The Muffin Girls (plus)!

I realize I'm about to have my one year anniversary for this blog but haven't posted in 3 1/2 months, so better get busy! There is way too much to ever catch up on since the last post so I thought we'd start with the most recent events . . . THE MUFFIN GIRLS!

Mom and I baked 60 muffins on Thursday night for the 3rd grade muffin sale to raise money for our spring farm trip - each family takes a week to bake muffins. We made 1 dozen gluten and dairy free banana muffins and then 4 dozen regular banana muffins, using our friend Ann's famous banana bread recipe (thanks Ann!).


We weren't sure exactly how many ripe bananas we would need, so after piano lesson we picked up a few more. After making the first 3 batches we started to get nervous if we'd have enough to finish our muffins. One of my main jobs was mashing the bananas. For our first two regular recipe batches, we had to use 6 bananas to get 2 mashed cups. For our second two regular batches we only had 4 bananas left and they were pretty small - this is what made us worried . . . ! After I mashed those 4 smaller bananas I was surprised that we had a little more than 2 mashed cups and I realized it was like . . . THE CHANUKAH MIRACLE!



A few more things from this past fall. My Grandpa Mickey and Ms. Wendy came to our house for Thanksgiving. On Friday after, we went downtown to ice skate . . .



and see some of the Christmas displays. This creche is the only one modeled after the one at the Vatican and is the largest one in the United States.

We had lunch at Habitat, where this blog started, and dinner at DISH, which I've already written about as one of my favorite restaurants in Pittsburgh. At DISH, I had the Gnocchi with Wild Boar for dinner and I've never had anything like that before. I have to say that it was SOOOOO good (and Daddy agreed by eating my leftovers the next day for lunch). We're headed back to Habitat over the holidays and really like sitting where we can see the kitchens best. (And we'll also go back to DISH soon too because our friends just gave us some gift certificates - THANK YOU Marian and Jim!)

Back in October I helped Mom bake her famous carrot birthday cake (her favorite baking ordeal of the year) . . .


and then delivered with birthday song and fork at the ready!


Make a wish Mom!


You can see that there are pieces already taken out of the cake because after two days of working each night to make this cake, Mom decided she wanted to have her cake for her birthday breakfast - let's just EAT IT!

Notes from New Hampshire

I love vacation!

It has been a long time since any posts from me and there is so much to catch up on. First, since it is most recent, I want to talk about New Hampshire. We returned last week from an amazing 10 days on Squam Lake in Holderness, NH. The picture above is from Rattlesnake, a hike we like to do that gives us a great view of Squam Lake and, through the binoculars, Camp Arcadie.

There are three NH food highlights that I want to share and the first is the person who makes the most amazing blueberry waffles on the planet . . . my Gampa! (This picture shows me and Gampa having a great conversation out on the dock before dinner. If you can find the rocks on the mountain right above my head . . . that is Rattlesnake, where I was standing in the first picture!)


Gampa's waffles are perfectly crisped on the outside and still soft inside. They aren't too sweet, and they have just the right balance of blueberries to enjoy the fruit flavor without being soggy and overdone, or purple. The recipe he has tested for years is made even better, once cooked, with a bit of butter on top (some people like more than I do) and the best maple syrup, made almost next door in NH at Burleigh Farms - this is REAL maple syrup from maple trees, not maple-flavored high-fructose corn syrup made from an ear of sweet corn from Iowa.

Gampa's tools are also part of the secret to his blue ribbon waffles and these tools are his waffle iron and timer. While most waffles have large-holes, called Belgian waffles, Gampa's waffle iron has small holes, which helps keep the waffles crisp because they are not as fat as the Belgian ones - this also helps with holding the butter and syrup in just the right amount when they're done too. The waffle iron's timer - beep beep beep beep beep - let's Gampa know when the iron is hot enough to pour on another batch; his own kitchen timer (I think it is set for four minutes) let's him know when the waffles are actually ready (he doesn't trust the waffle iron timer for this).

Everyone in the family tries to match his recipe and timing, even searching out the proper waffle iron, which is hard to find and extra expensive because it isn't as popular as the Belgian waffle irons - no one's waffles so far, that I've tried, even come close. Daddy has promised to give it another go over Labor Day weekend. Even if they aren't as good as Gampa's, it is worth the try, and I'm sure they'll still be "Dee-lish!"

On a day trip to Portsmouth to visit this cool town, have a day at the beach, and a lobster dinner (for my parents), I began my NH clam chowder tour. I'll rank them first:

1. Old Ferry Landing in Portsmouth, NH has the best
2. Squam Lake Inn in Holderness, NH was second best
   
3. Ray's Seafood Restaurant in Rye, NH was third
   

We started with lunch at the Old Ferry Landing in Portsmouth overlooking the harbor. This is our second year to eat lunch there, sitting out on the deck and watching the boat traffic, the drawbridge that goes up to let the big boats through, and to see Maine on the other side. This year Auntie Holly and my cousin Karla came with us. This chowder that I liked the best was the most thin without being runny, had paprika sprinkles on top that turned it kind of pink-ish, and because the flavor was the most like ocean - like when you first arrive at the coast and the smell is so strong you can taste it too - salty-ish, fishy-ish, yummy . . . Dee-lish.

