I've been thinking this week about how my mom and Bill are going to France this summer, and I'm a little jealous but mostly just excited for them. So that means I've also been thinking about French food. A lot. African hot chocolate at Angelina in Paris. Tarte au poisson and Kir Royal at a bistro in Rouen. Crepes from a street vendor in the Jardin des Tuileries. Croque monsieur sandwiches, pretty much anywhere. On this rainy day, in which I was sorely disappointed not to go to the Rex parade in NOLA and desperately needed something to help me embrace the rain, I couldn't get savory crepes out of my head. Crepes made with salt and herbs instead of sugar and vanilla, wrapped around roasted chicken, mushrooms, and potatoes, and topped with just a smidge of gravy. La Madeleine has something like this on their menu, but it's overly salty and has too much gravy, so I decided I could do better myself.

I can roast a pretty great chicken, but this seemed to need the ease of a rotisserie chicken. Rotisserie chickens remind me of France, too; the apartment I stayed in in Nice was right next to an open market, and I walked past the rotisserie chickens every morning on my way to school. Even at 8 a.m., it's a great smell. Plus, there's that lovely scene from Amélie where she's describing everything to a blind man at breakneck pace, including a child who's watching a dog who's watching some chickens spin on a rotisserie.

The chicken already taken care of, I diced some potatoes and onions, quartered some mushrooms, and threw the vegetables into a roasting dish with olive oil, salt and pepper, and herbes de Provence. They did their thing in a 425 degree oven while we watched Jeopardy! (it comes on at 4:30 here, freakishly), and then I made the gravy and crepes. For the crepes, I used Alton Brown's recipe and followed the "savory" guidelines, using fresh parsley from my garden for the herbs. The gravy had to be vegetarian, because Jack was having the same thing I was having, minus the chicken, so I made a roux and then added a cup of vegetable broth, some dried thyme, and some fresh parsley. I simmered it until it was thick, while I was cooking the crepes, then rolled everything together like a big French enchilada and spooned some gravy on top. Et voilà. It was done.

I had meant to steam some broccoli with it (since the green beans at the store looked horrible) but about five minutes before everything else was done, I realized I had forgotten the broccoli. It would have been nice to have a fresh vegetable, but we did just fine. And I realized that even buying a whole chicken, I fed all of us for less than I would've spent on the thing from La Madeleine.

One bite into it, I knew it was better than La Madeleine's, anyway.

Best rainy day meal I've had in quite some time.

Labels: eating out, kitchen adventures, photography, travel

• posted by erica 3/08/2011 07:26:00 PM
•  3 comments

Kicking off the December Photo Project 2010, I thought I'd share a photo from our trip home. This is (my goofy son in front of) a training model of the lunar module, used to train astronauts in the 1960s. It's at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where we always stop because it doubles as a rest area.

We had a lovely trip, including visits with all sorts of people we almost never see, but after several hours of Dean crying off and on, we were very, very ready to be home and get the rest of our December on.

Labels: Kent, photography, travel

• posted by erica 12/01/2010 08:28:00 PM
•  1 comments

We took a trip to New Jersey a few weeks ago to visit my mom and a bunch of family who were also gathering there. The official reason for the trip was to celebrate my grandfather's 80.5 birthday, since his 80th was in January and we didn't get a chance to celebrate as a family then. His 80.5 was on July 4, which meant we were also gathered for Kent's birthday on July 3, plus the holiday festivities and fireworks.

We got there on a Thursday, settling in and hanging out with my grandparents who also arrived that day. The flight was pretty bumpy on the way down, and Kent ended up being sick right when we landed and he was thrown forward. I cleaned him off and changed his clothes without too much trouble, and Jack and I wondered why in the heck we can't seem to have a trip to visit my mom without Kent throwing up.

On Friday, we borrowed a car and drove down to Philly to visit our friends Lauren and Steve. Lauren (and Jeannette) had told me about a fabulous little play cafe in Chestnut Hill called The Little Treehouse, a sweet super-fun place that's almost just like the kid-friendly coffee shop I've been dreaming about.


I didn't remember to take any pictures of the actual play space, which took up about half the interior, or our amazing wood-fired pizza or coffee drinks... but the place was amazing. Here's just one aspect of the amazingness. Toys on the wall of the bathroom for the kids to play with while Mom goes to the potty. I have a difficult time keeping Kent in the bathroom with me sometimes, since he goes right away and then wants to leave before I'm done. Example: when I took my pregnancy test at Target last year and found out I was pregnant with Dean, Kent busted out of the handicapped stall before I had my pants up. I'll never forget that. So having something to keep him occupied was pretty ingenious.


