Spring Fever

I hope everyone's been enjoying this "Spring" weather. We've been playing in the backyard, playgrounds, the woods, and the sidewalks... anywhere outdoors! Ramona's favorite outdoor art is painting windows (we replaced our house's windows and saved many of the old ones) and drawing with chalk.

Lately she also enjoys collecting rollie-pollies (I have no idea how to spell that), helping with the chickens, and riding her tricycle. Over this hot spell she has been donning her swimsuit and playing in the sprinkler!

Astrid likes to paint, too.

But more so she enjoys opening and closing the containers of paint. She also loves the birdbath.

I think her favorite outdoor activities are running up and down the sidewalk and climbing everyones stairs, "riding" Ramona's tricycle, and playing with the gravel in our driveway.

All you need is love...

We've entered a new era in hiking with the kids. Ramona can trek for a couple of hours without usually complaining about being tired. The only hitch is that she wants to play hide and seek the entire time we're hiking. So one of us must run ahead with her to hide, while the other must look the opposite direction and wait. Here's Ramona climbing up some tree roots that run down a rocky face.


And here's Andrew rescuing her like a cat up a tree.



The river was beautiful and made us want to try fly fishing.


Here's a cool tree.


Looks like a beaver borrowed this tree.



Some of you were interested in the recipe for those 4 loaves of bread I pictured in the last blog entry. Here it is from "Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World" by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid (My favorite cookbook authors).

This is a slow rise bread and need to start 2-3 days before you want to bake, timing is flexible. Makes 4 large loaves, each weighing 2+ pounds.

large-batch whole wheat pan loaves

Poolish
3 cups lukewarm water
Scant 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
3 cups all-purpose flour

Bread
6 cups lukewarm water
11 cups whole wheat flour
3 tbsp salt
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
About 2 tbsp unsalted butter or mild veg.oil to grease the pan

Make poolish at least 12 hours before using:
Place lukewarm water in medium bowl and sprinkle on yeast and stir to dissolve. Add flour and stir well to make smooth batter. Cover with plastic wrap or tight lid and set aside to ferment for 12-36 hours, whatever is most convenient. The batter will develop bubbles and look lively.

When ready to proceed, place lukewarm water in a large bowl. Add poolish and stir to dissolve. Add 2 cups whole wheat flour and stir in, always stirring in the same direction. Add another 4 cups whole wheat flour and stir in the same direction until smooth, then stir for 1 minute longer. Now you have a sponge. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to ferment for 8-18 hours.

Stir the honey into the sponge, then sprinkle on salt. Add the remaining 5 cups whole wheat flour, 1 cup at a time, stirring and turning the dough to combine it completely. The dough will become heavy and difficult to stir. Sprinkle about 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour over a wide area on your work surface and turn dough out. Use a dough scraper to lift one side of the dough and fold it over, and continue to use the dough scraper to knead by folding the dough over on itself. You will soon need to add another 1/2 cup flour or more to your work surace, and soon thereafter you will be able to knead using your hands, as the dough gradually gets less sticky and more smooth. Use a dough scraper to keep your work surface clean, and knead for a total of 10-12 minutes, until the dough is very smooth but still soft and a little sticky.

Place dough back in clean bowl, cover, and let rise 4 hours, until doubled.

Lightly flour work surface with all-purpose flour. Turn out dough and fold over on itself several times. Use a large knife of dough scraper to cut the dough into 4 equal pieces (weighing about 2 1/4 pounds each). Loosely cover dough and butter/oil four 9x5 inch bread pans.

Gently flatten 1 piece of dough in to an oveal about 12 x 8 inches, then roll from narrow end into a cylinder. Pinch the seam closed and place seam side down in pan. Repeat with remaining.

Cover loaves with plastic and a cloth and place in reasonably warm place (68-75) to rise. After they have proofed for 1 hour, start preheating over. Place rack in lower third of oven and place baking stone or sheet on it. Preheat to 425. Fill a sprayer with water. (I just use a bowl of water and fling it with my fingers)

When the loaves have proofed nearly 2 hours they will have risen a little but will not have doubled. Slash one loaf two or three times diagonally with sharp knife, spritz generously with water, and place in oven on stone/sheet. Repeat with all. Then spritz them all again generously. Close door and reduce to 400. Spritz generously every minute for 10 minutes, then bake for 35 minutes. Lower the heat to 375 and bake for 30 minutes. (I lower the heat after only 25-30 minutes and then bake another 30 minutes, I guess my oven cooks faster) Remove the loaves from the pans and place on stones/rack and bake a few more minutes, until corners are very firm when pinched. (Sometimes I forget to do this and it doesn't make much difference.) Let cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Note: Let stand 12 hours before wrapping in plastic to store at room temp or freeze. Defrost by leaving out overnight at room temp.

Enjoy!

Snow and Bread

Butterflies, Fairies, and Peaceful Protests

There is so much excitement in the air with this upcoming inauguration. Andrew was just saying today that if John McCain had been elected this inauguration would not be half as publicized or festive. It would have just been another rich, white guy in the white house. People are excited because Obama represents the hopes of many of us who felt underrepresented in the past. And that's great. But he can't do it alone. On that note...

For those of you with a yearning to get out of your house and shake things up...there is a massive peaceful protest being planned in March in DC to put the word out about the nasty effects of coal mining. This includes such major issues as global warming and mountain top removal. Andrew and I just might do it...let us know if you're going, too. I've included a link in the post below to the Capitol Climate Action website for more info.

