5 Years

5 years have gone by already since I became Mrs Pine Nut.

On our first anniversary I was newly pregnant with GooGoo and so we had our one and only Actual Anniversary Day where we went out to eat and do something that actually cost money, like visit the Newport Aquarium. Then we walked on the beach in strong winds and pranced about on heaps of kelp.

Ever since then, we’ve had kidlets and I can only think of one time we were able to sneak out for a dinner together (not on our anniversary) and even then it was only because my mom happened to be visiting and someone had given us a gift card for Olive Garden.

One view of Dancing Oaks nursery

We thought about going to the beach this past Sunday but it was raining at the coast and cold and I think the kids would have been miserable. So Mr Pine Nut and I went to Dancing Oaks Nursery instead. (Side note: it’s a gorgeous place. Last time we were there GooGoo almost drowned in one of the ponds, however.) To avoid further nearly drowning incidents, we left the girls with his mom, and we splurged on a burgundy native iris plant and some flowering thyme for my rock garden that is not really there yet, and some other ground covers he wanted. We are such big spenders.

Anyway, in honour of the past five years, here are some lists of 5.

5 Things We Did the Day We Met

1. Walked (fully-clothed) on a (deserted) clothing-optional beach.
2. Went from about 2pm to 3am without eating anything because we were too busy talking.
3. Watched nerdy podcasts.
4. Explored a wetlands reserve while an accompanying friend described her experience with Lasik to me.
5. I stepped in a hole.

The wedding party. My bouquet was fake flowers from Walmart. Perpetually classy, that’s me.

5 Things About Our Wedding Day

1. I wore a blue 1870s style dress and he wore a Civil War-ish uniform type suit.
2. He had a best man and a groomswoman.
3. We played “Storybook Love” to open our wedding service.
4. The pastor who married us began the service by saying “Mawwaige is what bwings us here togevvah today.”
5. My maid of honour and bridesmaid spent probably 5 times as long getting ready for the event as I did. I even had time to iron their clothes before I got dressed.

Peeking around at Fort Clatsop

5 Things About Our Honeymoon(s)

1. We spent our wedding night at the Hallmark Resort in Cannon Beach because the beach house we had planned to use failed to leave the key where it was supposed to be and it was 11pm when we arrived.
2. Our first honeymoon was along the northern coast of Oregon; our second was a couple months later in northeastern Pennsylvania.
3. After failing (in PA) a second time to secure a hotel before midnight, we made a reservation for one close to the airport in Newark where we flew from to go back home, only to walk in and see a circular bed bedecked with twinkle lights, upholstered headboard, and ceiling mirrors. We do not have luck with hotels.
4. I stood in Lake Erie in June. It was not scary at all.
5. I also stood in the Pacific. Barefoot, in April, in Oregon.

Baxter Hotel, Bozeman, Montana.

5 Places We Have Been Together Since Then

1. Bozeman, Montana
2. Sequim, Washington
3. Carson City, Nevada
4. Cataldo, Idaho
5. Bend, Oregon

Watching gardening videos together

5 Things I Am Thankful For in Our Marriage

1. Our two precious little girls
2. He watches gardening videos instead of (foot/base/basket) ball
3. We work well together
4. We have yet to get tired of always being together every day
5. He doesn’t buy me stuffed animals for Valentine’s Day (or ever)

Here’s to the next 5 years.

Tiny Paper Bits

When I was five or thereabouts, I remember having scissors in one hand and a piece of (probably pink) construction paper in the other hand, and I skipped and pranced about the house snipping little bits of the paper off as I went, leaving a beautiful pink trail of Tiny Paper Bits in my wake.

Unfortunately, my mom was less impressed with my beautiful pink trail of Tiny Paper Bits, and with much weeping and wailing, I was compelled to clean up all the Tiny Paper Bits.

Today GooGoo decided that her new scissors from Grandma were really fun for cutting up the food ads. Instead of prancing, she sat in one spot, but the effect in a living space this small was about the same: Tiny Paper Bits.

Here’s a nice action shot of her initial flinging about Tiny Paper Bits in a fit of rebellious rage

Interestingly, cleaning them up was a lot less fun than creating them. First I tried to bribe her with some chocolate. When she continued to flop on the floor and whine and wail about them, I told her she wouldn’t have the chocolate and we were going ahead with lunch and she could have lunch when she finished cleaning up the bits. She howled and hollered on the floor about WANNA TAKE A NAP and I NEED HELP and WANNA TAKE A NAP and WAAAAAAAAAAH. I started to count to three. On two she began to pick up more pieces.

