It is so fitting that my post tonight is about food, because I finally went to go see "Julie & Julia" with Di this evening! I loved this book when it was published a few years ago and got very excited when I found out that they were making it into a movie, especially since I love both of the actresses in it (Amy Adams has incredible energy and keeps making me fall for her cutesy and sometimes goofy movies, like "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day"; Meryl Streep is, obviously, incomparable). The movie was really darling--didn't compare to the book, but when do they ever? But it's all about food and cooking it, eating it, enjoying it, sharing it with those you love...all things that I can relate to.
I come from a family of foodies. Well before The Food Network was popular and Giada made marinara on your chin look really, really sexy, I can remember being in the kitchen with my mom in my early teens, not only learning how to make her tomato sauce and lasagna recipes, but committing them to memory. Despite growing up during the time that microwaves and their cuisine became commonplace in the majority of American homes, our family kept a wedge of Romano in the fridge to freshly grate over every plate of pasta, not to mention most vegetables, that we ate (although we did use the microwave plenty for its quick-cooking prowess). And although my mom and her relations are all a bunch of pot-stirring, cheek-pinching, ricotta-stuffing, wine-drinking, talk with their hands Sicilians, my dad was not one to hang back and let the kitchen be solely a woman's domain. I remember a couple of years ago I called him on an afternoon when my mom was going to be out and about, and maybe not even home for dinner. I asked Dad what he was going to cook that evening, and he said, "Oh, I don't know...I bought this duck at the market the other week and defrosted it in the fridge a day ago, so I think I'll do something with that, maybe something like a duck a l'orange." Because you know, we all just go to the effort of whipping one of those together on the random Sunday evening when you aren't even sure who's going to be home for dinner.
So long story short (did I mention that I was Italian?), you can see that I enjoy cooking, making food for my family to enjoy, and experimenting with new recipes. When we first met, my husband was a self-proclaimed "picky eater" who only ever ate his spaghetti noodles plain, with butter on top. Now not only will he try just about everything I make, he has a higher threshold for spice and a much, much wider variety of foods that he likes. We have looked forward to sharing meals together as a family with Alton in our lives, and now that he is out of the "plain food" stage of toddler development, we are being more daring and including him in all of the dishes that we prepare. From grilled salmon to turkey tacos to couscous, he seems to be happy thus far to dig in to whatever we are eating. Last night was baby's first...pizza!
I wanted to make something fun and tasty for dinner Friday night, and to that end had purchased ready-made pizza dough, mozzarella cheese, and some prosciutto earlier in the week. We had some sliced raw zucchini leftover from a recipe I had made a few days earlier, so I started by sautéing that on the stove before I put it on the pizza, and also baked the crust in the oven a bit ahead of time, both so as to expedite the cooking process of the pie. I had tomato sauce ready-made in the freezer, thawed it out during the day, and once it was spread on the nearly-toasty crust I sprinkled it liberally with dried oregano, a spice that my Mom has always insisted is for pizza sauce, not regular tomato sauce. Some sliced prosciutto, the tender sautéed zucchini, and shredded mozzarella and parmesan cheeses all got added on top of that and finished in the oven for another ten minutes or so. Bravo!
We let it cool on the counter and prepared for Alton's first pizza experience by pulling out the camera before settling him in his booster seat. A few small pieces were cut for him, the bib was donned, and he went to town! After we showed him how to hold the piece and take bites out of the whole thing, like a sandwich, he did pretty well for awhile on his own before putting the slice down on his plate and disassembling the whole thing (little Engineer-in-training that he is). Cheese and toppings were removed, sauce was scraped off the crust with a finger and licked up, and the crust was nibbled from sides and center like a field mouse. He loved it and was only maybe 50-70% covered in sauce when it was all over. Our Italian baby has a new favorite food. *Tears!* We are so proud. Maybe we can slip in a trip to the infamous Bay Area Zachary's pizza the next time we are in California!