View from our patio table at the Old Ferry Landing - the drawbridge is in the up position and the red boat with big antennas is about to go under.

We were down at the beach in Rye, NH at the end of our beach day and had dinner at Ray's, where we've been many times before. Mom and Dad like to get lobsters there for dinner and I really don't like breaking them apart and seeing their little eyes - it freaks me out. So I ordered clam chowder once again and it was good, but not as good, really it was only so-so in my book, though Auntie Holly liked it better. What I didn't like as much was that it was too thick for my taste and was just too creamy tasting - where's the ocean? Even though I could see the ocean there was no ocean flavor.

Back at the lake a few days later, we all had lunch at the Squam Lake Inn in Holderness. Last year, my Auntie and Uncle had a really nice anniversary party at the Inn and it is really a great place (they have great homemade cookies and homemade ice cream sandwiches with those cookies too). For lunch that day I had a half turkey sandwich and bowl of clam chowder. It was a bit thicker and creamier than Old Ferry Landing with nice big chunks of potatoes and clams. The only thing that puts it second on the list is that it didn't remind me so much of the ocean. More ocean taste than Ray's but not enough to match the deliciousness of my favorite at the Old Ferry Landing.



These are my two cousins who live in California. The top picture is Purna - she was my roommate last year - and the bottom is with Emerson, we are sharing the wind board that we turned into a stand up paddle board. It was great to see them! If we weren't swimming, paddling, hiking, or singing, we might have been dreaming about Campground Ice Cream. Although that isn't really the name, just the name we all call it, they have the very best Peppermint Stick ice cream, in fact the only Peppermint Stick ice cream, that I've ever had! It is a really pretty pink color and this year, cousin Karla had the great idea to put hot fudge on top!

My FAVORITE ice cream of the whole NH trip this year though was at Annabelle's Ice Cream in Portsmouth. After our lunch at the Old Ferry Landing, we walked on this really cool street and in Annabelle's I had the very best chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream - EVER. Really! The chunks of dough seemed like they were about to make real cookies, the dough was so fresh and soft (in a good way). They had nice BIG chunks too, which was my favorite part.

This is a picture of our fire pit on the end of the dock watching the full moon rise over Squam Lake - picture perfect vacation!

Mom here posting for Lila. I'm in Wyoming and she's in Pittsburgh and we've been chatting about "the next post" since before I left. Last post, Lila mentioned wanting to write about all of the wonderful things that happened the last week of school . . . here are the highlights:

• A Tuesday tie dye extravaganza where each child in the grades tie dyed their own Waldorf School shirt.
• An end of the year Fiesta on Wednesday with their Spanish teacher where they broke open the pinata they made and had chips, salsa, and guacamole! Ole!
  
• Thursday was a field trip and picnic - all the children wore their tie dye t-shirts. Then Lila's class went on a hike into the woods with their teacher and were surprised to find that the Gnomes they had spent so much time knitting throughout the spring, had made it to the forest to surprise them! Lila's had climbed a small tree and she had to ask for help to get her down. The children had a kind of watermelon treat tea-party with their Gnomes, children and Gnomes together (can't wait to see and post the photo of this, the knitted gnomes are amazing!).
  
• On Friday they cleaned their classroom and desks and then moved all of their gear to the third grade classroom - Pebbles their turtle will spend the summer with their teacher.

What a wonderful 2nd Grade year!

Lila's last day of school was a half day, followed by an all-school picnic. After the picnic we came home and began working on our first batch of homemade ice cream for the summer, beginning our ice cream experiments with mint chocolate chip in icy blue . . . . It took awhile of churning and the ice cream still needed to freeze up some in the freezer but it was pretty tasty! (We've since made pumpkin ice cream trying to replicate that of Campground Ice Cream in Holderness, NH . . . ours was rich, but still not quite as good, we're sad to report . . . .)


The next week was "Mom Camp" and while we both had so much fun and did so many cool things, turns out we can hardly remember them all . . . . On Wednesday we went to the Mattress Factory to volunteer and help the museum get ready for a big party they had coming up that weekend. We worked together in a team (Andy says, "You can't have (fill in the blank) without T-E-A-M!") to put tags on 300 pair of sunglasses - whew! We celebrated with some lunch at their delicious cafe that has food by M Catering (our neighbor). And get this . . . for dessert, we had gingersnaps with Nutella - WHOA! Try it!

After the Mattress Factory we went to the bike trail on the South Side (our bikes were handy in the truck) and rode the trail from REI to almost where Andy parks downtown. Lila put her brakes on every other mulberry tree and proceeded to gather a good amount of mulberries in her basket. Then she ate them, and then later . . . she didn't feel so well because of eating so many (but the Nutella might have played a roll in this too, I see now).