Finally they were all cleaned up and she had lunch. She had rice and taco shells and even ate some tomatoes. A few hours have passed and as I look on the floor beside the bed where I’m sitting, I notice that a new batch of Tiny Paper Bits has materialised on the floor.

Hmm. The scissors may need to disappear for a while. In the meantime I’m going to pretend I don’t see the new batch of Tiny Paper Bits until later, because I don’t have much energy right now.

And now I’ve had a birthday.

And I’m 30, and I really don’t care. In fact, I’d like to flaunt it. 30, and flirty, and thriving, right?

Definitely.

So, my life this past week has been utterly insane and I’m reeling from all the insanity and struggling to keep my head above the water, so to speak. We had a bonfire on Sunday afternoon/evening (I’ll post about that later) and it was loads of fun but also loads of work and I made probably enough food to feed three times the people that showed up. I’m not complaining; we had very good attendance, but I think we’ll be eating Brasilian rice the rest of our lives.

Anyway, due to that, I haven’t slept well in about a week. I think too much while preparing for things and then I think too much afterwards. So. Much. Stimulation. And when I don’t get enough sleep, I begin to get incredibly irrational about everything, and life is miserable and there are lots of tears and everything is disaster and nuclear bombs and despair.

So I almost didn’t make myself a cake because I was feeling so low, but then I decided I would, because why not, even though I’ve been cooking a lot and I’m sick to death of the kitchen and I already have at least 3 kinds of cookies in large bags in the freezer and I’m kind of sick of sugar. Yes, me, sick of sugar.

So I made myself a cake. I call it the Minstrel Boy in Prison Cake. If you don’t get the reference, keep reading and you’ll get some hints later on.

I’m very picky when it comes to carrot cakes. I’ve tried a lot of recipes for them and while they’re all pretty good, the one I grew up with is still my favourite. It has all the elements I consider essential for a carrot cake, not the least of which is CRUSHED PINEAPPLE omnomnom.

So, let’s interject my mom’s carrot cake recipe here, veganised.

In large mixing bowl, sift together:

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour

3/4 c sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

In separate bowl, whisk together:

2/3 c veggie oil

4 T water + 1 T Ener-G egg replacer (this is equivalent to 2 eggs)

1 c finely grated carrots

1/2 c crushed pineapple in juice, undrained

1 tsp vanilla

Add liquid ingredients to dry and stir until moistened; beat 2 minutes at medium speed on electric mixer. [I did it by hand and just stirred it around a few times, definitely not for 2 minutes.] Bake at 350 in greased/floured 9×9″ pan for 35-45 minutes, whenever toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan if you plan to remove it.

Cream Cheese Frosting

3 oz. vegan cream cheese (I had Follow Your Heart brand in my fridge, but you could also use Tofutti)

1 T vegan margarine, softened

1 tsp vanilla

 2 c powdered sugar

In small bowl, beat cream cheese, margarine, and vanilla. Mix till light. Gradually add sugar, beating till fluffy. If necessary, add a bit of non-dairy milk or water to make it the correct spreading consistency.

This cake does need to remain refrigerated when not in use. (Or “pie”, as GooGoo insisted on calling it. She wanted to eat the “HAPPY BIRDAY” PIE all morning.)

***

Now, what about the minstrel boy?

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you’ll find him;
His father’s sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;
“Land of Song!” cried the warrior bard,
“Tho’ all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy right shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!”
The Minstrel fell! But the foeman’s chain
Could not bring that proud soul under;
The harp he lov’d ne’er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder;
And said “No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and brav’ry!
Thy songs were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery!

Now, if you still don’t get it, read the poem carefully and go back and look at the cake again.

And finally, here is a picture of a seriously awesome birthday present for you to enjoy looking at.

Oh yes I will. Expect recipes with pinenuts (that you can sub sunflower seeds for) in the future. *rolls around in the culinary gold that is pine nuts*

Road Trippin’ Across the PNW

Every once in a while I get an Urge to Go Somewhere.

Every once in a while I also have No Urge to Go Somewhere but Have to Go Anyway.

A couple weeks ago I had one of the No-Urge sorts of trips. I wasn’t enthused for a whole host of reasons but felt obligated, I guess, so I went.

I have to laugh at this sign every time I see it.

You do know, I hope, that Washington is NOT all Rain and Coldness. Only the westernmost and northern parts are green and precipitous; the mountains create a desert everywhere else. Nobody who hasn’t lived in Washington wants to believe this, but it is NONETHELESS TRUE. The same rule applies to Oregon.