We spent the rest of the afternoon chilling with Lauren and Steve, who gave Kent a card that we could turn into a cardboard airplane. There was much revelry throwing the airplane around their apartment. We also introduced Kent to a couple of different video games on the Nintendo Wii. He couldn't quite understand that his movements while holding the Wii remote were controlling what happened on the screen, but he thought bowling with 100 pins was pretty spectacular. Several of my friends in town, who have kids just a little older than Kent, have Wiis, and I've thought seriously about getting one sometime soon so that we can play games as a family. Perhaps it's in our future.



We also did a lot of Dean-gazing, because he's fun and very giggly.


We made a stop by the side of the road on the way back to NJ that evening, because Dean needed a break from the carseat. I snapped this picture of our reflection in the car's window.

Saturday was Kent's birthday, with a party and cake planned for the evening. My stepbrother Chris and his wife Cat had arrived from NC, my Aunt Mary and Uncle Jeff and two of their kids, Dave and Dan, had flown in from Colorado, and my stepsister Morgan, her husband Brian, and their baby daughter Blythe drove up from Baltimore on Saturday, so we had a pretty large crew. During the day, Mom and Bill took my little branch of the family to a carnival in town that Bill had some experience with as a Kiwanian. Mom, Kent, and I rode on the ferris wheel, which Kent always loves doing, and then Kent got to ride kiddie rides for the first time. He had a blast. He just kept grinning and smirking and then running around excitedly, telling us which thing he wanted to do next.
 
 
 
 


It was dang hot, so Dean and I bought a bottle of water and chilled in the shade where we could still see Kent.


Here's Kent getting a fun shoulder ride from Bill.


After Kent's nap, the birthday festivities got going, which included swimming, grilling out, and Kent's birthday cake, which I decorated earlier in the day to his specifications. He had told me he wanted a space shuttle on his cake, so I ran with it, and this is what I ended up with:


Several people have been confused by the numbers at the bottom, thinking that perhaps Kent was turning 32, but it says "3 2 1!" for anyone who can't read frosting.

On Sunday, we had a sort of lazy morning at Mom's house, while Mom, Bill, and my grandparents went to church. Ordinarily, we would go with them, but we knew that between Kent being in an unfamiliar church (and consequently not wanting to go to the nursery), and the up-and-down dance we usually do with Dean at our own church, we wouldn't get much out of the service, so we sat it out this time and hoped for a day in the future when it'll be easier to tag along. After church, we all went to a diner for brunch/lunch, and I got a Greek-style chicken wrap with tzatziki sauce, something I'd been craving. It was perfect. I don't quite remember what anyone else ate because I was so happy eating my own food. I think Kent had part of a meatball and some spaghetti, plus the chocolate pudding that came with his meal. It's funny, I read a quote recently about having realistic expectations while on vacation, and the example the author cited was that if your child is a picky eater at home, s/he is going to be a picky eater on vacation. Um, yes.



After the meal, Jack and Brian found themselves swaying side by side with their respective babies, so everyone turned to look and smile, and then Dave and Dan decided they ought to get in on the swaying, so Dan jumped into Dave's arms and gave us all a good laugh.



Back at home, Morgan and I took about 100 pictures of Blythe and Dean together in their Fourth of July outfits. What a couple of cuties. They're a month and a half apart, destined to be great friends as they get older. Dean hadn't quite developed all his sitting up muscles yet, so he kept falling over and we kept propping him back up next to her.


Brian caught a snooze later with Blythe and Mom and Bill's cat, Barnaby.


And my favorite part of Sunday was a little personal tribute to my grandfather: homemade pretzels. He and I made these all the time when I was a kid (though admittedly I didn't drink beer with them back then... I didn't know what I was missing). I have so many memories revolving around those pretzels. There was greasing the pan with Crisco, then having to wash it off my hands while my grandfather turned up the water temperature and I complained repeatedly that it was too hot. There were all the times I tried to make letters for everyone in my family instead of the classic pretzel shape, and my grandfather was a terrific sport and tried to keep Ms, Es, and Js together in the water bath and on the pan so that the letters would stay intact. And there was the time that we couldn't find the recipe (in the days before looking things up on the internet), and we tried to recreate the recipe from memory. I think my grandfather looked at it as a teachable moment, but I was too young to be much help.


