An alternative communication

Did you ever watch Felicity? It was a fairly popular show back around the turn of the century about a girl who moved to NYC from California to go to college.  The show often started and ended with the narrative of her recorded voice which she was recording to send to a penpal we never got to see on the show.   I had always thought it was a cumbersome form of communication.  The recordings were made on tape which would have taken up a lot of storage space, especially in a small college dorm room.  It also seemed to be more expensive than a regular letter because they were sending each other packages.  And you have to go to the post office to send a package to make sure you get the correct postage while letters can be posted in the mail box down the road.  Despite all these negatives, there is something nice about hearing a close friend's voice.  Almost like you're sitting down with them and having a cup of tea together.

I'm telling you all this because a friend of mine recently sent me a recorded message and since she did, we have had a to and fro of ten minute recorded messages.  With email and mics on computers, it's a much easier method of communication than it was in Felicity's time. I also like it a lot better than straight email.  It's quick, we can do something else at the same time as recording, we definitely don't need to proofread what we've written as we would with email, there are no time zone differences or babies needing our attention, or lagging internet as there sometimes are with Skype.  And we have the added bonus of hearing each other speak.  Lovely.

Soundbite

Jbird is rather clever with recordings and editing and here is a soundbite of our sweet BabyBird over the past month or two as she learned how to laugh. 

Apple picking

We took some international students apple picking today.  It was a very fun activity to do at this time of year while the weather is so ideal.  It seemed quite American too.  When I think of baking with apples, I think of Americana, probably from seeing apple pies on various TV shows, movies, and books.  We actually had an apple tree in our backyard back in New Zealand, but I have never been to an apple orchard before.  

There were so many varieties, it was really fun eating a few and just tasting a few and climbing up the trees to get them.  Mostly I sent these guys up there, but there was a moment when BabyBird wasn't in her carrier and I could hop up too.  It gave me that feeling of being in my childhood house and climbing trees again.  I hope BabyBird experiences that often.   Jonathans were my favourite, and the only new variety I remember (new to me).  I also got quite a few granny smiths which I have always thought were best for baking.  BabyBird will be on solids soon so I want to tin* some apple sauce for her. 

I filled a peck which I found out today is equal to 10-12 pounds, 32 medium apples, 3-4 nine inch pies, 7-9 quarts, and 4 quarts canned.  A quart in Annabel-speak is a quarter of a gallon.  A gallon is around 2 two litres or approximately 4 litres.  Maybe a little less.  

It was the fall festival at the orchard so there was also a craft fair and various venders selling lunch.  I bought Jbird a gallon of apple cider, one of his favourite drinks. 

*tin=can

 

He blew them all out

We finally had Jbird's birthday cake I wrote about recently.  Remember? I made a red velvet using beet root* instead of red food colouring.  I had to freeze it as we had the cake cutting a whole week after his birthday.  I was pretty nervous about taking this particular cake and feeding it to other people so I ended up making regular cream cheese icing* with plenty of icing sugar*.  This way if the cake was a complete flop, the icing would mask that.  My original plan had been to make a swiss meringue cream cheese icing using turbinado sugar because it used a lot less sugar than regular cream cheese icing uses.  Unfortunately when I tested it, I found that the turbinado stained the icing brown and I didn't have time to come up with another solution.  In my opinion, red velvet cake is complemented by stark white icing.

Well.  What can I say?  The icing was delicious.  And full of sugar.  The cake itself tasted like beet root.  But not in a really horrible way, it's just that beet root isn't what you plan on when baking a cake.  It certainly didn't taste anything like chocolate which I think is the point of red velvet cake.  It was also denser than I had hoped.  I think it needed to be eaten the same day it was made. From now on I'm going to save my lower sugar baking for home.  Lesson learned.

 

*beets

*frosting

*powdered or confectioner's sugar

It's a puzzle to me

In the old days, I'd whack one of these out in a couple of days.  But now I find myself easily distracted, easily frustrated, and needing to go to bed much earlier than I used to.  This one has been at least two weeks in the making.   

Jbird is good at encouraging me into doing puzzles.  He talks about it for a while, gets it out for me, and even finds all the side pieces.  With his busy schedule this semester, he's left me to do most of this one alone.   I've had a picture of this same castle all covered in snow on my desktop for the longest time.  Hopefully we'll visit it some day.

  

I wonder where that missing piece could be?

