Hot Rod

Check this out:

She's still working on learning how to make the pedals work, but she does love her trike.

She especially loves her helmet

and the bells on her handlebars.

It's been a little hot this week for being out riding, but it makes me so happy that she loves this tricycle. Every time she sees it in the garage she wants to sit on it and ding the bells. She calls it her "big girl trike." I can't wait until she's able to work the pedals and steer herself.

And speaking of "doing things herself," this little one is very into doing everything herself. Getting from point A to point B, feeding herself, etc.

I thought she might be ready to take her first steps the other day.

She thought really hard about it.

We were ready with the camera, video and all, but she decided she's just not quite ready. That's cool.

We scored at the farmer's market on Saturday. This says "Summer," right here.

Can't you just hear the "slurp"?


Last day of swimming lessons tomorrow, lots of family coming to town, and a big weekend at the Wisconsin Dells. I do love summer.

So It Turns Out I'm Not a Cooking Goddess

Damn. I was really hoping that I would be able to transform pickled herring into something delicious. If I'm honest, I was fairly confident in the plan I had come up with for using the herring, sweet pickles, and bran cereal for this week's home "Chopped" challenge. Unfortunately the plan was no match for pickled herring. Who knew that its taste was so strong? So persistent? So... pickley? Part of the problem was probably that I didn't even taste the herring until I was getting ready to cook it tonight. Remember how I said I wouldn't even be able to come up with a plan for it until I tasted it, since I had no idea what the taste and texture would be like? Well, I threw that out the window and came up with a plan, sans tasting, to make a Bran-Cereal Crusted Pickled Herring Po' Boy with Sweet Pickle and Onion Puree. I'm going to spare you the recipe, because it's not worth typing out, but here's what happened:

I was so confident in my plan. I thought for sure if I rinsed off the herring to get some of the pickled flavor off, and then coated it with crushed brand cereal seasoned with some strong flavors (I used chili powder and a bit of cayenne pepper), and then pan fried it to give it a nice crispy crust it would be fabulous on a nice baguette with a caramelized sweet pickle and onion puree sauce. Unfortunately, this plan was based on my expectation that the herring would be salty and maybe a little sour, rather than sweet. Imagine my surprise when I tasted it and discovered the herring tasted like sweet-pickle fish! I had sweet-pickle fish and sweet pickles to put in one dish. This gave me pause, but I decided to push ahead with my original plan and make a few seasoning changes rather than taking the time to change things entirely (two small children fussing for dinner helped with this decision).

Like I said, I pulverized the bran cereal and added chili powder and cayenne pepper, rinsed and patted the herring dry, then coated the herring in the bran powder and put it in a hot pan with some oil to get crispy. For some reason instead of getting crispy, the bran "crust" just fell off in the pan. A few pieces did get a little crunch to them where the crust stayed on, but most just ended up kind of soggy. I'm not really sure where I went wrong here. Maybe my pan wasn't hot enough or I had a little too much oil. Maybe I should have used some egg to dip the fish into first to get the crust to stick better? If I had any desire to try this recipe again ever, I'd try that next time. . .

The sauce ended up okay. I did the usual, sliced the onions and put them in the pan with the chopped sweet pickles to get soft and caramelize a bit. I used a little bit of wine to get all the crust from the fish off the bottom of the pan. I added a diced ancho chile to try to cut the sweetness of the pickle. Then I pureed it. It was tasty by itself, but added to the still-sweet-pickley tasting herring, it was too much. Oh yeah, and I didn't have a chance to get a nice crusty baguette for my po' boys so I ended up using regular hot dog buns, which I didn't even remember to toast a little. Mush on top of mush on top of mush. . . It wasn't pretty (served with roasted Brussels sprouts).

I did have a small victory though. My husband actually ate all of his po' boy, as did I. It wasn't super delicious, but it wasn't awful either, and he did say that my pickled herring was more palatable than any other he has ever had. That's saying something, right? Right?

Live at Lunch

My husband and I have taken some fun photos of the girls over the last several days. I love my camera more and more every time I use it. I feel like I'm starting to take better photos, but I still have so much to learn. Fortunately, I have the best subjects in the world to practice on.

I love that this photo seems to have captured the activity of my two girls right now just perfectly.

No words needed for this shot, taken by my husband.

This is one of my favorite Lass poses. She puts her arm up to her face and makes a sucking motion with her mouth when she's tired. She does this when I'm rocking her to sleep. She holds the pose when I put her in her bed. Sometimes, like here, she does it to let us know she's sleepy. It's her comfort move.

Busted!

Look closely at the photo below. It's a little bit hard to tell, but she is not holding on to anything to keep her balance. She does this a lot now and for pretty long periods of time. She's going to be walking before I know it. How can that be??