Lila also worked on some very important clay sculptures, one a replica of Princess Kate and Prince Williams' wedding cake. While we don't, unfortunately, have images of that cake before packaging it up to send to them, I did scan the front and back of the envelope that contained Lila's letter to the Princess, now Duchess . . . (decided to only show back, the front was gorgeous but has just too much personal information to share here).


Since Mom camp, Lila has enjoyed the Science of Sports at the Science Center and last week she had Comics and Cartoons at the Art Museum with the good fortune of having one of her former Waldorf teachers lead the class. They even had an art opening in the museum on Friday! (She's made the museum before me - bah!) Dream House, an architecture camp, is this week after the holiday festivities, and she will end her week with fanfare by celebrating her 9th birthday! Next week she and her dad join me in Wyoming - can't wait!

We always attempt to ease the sadness at parting, when one of us will be gone for a period of time, by taking Polaroid photos - one for each person - so we can have them at home and during travels. Lila mentioned how much she likes this ritual - as I became more and more behind schedule in my leave taking - and you know what . . . I like it too.

Perhaps some Wyoming adventures next? Or some birthday pictures? Stay tuned . . . !

What a day!

There is so much exciting news to catch up on from the last week but I have to start with last Friday, June 3rd. A couple of really exciting things happened that day.

First: it was my mom and dad's 16th anniversary - HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to them!

Second: it was my birthday celebration at school - kids with summer birthdays are invited to celebrate with the class before the school year ends! Mom made a pumpkin molasses cake with cream cheese frosting and baked it in a bundt pan so it was like a giant doughnut that I could share with my friends and my teacher. Mom and dad brought the cake at the end of the school day and we sliced it up - the cake was amazing from my perspective!

Third: when school ended, my mom and dad took me out to the car and handed me tickets for Cirque du Soleil's TOTEM and told me we were all going to see the show right then and there. This was really such a surprise! So many of my friends from school had seen the show and I knew my parents wanted to see it too but mom kept telling me that it was just too expensive and that maybe we could see them next time they were in town. I changed into my dress in the car and we headed for the huge blue and yellow tents down in the Strip district! What a fun way to celebrate an anniversary and a birthday at the same time!

None of us had ever seen Cirque du Soleil before and we LOVED it! The show was STUPENDOUS, FABULOUS, AMAZING, AWESOME, and GREAT! My favorite acts were the Amerindian Hoop Dancer and the Rings (blue, orange, and pink - the girl is especially awesome)! My mom's favorites were the Hoop Dancer and the Russian Bars. My dad's favorites were the Perches and the Russian Bars - and he also liked the variety of "clowns" in the show, especially the Italian one.

Fourth: I knew that mom had made reservations for one of our favorite restaurants that very same night, I just didn't know we'd be seeing Cirque before going. Remember my friend Nico? (I traded him a squishy for the Buddha eraser for my mom for Mother's Day, remember?) Nico's family owns and operates an awesome restaurant on the South Side called DISH OSTERIA. Nico's dad and uncle were there and my parents began the evening with cocktails - dad had a Gin Rickey and mom had a Lavender Lemondrop, funny names for drinks huh? I had pineapple juice. Nico's dad started us off with a crostini with smoked mozzarella, prosciutto, and funghi, which is a Italian word for fungi, which really means mushrooms in this case. The crostini was kind of like a pizza and it was amazingly good - I could have ordered another helping of that for dinner. But . . . I had already ordered some other things.

I began with a really good soup that had cheese tortellini in a house made organic chicken broth with spinach, carrot, celery, and onion. I really liked the soup, it could have used a little more salt for my taste buds and the tortellini was just too filling for me - but that's just me, my parents thought it was the bomb! My parents started with grilled calamari that I almost forgot about because I think they just gobbled it up - all I remember are little white balls.

For dinner, I had marlin carpaccio with rainbow microgreens and HUGE capers. The microgreens were pretty but I wasn't into them (my dad gobbled them up however) and I refused to share my capers! The marlin was unbelievable - I'm a sushi nut, so "unbelievable" is a pretty serious rating.

Mom had swordfish and spinach - she ate the leftovers for lunch the next day and would only give me a small bite. Dad ordered the softshell crab and polenta that was highly recommended by Nico's dad, but he almost ended up with the copper river salmon with asparagus and mashed potatoes. The server - who was fabulous and who my parents have had before - thought dad had ordered the salmon and brought it out for him with our meals. Dad almost grabbed it out of her hands because it looked sooooooo good, but she put in a new order for the soft shell crab before he could grab it. The good thing about all of this is that we got to linger at DISH because our time there just always seems to go way too fast.

