Asher and I baked vegan sugar cookies yesterday. I always forget how long you’re supposed to chill the dough to make rolling and cutting the cookies easier.

Lucas, Asher, Daddy, our dinner guest Kimmie, and I decorated the cookies after supper. I think we all enjoyed it.

Aren’t they pretty? Icing made from coconut oil is delicious, by the way. We made these treats to leave some out for the Leprechauns (and for us to enjoy!).

Here is the little party we set out for the Wee Folk last night. Shamrock cookies, hot mint tea, honey, and cream.

Early this morning, we found the Leprechauns had eaten up all the goodies and left the boys presents. Two pots of gold! With five gold dollar coins each and rainbow sour candy wrapped in gold paper.

It wasn’t until later, when the boys were getting ready to leave for school, that we realized the Leprechauns played a prank on us after all. They duct taped all our shoes closed! Those wonderful, pesky Leprechauns!

Tonight we’re going to dinner at our friends’ house. We’re bringing cookies!

* An extra much-needed day of work, and appreciation for a job well done
* A mom friend who takes my boys home with her children and feeds them
* Parents (kids’ grandparents) who arrive home, safe and rested, from their vacation
* Delivering the requested milk and bread, and turning on the heat in the house 12 hours before they get home
* Shark tooth necklaces and sea salt seasonings from Hawaii
* An assistant basketball coach/dad turned coach, who is passionate about teaching, connected, and dedicated to helping our boys get the most out of their season
* A little boy who writes his own game books
* Friends who run with you, even if you’re slow
* Friends who hike six beautiful miles with you, and let you cover even more territory in conversation
* Visiting friends from out of town who don’t mind either sleeping bag or early-morning boy bounces
* Blueberry muffins from scratch, because someone small asked for them
* Big boys who need and ask for an extra cuddle at night to help them fall asleep
* Friday night fish tacos à la Daddy
* Friends who take you to places in your hometown’s backyard that you’ve never seen before
* Grandmas who take boys to school and pick boys up from school
* Watching my son and his friends/teammates win a basketball game
* Helping friends with their farm-to-fork movie contest
* Date night featuring a sushi gift card and The Hobbit.

Happy Santa Lucia Day! Yesterday Asher and I made a lovely cardamom bread dough and the boys and I shaped it together after school.

I had a baking mishap—I cooked it a little too long, or maybe too hot—and so it’s a little browner on top than I’d like it to be, but it still tastes delicious in every other regard. We had a nice, special breakfast this morning. I am pretty sure the kids weren’t too into it this year, although Lucas did say Santa Lucia bread is his favorite bread. Asher wouldn’t eat it. What can ya do?

The Winter Concert is tonight at our Waldorf school, and the whole school, grades 2 through 12, will perform songs with voices and instruments. The sixth grade is performing the traditional (for us?) sword dance tonight. Every year it is a joy to watch, but this year is special to me because Lucas’s class is dancing. He is not very enthusiastic about it.

(This is a sword dance shot from last year.)

Anyway, I hope this day brings you a sweet moment of light in the darkness. May you be with people who shine love into your life.

Well, here it is, Advent already. I’m not too great at marketing, but this is to let you know that my co-author Eileen and I are having a sale on our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book until December 7,2013. The sale price is $9.99—half off the regular price of $19.99.

It offers poems, stories, songs, crafts, and many special ways that families, schools, or childcare professionals can celebrate the whole month of December with children.

A measured, calm approach to the winter holidays gives children time to dream, live into the stories of their faith and the season, and count the days of Advent. Children can savor the passing of time with peaceful, delicious anticipation and gentle, useful activity, rather than experience the holiday as a single, frenzied, blowout day that is over all too soon. A peaceful Advent full of simple pleasures and togetherness is what they’ll remember later, not the package-ripping and specific, expensive gifts. We wrote this e-book with the intent of helping families create a thoughtful, heartfelt approach to the holidays, with less rushing commercialism and more togetherness time.

This mosaic is a peek at what’s in our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book. Click on the title  or any of these photos to be taken to the full description of the e-book contents and place to buy it, on the Little Acorn Learning store. Many thanks for reading this far, and for spreading the word to anyone who might be interested in our offering.

Blessings of the season on you and your loved ones!

This is by no means a foodie blog. My food photos aren’t pretty enough and I don’t spend most of every day in the kitchen. Nor do I have all the gizmos and gadgets and pretty work surfaces and good lighting. Nevertheless, I do cook good stuff.

Here is my favorite fall soup hands down (and I love soups—my kids say I specialize in soups and stews). I present it here because some friends on Facebook have been asking for it. Incidentally, I never measure when cooking this. I don’t think it’s possible to screw this up.