Here in our lives the kids could care less about politics. Crafting and dancing have been all the rave. We worked on a large butterfly mobile today and collected supplies for making little flower fairies. Ramona has become quite the prima ballerina and was doing some lovely ballet performances to the new (and wonderful) Bob Dylan album "Tell Tale Signs" tonight...she's very postmodern! She called her performances "the butterfly dance" and "the fairy dance". We've also managed to spend fun times outdoors, despite the cold front. Today we were walking through the neighborhood and stopped to watch the street maintenance crew. They dumped a load of gravel into a huge hole with a dumptruck and scraped it neatly into place with a bulldozer. Ramona loved it and said that she would bring her cousins and some of her Asheville friends to come and watch next time.

Capitol Climate Action

Homelife, Career, and ..... more?

It feels good to be home. Today felt like our first "normal"day in weeks. Andrew had class, the girls and I stayed home baking and reading books, then some friends came for dinner...ah, the good life. We did enjoy the holidays. The week before Christmas was busy with preparations for travels, visits with my family, and work. We spent most of Christmas week in Pennsylvania with Andrew's family where Ramona and Astrid had a great time playing with their six cousins. We were home long enough for me to work a couple of days and then off to Athens to stay with my parents for a few days. Then a couple of more days of work and that brings us back to the present...just where I want to be.

I was talking with a friend tonight about how difficult it is to find a balance between cultivating a meaningful lifestyle (which for me includes much baking, cooking, gardening, active time with my family, reading, and exploring the outdoors), working for a living, and maintaining an active involvement in community and civic action. Since becoming a parent I find myself reading and thinking about the changes I would like to see in my community and the world, but I just don't have as much free time to volunteer, or be part of a protest, or organize a community group. I had planned to volunteer at a non-profit health clinic, only to come to the obvious realization that I would need to pay for daycare for my children in order to go volunteer. So, I have been trying to incorporate my visions and hopes for my community and the world into my everyday life and work. Instead of driving to work in a rush and just going through the ropes, I walk there. The moon and stars are out these winter days as I leave for work at 630am and they remind me of all those reasons I wanted to be involved in women's health, the changes I hoped to make, and the support I hoped to provide. I arrive to work ready to do my basic job and hopefully a little more. One of my friends that came for dinner tonight is very involved in educating others and organizing against mountain top removal for coal mining. I am inspired by her energy and courage. She is presenting to a Yale law conference, creating school age curriculms, and planning to be part of the organized civil disobediance (protest) in DC this march. At the same time she is a mom, a full-time graduate student, and has just moved to a new city. It feels good to find a friend that inspires me to not stand back and hope, but to actively work with others to create a change. On that note, I feel very hopeful about our next years as a country under the new guidance of our President Elect, Barack Obama!

Happy Holidays!

We have been busy with holidays, final exams, work, and on-going house renovations and I feel like there is quite a bit of catching up to do here on our blog.

We are moving Astrid and Ramona into a different bedroom that has more windows. We talked to Ramona about the move and she requested that their new bedroom be "sparkly princess pink." I told her that we were planning on painting it yellow. So, she said, "Can it be princess yellow?" Of course!

I am proud to announce that Astrid is going to bed so much easier now. We decided to "train" her to go to sleep on her own, rather than holding her until she was asleep and then putting her into bed. And it worked!

We have been reading Ramona "The Wizard of Oz" at bed time. It's her first big kid book, with only a picture on every other page and lots of words, and chapters. She seems to be enjoying it. I had never read "The Wizard of Oz", only seen the movie, and there are some differences. For example, Dorothy's shoes are not red, they are silver. Nevertheless, Ramona will wear nothing but her red sparkly shoes that Mumsey gave her.

Andrew and I have been daydreaming lately about moving to Hanover, New Hampshire. There is an ornithologist there at Dartmouth that studies the effects of global warming on migratory songbirds, which is exactly what Andrew would like to study if he enters a PhD program. The state of New Hampshire is also a great place to study and practice as a midwife legally and socially. I think about 25% of pregnant women give birth with a midwife there and homebirth midwifes have a lot of freedom in their practice. So, we've been daydreaming, even though we would be very sad to leave the close proximity to my family. Guess we'll just have to see where the wind blows us. In the mean time we'll be here in Johnson City for another year and a half while Andrew finishes his graduate degree.

Andrew finished his finals about a week ago with straight A's and is now on break through the second week of January. So, he's been spending lots of time with the kids, feeding the ducks, baking cookies, swimming, taking walks, and going to get treats at the store. I'll have to admit, he seems to get so much more done than I do when I am home all day with the kids. I get home from work at 730pm and he has the kids asleep, dinner made, the house clean, errands run, a batch of homemade cookies, and stories of what fun things the kids did that day.

We spent Thanksgiving with my family here at our house and had a wonderful time.

My sister and parents spent the night, we played at our favorite park, ate a little roasted chicken and some other yummy food, watched a very cool documentary on Andy Goldsworthy called Rivers and Tides, and just enjoyed hanging out together.

Ramona made this artwork titled "I Am Thankful".

Here's a little close up of "At the playground with Grandpa sliding down the twisty slide"
and "strawberry ice cream" and "jumping on the couch"
We will be spending Christmas in Fenelton, PA with Andrew's family out in the country. Ramona loves getting together with her cousins and has been talking about this visit for months. I think there may even be a surprise visit from Santa Claus and Mrs.Claus when we're there! Andrew and I have been looking forward to this visit, too, and can't wait to see all of his family and celebrate the holidays with them.

I hope that all of you are have safe and happy holidays with your loved ones!