Cookin' Out

After swimming yesterday, we cooked out in the backyard. Pop manned the grill, mainly pizza and chicken, while Mama and I made blueberry cobbler. Gommie and the kids played baseball, ladder ball, and other yard games.

Later, before all the food was done and as the kids sank with the sun, we sat out singing songs, all our family's repertoire (*list below). We like to sing and Mom and Dad can even sometimes harmonize. It was fun to hear all the family standards and to have the kids add their own. Though, they were almost too tired to sing. We barely got them in bed before their faces hit their plates.

But back to the cobbler: it was the best cobbler I've ever made. In fact, it's right up there with the cobbler of Mel's Country Cafe in Tomball, the best I've ever had. Only the homemade one, from a Cook's Country recipe had lemon zest, which made it a little more fancy-tasting than Mel's. And Mel's has a lot more butter. Still, I've always wanted to make a good cobbler--not the Deep South's particular biscuit-topped variety, but Texas's own "Don't Stir It" almost gooey cake-based/topped (the batter rises through the fruit) kind.

Mmm, mmmm, good.

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Family Song List

Mom and Dad's Repertoire: "Dixie," "Deep in the Heart of Texas," "Eyes of Texas," "Roll Out the Barrel," "Darktown Strutter's Ball," "Home on the Range," "Sidewalks of New York," "Bicycle Built for Two," "Barrel of Money," "Tell Me Why," "Down By the Old Mill Stream," "Let's Go Fly A Kite," "Supercalifragilistic," "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning," "Kansas City,"

Mommy Hungry: "Buffalo Song," "Summertime," "Can't Help Loving That Man of Mine," "How many colors are in the rainbow?", "Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose," "Noah's Ark"

Bud and Sis: "Skidamarinky Doo," "Daisy Smile," "Taps," "Make New Friends," "Silliest Song in the World" ("ain't gonna rain no more"), "Shoofly," "Row, Row, Row Your Boat,"

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Blueberry Cobbler

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces, and 8 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons lemon zest

3 cups blueberries, rinsed

1 1/2 cups flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups milk

Melt and cool 8 tablespoons of butter in 9x13 pan while you preheat oven tto 350.

Meanwhile, pulse 1/4 cup sugar and lemon zest and set aside until the end.

Mash blueberries with 1 tablespoon of lemon sugar.

Mix 1 1/4 cups sugar, flower, baking powder, and salt. Whisk in milk and cooled melted butter. Pour batter in hot pan. Dollop blueberry mixture over dough. Sprinkle with remaining lemon sugar.

Bake 45-50 minutes, turning pan halfway, until golden and bubbly. Cool 30 minutes.

Cook's Country (with instructions written by Mommy Hungry)

Spectacular, Exquisite, Humongus Weekend*

The weekend cured one of us of last week's virus and sent another of us back to muscle relaxers--it must have been good!

Saturday we stayed at home, not quite wanting to risk taking Sis out and about, even to a friend's birthday party that afternoon. She was still tired and prone to crashing at odd times; a worst, I worried about her catching something else. So we made the most of it by playing in the yard. Mama went to work on a big grilled lunch, taking advantage of the nice weather. There were vegetables, chicken, roasted garlic for bread, pizza, baked beans, shrimp, cabbage (hey, don't laugh, it was sweet and tasty), even peaches. She really enjoys the creativity of cooking outside, I think.

Meanwhile, the kids and I occupied ourselves by building faerie houses under our pine tree. There were lots of small branches with leaves on the ground, casualties from a wind the night before, that made for perfect camouflage* to hide our little houses. We got fancy with miniature* furniture and gardens*, even food in little shell bowls. We hadn't built faerie houses in a long while and it was fun . . . the kids are much better at creating stable structures, have finer motor skills to add little details.

Then we decided to go float faerie boats down our stream, using sticks and big wax leaves to build the vessels. Sis and Bud climbed up and down the rocks, helping each other to navigate a path across the water. "I need teamwork!" Bud would shout if Sis got too far ahead and he wasn't sure how to follow. She would come back and help. "Twins always stick together," he said. And they did, holding hands, encouraging one another, pointing out wobbly footholds. They concentrated* on the best place to launch their boats for maximum potential, just pleased if the boats didn't sink. Though having fun, they worked up enough of an appetite not to complain when lunch was ready.

After lunch, we played indoors. Mama had designed "Word on the Street" notebooks for the kids, with a page for each Sesame Street vocabulary--they drew pictures and cut out magazines for all the words we've seen on tv (marked here with an asterisk!). The kids also played with the new puppet theater I found at a tag sale for just $5, complete with chalkboard signage and red and white-striped curtains. Sis performed her "Barn Show" in three parts, first with a visit to the CSA garden, second with a meal in the kitchen with all the vegetables, third a family trip to the ice cream parlor, all using her birthday Playmobil sets. Bud used his knights and dragons to put on a war; later he showed his "Green-Headed Schwaubble Worm" Drag picking flowers for his grandmother, Tango the penguin (not a Schwaubble!). And they were in bed by 7 pm!!