I am somewhat ashamed (well, I'll say I feel a bit sheepish) to admit that I got majorly scammed today. We got a call two nights ago from our local Petco, where we have occasionally taken Minerva to be bathed, saying that they had a photographer coming in on Thursday, and did we want to sign up for a free sitting and 5x7 for Minerva? I didn't say no right away, that was my first problem. I waited until Andy got home and conferred with him, and he was on board with getting doggy portraits right away because he is such a softie where the puppybaby is concerned. He even suggested that she get a new collar for the occasion (she needed one anyway, but Andy mentioned that we could get one that's purple--maybe we have purple on the brain?). In making our portrait appointment, they happened to remark that someone could join Minerva in the pictures during the sitting. So I'd like to say that I had no intention of doing anything other than collecting my freebie and leaving when I drove over to Petco today. I'd like to say that the photographer saw me coming from a mile away with his suggestion that the baby get in the shot with the dog...except that I specifically changed Alton's clothes and combed his hair before we left the house for our appointment. There's no turning back now.
So I guess you know by now that I succumbed and actually bought pictures and you've scrolled down to see the shots of Minerva and Minerva/Alton. I will not advertise my colossal sucker-hood by telling you how much the two extra 5x7s of dog and baby cost us, but suffice it to say that although it was probably too much, it could not be nearly as much as was spent by the woman ahead of me, who spent an inordinate amount of time perusing the packages printed on canvas. She was spectacularly outfitted in a mint green rayon pantsuit with huge ruffly collar, big costume pearls, and short wavy auburn hair...exactly the same shade as her miniature poodle's. I know they say that people start to look like their pets, but I think that one of those two gals gave Mother Nature a little help. Have a great weekend! (Click on the picture to see it full-size; the speckles on the picture are from our scanner.)
You know that we Rhynes are not satisfied unless we have several projects going at once, right? I'm not talking about doing dishes and laundry and vacuuming and cleaning up toys all at once, because that's all in a day's work. I'm talking about serious home improving, multiple-trips-to-Lowe's-taking, measure-twice-cut-once-ing, legitimate brainchild of Bob Vila crossed with Martha Stewart stuff. If you design it, Andy will build it (or he'll just design it and build it based on your rough idea, that works, too). If you say it can't be made, Katie will make it--no custom orders in this house! So amidst Andy's fence-stension project (post to come!) we decided to paint our front room...the piano room...the parlor? Do people still say parlor? It's the room connected to our entryway that houses a dainty desk for the computer, the baby grand piano (like you do), and that's pretty much it. The room, with the frosted glass panes on the windows (an Andy project: the windows don't open and we wanted to avoid sun damage to the piano) and the walls and the front door, was very...white. There was just too much blandy blandness happening there, so we decided to jazz things up with some PURPLE paint. Now, many of you would shy away from purple paint, thinking that it would feel like living in a grape, or that it would look like a little girl's bedroom, or that it would clash with the mahogany piano. We managed to surpass all these things and leapfrog straight to awesome. I hope you can feel the energy in this post, because I am in LOVE with the paint! I will forewarn you that it doesn't translate perfectly to pictures, so you are not getting the full effect, but I will post them here nonetheless. We painted the wall behind the piano and the half-wall that the staircase is on, and the adjacent walls are either a nice beige "macadamia" color, or white. After getting some serious painting done on Sunday night, I stripped the painter's tape off on Monday morning while Alton followed around behind me, collecting the sticky tape balls into one giant armload, which he carried around the downstairs like a teddy bear. He asked me to hold it for him while he took a drink from his cup. Adorable.
Directly after we returned home from our vacation to California, my sister Cari came up here to Oregon for a visit while she was on vacation from teaching school. During our trip down South, Cari had been taking a vacation of her own with her husband Julio to Hawaii to celebrate earning her Master's degree in Education, hooray! So this way she got to spend some private time with her favorite nephew. Things were not looking good for a little while before her arrival when our air conditioning broke--I thought that I might have to move our spare bed into the freezer to make things comfortable enough for her to sleep--but it luckily got fixed just hours before her flight arrived in Portland. However, the "cold" that I thought I had contracted turned out to be laryngitis instead. I had a hoarse, sore throat that was developing into a nice chest cough, and two days after Cari's arrival my voice was completely gone. Fun! But that didn't stop us from showing her the sights.