And now, for dessert, the highlight of any meal (drum roll please), dad had the famous chocolate bread pudding and I was lucky enough to have the very last slice of mango cake. We knew that Nico's grandma made the chocolate bread pudding that my parents love and say is absolutely amazing - it is served warm with a dollop of whipped cream on the side and a sprig of mint (I didn't taste it)! What we didn't know until later is that she makes ALL of the desserts. I just have to say that the mangoes in the mango cake were unbelievably fresh and you could taste them more than the cake itself. I loved the coconut on the outside of the cake too and my mom and I were like sword fighters with our forks dueling for the next bite. Here's a message for Nico's grandma: YOU TAKE THE CAKE! And to Nico and his family: we LOVE DISH! Thank you for a wonderful meal.

By the way, DISH was once again voted one of Pittsburgh's Top 25 Restaurants in the recent issue of Pittsburgh Magazine - congratulations to a terrific restaurant and family. If you haven't been there, go - but I'll arm wrestle you for the last slice of mango cake!

What a fabulous day I had, I am such a lucky girl!

(PS - I want everyone to know that anything that is written here is absolutely true, from my perspective. For example, I didn't try the chocolate bread pudding - I was too into my mango cake - so it was my parent's opinion that I shared instead of my own.)

I'm out of school now, more to come soon, gotta catch up . . . !

North Carolina Weekend + Some West Virginia Food

We headed down to North Carolina for the L O N G Memorial Day weekend. Mom and Dad picked me up from school on Thursday and we headed to Fayetteville, WV, one of “the coolest small towns in America.” Fayetteville is almost the half way point between Pittsburgh and Cary, NC where my Tita (my name for Auntie) and cousins live, and we stopped there for the night and to have dinner at our favorite Pies and Pints. It is our favorite stopping point because the pizza is soooooo good, Mom and Dad like the beer selection, and the service is always great. I had a small pepperoni pizza and Mom and Dad had the Thai Pie. We sat on the patio for the first time and then almost as soon as we got there, we had to close the plastic curtains on the patio because a thunderstorm came up; the storm left a DOUBLE rainbow!

We headed to Cary the next morning and arrived in a thunderstorm - we didn’t bring it with us, I swear! I got to meet my new cousin Amelia - she is soooooo CUTE! - and I spent the weekend playing with my cousin Pilar, who is 5 ½ years old. We had yummy extra chocolate cake and lasagna at grandma’s on Friday night (she lives in Cary too).

Amelia, my youngest cousin

On Saturday, Mom made her famous coffee cake for breakfast and then we helped open the neighborhood pool for the summer season by swimming and eating their free hot dogs in the sunshine. That night, Grandma babysat while the adults went out to explore Raleigh's brewpubs. On Sunday we headed to Chapel Hill for a picnic at GranTita and John’s house where I got to see my Greatgrandma Nonny. I played an awesome game of badminton and played with Pilar in GranTita’s beautiful garden. I especially liked the shredded BBQ chicken and the homemade vanilla ice cream with brownies. GranTita and I played the piano for everyone.

Pilar and me at the pool

Back at Tita’s house, the girl’s looked through Papa’s treasure box for the first time - it is a cigar box that he had high up on a shelf in his garage that is filled with arrowheads, handmade buttons, old pennies, and little pieces of paper (a receipt, a ticket stub to the Texas Theatre, a tag that says “made in Japan,” and another that says “Don’t Open Till Xmas”).

We left this morning to head back to Pittsburgh and stopped in Fayetteville again, this time to eat at Diogi’s Mexican Grill and Cantina, a dog loving and delicious Mexican restaurant with a Salvadoran flair. I had the chicken enchilada and it was DEEE-LISH, as Daddy would say, and it was the first time I had an enchilada! Oh yeah, the queso was really yummy too!

Now . . . I’ve been promising the triple roasted marshmallow technique and we’ve been waiting out the rain for the opportunity to make them again but since so much time has been passing, I want to be sure you have the recipe for your summer roasting pleasure. (Mom broke her camera lens this weekend, so no pictures until it is fixed.)

Here’s the technique:

• First, it is important to SLOWLY roast the marshmallow. Once it has browned nicely, carefully peel off the browned skin goodness of your marshmallow and eat the browned part - YUM.
• Second, slowly roast what remains on your stick some more until you get the roasted brown skin goodness again . . . carefully peel that off, eat it - YUM once again.
• Third, slowly roast what little remains of the marshmallow, and once it is roasted to perfection, eat the entire thing! YUM for the Third Time! Woohoo! Triple roasted marshmallow perfection, with a dose of patience.

Bon appetit!

Happy Mother's Day!

Daddy and I tricked out Mommy's bike for her for Mother's Day (no pictures yet because it is still in the shop), and I also traded my friend Nico a see-through moose squishie for this Buddha pencil eraser (not quite a squishie). For those of you who don't know, squishies are this year's silly bands. Nico was trading squishies and I happened to see the Buddha on his desk. Remembering that Sunday was Mother's Day, I tried to think of something good to trade knowing that I wanted the Buddha for my mom. So . . . I asked if he would trade my see-through moose for the Buddha and he said, "Okay." SCORE! And Mom LOVED IT!