The next day, Sunday, we figured Sis was well and truly better, that we could do something bigger, take advantage of the nice weather and one of our last unscheduled weekends before school. So we went to Mystic Seaport. We realized we hadn't been in two years, since the Morgan was put in dry dock for restoration. But Sis remembered it all: the wooden boat toy structures, the children's museum, even that the whaling ship was the Morgan. The girl has a memory like a steel trap.

And it was as much fun as we all remembered, perhaps even more because they've added a few things. The kids loved the new wooden tugboat to climb on and the new Map Spot children's exploration area. There, Bud became obsessed with grids and coordinates, while Sis drew her own maps. They both liked building bridges and canals and using the cranes and driving the simulated car. Then we made wooden boats, painted scenes of the seaport on canvas, and rode in the horse-drawn carriage. I enjoyed looking at the kitchen and parlor gardens of one of the old houses, getting some new ideas for trellises for next year's beans. Mama also created a piece of scrimshaw (on polymer, of course, not actual whalebone) with a knot design; I think she's found a hobby that combines her love of drawing with her love of woodworking. If she can find the right polymer . . .

On the way home, after almost 8 hours walking around the seaport (which is probably why my back is bothering me this week, my PT says), we stopped for pizza at the restaurant with the trains. Mama and I really liked the mushroom pesto pizza and Bud continued his preference for lasagna. Sis preferred the Kentucky Derby Pie, which is like a big, warm chocolate-chip cookie. They napped on the way home, the icing on the cake of a good weekend.

*This weekend was brought to you by Sesame Street's "Word on the Street!"

Hot Off the Grill

I think it is my new favorite grilled food: pizza!

Some guys at church said they do it all the time. And so, tired of grilled veggies and frozen veggie burgers, I thought it was worth a try, especially because Mama assured me that it was doable.

Plus, I'd read the article in the NYTimes about homemade pizza, the secret being letting the dough rest overnight to develop a richer flavor.

So, on Friday night, I made my basic pizza dough in my bread machine and left it out in a container at room temperature overnight. The next day, with homemade sauce, slices of fresh mozzarella, and fresh basil leaves, we were ready. I divided the dough in half, spread it in a rectangle, and Mama threw it on the grill before anything else, closing the lid after it. In about 4 minutes, the dough was done on one side, bubbled and crisp, with pretty grill marks. We flipped it, spread the sauce and placed the cheese and basil, closing the lid again. In about 4 more minutes, the pizza was done.

And it was amazing. Not just the best grilled food, but some of the best pizza I've ever had. And so fast and easy. We even froze the second pizza in foil, not able to finish it all, and defrosted it the next day and reheated it on the grill--almost as great as the first day!

We'll be making this pizza every weekend . . . and you can too!

Mama's Grill Pledge

Mama is on a grill kick and having a great time learning a new skill for which there are tools (yeah, well, some stereotypes are true.)! She has grilled once and even twice a weekend for almost a month now--chicken drumsticks and thighs, Chinese sauced pork ribs, t-bone steaks, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, a variety of vegetables (squash, eggplant, mushrooms), banana boats, even leftover pizza. Not only does she produce these great meals (I've listed below but not appended recipes yet for some of her dishes), but the outdoor cooking and eating contributes to a whole fun family outside afternoon, with the two of us hanging out on the deck while the kids run around the backyard. Yesterday, in addition to creating and running through their own obstacle course and visiting with a neighbor, the kiddos watched birds build a nest in our recently trimmed hedge and a squirrel, newly named "Chippy," stick her head out of her nest high up in the knot of our tree. In fact, we were outside well after 8 pm, which is very late for them. But that's what summer is for, right? And with school out in less than a month, it definitely feels like summer is on its way.

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Corn

Sweet Potatoes

Chinese Pork Ribs

Banana Boats

Homo Depot

We always see "family" at the hardware store. Today, it was two middle-aged women, one with an Human Rights Campaign (HRC) yellow equal sign (one of the most closeted GLBTQ symbols in America) hat on, and her sweetie. They were loading up a flatbed with all sorts of garden supplies and clearly did not need the help that young men kept proffering. I just love dykes sometimes. And so I told her I liked her hat and we shared notes on flowers. It's as close as we come to a secret handshake.

We also saw playgroup friends whom we hadn't seen in awhile. The kids had on their special project aprons and their parents raved about the weekly project for children. We might have to try it sometime.

Otherwise, we spent the time overloading on garden supplies and hardware, just like we always do for our first trip of the season to the hardware store. We got a new grill and accoutrement, some mulch, some edging stones, flowers (let's call them volunteers, since it was more for fun, knowing full well that it could freeze and the flowers--pansies, petunias, and marigolds--could die), and two little American flags, the kids' 79 cent bribe for behaving.

Next, we picked up grilling ingredients--zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, black bean burgers, chicken (which Mama marinated in coconut milk!), corn on the cob, even bananas and s'mores. Yum! Everything was tasty on the grill (even frozen black bean burgers are great), but the corn on the cob was just a revelation. So sweet. And it wasn't even particularly good corn. Plus leftover fassolia (a stewed giant bean dish; more on that soon) and some watermelon lemonade we made yesterday. It was a delicious meal . . . . and a great afternoon cleaning, planting, and playing.