My new happy place

Around these parts there is very little variety when it comes to grocery shopping. We've got Dominicks and Jewel-Osco and if you're feeling high brow you can drive over to Hinsdale and visit the Whole Foods. I'm not a Trader Joe's addict like most folks, but I do make the occasional trip there also.

But all that has changed. I've found the most awesome small fruit and vegetable market and I find myself unusually excited about it. Small things make me happy, folks.

A friend of mine had been talking up Nature's Best in Westmont for a couple of months now. It took me forever to make the trek over there, but I'm so glad I did. Anna and I made an early morning shopping trip on Saturday. We were in search of leeks because I checked out an Alice Waters cookbook last week and got all inspired to make potato leek soup.

This market is small. In fact, you pull your cart into the store and immediately butt up against the checkout lanes. But right past that area is the best produce section I've seen anywhere. Rows and rows of apples, pears, nectarines, mangos, plus lots of ethnic vegetables that were new to me. Seriously amazing. And cheap.

Now their produce isn't organic, but I've given up on that because unless I drive to Whole Foods I can't seem to find much organic anything anyway. I get my organic veggies when I grow them myself. That's about it.

They have an amazing meat section I'm told, but I didn't make it over there. I did manage to splurge on a GIANT loaf of french bread though. Bread taller than my children? Yes, please.



They had a lot of interesting cheeses, but I didn't buy anything. I'm trying not to purchase stuff that isn't directly related to my weekly recipes. It just rots in the fridge if I don't have it in the meal plan.

My soup turned out amazing. I'm fairly sure that heaven smells like sauteed leeks. We cut up some bread and had a great Sunday lunch. Abe liked the soup and dipped his bread into it, but Anna had to practically be forced to eat a couple of bites. Feeding that girl is so frustrating lately. I don't like it... JUST TRY IT!



My nectarine purchase transformed into a galette on Saturday night. Have you ever made one of these? Very easy. Just make up a quick dough and refrigerate it for a few hours. Roll it out and fill it with fruit and then fold over the crusts and sprinkle all of it with sugar.

Mike and I have a new favorite. Warm pastry, cold ice cream on top. Yum, yum, yum.

Cook books really inspire me and our library has an amazing selection. Rows and rows of gorgeous books. In the Green Kitchen by Alice Waters is my current obsession. Both the soup and the galette recipe came from there and I've got a few more up my sleeve. I'm no whiz in the kitchen so I appreciate simplicity.

One of my goals for the year (though there isn't really a deadline on this) is to have a list of 20 dinners that are fail safe. Things that all four of us will eat without complaint. Anna doesn't have to finish her plate, but I want to serve things that don't elicite complaints and long-winded negotiations. By the end of the day I've got so little patience already, please just let dinner be peaceful.

I'd say I currently have four dinners, but, of course, I need some variety so that we don't get sick of them and have to start all over again. Hence the list of 20. We'll see how it goes. My latest grocery discovery certainly can't hurt, right?

Starting our seeds

Perhaps the cold weather is starting to wear us out a little bit or maybe it's that we've had enough false hope instilled in us with a few freaky warm days, but I got a sudden urge to start planting our garden last week.

We didn't start seeds until much later last year, but I'm kicking it up a notch this time. Three season planting. Yeah, as in spring, summer and fall crops. Plus, I've picked up an awesome book called Square Foot Gardening that promises to transform my garden's yield. Transform.



I enlisted my trusty garden assisted again this year and she was all too happy to help. Sidenote: it's fun to see how her coordination has improved in a year's time. Anna was able to fill the peat boxes herself with hardly any spilling and pick up just the right number of extremely small seeds per cup and plant them. Not too shabby.

Our spring crop, which will actually be transplanted in late March, will be filled with lettuce, spinach, and carrots (24 of them this year). Plus, I let Anna choose some flowers to plant so we've got a tray of zinnias to put in planters later this spring. Basil and chives and tomatoes also will make their debut, but I've gotta keep those inside for a looong time. My indoor basil track record isn't too fabulous so we'll see how it goes.



Abe is already eager to help with the watering. Today he tried to follow me outside in his socks so he could have his turn holding the watering can. Turning back to see him march out the door into the snow without shoes brought a smile to my face, though marching him right back in against his will was not as happy.