Sing me a lullaby

As we try to instil night time habits for our dear little one I am collecting a number of little lullabies.  I hope to help her know it's sleep time and have noticed she responds well when I sing to her.  My first were Twinkle Twinkle and Jesus Loves You.  A fairly basic repertoire.  During the day I sometimes sing her I'm a Little Teapot.  It makes her smile and I can move her body to make the actions or dance her around the room with it.  The closest I got to a true lullaby was Go to Sleep You Little Baby from Oh Brother Where Art Thou.  I feel a bit weird that I don't know any true lullabies and would sometimes make them up, but can never remember those when I need them again the next day.

Recently I was given a book - Yellow Moon, Apple Moon - which has a lullaby in it.  I first I thought the book looked cheesey and kind of dumb.  But I read it a few times to the boy I babysit for when he was 7 months old and it was the only book that he would sit still for.  Mysteriously.  Out of all the books, this nonsense one was his favourite and I didn't even sing the lullaby in the middle.  Then his parents gave it to me along with a pile of other books they were going to otherwise get rid of.  I guess it wasn't their favourite book but it had become mine so I was very pleased to find it in the box.  This is the book.

I thought I might find the song from it on youtube to share with you but alas it wasn't.  I did find this.  Jbird and I coincidentally sometimes play this together as a duo on the violin and viola but I hadn't placed it into the context of a true lullaby for my baby.  It's so pretty, I'm going to buy it to put on repeat in her room.  And learn the words so I can sing it to my baby. 

 

Slumber, my darling, thy mother is near,
Guarding thy dreams from all terror and fear,
Sunlight has pass'd and the twilight has gone,
Slumber, my darling, the night's coming on.
Sweet visions attend thy sleep,
Fondest, dearest to me,
While others their revels keep,
I will watch over thee.

Slumber, my darling, the birds are at rest,
The wandering dews by the flow'rs are caressed,
Slumber, my darling, I'll wrap thee up warm,
And pray that the angels will shield thee from harm.

Slumber, my darling, till morn's blushing ray
Brings to the world the glad tidings of day;
Fill the dark void with thy dreamy delight--
Slumber, thy mother will guard thee tonight,
Thy pillow shall sacred be
From all outward alarms;
Thou, thou are the world to me
In thine innocent charms.

Slumber, my darling, the birds are at rest,
The wandering dews by the flow'rs are caressed,
Slumber, my darling, I'll wrap thee up warm,
And pray that the angels will shield thee from harm 

A baker's substitutions

Did you know that red velvet cake came about during war time rations when beet root* was used as a substitute for cocoa?  Jbird turns 30 (!!) this week and I'm making him a red velvet cake with beet root in place of nasty red food colouring.  Every cook needs to practice and as this yummy looking cream cheese swiss meringue butter cream frosting looked a bit complicated, I made this sugar free carrot cake as cupcakes as a practice canvas.  This is a really delicious carrot cake recipe.  

In my goal to avoid refined white sugar (and any artificial sweeteners), I tried using raw sugar.  This gave the frosting a pale tan colour.   To remedy this, I'm going to try making it with a smaller amount of raw sugar.  If that doesn't work, I will add a tiny amount of beet root juice which will give the icing a slight hint of red or pink.  This is unfortunate as part of the delight of a red velvet cake (in my opinion) is the stark contrast between the red cake and the white white icing.  Does anyone have any other suggestions for natural sweeteners?  I'm assuming honey has too strong a flavour.  I'm not going for less calories, just less evil white sugar.  I've thought of buying some natural stevia but for some reason it frightens me.  The question I ask is: if it's so amazing, why have I never heard of it before? 

*beets
**turbinado

I also used butter in place of oil in the carrot cake.  And dates in place of raisins. 

First bluegrass festival

This was saved in the drafts.  Perhaps I forgot to click 'publish'?  It was kind of a time sensitive post but I think I'm going to post it anyway because it reminds me of a time when I didn't know BabyBird very well.  Or myself and Jbird as parents.  Life was all different and it kind of hurt and overwhelmed me... 

The Bean Blossom Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival is on this week and it's just a 30 minute drive from here.  On Sunday afternoon we took the opportunity to expose BabyBird at the primitive age of 2 weeks and 5 days to our favourite American musical genre. She survived it like a champ.  I did too but I was glad to leave the drive home to Jbird while I had a snooze.  Everything takes so much more energy than it used to at the moment.  

It's neat to live in this part of the world when things like this are on.  The accents of the presenters were especially country-Indianaianingly fantastic.  Nothing like a little bluegrass to put a spring in your step.

See how little she was?