I know I promised the triple roasted marshmallow recipe (and we may do it still tonight) but it has been raining like crazy in Pittsburgh (the past TWO months) and we haven't had a chance to try since our treehouse camping weekend. Here are my latest clay creations though, I've been really into making clay miniatures for my dolls. These I just wanted to make anyway but also because Mr. Hare is reading Alice in Wonderland to us in class and I've been thinking of the little cakes that Alice eats to get big and also to get small. So here's my version of her cakes - I just gave the carrot cake to our neighbor Benita because she liked it.

This is Daddy's set up for Mother's Day dinner - one of Momma's favorite treats, Sake Steak that they first read about in Saveur Magazine many years ago (before I was born). Daddy's trying it a bit differently today by briefly smoking the filet mingnon steaks with sage and hay from our garden. Next he dredges the steaks in kosher salt, cooks them on the grill for two minutes each side. He washes the salt off by bathing the steaks in sake, cooks them for two minutes each side again. Then he bathes them in a soy sauce bath and cooks them three minutes more on each side. The steaks caramelize on the outside because of the sugar in the sake and the soy sauce, and inside they are de-lec-ta-ble!

Happy Mother's Day Mom! And all other Moms out there. Triple roasted marshmallows to come - pinky swear!

Treehouse Camping

It has been about three weeks since I last posted on my blog and a lot has been going on! I had a great spring break with my grandparents, my mom went out of town to the Dallas Art Fair, my dad brewed beer, and after spring break we began learning our play about St. Francis in school. (This Friday, April 29th we will perform in the morning for the other grades children and that night we will perform for our families and then we will celebrate afterward with a potluck dinner.)

This weekend is Easter and last weekend we met our friends Linn and Sheppy for Treehouse Camping in northern Maryland. The cottages aren't really treehouses but are up high on stilts on a hill among the trees. Here's our cottage:


The first night we cooked our dinner on the campfire. The next morning we cooked on the wood burning stove. It rained like crazy the entire day on Saturday and we still had an awesome time. The wood stove kept our cottage warm during the day when we were tending the fire, but at night when we slept it got a little chilly because no one was awake to take care of the fire. I just started reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods again and our little cottage with the wood stove and bunks with mats to sleep on in our sleeping bags, reminded me a bit of some of the stories from the book and what it must have been like for Laura growing up.

We read, played games, drew pictures, and later in the afternoon we went into town to have ice cream and go to a flea market. It was raining so hard on our way to the flea market that we could hardly see to drive. My friend Sheppy bought me this awesome car and when we came out of the flea market, it had stopped raining for a few minutes and all the roads were flooded. Before we drove through the flood, Linn treated us to three fast driving donuts in her car in the parking lot! (That was one of my favorite things from the trip!)

As we headed back to the camp we came across a number of flooded bridges that we slowed down to drive through with big waves of muddy water splashing up around us. When we got back to the camp, the camp road seemed to be washing away so my daddy drove us up the hill but parked before our camp just to be safe. We watched the storm and walked down to the main road, which had turned into a river within about 1/2 an hour of our return. It was exciting and scary too because we heard there were tornado alerts. I've never seen so much rain all day long - it was crazy. Thank goodness we were dry and warm in our treehouse cottage.

On Sunday when we woke up it had finally stopped raining, the water seemed to have mostly disappeared but the road had really deep cracks in it. A tractor had come to work on rebuilding the road while we packed up and we had to go out of the campground in two separate directions because my mom's car was on one side of the deeply rutted road and Linn's car was on the other side. We made it out, headed into town for breakfast and none of the water that we drove through the night before was still there. Where did it go so quickly? On our way back to Pittsburgh that day it seemed like all the rivers were overflowing so I guess the water rushed to the rivers and then to the sea.

I had a great weekend with Shep.


While treehouse camping I developed new technique for triple roasting marshmallows . . . stay tuned!

I AM THE CHEF!

I'm on spring break and my grandparents are here taking care of me while my parents work. Mom assigned me Wednesday night for cooking to help out - and since I love to cook - and last night I made Spaghetti Amatriciana from The Silver Spoon for Children: Favorite Italian Recipes cookbook.

I also made a tomato salad with a recipe I created myself; here's the recipe:

• first you need tomatoes - cherry tomatoes are perfect
• cut the tomatoes in half and put them in a bowl
• add olive oil, chopped cilantro, and a pinch of salt
• toss ingredients and present your tomatoes nicely
• Voila!
  

Shoe . . . box . . . Tour . . .

