Saturday lunch with pumpkin pretzels

This week's Saturday lunch was quite a feast. Our local farmer's market has more fresh local produce every week it seems and we are taking full advantage of the goodness!

In addition to our local farmer's market, we are fortunate to have a local mill with quite a variety of organic grains. Paul was kind enough to stop by the mill and pick up a 25 lb bag of organic spelt for me on his way home from a slightly out-of-town business trip so we are now well-stocked in spelt again.

With all that spelt on hand, I thought I'd make some pretzels to go with our Saturday lunch. I realize that pumpkin isn't exactly the seasonal taste of spring, but I still have about 10 pints of frozen pumpkin from last fall so pumpkin spelt pretzels it is!

I used the basic pretzel recipe of Catherine Newman's, and added 1 cup of pumpkin, an extra 2 cups of flour, 1 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg. I also sprinkled coarse turbinado sugar on the pretzels after boiling, instead of the salt recommended in the recipe. I was a little nervous that the pretzels might turn out too dense since I used more flour and all whole grain, but they were perfect. Well, perfect once we added a side of honey-butter, that is.

In addition to our pumpkin spelt pretzels, we had cucumber salad (with tomatoes on the side for our not-tomato-lover children), the last of this season's asparagus, and the-beginning-of-blueberry-season's delicately sweet blueberries.

I'd be hard pressed to pick my favorite part of today's lunch. It was all so fresh and delicious!

The pumpkin spelt pretzels were a huge hit with the kids. We've already frozen the extras for lunchboxes this week.

I think Finn was partial to the asparagus. He kept licking his lips and exclaiming, "dewishious!"

Oh, how I love to see the kids enjoying fresh, local produce! I hope they never forget our weekly spring and summer trips to the farmer's market and the lunches we shared afterward.

My favorite lunch moment: Finn finished his plate then ran to the corner of the deck with the bowl of remaining blueberries, scarfing them down as quickly as possible before he had to share.

{this moment} - backyard art show

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

a compass pointing toward creativity

As my oldest 3 kids have gotten older, I've noticed that more of their play and engagement with one another takes place in the secret of their bedrooms or nooks and crannies of the yard and parks we visit. When I catch a glimpse of them creating, generally at the kitchen table, I don't always take notice, but when hairdryers and talk of pirates wafts over toward the stove where I'm working, it tends to catch my attention.

Apparently a pirate movie is deep in production and one of the set pieces that was needed was a compass. Some children might find a slice of branch or cardboard to make compasses, but clearly, mine had other ideas. They had 2 different varieties of modeling wax, and the hairdryer to help them mold. Curious to see where this was heading, I asked them to show me their compasses when they were complete. With swords already strapped to their hips, they promised me a quick peek before heading back to their swashbuckling adventure.

Paulie and Philip each made a lovely compass in about 30 minutes of molding, sticking and trimming with a dull knife. Off they dashed after I admired their work (I didn't notice that their Es and Ws were reversed until the pictures were downloaded. Alas.), and I could hear arggghs drifting down the stairs while Elizabeth's head stayed bent over her waxy instrument.

After another 20-30 minutes of work, she proclaimed, "I'm done!" And she dashed over to show me her completed compass. With a little more wax for her needle and a pushpin set in a hole in the center of her wax, she managed to make a wax compass with a movable needle.

Whenever people tell me that I'm creative or inspiring, I generally thank them. What I often want to say, and so I'll say it now: my creativity just hits the tip of the iceberg of the ingenuity and imagination that I'm fortunate to be surrounded with in my family. I'm so blessed to have kids with boundless imagination, determination, and resourcefulness to make their every dream become a reality under their own fingertips with whatever materials they have on hand.

And what I loved almost more than the creativity...when Elizabeth said, "we should bend them over the sides of the table like a new version of Dali's melting clocks." Awesome.