We took Alton to the Portland Children's Museum so that he could touch and play with eeeeeeverything.
We cooled down in the backyard with fruit bars.
Andy and Cari took Alton to the Zoo on Saturday morning so that Mommy could convalesce at home with her sore throat (although Mommy rallied that night and conspired with Cari to cook up a fabulous fondue feast while Alton was sleeping).
We horsed around at home and practiced Alton's new word: Cici. Cari had been trying very hard to get Alton to say "Aunt Cari," but that's a pretty big mouthful for a little guy! Picking up on his ability to say Uncle KC's name ("ke-SEEEEEEEE"), Cari decided that she would also go by her initials, which are C.C. So all weekend long she was working on Alton with "Cici...Cici." He could definitely say it by the time she left!
The day of her departure, Cari, Alton and I rushed out to West Union Gardens, a local U-pick-em berry farm. We were pressed for time (against the napping hour!) and Cari and I hurried up and down the berry rows, tossing berries into our containers while Alton leisurely moved along, picking some berries, eating some berries (no pesticides, so you're free to sample!), and, inexplicably, tossing some on the ground (actually, I think he did this because there were so many berries on the ground already from overripe-ness, or from other patrons dropping them, so Alton may have thought that they belonged there). But we hurried for good reason: after we got home and put the baby to bed, Cari hopped in the shower to wash off berry farm dust while I washed the berries and concocted a DELICIOUS homemade berry cobbler in our dutch oven with a golden brown, fluffy biscuit top. It hurt your eyes, it was so beautiful.
We'll miss you Aunt Cari (Cici), and come again soon!
Here are the picture highlights from our trip.
The title was just too perfect, since we utilized all three modes of transport in our most recent trip! It was a great time for a visit for many reasons: besides the fact that it's summer vacation, so both grandmothers are free from schoolteachin' right now, we had other special occasions to celebrate, like Christa's bridal shower, birthdays for Grandpa Charlie and Aunt Cari (who swanned off to Hawaii to celebrate her graduation from her Master's Degree Program!), and Cousin *P's big FIRST birthday party. Quite a lot to do!
Alton and I flew down to Sacramento and picked up a sidekick, my good friend Julie, who was on the West Coast from her home in Maryland to attend the bridal shower. Andy had stayed behind in Oregon to work another day, then hopped into the car with his trusty companion (Minerva, of course) and bombed down the highway in record time to join us at his parents' house. Andy, Alton and the 'Nerve got comfortable with Grammy and Grandpa while Julie and I were "all aboard" good 'ol Amtrak to chug our way down to San Jose and begin our flurry of bridesmaid preparations. This was the first time that I had ever left Alton overnight, and I admit that there were some tears (on my end, naturally) before our train departed and I was separated from my baby for nearly two whole days! I was very grateful to have Julie with me to distract me from my nervousness, but felt obligated to warn her ahead of time that the train journey would be dull and unromantic. I had had necessity to ride the train in the past a few times from the Bay Area down to Santa Maria, and each time would groan with remembrance at the way the train doubled the amount of time it took to travel the same mileage by car, never ran on time, and glazed your eyes over with views of brown fields as you shrank away from your fellow (unwashed) passengers. You are all ready for the train to be this romantic 1950s movie set with uniformed porters and champagne and women with pearl-buttoned gloves carrying those little hard-sided round cases (Why do we have this image of train travel? Is it because that period of time was the last point in history when trips by train outnumbered those by air? I am completely just talking stream-of-consciousness--I have no actual research to back up these speculations.), but in reality, the staff are surly, the dining car has extremely limited hours of business that allow you to purchase gross microwaved hamburgers, and the little hard-sided round cases have been replaced with duffel bags emblazoned with promotional messaging.
However, Julie and I found ourselved pleasantly surprised, for the most part. The views were lovely, the train ran to schedule, we had our entire car to ourselves for pretty much all of the trip, and the only weird interaction with the staff came when the conductor announced several times over the loudspeaker that if THE PERSON who was smoking didn't STOP SMOKING, she would stop the train and HAVE THIS PERSON ARRESTED. I think I am going to post her on passiveaggressivenotes.com.