This is my shoe:

This is a shoe box:

This is the Shoebox Tour 2011:

On Friday night the Shoebox Tour 2011, an international juggling tour, came to my school, the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh, for a show (Thursday night the Shoebox Tour was at AiP, where my daddy works). Jay Gilligan and Wes Peden were the jugglers for this year's tour. Jay was born in Ohio and Wes was born in New York and they both now live in Sweden. This was my 4th year to see the Shoebox Tour perform in Pittsburgh - the second year at my school - each year it is a different group of jugglers and each year they are AWESOME! Here's why: My favorite parts are always the funny parts! One was when Jay pulled off Wes' shoe, and then Wes stuck his other shoe out for Jay to take, but Jay was still too busy juggling, and so Wes hopped over to Jay and put his foot on Jay's leg and pulled his shoe off while Jay was still juggling (without dropping any of the balls he was juggling)! And then . . . Wes did three back flips on the wooden stage! Whew!

They started the show with Jay juggling three pink sand balls that had balloons attached to them. It was crazy because the sand balls were heavier and the balloons kept dragging behind. After some juggling, Wes came over with a long thin pin and started popping the balloons as Jay juggled the sand balls, without ever poking Jay - how do they do that? Seriously, how did he do that without poking Jay? Mom says, "It's all about good timing." You wont believe how good their timing really is unless you see their show. There are parts where they are all twisted up together and are both juggling, another part where one holds the other's hands and makes his hands juggle. The show is funny and amazing and is kind of like the 4th of July with so many "Ooohs and Ahhhs", clapping and cheering. We were all kind of tired and worn out at the end because it is hard work to keep up with what they're doing, trying to figure it all out.

I'd personally like to thank Jay and Wes for doing their FABULOUS show at my school again this year, raising money for the school, and also introducing more people in Pittsburgh to Shoebox's AWESOME juggling (which is really so different than any other juggling I've ever seen)! THANK YOU JAY AND WES!

If you live on the east coast, they're coming your way, check their calendar at sbta11.blogspot.com for tour dates the next two weeks from Virginia to Maine.

Some of my favorite breads . . .

First, apologies for missing my post last week. I went on a little trip - a PA-staycation - with my parents last weekend to Lake Erie. Before coming back I got to go onto the re-creation of the U.S.S. Brig Niagara, the warship that won the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. It was interesting and . . . cold, because there was a blizzard while we were there. We got our own private tour of the ship after looking through the museum because we were the only ones in the museum . . . because there was a blizzard. I'll be glad to go on it again this summer when it sails - if my parents let me. This picture (by Lance Woodworth) is a little different from our tour because when we were there, the sails were not up, the skies were not blue, the water was frozen, and the ship was tied to the dock, but it was still AWESOME.

But today's topic is really my favorite breads because it has been a kind of bread-y weekend . . . (at least it wasn't a pork-y weekend, as my mom says).

Almost every Saturday, my dad and I (and sometimes my mom) go to the farmer's market by Home Depot in East Liberty. The market is awesome, we buy all of our meat there (except for fish), many of our vegetables, fresh eggs, apples, apple cider, Amish goat cheese, olive oil, and my parents get coffee. And there is also a baker lady who's name is Rebecca (I used to call her "the baker lady" before I knew her name). She always has a nice selection of pies and breads and pizzas. My daddy was talking tonight about how her table at the market reminds him of bakery windows in Europe. She sometimes has brownies and also usually has some turnover-like pies that are filled with sweet potatoes, or regular potatoes, with chives or the ones with carmelized onion only - these are my favorite of her turnover pies! I also like her ricotta tarts but get tired of them if I have them too often - and I have had them too often sometimes (blame my parents).

I also LOVE her zucchini bread! Daddy now buys two of her bigger loaves so I can have it for breakfast and also in my lunch each week - her big loaves are not as big as the loaves of bread in the store and they last just the right amount of time. I think that I remember her saying that her zucchini bread recipe is her grandmother's recipe. I'm not really a fan of zucchini AT ALL, especially if it is overcooked and mushy, and I don't know what Rebecca does with the bread, but it just doesn't taste like zucchini - which is a good thing! (Mom likes her ginger molasses bread.)

Next up, my friend Lily's dad makes THE BEST wheat bread. I had a play date with Lily on Saturday while my parent's worked. We went to the Natural History Museum, had a snack, and went back to Lily's house to play. Her dad had been painting the bathroom while we were gone and also baking bread - I think he bakes it every week for their bread for the whole family. I like it much better than my Whole Foods bread and I like that his bread doesn't taste like store-bought bread. It is soft, it has a good crust without being crunchy, and it tastes like BREAD - it doesn't taste sweet or full of preservatives. (Mom just asked me how I know what preservatives taste like, and I told her it was because at my old school my teacher would give me Kool-Aid.)

And then, Mommy's famous COFFEE CAKE! She made a BIG batch this morning because she wanted to take some to school with her both today and tomorrow and still leave enough for us for a few days. It is okay cold but is the BEST when it is warm and out of the oven - when it is soft, not crusty. Mom's coffee cake is sweet enough - without dripping in frosting - with a perfect cinnamon sugar crumb top. Next time I promise to take a picture!

That's all for now, see you next weekend where I'll be reporting from New Jersey!