For fun I let him fill up the watering can and dump it out into the sink a few times. Then Anna had to do it also. Then Abe wanted to do it again and, well, I sense a pattern developing. And I sense I will have a very wet messy kitchen during the next few weeks.

Vintage Valentines

Okay, twist my arm, I'm posting one more time this week. This last post features a centerpiece I helped put together for a recent meeting.

Our group needed something for 8 tables for a brunch meeting. They had used small conversation hearts last year and placed them in a glass container, but there wasn't much more direction beyond that.

I volunteered to do something with a handful of vintage valentines that I picked up at an antique store awhile back. The original intention was to scan them in and use them for valentine's day crafts for the kids. So I just carried that idea through to the centerpieces.



After scanning them in (there were originally four, but I only took pictures of two of them), I blew them up and printed them out on cardstock. Then I cut them out and used double-sided tape to afix them to a skewer.



Stick the skewer in the little vase of candy and voila!




They've been tucked away for next year so the group can use them again, if they want. Now that I have them scanned, I can use them again also. In fact, if you keep an eye out for little vintage cards during the year, you could probably get a lot of great things accumulated for various holidays.

There you go! Happy Friday everyone!

That empty space in Abe's room

Painting Abe's room was one of the very first priorities when we moved in. The previous owners had painted it a ferociously bright shade of blue and my head would ache every time I sat in there. I can see how bright blue can be fun, but this just wasn't quite my speed.

Not long after we got ourselves settled, we painted it a light khaki color. It looks great against the white woodwork. However, I've slowly slowly slowly been trying to give that room a little character and it's not been easy. Our Galena trip gave me one more piece to the puzzle.


We found this shelf in an antique shop on the way back home Sunday morning. I thought I was going to paint it red, but when we put it up on the wall I actually don't mind the dark wood.



It's got this great little circle detail on the sides. You can't see if from a distance, but I'm afraid painting the shelf might just cover it up.




I couldn't get a great pic of Abe's room. Usually it's the most light-filled room in our house, but this week has been very gloomy and gray and the photos all look dark. However, you can see that it is now filling that empty space in Abe's room that has had me stumped for months.




This old photo is a better representation of the walls. Plus, it features Abe trying to shove an entire stuffed horse into his mouth. We're so proud.



So that's concludes my interior decor posts. I MIGHT show you something else tomorrow. But you have to be really good and eat all your lunch.

Staying Alive, Staying Alive

Last week was our own disgusting version of Gwyneth Paltrow's detox diet. Should you decide to try it yourself, go her direction. Seriously. I'm sure it's more enjoyable to drink cabbage soup than it is to puke your guts out for three days straight.

It took each of us several days to recover and I'm still a little shakey, but we're all back into our regular routines now so we're closing the door on that episode and hoping not to return again.

So back to our regularly scheduled programming.

There were two more items we picked up in Galena that I was going to share. Pardon me while I continue to pretend that I'm an interior designer :-) I promise, it won't last long.

In a dark dusty antique shop, I spied two gold (again! why am I like a magnet for gold?) wall sconces hanging on a wall, along with a bunch of other ugly gold items. For some reason I really wanted them. I talked the lady all the way down from $12 to $11 and then we spray painted them last Sunday.

I'm not totally happy with the color. It said slate blue on the can, but I feel like it's more of a country blue and I have some mixed feelings about it. Originally, I also thought I'd put two of them on the wall outside our downstairs bathroom, but now I'm thinking that one might be enough. It holds two candles, but I don't know if I will actually put candles in them. The holders are not even and it will probably look a little off.

So there you have it. Project #2 has been revealed. What will Project #3 be?

Wait and see...

Week to Forget

(by Mike)

Just so you don't think we've forgotten the blog this week, we've all come down with the stomach flu this week. Abe on Monday and Tuesday, and the rest of us Wednesday through today. There hasn't been much to share as a result, other than that Abe does not understand when you are too sick to pick him up and read a little critter book for the 40th time that day. Hopefully, next week we'll be back in full swing.

Please Humor Me...

So I'm going to ask for your forgiveness in advance. This week I'm pretending to be an interior decor blogger and posting on the nifty projects we managed to accomplish this weekend.

In the previous post I think I mentioned we picked up a couple of items at flea markets in Galena. Well, one of those said items was a trashy gold magazine rack that looked like it belonged in a disco but had really awesome design to it.

One can of almond-colored spray paint later and..... voila!



