Baby #2

It's a girl!

Beloved

(oh yes yes these are my first pictures from our new camera. what a difference! yes, some of them are blurry but that's because I shun flash. and I don't care that they're just a teensy bit blurry. It still looks 1000 times better than our old point and shoot!)


Meet Cameron. He loves:
puppy


" pisas" ...derived from the word "piece" as in "game piece." they are from a Connect Four travel game. What does he do with them?? Oh, you know... just carries them around. ALL the time.

Stromboli Recipe

Okay kids, here's the Stromboli Recipe:

This makes 2 loaves... so only use HALF the filling for the first loaf.

Dough:
1 cup plus 2 T. lukewarm water
1/4 c. orange juice
1 T honey
4 T unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces
3 c. whole wheat pastry flour
1 c. unbleached bread flour
heaping 1/2 c. dried potato flakes or 3 T potato flour
1/4 c. nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. instant yeast

Spinach and cheese filling
3 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
10 oz. mushrooms, washed and chopped or sliced (4 to 5 cups)
10 oz. fresh spinach or two 10 oz. packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and thoroughly squeezed dry
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. coarsely ground black pepper
5 oz. feta cheese, crumbled (about 1 1/4 cups)
1/2 cup pitted and sliced kalamata olives (optional)

To prepare dough: combine all ingredients, and mix and knead them until you have soft, smooth dough. Cover and allow to rise until nearly doubled 1-2 hours.
Filling: Heat skillet until hot, add oil and garlic, then add mushrooms immediately. Cook mushrooms until they give off juice. After 2 minutes or so add spinach, salt and pepper. Cook just enough to wilt spinach. Remove from pan, put mixture in a bowl. Stir in cheese and olives.
Assembling the stromboli/baking: I rolled out the stromboli on a lightly greased work surface (it's better not to add more flour and it's pretty easy to manipulate this way). Divide it in half. (As it makes TWO loaves, remember??) Roll it out into a rectangle shape. Put half the filling on the dough, leaving 1 inch margins on the sides. Fold the two long edges over (to keep from spilling out). Starting with the short edge, gently roll the dough into a 10-12 inch log. Put loaf on a greased pan. Repeat with other half of dough. With a sharp knife, cut 4 diagonal slashes in each log, to let steam out. Then cover the loaves with lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow to rest for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 deg. F.

Bake until loaves are light golden brown, and filling is bubblig, 35-40 mins. If they look like they're getting too brown too quickly, then tent them LIGHTLY with foil for the last 10 minutes of baking time. When you take them out, the loaves may flatten a little, but that's normal.

That's all! And oh my does it smell good! :)

Whole Wheat Spinach & Feta Stromboli

On Friday, we made this:
From this fancy cookbook:

and you better believe it smelled DI-VINE!

One Snowbound Day in Portland, Oregon....

Experimenting with watercolors...while Cameron just stirred the water cup (I believe this was the only time he put the brush in the paints).

























Playing with shaving cream on finger paint paper, shoveling the back deck...
Oh yes. Notice the layer of ICE in the middle picture. I believe THAT was why church was canceled the first Sunday we were there.

15 Minute New Years Day Adventure

What we did today:

Geocaching up near Dear Valley Road. It probably only took us 15 minutes to find the geocache. You gotta be quick when you have a 18 month old, y'know. Just as we approached the trail head, there was an older man with this MUTANT HUSKY (that dog was BUTCH!) and there was an older woman up on top of a hill behind him.
She starts in a most urgent tone: "Excuse me! ...EXCUSE ME! EXCUSE ME!!! You will never go on a hike with me again!!! I told you we should've turned around TEN MINUTES AGO!"
We laughed. And laughed. And laughed. Then Brian says: "Are we bad people? Because if we are, we might as well accept that now."