I took GooGoo with me on a roadtrip in summer 2011, which entailed 10 days of visiting family and friends, going to a Bible camp, and seeing sights and museums along the way. It went swimmingly well and we had a really good time together despite her general non-interest in long car rides.

This was GooGoo at Wild Horse Monument at 18 months, roadtripping with Mommy. Look at that grumpface.

This trip of a few weeks ago is the first time I’ve gone far from home solo with both girls, however, and so I was a little worried about how it would go driving 5-ish hours there and 5-ish hours back. We left after church ended on Sabbath. I packed food we could eat in the car. GooGoo decimated a couple carrots’ worth of carrot sticks, a few pieces of flatbread, and some water. I got myself off on a wrong turn in the depths of urban Portland, but thankfully was able to get myself turned in the right direction. Along the way I had to stop to deal with GooGoo’s screaming and feed Lou Who. A little bit of bouncing about in the car while I was pulled over seemed to solve GooGoo’s problem, and diapers got changed, and we were off again.

I think the thing that surprised me most during the drive was realising that somewhere along the way GooGoo’s vocabulary has increased to a point where I found we were actually having conversations about what she was seeing out the window (Look, Mommy, snow! sheep! water! look! Go home. Where daddy?)

The last 45 minutes of the trip Lou Who was inconsolable. She cried and cried and I felt absolutely horrible, but I knew that if I was to pull over and take her out, she’d continue to cry as soon as I strapped her back in. I was so close that I just wanted to finish the drive, and it was getting dark and I don’t see well driving at night. So I kept reaching back to put her Nukky in her mouth and speaking comforting words to her, but I felt so bad all the same. I was glad to arrive and be able to cuddle and love and feed her back to happiness.

As soon as we arrived, GooGoo wanted the Beanie Babies out and then wanted to see Grandpa’s phone.

So, the girls got to see Grandma and Grandpa over the weekend and everyone had fun, I think. I had a productive Sunday on Skype with my sister sorting through things she left behind when she moved out. My car was jam-packed full of stuff when I left!

Then I went to see a former coworker I’ve continued to be friends with and her two little boys.

GooGoo had fun playing with her new friend

And then it was off to see other friends, where I was able to kick back and relax for a little bit. The girls were in general very happy.

GooGoo got to help with making sugar cookies

Lou Who shows off her tooth

GooGoo munching strawberries and chick’n seitan

I also got to go thrift-storing whilst there as well and scored a few Golden Books for GooGoo and some clothes for her and me.

The end result of the trip I’d rather dreaded? Everything went very smoothly and I actually had a very nice time, and the trip home was really easy. I stopped once to change diapers and feed Lou Who, once at Bob’s Red Mill to purchase Large Bags of Stuff, and then I didn’t have to stop again until I got home. I was so tired, having not slept well in a week, that it took a while to catch up on sleep sufficiently again. But it was also really nice to be back in my own space, on my normal schedule, with Mr Pine Nut and my cute feline furball.

I opened the window, and in flew Enza.

Two weeks ago today I was preparing to head north for a weekend with some friends, one of whom was having a baby shower. I felt really tired, lay down for a nap, and at some point after lunch, I became aware that I felt unnaturally cold. I cranked up the heater until it was 71 degrees in the house, and I was still cold. (Under normal circumstances I’d have been melting by this point. I like it cold.)

So, I figured I had a fever, and sure enough I did. It fluctuated between 99.5-102.3 from Wednesday afternoon on until I woke up Monday (the 4th) fever-free. On Friday I actually had to go to the ER for an IV because I was so dehydrated and could not seem to get enough water into me (my nose was so stuffed up that I had to breathe through my mouth and that’s the worst way to dry yourself out).

I don’t think I’ve ever had the flu before. I hope I never have it again. This was vicious and merciless to me. I was useless for days, barely able to get up to just go to the bathroom. Over the weekend my milk supply tanked and I struggled to keep Lou Who fed and hydrated. I got her to drink a couple small bottles of warm water with peppermint one night but the next night we had to get her some formula because I just had nothing for her.

That was really, really hard for me. I hadn’t wanted to start her on solids for maybe another month still and now I’ve had to introduce all kinds of foreign substances into her gut just to keep her fed. Was it necessary? Yes. I couldn’t let her starve. But that doesn’t mean I enjoyed having to do it. Formula’s first ingredient is corn syrup, after all, and without labelling we have no way to know it’s not GMO corn, and the soy probably is GMO too.