I love it! Total cost: $12, plus then I bought the spray paint but that was three or four dollars and will get used again.



It fits nicely by our "sideboard" in the living room (really, it's a dresser I found at an antique place but it looks like a sideboard) and I'm now going to start spray painting everything. It's so incredibly easy.

Why did it take me almost 35 years to realize I could have improved the look of so many things I own? Oh well, at least I wear the proper size bra. :-)

Spray paint. It's rad.

Weekend Getaway in Galena

Silence? Conversation? Eating a meal in peace? These are not things we are accustomed to these days, yet we found ourselves with a weekend full of them during our quick getaway in Galena.

For those of you unfamiliar, Galena is a gorgeous little river town in Northwest Illinois. It is the only place in Illinois that we have experienced hills and vistas similar to Missouri. As you know, Illinois is usually summarized by one word: flat.

Not Galena. Galena is the Hannibal of Illinois. But really cute and filled with loads of little shops and restaurants. We made the three hour drive on Friday afternoon and arrived just in time to have a leisurely italian dinner at Fried Green Tomatoes. It was so good. We had the signature appetizer fried green tomatoes covered in cheese and sauce and then tortalloni and warm parmesan bread. Oh. My. Gosh. Awesome meal, but more importantly it was a leisurely meal. We found ourselves almost feeling an imaginary rush to quickly get out of the restaurant before a child (or parent) melts down, but then we'd stop and look at each other and realize no, we really don't have to move at all. We can sit right here as long as we want.

It was awesome.

The town is so quaint and cute. The big historical element to Galena is Ulysses S. Grant's home. He and his wife Julia Dent had a home there prior to the Civil War. He was a bit of a failed businessman with four children who became an honored general. When he returned home to Galena, the town presented him with a pretty grand home as a thank you for all he had done for the country. We didn't tour the home because we were in more of a lazy eat and shop mood than we were a historical mood. But we did read about Grant and his family at the tourism center. Very interesting place.


Galena is a really pretty place. The buildings are old and the streets are really steep. When you look up and down each block it feels like you're looking up a ski slope. The stairs are incredible, too. I can't imagine what it would be like to shovel them after a big storm.




This picture isn't fantastic, but you can see below one of the giant sets of stairs that lead up to the next block. Perhaps everyone in Galena has incredible leg muscles.




Main Street is filled with several blocks of cute shops. Gourmet foods, candy shoppes, lots of clothing places (though it tended to be geared a bit more to older women) and some home decor. Mike and I like to go to flea markets and antique places and made a couple of stops outside the city also. We came home with a couple of cute things that I'm painting and will make their debut later.






Why do I have pictures of Republican and Democratic presidents playing pool? Oh perhaps because Mike was OBSESSED with these prints and had to be pulled away from them multiple times. It's like the government equivalent of dogs playing poker. But Mike thought they were incredible, even contemplating all the people he knew who would want to see this because it's so hilarious.




Thank goodness they were expensive. I didn't want to return from our romantic weekend with a fleet of U.S. Presidents staring at me from the back seat.

A few more pics of Galena...




Saturday night we ate at 111 Main, a restaurant highly recommended by a friend who plans his trips to Chicago around dinner and lunch at this place. Seasonal, local produce and meats and cheeses. It sounded right up our alley and while we did enjoy our meal there, it wasn't quite as good as we expected. We'd go again, but maybe without such high expectations.




We drove back Sunday morning so Aunts Pam and Meagan could get back on the road. to St. Louis. They did an amazing job with the kids and it appears that the kids LOVED spending time with them also. Mike and I really needed a break and we are so lucky that they volunteered. They are so sweet to trek all the way up here for us.

There are lots of sporty things to do in Galena like cross-country skiing and biking, but we really had two goals: sleep and eat. Actually, that's not true. Our goal was to just make some time for each other, something that we don't do often enough. It was a great trip and left us feeling so much more relaxed. Such a wonderful and welcome feeling.

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Post-blizzard

Snowfall hasn't stopped us from staying busy. In fact, we are surprised just how busy we've been lately. The awe of the blizzard last week quickly passed. Now we are just driving into our tunnel driveway and out again each day, straining our necks to see around the snowbanks in each intersection, and huddling inside while the temps take a major dip.

