing and giggling, often times crying, testing us, and driving me nuts.  chocolate cake helped temper the exhaustion.

ixnay on my desire for there to be a weekly ortiz risotto night, for the time being. it was all good.  really good.  but my sanity might go on hiatus if we try to continue to hone 2.5 hour family meals.  

coffee and the wall street journal

i was a classics major in college. i loved greek history, talk of the trojan war, egyptian burial practices, etc.  to some it might seem like an obscure choice of a major.  i like to think that such an education and interests make me a prime target reader for articles like friday’s wsj article on digitizing endangered manuscripts and artifacts.  what classics major wouldn’t get excited over finding out what is written on fragile scrolls found stuffed inside mummified crocodiles?!

i think they should have spent more time exploring the work of father columba stewart, an american benedictine monk who travels the world, gains access to rare artifacts and manuscripts, then digitizes them. sounds like it could make for a good book or movie. kind of like the name of the rose meets indiana jones.

on the next page was an opinion piece on a topic i’m definitely more current with: motherhood. megan basham focuses on the fact that the recession has caused more men their jobs than women and that some writers/commentators/the government see this situation as a potential “silver lining” for women (that lining being more women entering and staying in the workforce).

such language confuses me/humors me/saddens me all at once. why is there such a need by some who work outside the home to push and try to persuade those who work inside the home that joining the workforce is a better alternative? basham addresses polling on the topic:

Virtually every reputable poll taken on mothers and work reveals that a strong majority of moms prefer to work part time or fewer hours. Reflecting the results of many other polling organizations, the Pew Research Center’s most recent survey found that only 21% of mothers with children under the age of 18 say full-time employment is the ideal situation for them. The rest prefer either part-time work or not working at all. In contrast, fully 72% of fathers say a full-time job is the best option for them.

and lastly (for today…) on the motherhood topic, do we really need more stories like the ones we see popping up around mother’s day about the estimated worth of my work in the home? no. how american is it that we feel we need a monetary designation for the value of our work in order to feel our time and life is really worthwhile?

he’s three

yesterday elisha turned 3.  to a three year old, you can’t get much better than a cracker barrel breakfast, bubbles, pint-sized tool box, and new books.  the mama made elephant birthday crown?  well, let’s just say he likes to look at it and see mama or papi wear it.

click and snap

while i hope to spend some of our “vacation” time figuring out my new camera, elisha has almost perfected his technique with my old fisher price pocket camera. the good old days of flash cubes.  my first real camera was a sleek little blue and black number with such a cube.  

elisha digs the zoo pictures that rotate through the viewfinder.  i dig his misnaming the animals – tiger!! (no, it’s a lion.)  owl!! (no, it’s a peacock.), elephant!! (no, it’s a hippo.), etc.

no one around this house has been very picture worthy the past few days. sickness hit everyone to some degree so all of the cameras have stayed tucked away.  runny-nosed babes crying for mama do not make for good pictures.

berry berry

i highly recommend that you run out and get some cute boys to go berry picking, some berries, and some mascarpone cheese so you can make this.