Thankfully she only had to have it a few times. She really hated it. There were a couple times she guzzled it down, but my guess is she finally got hungry enough that she took it. Most of what we made ended up down the drain wasted, unfortunately. One of my friends got me an herbal tincture and some fenugreek to take and it seems that they helped, because my supply is now back.

Lesson learned: I need to have a stash of pumped milk on hand. I intend to start putting up a stash as soon as I can find where I stuck my box of bags. (I put them in one of those so-obvious places that I’d surely remember.) I hope I’ll never have to fall back on the stash, but at least I’ll have it. If I don’t use it, I’ll give it away to someone who can. (Check out Human Milk for Human Babies, Oregon.)

Nothing like Instagram to document one’s sickness in vintageous detail.

Anyway, it’s been a lousy 2 weeks, and I’m just now starting to get back on my feet. Kind people have brought us a lot of food to eat and this has really helped because Mr Pine Nut and then Lou Who both came down with this. Lou Who had the fever and the stuffy nose mostly; she seemed to remain fairly alert. GooGoo finally got the fever this Sunday, so we’ll see how she fares. Mr Pine Nut was out for a couple days but never seemed quite as close to death’s door as I felt. I hope next week I can have something foodie to share with you, but no promises.

Snowflake/Hanukkah Birthday Party

My internet was down for a while this week and I didn’t have time to finish the post I wanted to post this week, so you’re getting this one instead.

It’s wintertime still, so I’m going to write a little bit about GooGoo’s first birthday party. It fell during Hanukkah, in December, so I decided to make it blue and white and go with a snowflake theme.

I’m the type who tends to plan things way in advance, because I like to Plan Things and Make Lists. It’s like a disease. In fact, the planning is far more fun for me than the execution. I started planning Lou Who’s first birthday party the spring before she was even born. Yes, I’m crazy.

Because GooGoo was only a year old, I felt no need to get really elaborate with games or anything like that. I chose to do this cake, only with a round pan because I was too cheap to shell out the dough for the hexagonal one, and made her a party dress to match.

I did a homemade cocoanut cake recipe and put icing and a layer of cocoanut flakes between the two layers of cake.

I’d share the cake recipe I used, except I have no idea which one it was. Something off the internet somewhere. It was very good, but was more a muffin-y texture than light and fluffy like cake really should be. I was still pretty new to the world of vegan cake-age at this point. I also did cocoanut milk ice cream from a recipe I’ve never been able to relocate online. (Note to self: THIS IS WHY BROWSERS HAVE BOOKMARKS kthxbai.) I used the classic Wilton buttercream recipe for the cake.

This is my finished adapted version of the cake. Making a non-wonky Star of David would have been much easier with the guiding points of the hexagonal cake shape.

Just for the record, don’t make the same mistake I did. I frosted the cake and popped it in the freezer a few days ahead of time to decorate later. It didn’t work so well because then the frosting sweated when I pulled it out and the decorating frosting didn’t want to stick. At all. I would have done better to just do ALL the decorating and freeze it ahead of time.

Side view. Because I was having so much trouble getting the decorations to stick, I just did stars instead of the more intricate snowflakes on the sides.

I should also add that I am NOT a cake decorator and have more wrecks than successes, by far. Someday I’ll share some of my wrecks for your entertainment. Maybe. This is one of my finer moments in cake decorating and it’s still not exactly pristine. But I was satisfied with it anyway.

And GooGoo had a custom-made dress to match her cake.

I was absolutely in love with this dress. I wanted to eat it up. The fabric was leftovers and freebies from someone’s garage sale haul, too, so it only cost me my time. Looking forward to having Lou Who get to wear it too.

We had both sets of grandparents to the party and some family friends. I served latkes with applesauce and tofu sour cream (the latkes weren’t vegan; I wasn’t brave enough or skilled enough to try doing them minus eggs at the time). I am pretty sure we also had green salad, but I have no pictures of that, so I’m not 100% sure.

After we had the meal, we had cake, ice cream, and presents. The doily under the cake was a lovely gift from a lady who has since died, but did incredibly crocheted handwork despite being legally blind.

And, because it’s my blog and I can, I leave you with GooGoo’s official birthday portrait.

GooGoo’s 3rd Birthday

GooGoo is 3.

Three years ago GooGoo joined our family and our life has been quite an adventure ever since. GooGoo is feisty, stubborn, sweet, and beautiful. Despite the bedtime battles that have raged ever since she entered the world and her tendency to throw fits, gnaw her fingernails, pull out her hair, and say “no” a lot, she is still becoming more and more fun all the time. She can talk to us, she loves to help in the kitchen stirring food and wiping tables, she sings Jesus Loves Me and Jingle Bells and loves to look at books, “reading” them to herself. (Somehow the sentence “Jesus a comin’ to trailer” always manages to get into any story she might be “reading”.) We wouldn’t trade her for any other little girl. She keeps us on our toes. She loves her little sister.

