Silverwood Park- My New Hangout

I am beyond excited about this. Across the street from my house there is a large patch of wooded land that used to be a Salvation Army camp when I was a little kid. It was always a source of intrigue for me because, like most little kids, I found nothing so interesting as a "Private Property, Keep Out" sign. We'd sneak over the fence and look around, ducking behind trees when we heard someone coming or paddle over from my friend Geneva's house on the other side of the lake. It was great fun.

Then the camp closed and the lot sat vacant. I, like a lot of people I knew, was afraid that the land would be developed. It's lakeside property in a great school district 10 minutes from downtown Minneapolis. It's just the kind of place developers love. Fortunately, the county park board bought the land instead to turn into a combination park and center for the arts. The idea is that the park will give Minneapolitans a sort of arts based urban retreat.

The park has been closed for a year and a half for construction and opened this week. They tried to rehab the park in an environmentally friendly way. For example, the visitor's center uses geothermic heating and cooling and the rainwater is directed into a 5000 gallon cistern for reuse and to prevent runoff into the lake. There are also compost and recycling bins next to all the trash cans. The hope is to bring the park to as close to a zero waste facility as possible.



I think this is my new hangout. It has a coffee shop with fair trade organic coffee, compostable cups with recyclable lids, organic, local milk, wifi and a killer view. Excuse the dark pictures, it was a really gloomy day today.


A beautiful patio with rocking chairs and lounge chairs

an outdoor fireplace

And, again, a beautiful view

It has a beautiful event hall overlooking the patio

A gallery with lots of natural lighting (the woodwork is from the trees that had to be taken down in the park's construction)



And an outdoor amphitheater for summer concerts


They are going to have both art classes and nature classes at the visitor's center, both of which I am really interested in.

And then of course there's the hiking, fishing, canoeing, birdwatching, picnicking and walking. And the first Friday family nights and community events. I think this is going to be a huge asset to our community.

Marshmallow Mermaid Pie

I have a weakness for marshmallows. It's not even so much the flavour, especially with store bought marshmallows, as it is the texture. I love the sweet, airy creaminess. So two years ago when I saw the movie Waitress I filed away the idea of Marshmallow Mermaid Pie in my head, only to randomly retrieve it last night when I was rolling pie crusts. I looked it up on the internet and found the recipe on the movie's website. I decided that this is the kind of thing I should get out of my system before my Year of Temperance begins.

Marshmallow Mermaid Pie

9 graham crackers
1/2 C. sweetened, flaked coconut, toasted
5 Tbs. butter or margarine, melted
34 lg. marshmallows (8 oz.)
1/2 C. whole milk
1 1/2 C. heavy or whipping cream
1 oz. unsweetened chocolate, grated

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine coconut and graham crackers in food processor until coarse crumbs form.
2. Combine crumbs and butter with fork. Press to bottom and side of 9-inch pie plate. Bake 10 minutes and cool on wire rack.
3. Heat marshmallows and milk in 3-qt. saucepan over low heat until smooth, stirring constantly. Remove saucepan from heat. Cool completely (30 minutes.)
4. In large bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat cream until stiff peaks form. Fold marshmallow mixture into whipped cream with grated chocolate. Spoon filling into cooled crust. Refrigerate pie at least 3 hours or overnight.
5. Top with mini marshmallows, maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles.

Good Lord, was this a good pie. It wasn't nearly as sticky sweet as I had imagined it would be. The girls and Zach all agreed that this is a winner and one we will definitely be making again.

Frugal Cooking- Squirreling Away Food For Winter

This is my great-aunt Beulah. I want to be just like her when I grow up. Beulah's one of those old-fashioned Grandma types who makes everything from scratch and always had a freezer full of stuff like butter sponge cake and homemade twice baked potatoes and strawberry sauce, you know in case there's a winter storm and twenty hobbits are stuck at your house and in need of provisions. I love it.

In my efforts to be like Beulah, I've been working for years on coming up with a similar system to hers for freezing, canning and otherwise preserving and preparing food for the winter months. In my case it's not a necessity. I live in the city within walking distance of a grocery store, but it does help to make weekday meal planning a whole lot easier. There's been a lot of trial and error. I've learned that there are plenty of things I really don't use, things that don't can or freeze well and things that are just not worth the freezer space. I feel like I'm starting to hit my groove now.

This past week I've been working hard on this project. The school year is less than a month away now and life is about to get a little more hectic.

Tonight I made and froze some pie crusts. Eight pie crust, to be exact.


In the winter I like to make quiche and pot pies, as well as sweet pies, of course. The Pillsbury stuff just isn't the same. While pie crust is easy, it's messy, so I have to be in the right mood to make it. Once it's made I roll it out on wax paper, roll it up and put the crusts in a ziploc bag for freezing. It makes it easy to store and easy to retrieve.


One of my experiments this year is with freezing dough for fruit tarts. It's crumbly, so I stored it in a ziploc bag. When I'm ready to use it, I'll unthaw it and pat it into a tart pan. It's really not very different from pie crust, so I am hopeful that it will freeze well.