Chocolate chocolate better than Vanilla . . .

Today was Daddy's 48th Birthday (boo hoo hoo hoo - I don't want my family to get older)! Here's a picture of my happy parents - I love them. Here's what 48 looks like on Daddy, I think he's cute. Check out their hats, Momma made them; she gave Daddy his blue and red hat today for a birthday present . . . the colors of his favorite football team, the New York Giants. By the way I'm reading a book called the BFG (Big Friendly Giant by Roald Dahl), and the BFG says that human beans, that's what he calls us human beings, sleep half our life. So Daddy is really only 24.
Remember a few weeks ago when I said that Vanilla Pastry's cupcakes were better than Mom's . . . ? I take it all back today. Daddy and I gave Mommy an awesome cookbook for Christmas, called Baked Explorations and we, she and I on Friday night, made the Devil's Food Cake recipe (page 133-134) as cupcakes. I was a bit suspicious since it had both coffee and dark chocolate in the recipe. Daddy actually stuck his finger in the chocolate bowl while we were working and he didn't know it was all bittersweet chocolate - he went running around looking for something to kill the bad taste - blech! On Saturday, Mommy made the frosting (different recipe, same book, page 147-148) and it had even more dark chocolate - I was extra suspicious. BUT . . . today . . . oh my gosh . . . ! These cupcakes are BETTER than Vanilla Pastry's. It's a texture thing, totally! The cake is not even like cake, it is airy, soft, moist, crumbly but still moist. And the frosting is thumb's-up perfect, just enough without being gobs of too much. Check me out, here's my seal of approval.
One more thing, I'll have to tell you about Dinette a different day (my FAVORITE PIZZA IN PITTSBURGH) but right now I would like to ask you to vote for the chef Sonja Finn in Food and Wine Magazine's "The People's Best New Chef" Award. You can vote for her at: eatocracy.com/foodandwine she's represented in the Mid-Atlantic region, one of two chefs nominated from Pittsburgh. Her bread sticks really are awesome: long and thin and crunchy and yummy. I just voted for her; I hope you will too!

See you next weekend when I tell you more about Dinette and my favorite farmer's market baker Rebecca - her zucchini bread is AWESOME, especially when toasted.

Happy Valentine's Food

On Friday, we went to an opening to see the work of my mom's new colleague Aaron Henderson (I was glad to see his work AND his cute round-cheeked son Takumi and wife Reiko). I was starving and when we were deciding where to go for dinner, I said, "Taste of India," like I always do. But the last few times I suggested Taste of India we haven't gone, and this time, when my parents didn't seem interested, I got REALLY frustrated. Since they couldn't really think of anywhere better to go, we ended up at one of my favorite restaurants . . . Taste of India. My favorite things there are the chicken tikka masala, raita, plain nan, and the mango lassi - they are all YUM! I don't know the name of our waiter, who always recognizes me and is so nice, but even when we said we were full, he brought me two honey ball donuts that were AMAZINGLY YUMMY!

(Photo is by my mom of juiced orange pulp in a strainer - she didn't shape it into a heart, it did that on its own as she tapped it on the container to drain the juice.)

Mom and dad have been working on making our own version of chicken tikka masala and we tried it for the first time for our Christmas Eve dinner this past year. Though it was good and showed promise, it was WAY too salty. They tried again after new year's and it was MUCH better but still not as good as Taste of India. Keep trying mom and dad!

Yesterday, my mom and dad had a date night to try out a restaurant they'd never been to before and to go see a show. Elise, my babysitter (former Virginia Tech pole vaulter, who works at AIR), helped me make a Valentine's surprise for my parents when they came home. And THIS is the recipe:

• melt as much chocolate as you need in the microwave (not for too long or it will burn, like mine did the first try, YECH!), a double boiler seems to work better, that's what my mom uses
• spread melted chocolate on honey graham crackers
• if you have red chocolate, you can sprinkle small broken pieces on top for decoration.

Mom and dad were surprised - and the cookies were very yummy.

Today after swimming, which was a phenomenal lesson with a different teacher, we went to the Frick Cafe a block away at the Frick Museum for a special Valentine's lunch. I had a potato and leek soup, daddy had a chicken basil sandwich, and mommy had a salad with crab dumplings (that weren't dumplings, they were really fried crab rangoons). My soup was good, actually ok. Good until I got to a part that was a little slimy. Daddy thinks it was a leek but the texture was enough to put my spoon down. I had a clementine Izzy that was really good and then for dessert, we all shared a slice of chocolate raspberry cake - THE BOMB! I've got half a slice left over for my lunch tomorrow . . . .

Super Bowl Means FOOD in our house (whoever's playing)!

Super Bowl Sunday is going to be busy. First, I've got swimming. Then a piano recital where I'll play Tarentella. My piano book says that "a tarentella is a fast Italian dance. There used to be a superstition that the madness caused from the bite of a tarantula spider could only be cured by wild dancing." Wild dancing . . . sounds like the perfect thing for Pittsburgh this weekend, since our city has gone crazy and the Steelers Nation started their parties on Friday night.