Here's Kent munching on his pretzel by the pool. One of my favorite things about having kids is passing on traditions to them that have already brought me so much joy.

Here are some more pool pictures from throughout the weekend:






On Monday, Dave and Dan did a lot of crazy diving where they attempted to dive under each other, do high-fives on the way into the water, etc. I took a lot of pictures and a couple of short movies, and I thought I was going to be calling the collection "How Dave and Dan Ended Up in the Emergency Room." But somehow they managed not to injure each other, except one time that I heard Dave say, "You poked me in the eye!" Those two are hilarious. I wish we all lived closer.


All the diving board action seems to have inspired Kent to finally jump into our arms in the pool, and he dazzled us with his newfound adventurous spirit in the water.


Mom read a lot of books with Kent. I just love watching my mom bond with my kiddo.


At some point in the weekend, Chris and Cat posed for me to take a quick picture in Mom and Bill's kitchen. I was terrible about taking lots of pictures of everyone, so when I realized I didn't have any of them, I had to fix it.


Mom has lived in NJ for (almost?) three years now, and in that short time, I have developed a favorite tradition: walking to the little farm stand on the main road, shopping for produce, and then eating a cider doughnut and petting the goats. Here are Jack and Kent sharing a doughnut in the sun. Not much beats a doughnut enjoyed with the people you love most.

Inevitably, we had to go home. It was one of the few trips I've taken where I really didn't feel ready to leave. However, the temperatures in NJ were topping 100 that Tuesday, and when we got back to New Orleans, it was a pleasant 80 degrees. Talk about a schema breaking.

As we boarded the plane, the very eager flight attendant offered to let Kent go into the cockpit, and the pilots were all over him and had a great time with him while I went to grab the camera.


The pilot insisted on posing Mike the Tiger Kitty as well, and I was cracking up at all of them. I've said many times that I wish I could always fly Southwest because the staff is so great, but Continental gave them a run for their money this time.


And here's our wide-eyed baby enjoying the flight home.

The web of family was tightened a bit over this weekend, strengthening our bond across the vast country where we've been scattered. Thank goodness for the internet, and air travel.

Labels: Dean, family, Freude, holidays, Kent, kitchen adventures, Philly, photography, travel

• posted by erica 7/20/2010 01:29:00 PM
•  1 comments

The Jersey shore! This was Kent's first trip to the beach, and we all had a marvelous time.

Full of cinnamon rolls and scrambled eggs, Mom, Bill, Kent, and I set out from their house to pick up Jack at the Newark airport (yay for seeing Daddy!) and then headed down to Manasquan on the Jersey shore where Bill's dad has a beach house. We met Morgan and Brian there, so I got to see the beginnings of Morgan's baby bump — she's having a little girl at Christmas, so we're sharing a lot of our pregnancy time, just like Joanna and I got to do when I was pregnant with Kent and she was pregnant with Travis. It's quite exciting to have cousins who'll be so close to the same age, especially if Jack and I can ever figure out how to live closer to said cousins.

After meeting up at the beach house, we all headed out to find a lunch place, hoping to happen upon some good, fresh seafood. We found a spot that had a seafood counter as well as sit-down restaurant service, and the food was good. Some of it was excellent. I had a crab cake sandwich, which was a fabulous crab cake in between two cold slices of store-bought bread, so I peeled the bread off and just ate the crab cake, and it suited me just fine. I also had some incredible lobster bisque that I can't stop thinking about; I've been in a serious seafood soup mood ever since, leading me to wonder if maybe it's time for me to learn how to make shrimp and corn soup or some sort of bisque-y concoction. Anyway, after our lunch, we came back to the house to change, and then it was time to walk two blocks down to the lovely, yet very crowded, beach.

We went swimming first, easing into the ocean and then getting all the way past the breaking waves to where the ocean was lulling and peaceful. It was overcast, warm but not hot, so the water mostly felt cold and wasn't quite as refreshing as it is on a super-hot day. After a big accidental gulp of ocean water, Kent made a rather sour face and stuck out his tongue, then told us that he wanted "different water," as if to say, "Can't you guys do something about all of this salt??" He nevertheless had a really fun time holding onto us as we jumped over the waves, though when he started to turn purple, we decided it was probably a good time for him to get back on the beach. Jack took him to dry off and play in the sand, and I stayed in the water with Mom and Bill a little while longer, floating and relaxing until I started to feel cold as well.

