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!