honeyflake

happy mothers day

here's my awesome mom in action, with me happily on her hip... enjoying a good time in 1973. 
thanks mom...

for friday's lunch

picked a few spring asparagus and a handful of chives to create an early-may-garden omelette. yum.

lax

 

this photo was taken two and a half years ago. it was january 2010. we were at the american museum of natural history... and margaret gravitated towards this display. it was filled with some of the coolest sports gear on earth.... handmade native american lacrosse treasures!!! i'm pretty sure this was margaret's first interest with anything related to lacrosse and little did we know that the attraction and connection she showed then would grow and stick around...

 

that spring we found a lacrosse clinic for girls margaret's age, which would let her get familiar with the basics of the game... and without much hesitation, i broke out my own personal ancient lacrosse treasure — my wooden stick from my high school girls lacrosse days!!! awesome. turns out, my old stick is much closer to those in the museum display case than what the girls play with now... we found this out when we went to get margaret set up with her own personal gear from this century... her first stick, googles and a mouth guard. as i remember it, we held off on getting the store-bought nylon bag for the stick and i saw this as my opportunity to bring a little bit of the hand-made quality back to the sport... i did not whittle a new stick or fashion some deerskin into a ball, but i did gather up some chunky bright zippers and repurposed blue canvas fabric and sewed m.a.g. her own stylish, monogrammed, lacrosse bag... 

  

she was quickly ready for the field. ready for some scooping, passing and catching. we practiced a lot together — me with my old-school stick and margaret with her fancy new pink stick. she kept at it and in 2011 she signed up for several more of these clinics where there was plenty more scooping, passing and catching practice... building skills and experiences and making many new friends along the way.

and now we're here in 2012... and she's now gone from learning the basics to a new season of real team games. real uniforms, real big fields and real referees but at this age there are many modified rules for safety. quite honestly it is adorable and so much fun to watch. two years into it and the fancy blue bag is still holding up, keeping her gear together from practices to games. and that spark that was ignited back at the museum display is still there — i'm sure i saw it today as she cradled down the field in a fast sprint... passing cheering fans, coaches and teammates...

let's go number 3!!! (not to be confused with "let's go number 5!" which is what we cheer on saturdays at her soccer games) can you tell i love this game? i do. and i am thrilled to see margaret growing to love it too.

rehearsing

dim sum

today our family had an outing that was inspired by a really sweet book called dumpling days, which recently came home with margaret and i from our local library. it is a book we found in the children's chapter book section, but i could not help taking a turn in reading it myself. the story takes place in taiwan and is filled with description after description of all the food that the main character encounters while she is there — and dumplings in some form or another are a re-occuring theme. for days both margaret and i found ourselves bringing up food from the book in conversation — like the bubble tea, the dim sum, the chicken feet and especially the special "soup filled" dumplings!!! yeah. so you know it wasn't long before we all planned an afternoon in chinatown, nyc.

chuck, margaret and i chose a vintage tea parlor,  whose menu was almost straight from the pages of our recent read. with a little jasmine tea to start things off, all three of us picked a few small dishes to share (you can be sure there were soup dumplings for margaret)... and waited for these "little bits of heart" to start appearing on our checkered-cloth-covered table... four dumplings on a little blue plate here, four dumplings in a little tin steamer there... yum. it was all very exciting and delicious. 

afterwards, we took some time to walk around the busy streets of chinatown, where we found one more culinary stand out from the book that we couldn't forget - some bubble tea!!! a really fun way to cap off this literary-inspired adventure of ours. and we'll certainly put a bookmark here on this day so that we may return again.

with a few brushes and tubes of paint

an underwater sea turtle happily appeared in our living room today... it peacefully and somewhat effortlessly emerged onto margaret's blank canvas along with a vast amount of clear, open, nicley blended, blue water. perfectly capturing this little window of springtime calm and relaxation we have here this week (also known as spring beak!!).

on a day like today

loved going out without a winter jacket...
walking around union square...
noticing the buds and flowers adorning the urban trees...
stopping in at jivamuktea for a big salad and smoothie... 
having the time to sit by an open city window and savor the peacefulness of the day.

here is a close up of my sunlit salad bowl. greens topped with warm red quinoa, black beans, veggies and a tumeric tahini dressing. i have to say that i ate it very thoughtfully — trying to identify all that might be in there.(cumin? in the beans? or perhaps infused into the grains? or maybe in the dressing? all of the above?) i kept thinking about how i would love to recreate this at home to share with chuck and margaret. so simple but so completely enjoyable. totally something to keep in mind this season once that spring lettuce starts appearing in our garden...

welcome, spring. thanks for the warm, sunny day.

greens

backyard tulips starting to emerge...

a torta for dinner...

fresh chives sprouting up in the herb box...

knitting progress...