Once down in San Jose, Julie and I threw ourselves, along with five other bridesmaids, into a maelstrom of cooking, baking, slicing, dicing, scrapbooking and beautifying for bridal festivities. We had a really lovely time, we were so busy that I didn't even have time to think (too much) about missing Alton and Andy, and we got a chance to let our hair down and have fun.
Alton and Andy, meanwhile, took a tour of some tractor/crop sprayer projects at UC Davis with Andy's friend Ryan, played in the water, went to the park, made friends with the cats, took pictures with Grammy and Grandpa, and had a blast until it was time to drive into San Francisco and pick up Mommy for the drive down to Santa Maria. We spent four days down in my Central Coast hometown with Nonna and Papa Carnine and Uncle K.C., and had a great time hanging out, showing off all of Alton's latest words and accomplishments, and taking Alton to the BEACH for the first time.
Then we Oregon Rhynes piled back into the car and returned to Woodland with Grammy and Grandpa for a momentous event--Cousin *P's first birthday party! She and Alton are now both the big 0-1. We had a far too short visit with Zach, Karen and the birthday girl, and after some more downtime with the Rhyne grandparents we loaded the car up and drove home to Oregon.
After so much driving already, we decided that the best baby road trip tactic would be to leave Woodland/Sacramento area when it was time for Alton to go to bed, and that way he would conk out with tiredness a few minutes into the drive and we could blast to our destination without having to stop every hour or so, for an hour, to give Alton exercise and entertainment. We had utilized this approach successfully when we left Santa Maria, and Alton fell asleep within 15 minutes of our departure and we tore up the highway straight from SM to Woodland in 5 hours flat with no stops (yes, Claire, I know that's bad for my circulation).
Alton foiled us a bit by staying awake for more than two hours, requesting books and snacks and finally necessitating a pit stop to do a diaper change, but we rallied and pressed on and eventually he drifted off in the dark backseat. So our plan was to drive about 4.5 hours, get up 'n over the Siskiyou Pass and stay the night in Ashland, Oregon, and then get up in the morning and drive another 4-plus hours home. We had snacks and sodas and it was nearing 11pm as we started up the grade to the Siskiyou Pass. The last time we'd made this trek had been during our Christmas drive (see here), and it had been daylight and snowy, so things looked pretty different in the dark, black stillness. Andy was driving and I was tensely looking out of every window at once, making sure I could see every upcoming curve in the road and verifying that none of the other drivers got too close to us (bloody weirdos). As we crossed the apex of the Pass and began our descent down the other side, I noticed that there was an exit-type lane off to my right, with a prominently-placed sign indicating that this was the "Runaway Truck Ramp," for big rigs that experience brake failure as they drive down the grade. This lane continued for a couple hundred feet, appearing to end in a few Mini Convertible-sized heaps of gravel rock that must have been helpfully appropriated there by ODOT. Um...what? I must have missed this during our Christmas drive. Where's the "I Just Sh*t My Pants" Ramp? Because that is EXACTLY what I would do if I was driving down the grade of the Siskiyou Pass at 10:30 at night and saw a semi truck 15 feet away from me screeching down the Runaway Truck ramp on failed brakes with no hope of stopping save a few bags of road base. Time to build my family a cabin in the woods on the mountain, because ain't no WAY I'm getting inside a car ever again.
Thankfully, our late-night drive passed without incident, we made it to Ashland for a good night's rest, and Andy and Alton took a nice long nap together in the backseat of the car during the drive home the next day. Our biggest bummer was having to schlep our picnic lunch to a shady spot in a park in Salem through 95-degree heat, because with Minerva in tow we couldn't abscond to a nice air-conditioned restaurant. But since we were only about 45 miles from home, we didn't care. We booked it as best we could for that last leg of the journey, got home and you know the rest: heat wave, busted A/C, R-rated movies, rugby players, miracle in the Andes, repairman, mercifully cool air, the end. Oh, and I got glasses.