Kent was very taken with the sand and had an excellent time rolling around, digging in it, and generally absorbing it into every crevice of his body. He and Bill dug around in the sand a bit, basically amounting to Kent smashing all of Bill's attempts at a sandcastle, and Kent finally agreeing to be buried in the sand, only to remove himself a few seconds later. It was pretty fun to watch. My mom's favorite part was watching Kent lie down face-down, then drop sand onto his own back and down his diaper. This necessitated a full strip down to the bare bottom when it was time for us to leave — Jack carried a very naked little Kent over to the outdoor shower, hosed him off as best he could, then carried him back to a dry spot where he could get clothed again. Kent also had a shower back at the beach house, but he still had sand in his hair and his ears, even the next morning. Sigh. The beach. I didn't mind, though. He loved all of it.


Bill and Jack attempt to bury Kent in the sand.


Bill and Mom, after Bill buried himself in the sand


Kent decides he wants to be just like Aunt Morgan and Uncle Brian


Kent, with sand

We headed back to the house after a while and had an evening of eating, grilling, and more eating, and except for the part where Jack accidentally ate some clams in a dip he thought was onion dip, everything was excellent. I did corn on the cob on the grill, and since there were about a dozen people eating, we had a ton of corn. We had to do two batches, each of which covered the whole grill, but even though it was a monster to prepare, it was still grilled corn, so it was delicious. The lightning bugs came out, and Kent and his newfound cousin-in-law William (age 8) had a lot of fun trying to chase them and pointing them out to us.

William was great with Kent; I really enjoy watching older kids who like to engage toddlers instead of just seeing them as an annoyance. William also introduced Kent to the hand-held video game experience, so we're expecting Kent to ask for his own game system any day now. I don't even know what the kids are playing on these days, but I know it's not the little green-and-white screen of the original Nintendo Game Boy, which is what I had growing up (and loved every minute of, by the way, especially since I had saved up my own money to buy it).

Much fun conversation and darkening sky later, we got into the car around 9 p.m. and headed back to Mom and Bill's house, a little less than 2 hours away. Mom rode with Morgan and Brian, who came back with us to spend the night, and Jack, Kent, and I rode back with Bill. Kent and I both fell asleep, and we all stumbled into bed when we got back. It was way past my bedtime, not to mention Kent's.

Next up: a visit from Lauren and Steeeeeeeeeee!

Labels: family, Kent, photography, travel

• posted by erica 8/23/2009 02:54:00 PM
•  2 comments

Kent and I were up before everyone else on Friday morning, a common theme for the whole trip, since going to bed late never means that he's going to sleep in the next morning. Maybe when he's a teenager, he'll learn how to do that. Anyway, we saw Mom and Bill for a little while in the morning before he headed off to work and she headed off to a few appointments, and then Kent and I had a morning alone.

I was incredibly thankful that we were in a cooler climate than Louisiana, because at 9:30 in the morning, it was still cool enough that we could go for a walk in the neighborhood to the local produce stand/turkey farm. We bought some fresh veggies to cook later that weekend, as well as something I couldn't resist after trying one in June: cider doughnuts. And we had to have something to drink, so we got chocolate milk, and we sat outside on their picnic table next to the goat pen.
The goats were bleating at us (or whatever that sound is that goats make) while we ate, so we went to visit them after we had finished our doughnuts and apologized for not bringing them anything to eat.


Here's Kent petting Goat #1.


Goat #2


Mom and Boy, with sugar on Boy's face

Kent wanted to watch a movie when we got home from our walk, and I was so tired that I acquiesced. I searched Mom and Bill's DVD collection for something new to Kent and settled on Lady and the Tramp. Ten minutes and a phone call to Bill later (they have a lot of equipment), I finally had the DVD playing, complete with sound, no less. Kent fell asleep lying on me about halfway through the movie, and I nearly fainted from the shock when he let me put him right down for a nap. I guess he was tuckered out from all the travel and his late night, because a self-imposed nap at 11:30 a.m. is unheard of for my little guy. I scrounged up some lunch while he napped and waited for Mom to get home so we could get some grocery shopping done.

After Kent woke up and ate some lunch, we headed out to buy provisions for that night's dinner, coconut beer shrimp. My grandmother used to make these shrimp every once in a while, and her best friend Harriet would come over to help since it's not really a job for just one person. We'd all sit around and devour the delicious shrimp, then count how many tails each of us had left on our plate afterward. I don't think I ever ate more than 6, though my dad and grandfather and possibly my uncle could put away 10 or 12.