Today we went to a weekly event they have in our town all summer long called "Live at Lunch," and I actually remembered to take along my camera. Each week in this little grassy area downtown they have a restaurant selling food and a musician playing music and people come out and eat and listen and bask in the sun. Kids dance or run in the grass or climb on the monuments. People eat and drink and laugh. There was a long line for the food today.

Standing in it seemed like the thing to do, even though the food at the end was just a cold hotdog on a too-dense bun with chips, and there were other restaurants around where we could have gone in and probably gotten better food faster. It was about the experience though. We stood in the line. We danced and sang while standing in line. Miss nearly lost it, but we managed to get to the front of the line just in the nick of time. I almost lost our hotdog and did drop our chips more than once while trying to maneuver the stroller and balance the food while finding the perfect spot for our picnic. But we made it of course, and it was worth it.

Miss danced, and danced, and danced.

I couldn't help but love the fact that a few tables of elderly people were watching Miss dance and play and smiling at her. A woman actually came up to me afterward and commented on what a "bright" and "enchanting" little girl she is. That just warmed me to my toes.

Home Run

Raisins and cherry tomatoes were my at-home-"Chopped" ingredients this week. I thought and thought for a week about what to do with them. Initially I was going to cook them with some onions and broth and spices and then puree them into a sauce for some pork tenderloin medallions. Then I realized that the skin and seeds of the tomatoes would probably not work well in a pureed sauce, so I scratched that idea. I finally settled on making a pan sauce for pork tenderloin using the raisins and then doing a side dish by caramelizing some fennel bulb (my new favorite vegetable since I learned how to cook it in my cooking class) with some raisins and then adding in the tomatoes. I wanted to use caramelized onions and raisins in a sauce (topping might be a better word than sauce, because the raisins and onion made it chunky) for the pork but add in just a bit of heat to compliment, brighten, and balance the sweetness of these ingredients. Similarly, I thought the tomatoes would balance the sweetness of the caramelized fennel and raisins in the side dish. Yeah. I hit a home run with this one. Here are both of the recipes.

Pork Tenderloin with Spicy Raisins and Onions

1 Pork Tenderloin (about 1 lb)

Salt and Pepper

1 Tbsp Vegetable oil

1 Onion, halved and sliced thinly

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup white wine

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 cup chicken broth

3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1 Tbsp pieces

Trim fat and silvery skin from the tenderloin. Slice it into 1-inch-thick medallions. Season with S&P on both sides. Then press the tenderloins (with your hands or the flat side of a knife) until it's about 3/4 inch thick. Heat your pan over medium high heat. Put in the oil. When the oil is shimmering, add half of the pork pieces. Sear them on one side for 2 minutes, then flip them using tongs and sear the other side for about 2 minutes more (they should be firm around the sides). Remove to plate and cover with foil. Repeat with the rest of the pork. Add the onion and cook until it starts to get soft, stirring occasionally. Add the raisins. Let the onions and raisins cook together for a while so the onions get nicely caramelized. Add wine, cayenne and paprika. If you don't like spicy, you can reduce the amounts of these, but I would recommend still adding them, maybe at about 1/2 of the amount I used. Let the wine reduce by about half. Pour in the chicken broth and any juice from the tenderloin pieces that has accumulated on the plate and continue to simmer for a few minutes longer. Off the heat, add the butter, 1 Tbsp at a time, swirling each Tbsp piece around until it melts. Serve the sauce over the pork medallions.

Fennel with Raisins and Cherry Tomatoes

1 tsp Vegetable oil

2 Fennel bulbs, julienned

1 Tbsp sugar

1/4 cup raisins, chopped

1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered

Sprinkle of salt

Heat a pan over medium high heat. Add oil, then fennel. Stir fennel to coat with oil and add sugar. Stir, then add raisins. Cook for several minutes, stirring occasionally, to let the fennel soften and start to caramelize. I can't remember how long this took, but the fennel will start to darken and get soft, but still have a little bit of bite to it. Add the tomatoes and stir them in. cook for a few more minutes to let the tomatoes start to soften, but don't let them get too mushy. Sprinkle a little salt on, stir, serve.

I was so happy with the way these dishes turned out. Lots of flavor and great textures. The only thing I might have done differently would be to add more wine, chicken broth and butter to the pan sauce to have more of the liquid part of the sauce. It was yummy.