For her cake, I was inspired by this pin. I had made the dress earlier this year and it was too big at the time, so I figured she could wear it for her birthday and, of course, the cake had to match. I did two layers of cake: vanilla and chocolate gluten-free from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, using mint extract in them, and filled and frosted the sides with chocolate frosting. (I’ll talk more about the cake when I review this book next month.)

I had to frost the cake at least partly in chocolate because I don’t like white-frosted chocolate cake.

She had a nice party with some great-aunts-and-uncles, grandparents, and of course us.

gggggqrtejjjjjjjghfddeeeefghrdeey42 <—This is GooGoo’s message to you.

Happy Fall!

 

Fall has arrived.

Yesterday GooGoo helped me rake leaves.

I turned this part of our driveway into an obstacle course of leaf piles. (Good thing it’s a circular driveway, or we’d have a time of it getting out.)

It’s really hard to get a picture of this goofball.

Dance of the Rake

Tonight we went on a walk and GooGoo had fun looking at the water.

 

 

Not on the Topic of Cooking

And today I’m going to take a break from food talk, just because it’s my blog and I can, and because I’m about to bombard you with almost-daily food posts all October.

So, let’s talk about thrift stores.

I didn’t grow up with a thrift-storing mom. Sometimes we’d go and look around, but the stores always stunk and we seldom came away with anything except occasionally a newborn-size baby dress for one of my stuffed animals to wear, or something like that. Just wasn’t our thing.

When I was in my early 20s I worked at a fabric store right next door to a Goodwill and I started stopping in there a lot on my way to or from work and got in the habit of buying records and books there and sometimes clothes and often shoes. But it was after I got married that I really started to fall in love with thrift stores.

The stores do tend to stink, and some are definitely more trashy than others. They aren’t always a guarantee of good deals, either. Still, when you consider that generally you’ll be paying more even at Walmart, the thrift store prices look pretty good. There is something very satisfying about the Thrill of the Hunt and Bragging Rights Gained by Finding a New Toddler Dress for a Dollar.

My most-frequented spots in the Willamette Valley area:

• Teen Challenge’s thrift stores in Albany and Lebanon, especially the one in Lebanon, because they have a bin of baby/toddler clothes for 49 cents a piece. I’ve gotten a LOT of things for my girls out of that bin.
• Jack and Jill in Albany in the past was one of my favourite places to go, but after the owner was found guilty of racketeering I have decided not to patronise her store any more. It’s a pity, because she had a nice selection and pretty reasonable prices. Many of my favourite clothes for GooGoo came from here.
• Mother Goose Resale is another really nice place. The prices aren’t really particularly low, but the clothes are in good shape and the Albany location particularly has a great rack of maternity clothes. The Lebanon location is new but I’ve found some super cute stuff there and they did have a 50-cent rack at least one time when I went there, and I hear that they bought Replay in Corvallis and will be reopening that as a new Mother Goose location.
• I check Goodwill fairly often but especially in Corvallis the prices on almost everything are pretty steep for a thrift store. I do find some stuff there sometimes but generally more for me and not so much for my girls.

Do you go to thrift stores or yard sales? Where are your favourite places?

Random Bullet Points

Do you like bullet points? Whether you do or not, I have some for you.

• I use ginger fairly regularly, but not quite often enough to use up an entire ginger root before it spoils. So I grate it up and freeze it in a plastic container and scoop out what I need as I need it. Just don’t pack it down, or it’ll be really hard to scoop out.

• Despite the recommendation to Not Keep Garlic or Onions in the Fridge, I do anyway. They last longer and onions produce less tears streaming down my face if they’re cold. Also, if I have more garlic than I can use (think those big bags of pre-peeled cloves from Costco), I do the same thing as I do with ginger: I press it all and pop it in the freezer and scoop out bits as I need it.

• I LOVE discount grocery stores. In our area we have two Grocery Depots and a couple Grocery Outlets. Good things can be found at both, but I prefer Grocery Depot myself. When they have shelf-stable non-dairy milks, it’s 79 cents a quart, and it’s usually feast or famine with it because they only get what they’re given. (Things that are getting close to expiring, have damaged boxes, or the like.) One time they had Sabra hummus for 50 cents a container and once they had frozen tofu 4 for $1. I can deal with deals like that.

• Did you know that unfrosted strawberry pop tarts are vegan?