My neighbor has been bringing me tart cherries, so I've been using them to make cherry freezer jam and cherry pancake sauce. I love cherry jam. It's one of my all-time favourites, especially on jam cakes and in jam tarts.


Beans are another thing I like to cook ahead and freeze. These are baked beans. I made enough to fill four bags with enough in each bag to feed 5 people in a meal. I have some black beans with a little onion and a dried pepper in the crockpot now. I like those for black bean chili and black bean burritos.

Finally, they had overripe bananas on sale at the grocery store, 4lbs for $1. I froze them individually and then put them in a bag to use later in smoothies or banana bread.

I've been thinking about what else I'd like to make ahead and I've come up with the following list.

-Cinnamon/caramel rolls
-Dinner rolls
-Biscuits
-Pizza dough
-Cookie dough
-Twice baked potatoes
-Raspberry freezer jam
-Raspberry pancake sauce
-Pumpkin puree
-Leeks
-Pesto
-Herbs
-Cornish Pasties
-A few batches of Potato Leek Soup

Colouring Book Holder

We have so many colouring books and notebooks that things tend to get a little messy in our dining room. I was leafing through Family Fun magazine and came across a picture of a magazine holder made from an old cereal box and decided it was just the ticket for solving my storage problem.

The directions are simple. Take a cereal box and cut it at an angle so that it looks like a magazine holder. In Family Fun, they left it like this, but I wanted to make it look a little more attractive.

I decided to decoupage. Decoupaging 3-D objects makes me nervous. I am living proof that the gift-wrapping gene is not standard-issue on the second x chromosome and this process is very similar. On the other hand, I was decoupaging paper I had gotten for free onto an old cereal box, so if it didn't work out I was out the maybe $.05 in Mod Podge it took me to coat the box.

I think it turned out nicely.

National Night Out

I am pleased to announce that my town won second place in our category for this year's national night out. We have always had a big turn-out, so I'm not surprised. It was a fun evening. James was passed around the whole night from neighbor to neighbor, so I actually had a chance to eat a meal in peace. It was lovely.

There was plenty of food, games for the kids, prizes, ice cream and swimming. The kids went home about 9PM, but I stayed out talking until well after 10:00.

Later that evening we got a chance to see our town's fire department in action as no fewer than two fire engines, four cop cars and three fire rescue vehicles rushed to change a neighbor's smoking light bulb, thus answering the age old question, "How many firefighter's does it take to change a light bulb." Oh well. At least we know we are safe if anything does ever happen around here.

Image courtesy of feverblue

One of the things I'd like to work on in the next year is correspondence. I am spectacularly bad at this. I cannot count the number of times I've gotten Christmas cards filled out for 25 people, only to have them sit in a drawer until Easter when I finally get rid of them out of frustration. I am also bad with birthday cards, baby announcements and, as noted in my last post, thank you cards. I mean to change this. I love recieving real mail, the kind that doesn't request money or advertise a product. To this end I've decided to take on written correspondence as a sort of hobby. I've set aside time for it on Friday afternoons, and I've asked Zach to buy me a few related products for my birthday.

I want to get an address stamp with the name of my house (Bryn Dial), our family name (Griffith) and our address, a signet ring, some sealing wax and some nice paper and envelopes. I like the idea of communicating by snail mail. Sure, I can e-mail, but it's just not the same. I am hoping that by approaching letter-writing as a pleasant, enjoyable enterprise I can get over this life long aversion I have to mailing things.

Manners

Really and truly, I am not one of those people who sits around complaining about younger generations. I'm not old enough for that yet, but I have noticed lately how many kids don't seem to know much about the subject of manners. Mine included. We're pretty casual around here, and although I like that I do think my kids would benefit from learning proper manners.

This is good for me too. As we've done this I have come to realize how casual I have gotten. I frequently catch myself with my elbows on the table and I've never ever been good with Thank You notes. I've sworn to rectify this, as it sets a bad example for the kids.

In thinking about how to teach this I've broken it down into a few categories. I'm sure more will occur to me, but for the moment I think this is enough for the kids to take in.

1. Table Manners
-How to set a table
-Please and thank you
-No complaining (I was a stickler for this already)
-Elbows off the table
-Chew with your mouth closed
-If a strange food is offered to you, at least try it
-If you are at someone else's house, thank them for inviting you and for their efforts
-Wait to be excused
-Hands to yourself
-Help clear the table (at home) offer to help when at a friend or family member's home

2. Playtime Manners
-If a friend is over, let them pick what to play
-If you are at a friends, clean up before you leave. At home, clean up when you are done.
-When leaving a friends, thank them and their parent for inviting you
-Please and Thank You
-Follow other people's house rules, even if they aren't the same as ours
-Listen to the adult in charge
-Never be a sore loser or gloat when you win
-No arguing
-No whining

3. Correspondence and Communication
-Answer the phone politely
-Take a message if someone can't come to the phone
-Be polite to people who have dialed the wrong number
-When someone gives you a gift, thank them in person and send a thank-you note
-Don't interrupt
-If someone is talking on the phone, be quiet so as not to disturb them
-Don't talk on the phone to one friend while another is over

It will take some time, I'm sure, but I think this will be a really valuable exercise for my kids.