I've been craving these things for a couple of months, but I wasn't going to go to all that trouble for just myself. I knew Mom and Bill would be a good audience, and they also have a deep fryer. I felt pretty good throughout the day, especially after our quick afternoon dip in the pool with Mom, so I decided to do as much as I could by myself and let Bill take care of the odds and ends of getting the rest of the meal together. I made some Asian slaw that I knew could sit in the fridge for a couple of hours, and then I started getting things together for the shrimp, including mixing up the spices and the dipping sauce and laying everything out in an assembly line.

I went ahead and did a full recipe, which was about 40 shrimp, though I didn't count after we brought them home from the store. The shrimp get seasoned first, then go into seasoned flour, then go for a dip in the beer batter, then roll around in some coconut before they all meet up again on a cookie sheet to sit and wait to be cooked in small batches. "Labor-intensive" doesn't quite cover it. But was it worth it? Abso-freakin'-lutely.

Here's the cookie sheet of shrimp waiting to get cooked. I really should have taken a picture of them once they were finished and all golden-brown and crunchy, but I was too busy eating them. Remember how I used to eat 6? I had 9 this time, even though my dinnertime appetite is much lower than usual right now. The dipping sauce, consisting of orange marmalade, mustard, and horseradish, is really what makes them wonderful, though I'm sure Mom thought they were plenty good, and she didn't partake of the dipping sauce. Kent had most of one shrimp, after he pulled it out of the batter. Oh well. Everybody else liked them.

Kent went to bed fairly soon after dinner, and I could barely keep my eyes open long enough to make a phone call to Jack, who was getting ready to fly up the next morning. I mumbled something to him about some stuff I needed him to bring, including a sweater for chilly mornings and Kent's potty seat, then went right to sleep.

Next up: BEACH DAY!

Labels: family, Kent, kitchen adventures, photography, travel

• posted by erica 8/13/2009 12:39:00 PM
•  1 comments

Kent and I set out early in the morning last Thursday with a friend driving us to the airport, and the plane trip was, as usual, pretty easy. Kent makes it easy — he's always traveled pretty well. Jack's laptop helps, with Hello, Dolly! playing for almost the entire flight, and Continental even gave us something resembling lunch, a real treat in these days of airlines tightening their belts to the extreme. After we had to put away the laptop for our descent, Kent fell asleep in his seat, so as soon as we could unbuckle our seatbelts, I put him in my lap, and then the very nice family sharing a row with us carried most of our bags off the airplane for us. I love being surprised by the kindness of other air travelers.

Mom picked us up and took us back to her house, where Bill was working from home that day — it's so nice that he gets to do that! After we got settled, we went to the pet store for a little while to waste time while Mom got her allergy shot, and Kent ran around looking at all the fish, even getting lost from us at one point. I freaked out for just a minute, as did the store employee when I asked if she had seen a two-year-old walking around. She had someone run right to the door, which was just what she was supposed to do, and she, Bill, and I kept walking around looking for Kent. I found him a minute later with his hands on one of the fish tanks (probably looking for Nemo in the clownfish tank), but since this was the second time I've lost him in a store, we've been having more talks lately about him staying close by where he can see me and not running away. Scary stuff, that is.

Bill wanted to take us to a Kiwanis fundraiser for dinner, a steak-and-corn cookout by the lake. They had lots of steak, sausage and peppers, corn on the cob, and a delicious green salad with pecans, feta, and cranberries.


Kent ate an entire ear of corn but was easily distracted by throwing rocks in the lake and chasing the geese, so we took turns walking with him so that he didn't run right into the lake.


Note the hand on his shirt. What a good grandmother. I was even able to eat three ears of corn and lots of everything else because she was chasing him most of the time.

We got home late, and Kent went right to sleep, as did his tired mom. Happily, he slept all the way through the night; even though he did roll off the mattress onto the floor, he didn't seem to wake up. I only noticed that he was on the floor later on in the night when he was kicking the bed posts, still asleep. What a tired boy. I just love it when he sleeps all night.

Next up is Friday. I have three words for you: Cider doughnuts. Mmmmmm.

Labels: family, Kent, photography, travel

• posted by erica 8/13/2009 12:17:00 PM
•  0 comments