(Note from mom: Can you believe the city schools have already called a 2-hour delay for Monday morning for fear of student safety? Because win or lose, the party-ers might not have made it home yet (!?) when kids are heading to their bus stops at the regular time. We're staying at home after the recital by the way . . . to be safe . . . from the party-ers.) Back to Lila . . . .

And then . . . the Super Bowl where the Pittsburgh Steelers will play the Green Bay Packers. I'm rooting for Pittsburgh - I always do, unless they're playing the Seattle Seahawks. Big sporting events are always a reason for fancy food in our house. Two weeks ago when the Chicago Bears were playing the Green Bay Packers, my mom and dad made Chicago Style Italian Beef Sandwiches in honor of the Bears. I liked them okay, they were kind of soggy, but my mom said that they tasted just like she remembered, when she was kid, and that they were supposed to be soggy. WHATEVER. Daddy made french fries and was going to put them in my sandwich, like Pittsburgh's famous Primanti Brothers, but the fries were too hard and I wasn't interested.

I think Super Bowl Sunday food will be better, but we're not really having anything that is traditional Pittsburgh - no Primanti Brothers, no pierogies, no kielbasi, and no iceberg lettuce. Mom's already started the baked beans, Daddy's going to make us the Brooklyn Bowl Fried Chicken recipe from the New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago. (By the way, the title of the article, "Tastes Like Chicken" is the same as a fortune I got at New Dumpling House a few years ago - HA HA HA, some fortune!) And mom is also going to make Grandma Carol's version of Velveeta cheese dip with sausage and broccoli - that's our GOLD in honor of the Steelers. Mom will surely be wearing BLACK . . . .

When I was with mom at her studio today, all of the dumpsters that are usually behind the building were inside the loading dock of her building. Mom says they're doing this all over Oakland, where the universities are, because the students might get crazy after the game and light them on fire. Can you believe that? Isn't that silly? Is that the way to celebrate either team winning? Mom said that the last time the Steelers won the Super Bowl in 2009, we could hear the students celebrating in Oakland all the way from our house almost four miles away - I think they must have been really excited!

Yesterday, I was one of six kids who were finalists in a painting contest to make paintings for the little boy character in a pilot for a TV movie called Locke & Key (based on a graphic novel by Steven King's son Joe Hill) - I had made three BIG paintings two weeks ago as a tryout and they liked them! The contest finals were at my school and my friend Natalka was the only other Waldorf kid there; my dad wouldn't let me look at the book that the movie is based on (he said that it was a graphic graphic novel), but I had to make one painting from one of the pages.

Because we were all so tired afterward, we decided to go out and celebrate with SUSHI! We went to the New Dumpling House in Squirrel Hill that has Chinese food on one side and an AWESOME sushi bar on the other. We sat at the sushi bar because I like to see the sushi chefs cutting the fresh fish and putting the sushi together. I also like the sushi at Plum in Eastside but this sushi is a bit more affordable at New Dumpling House and we enjoy talking with the sushi chef. My favorite is the super white tuna sashimi and our sushi chef Ching split it nicely and carefully put a tiny spoon of black tobikko (herring roe) inside with the tiniest thin slice of lemon. As my dad says: DEE-LISH!

Vanilla Pastry Studio

My dad always asks for cupcakes to celebrate his birthday, rather than a usual cake, because, as he says, "A cupcake is like your own personal party." (The truth is that he doesn't like to share his cake.)

Vanilla Pastry Studio's cupcakes, in the East Liberty area of Pittsburgh, beat homemade (my mom is cringing). I love homemade cupcakes - they're the right texture - they're just not quite the right taste. My favorite cupcakes at Vanilla so far are: the Red Velvet and Lemon (I haven't had any of their other ones yet, but I'm sure they will all be my favorite too). They use little ball-like decorations that are like nonpareils (my mom's word) but nonpareils are usually too hard. Vanilla's are like tiny rice balls with a metal looking coating - but it is really shiny sugar.

It all started . . .

. . . on December 23rd, having dinner at Habitat at the Fairmont Hotel in Pittsburgh before going to see A Musical Christmas Carol. The service was a little confused and slow at first, but then Raj, our server, worked to change things, and then miraculous FOOD (and hot chocolate) arrived at our table.

You see, I started the "Mac & Cheese" tour 2-3 years ago, and Habitat's Mac & Cheese now ranks #1 on the list. The noodles were big and curly, and the cheese sauce was better than anything I've had so far. It wasn't crusty, hard, and dry like Max & Erma's (when our server snuck out for a smoke while our food shriveled under the hot lamps). Habitat's Mac & Cheese was THE BEST. The chef has kids - no wonder the Mac & Cheese was so great - and I've never been to a fancy restaurant where they had a kid's menu . . . Habitat gets big points for being SMART too.