 

 

sorting through the box of seeds

taking inventory for 2012!!!

super bowls

supplies get gathered on the kitchen counter — blender, bowls, spoons, bananas, homemade granola, juice, honey, extra fruit and some frozen packs of açaí berries. a few ingredients are whirred up in the blender. the bowls get filled with açaí puree. the crunchy oats find their place on top of that. fresh fruit is then sliced and arranged. and next... the honey. 

these açaí bowls are all the rage in our little kitchen lately. we like them. they are fun and exotic. they are loaded with super-good-for-you ingredients. they are extra delicious and they simply bring us together at the table for a good while... and while we are still wearing sweaters and long sleeves, cruising our way through winter here, these chilled creations seem to bring about thoughts of warm sun, tropical getaways and make me want to queue up my beachday playlist. 

have you tried making açaí bowls? would you like to? these are totally something that can be easily improvised and altered, depending on what everyone's up for. before we made our first batch we watched these videos here and here which get you going in the right direction. yes,i definitely recommend grabbing some of your favorite granola, your blender and giving it a go... perhaps even turning up a few songs from your own favorite beachday mix. 

london (and knitting) calling

happily wound up some green, wooly beaverslide yarn from the rocky mountains into a ball and cast on for a new knitting creation this weekend... i'm loving this yarn and was so happy to have a bit of time to start working on something new... and on top of that? there was plenty of women's soccer streaming live on our computer. 

watching a new project take off loop by loop while getting to watch the u.s. team play a few games... perfect for a january weekend. (in some way or another, soccer really does seam to work it's way into my knitting doesn't it.) and i have to say that i totally enjoyed watching margaret root and cheer for this team and celebrate their goals... now they're off to the london olympics and we're a bit eager for the summer games to begin. and until then i've got some yarn to see to. 

peace

very pepperminty

 

and very wintery. the christmas baking is finally underway here. we began not with the traditional sugar cookies or gingerbread cookies but with a batch of chocolate peppermint cake pops. i used this basic chocolate cake recipe (which i've bookmarked for future use — it's a good one!) and from there just sort of followed several cake-pop recipes from various web sources (mixing the cake with frosting). to get them minty-fresh i added a few drops of peppermint extract to the melted chocolate and sprinkled the final pops with some crushed candy canes. a little bit of cool and a little bit of fun for all.

bright lights, big city

 
yesterday margaret and some of her cousins joined my parents for a performance of the christmas spectacular... crazy to believe my nyc born child had never taken part in this city's annual tradition before. it was a first for her and i think for her cousins too. the excitement and joy for those under nine in our group was off the charts. i tagged along (partly to help out and partly to not miss out on any of the aforementioned excitement and joy.) and while they went into the show (complete with 3d glasses this year) i got to spend some time by myself enjoying the buzz of midtown. hello old office where i used to work, hello saks, hello central park, oh, and hello family that just got out of that spectacular show.... and off we went together to wrap up our day.

the big tree at rockefeller center. so classic.

 
interacting with the technicolor touchscreen windows of macys at herald square. so cool.

passing the travel time with all sorts of hand clapping games and candy !! so sweet.

it certainly is christmas time in this city and i'm glad to have the time to enjoy it and such happy people to enjoy it with.

remember that time when we went to get our tree and it was 52 degrees? that was a good day.

yesterday chuck, margaret and i went on our traditional tree farm outing. embracing tradition, we brought along homemade ginger cake, a thermos of cocoa, lots of marshmallows and vintage holiday plaid. usually we find ourselves out there, bundled up in layers... but not this year. we'll remember 2011 as the year that we wandered around amongst the pines jacket-and-mitten-and-hat-free... the year we excitedly chose that big silly tree with the single quirky pinecone... the year we felt a bit of extra warmth of the season together on this sunny december day. oh so merry!