Butternut Squash and Leek Soup

This soup makes a wonderful fancy starter for a holiday meal, but also serves as an easy, earthy weeknight dinner when paired with a salad and bread.

3 lbs. butternut squash
4 tablespoons butter (or olive oil with a tablespoon of butter for flavor)
3 large leeks, washed well, halved, and chopped.
6 fresh thyme sprigs, or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
3 oz. cooked bacon, chopped (or fake bacon, or omit entirely)
2 quarts chicken or vegetable broth
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ cup sour cream
2  tablespoons chopped chives

Slice the squash in half and scrap out the seeds. Cook the butternut squash, cut side down, in a baking pan with a little olive oil in it, in the oven at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes. I usually turn the oven off and let the oven cool with the squash still in there. Cooking the squash well is the difference between this recipe being easy and fighting for your soup; and cooking the squash early in the day makes this next part nicer: Scrape the cooked squash from its skin.

Let’s take just a tiny moment and contemplate the humble leek. Leeks are WONDERFUL! Seriously, why aren’t leeks in everything?! Just be sure to wash them well, because soil can get trapped among the layers of the plant as it grows.

In a large pot, melt butter (or heat olive oil) over low heat. Add the chopped leeks and thyme and cook, stirring occasionally, until leeks are soft and browned, approximately 40 mins. If you get distracted and/or have the heat too high, they may burn. Trust me on that. Discard thyme stems, if you used fresh thyme.

In a frying pan, cook the bacon until crispy, drain the fat, and chop the bacon into crumbles.

Put broth, squash, and salt into the pot with the cooked leeks. Simmer over moderate heat about 20 minutes. With handheld blender, puree soup until it’s smooth. Add pepper.

Serve soup warm with 1 teaspoon sour cream, some bacon crumbles, and some chives in each bowl. Serves 6, or so.

My friend Sonya tried this recipe last night and she thinks it’s the thyme that makes it awesome. Her teenage exchange student from Germany liked it so much he reheated it this morning and ate it for breakfast. That’s quite an endorsement, I think!

Recipe is adapted from Food & Wine Books, Soups and Stews, 1994.

Meet our new hens, Chocolate, Caramel, and Eliot (named by previous owners). They were kind of doomed to be harried to death/eaten by dogs, so we took them in. We were supposed to take in four hens but the Ameraucana died from dog injury before we got there to pick them up.

They are 2-year-old Rhode Island Reds and have already laid five eggs for me since Sunday noon. They’re in quarantine for 30 days.

Good grief! We now have 17 hens! That, my friends, is a lot of chickens.

We lost our only Rhode Island Red, Fireball, who was one of our first five adopted birds, about a month ago. She was at least 6 years old when she died.

Breakfast on summer days around here is pretty relaxed. I don’t mind sipping my coffee and letting my kids get hungry enough to help themselves to some food. I think that I should not have to prepare every meal for them, now that they are competent enough to do some things for themselves. Sometimes our breakfast is home raised eggs from our hens; sometimes it’s cereal or oatmeal; sometimes it’s leftover pizza or a quesadilla. Lucas often prepares food for his brother or for all of us. This morning we all four ate different foods.

This is what Asher requested: Apple Flower Breakfast. This time I made it for him, but I think he can do it next time. Smear a honey-flavored rice cake with peanut butter and arrange apple slices to make a flower. The kid’s got style. (By the way, this makes a wonderful lunchbox meal, too.)

We make a lot of smoothies around here. During the school year they often serve as healthy, refreshing after-school snacks. I discovered a couple of years ago that a smoothie after school helped smooth out the transition from school time/behavior to home time/behavior. After-School Smoothies of Love (TM) also keep me from being (unjustly) perceived as the Bad Guy. So it’s a habit I embraced fully.

In summertime, smoothies often serve as breakfast. We don’t serve the kids eggs every morning in the summertime, though that’s generally the rule during the school year. A lighter breakfast is OK in summer because they are here and able to snack when they need to.

I’ve created a new smoothie recipe and thought I’d share it.

2-3 handfuls frozen mixed berries
1 banana
1 mango
1 to 1.5 c orange juice
1-inch thick slick of cabbage from whole cabbage head
Optional: Whey protein powder

Purée until smooth.

The cabbage adds a tangy quality that most berry smoothies don’t have. It also adds beta-carotene, vitamin C, and heaps of fiber. Several studies indicate that indole-3-carbinol in cabbage boosts DNA repair in cells and appears to block the growth of cancer cells.

Makes 3 to 4 12-oz smoothies.

We had big Easter fun on both Saturday and Sunday. We visited Ian’s parents’ home on Saturday and celebrated with family.