Yarn Along

This week's Yarn Along is not the same ol' cape I've been knitting for Elizabeth. That project is just not calling my name recently so I've decided to take it's lead and just work on other things. I've planned to make Elizabeth a pair of socks for a while and in fact this pink sock yarn by Spud & Chloe has been sitting in my stash for almost a year. When I finished Finn's Clementine socks, I was struck with the thought that the Clementine yarn might make the perfect accent to Elizabeth's Sassafras yarn. The tip of the ribbing, the heel and the toes will be Clementine. A very bright sock for a girl that loves to shine with color.

Reading has been largely centered around the seasonal book basket. As the chilly and wet spring weather has returned this week, Finn is very interested in reading about what he's experiencing in the present.

On a recent trip to my favorite local yarn shop, Finn was a patient, even helpful, sweetheart, and as a treat, I allowed him to pick out a skein of yarn to make his fall hat. He picked a bright red bulky super-soft cotton by Punta Yarns. Now I just need a pattern! Do you have a favorite bulky hat pattern that you'd like to share? I can always rely on the ever-cute Pointy Elf Hat, but I thought I'd check to see if anyone else has a favorite first.

Montessori Monday

Finn had a slower week than usual last week. The weather was nice and we spent hours outside leaving less time for indoor learning. He did work with this wooden "seasonal tree". I presented him with the tree which fits together and some different shades of green wool. I also needlefelted several little spring flowers for the spring tree. This tree will be a delight to put together season after season as we change the color of the wool to be added.

Several animals came with the tree and he enjoyed nestling the squirrel in the tree and playing with the other ground animals.

I think Finn's favorite work of the week was his new cutting book which I first saw at One Hook Wonder.

He did several pages, but his favorite was the train.

He carefully taped the train strips together and has faithfully played with it every day since then.

During all of our outdoor time, we squeezed in a bit of work too, like this transferring work with a Finn-sized shovel. He has excitedly shown off the new lilac bush as a "plant I helped dig!"

Another big work outdoors this weekend was Finn's first bike ride around the mile loop of our neighborhood. He did a fantastic job on his balance bike.

We also worked on our sounds quite often. His reading of many of his beginning sounds is becoming much more fluid, and he enjoys reading those often. It's hard to catch photos of that though. ;)

Check out One Hook Wonder for more Montessori Monday posts!

Saturday dessert and our vegan menu

Saturday Lunch wasn't completely from the farmer's market, but I'll share since I planned to share our vegan menu for the second week of May anyway. We found that the farmer's market booths are slowly but surely starting to fill out with more fruits and veggies, and there are plenty of plants for the gardens, pots, both veggie and flower. I can't find quite enough to make a variety of meals each week though. Soon.

For lunch today, we had black bean hummus with red pepper, cucumber, carrots and celery, with some corn chips as well. The celery and the green onions in the hummus were fresh from the farmer's market this morning, as well as the side of blueberries.

Black Bean Hummus

1 cup cooked black beans

1 cup cooked garbanzo beans

1/4 cup sliced spring onions

2 tbsp tahini

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1-2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp salt

Blend all ingredients together in food processor and serve chilled.

The first of the blueberries began rolling in this week from our favorite blueberry farmer at the market. He said that this variety (I don't remember what it's called.) ripens a little earlier than the usual but he should be at the market from now until September with his delicious berries.

For Saturday dessert, we had vegan spelt strawberry cobbler. It was a little tart and a little sweet and perfectly delicious. I do wish I had added a bit more cornstarch to the strawberries because the juice was quite runny. I suppose I'll have to make it again so I can get it right!

Our vegan, wheat-free menu for last week (the second week of May) was as follows:

Sunday: vegan pesto on gluten-free pizza crust, kale smoothies

Monday: quinoa spaghetti with veggie marinara (the sauce is essentially this recipe with sauteed carrots, onion and squash blended and mixed into the marinara) and strawberry-lemon sorbet

Tuesday: corn on the cob, field peas with green beans, steamed broccoli, fried potatoes

Wednesday: vegan lentil salad, spinach smoothies

Thursday: corn-quinoa salad and spelt chappatis

Friday: take out from our favorite Indian restaurant :)

Saturday: pictured above

{this moment} - his red yarn

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. See Soulemama to play along.