This weekend was rather full, I had a meeting Saturday morning so Mike was on Daddy duty, then we managed to sneak out for a date night. We saw The King's Speech with Colin Firth. Such a great story. We haven't seen any other Oscar contenders so we have no idea how it will fare, but I totally recommend this movie. I love it when I can see history from a different perspective and learn something new (it really is rather amazing that Queen Elizabeth became queen because her father was never supposed to be king) and this movie delivered!

Sunday morning was Anna's church choir performance. It was freezing cold and not very many kids showed up to sing. That kinda disappointed me because we've been carting the kids to choir practice each week and the choir director, of course, wanted to have a good showing. Oh well, we had a blast watching her sing I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.

Then it was SUPER BOWL time. Not that I really was paying attention to the game. Or the teams. Honestly, I am mostly in it for the snack food. We headed into Chicago to watch the game with the Westhoffs. Their son Ben is just three days younger than Abe so we love hearing about what he's up to these days. (Funny story -Jess was actually being wheeled into the hospital while I was being wheeled out!)

It was the first time Abe has really interacted much with a kid his own age. This stage is really more about parallel play, but the boys did interact quite a bit. And during the last half hour the kids just ran around at full speed, yelling DOH! and GO! Why? We don't know. It doesn't take much to entertain my children. That makes me happy.

So, Kate, we did actually make it out of our home despite the snow. And this weekend will be even more fun (fingers crossed) because Aunt Pam and Aunt Meagan are going to stay with the kids while Mike and I scoot out of town for a little weekend getaway. We are headed to Galena for some quiet, relaxation, and quaint shopping and food.

Snowmygosh! The photos!

I casually wrote to a few friends yesterday that I couldn't quite grasp that we were going to get an actual blizzard this week. The weatherman has been so wrong so many times this winter that I really thought we were going to get a smaller version of whatever was predicted.

Oh boy. Was I wrong or was I wrong?

I was wrong.

Starting yesterday afternoon we got slammed with snow. Blizzard-y snow, the kind where you really can't see much beyond a few feet. The snow started piling up around mid-afternoon and by the time Mike got home (early) from work he knew he better do an initial round of shoveling just to get ahead of the storm. Several people on our block did it also. One man even did a couple of rounds last night. I looked out into the darkness of our street, watching the snow swirl and blow, only to see him pushing his snowblower up and down the driveway. It seemed crazy to us then... but I guess he's lived through this before and knew more than we do about this stuff.

By this morning, we were buried in snow. We couldn't open our front or back doors. Luckily, we have a side door with a couple of steps down to the driveway. The snow had piled up on the drive, but not enough to cover both steps so Mike could leap down onto the driveway from that door. It was nuts!

Our front door. Not so bad looking actually, but you can see where snow was seeping in under the glass door.



Then... the backdoor. Wowsers.


Here's a pic with a child for scale:



This is my favorite one. Mike climbed up our stairs (somehow) and started shoveling a path to the door.



For three hours Mike shoveled and shoveled and shoveled. All the men in the neighborhood were out, sharing snowblowers, raking roofs (did you know you have to rake the snow off your roof with a special HUGE LONG rake?), and helping each other out. I told Mike it was like watching the suburban equivalent of a barn-raising.

Needless to say we stayed inside most of the morning. You couldn't even go out and play in the snow because it was simply too deep to walk in. Plus, the wind was pretty severe. Later in the afternoon we headed out just to see the novelty of it all.



The kids walked down the sidewalk paths. It was like a tunnel.

Some of the neighborhood kids were out playing and we walked down to say hello. These kids were so creative. They created snow tunnels in the lawn and then crawled through them. Anna crawled on her belly through this one. It was really impressive!




We didn't stay out too long though. Long enough to get cold fingers and feet. Then we headed home - back down the tunnel path to our house.

Here's the "after" shot of the backstairs Mike dug out this morning. Amazing, huh?

Preschool has already been cancelled again for tomorrow. Our area is relatively plowed, but a lot of neighborhoods are still buried. Thankfully, there weren't power outages around here. We lost internet/cable/phone for awhile, but no big deal. It's peaceful when we can't log on, isn't it?

Having Mike home today was fun. A special little mid-week surprise. Granted, he wore himself out shoveling, but I think we all loved the extra family day. Tomorrow he'll head back to work. But now we're just two days away from the weekend when the fun can begin again, right?

Gotta love a snow day!