We have already decided to go to 3 ingredients this next week and I drew them from our spreadsheet. I do it like the old game Battleship, picking coordinates that my husband matches up the the spaces on his spreadsheet. The one way that we limit what comes up is that he makes sure at least one of the ingredients is a protein. So, next week? Sweet pickles. Bran cereal. And Pickled Herring. Yes, you read that right. Pickled Herring. My husband told me this and then said, "I hate pickled herring." What?! This freaked me out a little, because I thought I was doomed from the start if he hates it (I've never had it, so I have no idea, though I can imagine, how vile it is). I was prepared to go ahead with it, but I think he felt bad for including such a horrendous ingredient on his list. He suggested we draw a different protein, and we did. The next one that came up was Canned tuna. But after thinking about it for a bit, I told him that I wanted to go ahead with the herring. That's the challenge, right? Taking something crazy, and potentially kind of gross, and making it fabulous? *gulp* Hubby did point out that it's actually a win-win situation for me though. If the dish I make is horrible, I can blame it on the herring. If it's delicious, I become a cooking goddess. Score. I told him I can't even begin to plan what I'm going to make though until I go to the store and get some herring and taste it. I have no idea what it's texture or consistency or taste is like, so I can't figure out what I'll do until I know that. Wish me luck!!

In other exciting news from the weekend (and to get on to the cute pics), we got our swing set delivered on Friday! The Hubby and I started putting it together during nap time yesterday.

Naturally we couldn't get it all done while the girls were sleeping, so they joined us outside while we continued to work on it.

We had to put in some more time this morning, though it was mostly the hubby getting it done today because the girls were awake the whole time. Finished product:

We have to trim up the landscaping and the dead stuff underneath a bit and put down some soft mulch, but the girls didn't care about that. They went right to it after they woke from naps.

This one continues to amaze me with her climbing. My mom says she gets it from me.



And no, she didn't actually climb all the way onto the platform by herself, but she did climb the ladder all the way to the top, until her hands reached the platform and she wasn't sure what to do with them to keep climbing. I don't have photos of that part of her performance, because I was hovering around her as spotter just in case. She never even faltered though!

I love this swing set and I know the girls will get so much fun out of it. According to my husband, who had to deal with most of the inevitable frustrations of putting such a contraption together, they'd better!

As a last note, please excuse the status of my header right now. I thought it was about time to change up the photos, but for some reason could not get the far left photo to fit in the header correctly. Also, some of the photos in this post have a bit of a foggy look to them. It's because my camera lens fogged up when I took it from inside the air conditioning to the muggy outside. Sorry!

Full

Starting swimming lessons and gymnastics class and three forensic cases to do and trying to get in my 20 days of exercise this month and watching Chopped last night. . . and this week is quickly getting away from me. So I realized, "What happened to my Independence Day post?" Well, it got combined with my Wednesday July 6th post, that's what. Here you go!

As I predicted, our 4th of July celebration consisted of more of the same festivities that filled the rest of our holiday weekend.

Well hello there Hunk.

Celebrating the birth of our country with my sunscreened babies, splashing and loving the water. Cherishing family. Perfect.

That and great outdoor food. We had grilled kielbasa, veggie kabobs, potato salad, the works. Even ice cream!

Miss loves her "Chocolate ice cream on a stick" - otherwise known as a Dove Bar.

And this little one had her first taste of the sweet stuff.

The brat making continued. Here's my hubby making sausage.

My hubby after I pointed out to him that he's wearing his "Wiener Shop" T Shirt.

Wieners.

We ate some for dinner tonight. Fantastic. There's nothing like fresh, homemade sausage. He also made chorizo, which I love to cook with. I can't wait to try out a new recipe using it.

Speaking of new recipes, my "Chopped" ingredients this week are cherry tomatoes and raisins. I wasn't able to get to the grocery store until today, but I got my ingredients and have something of a plan for my dish. I need to refine it in my head before I dive in to make it, so it'll be Friday or so before I do it. Stay tuned.

I think I've written about how I have ordered some new big girl outdoor toys for Miss so that the push-behind lion can be passed down to Lass now. We are still waiting for her trike, but her roller skates arrived yesterday. And so did these:

We had to try them on today to make sure they fit. I ordered them with the intention that they would fit her now and also be gear she can grow into, so they look a little big but they do fit. Naturally she didn't want to take them off and had to dance around in them until I had to nearly pry them off her for nap time.

Soon to come will be photos of this ensemble, outside, with little Barbie roller skates. I love it.

Right now we're busy in a great way. Miss loves her gymnastics class and seems to be enjoying her new swimming class so far. We're having play dates.

I'm enjoying work. Being a professional. Sorting out the intricacies of psychiatric diagnosis when a case is a little unusual. It helps me to be well-rounded. To be challenged and stretch my brain in a different grown up way. Then I come home and get back to my real job. And it's good. My life is full. In the best possible way.