 

Oh me, oh my

With the inclination to cook something different and without the creativity to think of what that could be, I have been using my old friend Yummly.com.  In our pantry we had chicken and couscous.  Sounds pretty bland to me.  But I typed those ingredients into the Yummly search bar and they came up with this chicken-broccoli couscous (I used peas instead of broccoli, and it was still delicious) on one occasion and this tangerine barbecue chicken and curry couscous (I used an orange instead of a tangerine) on another.  Actually, I made other minor substitutes but those seem important.  Perhaps because of them I would need to change the names of the dishes.  No matter.  Weirdly, they were both Rachel Ray recipes.  I used to love watching her show but I haven't seen it since we lost cable t.v., three years ago.  Thank you Yummly, for your ability to search for all things tasty.  And thank you Rachel Ray, for incidentally enjoying couscous as much as I do. 

Where have you been??

You may notice that my posts have been fairly sporadic recently.  Life is pretty ho hum - I'm stuck on a three hourly rinseandrepeat of feed, play, sleep.  However, that's not a good excuse because BabyBird is completely captivating to me and I could write about her and post photos of her all the time.  

The truth is, I've been stuck in a game on facebook.  Completely addicted to it.  It's not candy crush - I've never played that before but it seems like that's what all the cool cats are talking about.  No, it's called Words of Wonder.  I've unlocked 7 chapters and I'm up to level 91.  I spend so much time playing this game, it will sometimes get to lunchtime, BabyBird's onto her second nap, and I've only just managed to eat and change and do nothing else!  Seriously.  90% of the time I'm spelling three or four letter words so it doesn't feel like it's stretching me very much yet I cannot stop.  I think the addiction is due to the different aspects they add to each level.  There are flame letters, timed rounds, flying letters, ink to be cleared, and an owl which narrates each new level.  Luckily there are only 12 chapters so there is an end to my addiction...

100 days celebration

Our friends threw BabyBird a little celebration for her 100th day (which was about 10 days ago).  It's traditional for South Koreans to throw this celebration.  These friends adore BabyBird.  I think they like her more than us! We are always greated with "BABYBIRD!" (they actually call her that).  I'm guaranteed a babysitter so I spend a lot of time with them.  

There was cake, we said a prayer in Korean, and one in English of course, and everybody had lots of BabyBird cuddles.  I feel more confidant about passing her around now, I don't know why I didn't do it much before.  Maybe because she was less predictable.  But she's a happy, predictable baby these days.  I can't believe she's 100 days old already.  Here are some pics.

HakSoo LOVES BabyBird. This is his first cuddle.

Team shot.  These friends are from Singapore, China, Taiwan, and South Korea.

Clothing swap

I just got back from a clothing swap with a bag full of goodies, a full belly, and my need for social interaction fulfilled.  The first time I attended one of these was shortly pre-wedding.  I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with life and nearly didn't go, particularly because I felt sensitive about giving away clothes I didn't want.  I thought if I don't like something, why would anyone else?  I was so wrong.  I remember someone picking out a skirt I'd bought in Thailand and saying I've always wanted one of these.  I was amazed to find girls were happy with my discards! I still wear the items I got at that swap.  At the time I was sad to be leaving NZ, I felt sure the same kind of thing wouldn't happen here*.  But it does and it did.  And now I have a new wardrobe.  

* Why was I so prejudiced about the States before I moved here? Living here is like living at home.  Except my family's not here.  And. Well...maybe it's just more normal to me now.

An English guest

We had our English guest to stay last week and look what she bought us!  Yum.  These are my very favourite.  The question is: which packet do we start with? 

 

I met Kate when she moved into the apartment below me in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2006.  She would be teaching Year 2 and I was teaching Year 4 at Grace International School.  We loved being neighbours: coffee, shopping, meals, and movies were regular features of our time together.  We really had all the perks of being flatmates - without having to share bathrooms.  We took many trips around Bangladesh and toured Cambodia and Vietnam together.  After I left, Kate visited me in New Zealand and we had a road trip around the upper north island.  We also flew over to Australia for a few days.   Oh! The places we have seen! 

Our time together in Bloomington was fleeting - a mere four days - but it was a chance for her to get the feeling for small town America and meet BabyBird.  And for me to have a lovely time with a lovely friend.  Pool time, coffee, wine, and cake was a feature of her visit.

It has been nearly five years since we saw each other.  I think it's amazing that a friendship can survive so fully intact despite the distance of so many countries and such a long time.  It makes me wonder how I ever feel lonely, when I consider the friends I have made (and kept) over the years.

Here we are on Boxing Day when she visited me in NZ.

And this is the night before she left Bloomington. 

The last day of summer

...was on Sunday, Jbird returned to school on Monday and had a week of orientation  With labour day tomorrow, summer really must be over.  Yet we're 'enjoying' the hottest week of the year.  It seems that American summers stretch before us yet before we know it they've been and gone.  Popsicles, iced coffee, outdoor pools, flip flops, and sunnies will soon be in our memories.