Yarn Along

For this week's Yarn Along, I'm back to working on Elizabeth's cape. I hope I can concentrate on it a little more after my break to knit Finn's chain maille and his socks. I just started reading Chew On This to the older kids after Elizabeth read parts of it in school and wanted to read the rest and let her brothers read it too. We haven't gotten too far into it yet, but I really appreciate how the book begins at the beginning and gives the history of fast food, how it started, why it became popular and how it grew to become such a large industry.

I finished Finn's socks over the weekend so I wanted to share those too. He's always so excited to get a new pair of socks, or anything knitted really. I used the Easy Toddler Socks pattern again and put notes on ravelry for enlarging them a bit. The yarn is Risata, from KnitPicks, which a cotton-merino blend that is a perfect weight for chilly spring/fall evenings and mornings. Risata, unfortunately, isn't carried by KnitPicks anymore. I actually bought it for $2/skein on clearance and the socks took almost exactly one skein so I have another to make a second pair of socks later.

The color is Clementine which is so very Finn in all of it's orangy glory.

Silly sock model!

strawberries

Beware: this is mostly just a post of a bunch of cute little boys romping through strawberry fields and stuffing their faces with plump juicy berries. I say just as if it's a common, every day occurrence and not the most wonderful that has happened to Finn all week.

Strawberry picking has got to be the pinacle of late spring childhood memories. The sun is not bearing too hot overhead yet and the berries are just begging to be tasted. Who needs to fill a bucket when you can just fill your tummy on the spot?!

We met my friend, Melissa, and her two little boys, at a local berry farm where we had the run of the fields yesterday morning. Her boys were clearly strawberry picking pros, having already picked once this season.

Look at that sweet juice dripping down John Harper's hands! Irresistible!

Finn and Grady did a little bit of picking, although most of the berries in Finn's buckets were a tad on the smashed and juicy side.

But the majority of their time was spent scouting for the ripest berries to pick then eat before the berry made it's way into the bucket.

Have you ever seen such sweet strawberry-pickers under the beautiful May sky?

When the picking was finished (for today anyway!), we picnicked in the shade of the barn.

And watched the boys romp the nearby field discovering treasures of dried corn cobs, rocks and wildflowers.

Back at home, the serious strawberry business began: making strawberry-lemon sorbet

Strawberry-Lemon Sorbet

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

2 cups mashed strawberries

1/2-2/3 cup fresh lemon juice

Place sugar and water on stove over medium heat until a simple syrup is formed. Cool completely. Place simple syrup, mashed strawberries and lemon juice in ice cream freezer and mix according to freezer directions.

And there was even a bit of time in the evening for making strawberry jam.

Montessori Monday

This week was pretty busy as Finn learned some new works and spent quite a bit of time with the current works on his shelf. He really enjoyed the carabiner clips that I put on his shelf at the beginning of the week. He can clip them together with some effort, but he can't unhook them yet. More work on that to come, I'm sure.

He worked on his new calendar page for the 1st of May.

He also received this new multi-stamp stacker. He stamped the number of stamps to match the numeral in each box.

I think Finn's favorite work of the week was the orange-juice-making practical life work. He sliced the orange in half (with a dullish knife)

Then squeezed the orange on a reamer.

(nibbled a bit of pulp along the way)

And poured the juice/seeds/pulp through a strainer.

Then he was able to enjoy his cup of Finn-made orange juice. How thrilling!

Elizabeth was interested in that work too so she joined us.

Delicious!

When they were finished making orange juice, they asked if they could shell some peanuts that we picked up at the farmer's market.

Finn also planted some basil seeds in a large pot outside our back door and watered them thoroughly. He's been quite the helpful gardener this year.

He started working with a set of sandpaper letters recently too. The only letters in his pile are letters that he already knows the sounds of.

And more than the sandpaper, he enjoys using them as a movable alphabet.

His favorite word combination is f-a-t, which cracks him up every time.

What a busy week!

For more Montessori Monday activities, visit One Hook Wonder.