The boys love hunting eggs at grandma and grandpa’s house because they have a very big yard; the egg hunt can last a long time while they range far and wide to look for eggs. They were really well hidden this year. The boys are growing up after all.

It was fun playing with our newest cousin, Jack. He is a very lucky baby indeed! So cherished. So loved.

Grandma fixed us a great lunch and the day was warm and beautiful.

That night Ian and I were up late preparing Easter baskets and baking. I make these fun bunny buns for breakfast. They turned out really well, and I recommend the recipe. That night we had an amazing thunderstorm, and two very sodden Easter bunnies visited our yard to hide eggs at 5:45 a.m in the dark. The bunnies had to, for the children around here wake exceptionally early on holidays.

On Sunday morning, bright and early, my parents, brother, and my brother’s girlfriend, Fabiana, and her children came to our home for an Easter breakfast. We had extra kids to hunt for eggs in our garden, and that was fun! (It made my boys a little extra competitive, it seemed.)

Aren’t they sweet? Unfortunately, I didn’t get a nice shot of Fabiana’s oldest daughter. They are such great kids; it was nice to have some girl energy around here! (And it was neat to collaborate with my brother and Fabiana about Easter basket goodies: sidewalk chalk and bubble wands and hair clips and Star Wars ring pops and more!)

Afterward, we enjoy a relaxing, low-key day. The kids played with neighbors and I tried to nap. (A neighbor’s dog kept barking.)

A few hours later, we received a surprise invitation and left home for a wonderful impromptu Easter party, complete with a feast and board games and Minecraft and an egg hunt. It was the perfect end to a perfect holiday weekend spent with loved ones.

Today is easy-breezy. Daddy has the day off work. A good friend of our boys is coming to play. I hope to do some writing and some gardening. Life is good. I hope you had a happy Easter, or Passover, or Holi, Ostara, or weekend! xo

Our St. Patrick’s Day was really different this year, although we did do some of our traditional family celebrating, such as creating this cool party space for the leprechauns.

Ian ran in the Shamrockin’ Half Marathon—his first—and so our boys had an overnight with their besties while the leprechauns partied in our front yard. They all had a blast it seems (boys and leprechauns). Ian and I woke up bright and early on St. Patrick’s Day to make it to Raley Field for the half marathon.

I am so proud of him. Seriously, I am amazed. He’s awakened early nearly every day for five months to train, in part for this event. He’s run in the dark wee hours of the morning, in the winter cold and rain and fog to do this.

13.1 miles. In a row. His time: 02:00:56. Awesome! This is my best shot of him crossing the finish. Bunch of people were in my way, even though I had the best seat open to the public in the whole stadium.

I’m so proud of you, honey!

Afterward, we celebrated with some friends, eventually collected our children, and then came home to this:

Leprechaun gold and golden chocolate coins! The leprechauns must have enjoyed the goodies we left them. And then we ate an Irish family feast.

Crockpot Lamb Stew

This is a recipe for a crockpot Irish stew I found and then altered. I don’t have a pretty photo of it, so you’ll just have to trust me. I made this crockpot version because I needed something that would cook itself while we were at the Shamrockin’ Half Marathon. It was delicious.

Ingredients
1.5 pounds boneless lamb stew meat, cubed and browned in a skillet
1 14.9 ounce can of Guinness stout
4 to 5 medium russett potatoes, peeled and chopped into bite size pieces
2 onions, chopped
2 to 3 medium carrots
8 ounces of sliced crimini or shitake mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons salt
2 or 3 stems of fresh thyme
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 bay leaves
10 ounces frozen peas
1/4 cup quick-cooking tapioca

Last Step: I’ll just put this right up front because this is the type of thing I always miss when reading and (not) following recipes: Add the peas in the last hour of cooking.

OK, First Step: Brown the lamb in a skillet. Add it to the crockpot. Add the Guinness, onion, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms, bay leaf, thyme, salt, pepper, and tapioca. Stir a little. If your Guinness isn’t almost covering your lamb and veg items in the pot, add a cup of water or more Guinness.

Another Tip: Quick-cooking tapioca will make a really thick, luxurious gravy. I had never used it before. I found Kraft Minute Tapioca did the trick. It looks like Bob’s Red Mill also makes some tapioca products.

Cook your lamb stew in the crockpot for 10 to 14 hours. (I cooked mine for 8 hours. Then slept. Then turned it back on before we left for the day to cook for another 6 or 7 hours so it would be ready to eat for St. Patrick’s Day dinner.) I don’t think the extra cooking time harmed it at all. I think you just have to make sure your lamb is tender. Again, add the frozen peas in the last hour or so.

Makes 8+ servings. Enjoy!