mamasewingcircus.com

Hello, old friend.
My last post apologized for my absence, and funny thing, here I am apologizing, again. My Macbook harddrive crashed at the beginning of last week, and my replacement at work was a laptop running Vista – which is horrendous, and makes the PC/Mac commercials so much more clear. After fighting everyday to get the machine to do the things I needed to do for work, I couldn’t bear to look at the damn blasted machine at night to update the blog. I’ve instead been surfing the internets on my iPhone, which is sooooo nice.

I have noticed the amount of spam I have received on my site has dropped to zero since Ike hit land. Coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, as of this morning, I’m back in macbooking action, and will be updating the blog with photos and personal accounts, shortly.

Big things have been afoot recently.
Was last week the short week? It certainly seemed so.

Every second of our lives these past weeks have been scheduled. Wednesday was the first of the September concert series in Memorial Park (aka “Avenue Park”). Friday was a date night thanks to Mi Escuelita (aka Carlos’) who takes the kids on random Fridays, Saturday was a Dave Matthews concert at the Greek Theater which we ditched the kids in Marin to attend, Sunday morning was the first of our monthly brunch with the neighborhood kids. Throw in the laundry, straightening of the house, and grocery shopping, by the close of the weekend, we were exhausted. All of us. Even my laptop. In fact, the laptop was so exhausted, the hard drive died.

The week is not proving to be any less scheduled. Apple took my laptop away for 4-6 days to replace the HD. Our favorite nanny is back. We’ve switched dentists, so we’re all scheduled for cleanings this week. We bought a new mattress over the long weekend, which is coming tomorrow. Tonight is both the concert in the park and the first parent meeting at preschool. I’m responsible for snacks and clean up at the meeting, tonight, as well as plugging Escrips (for fundraising). Friday we leave to go camping. Soccer starts up again, Saturday. The Solano stroll is Sunday. And to top it all off I have one more level of Labrynth on my iPhone. Just typing all of this makes me anxious.

In an effort to improve the body of sub-par music we are all troubled by, daily, some beneveolent people introduced MoreCowbell.dj. Upload a song and add some cowbell and Christopher Walken.

A friend of mine asked me to post my weekly menu so that he could benefit from my planning or he’d know when to invite himself over for dinner. For him, here’s this week’s menu:
Monday: Grilled red snapper fish tacos
Tuesday: Heirloom tomato tart and salad
Wednesday: Chiles rellenos and black beans
Thursday: Tortilla soup (the cheater way)
Friday: Calzones

The recipes:
Grilled red snapper fish tacos –
1. Prepare the grill.
2. Grill 1/2 ear of corn per eater and 1/2 lb of red snapper. (We prepare ours by sprinkling with Montreal Steak Seasoning)
3. Chop cilantro, tomatoes, an avocado, 1/2 lime per taco, jalapeno/habanero. Grate cheese.
4. Heat corn tortillas.
5. eat.

Tomato tart –
Mine is based on Martha Stewart’s, but we use whatever cheese we have on hand and the mediterranean pie crust from Martha Rose Shulman’s “Best Vegetarian Recipes”. Martha Stewart’s recipe uses a pate brisee, roasted garlic and farmers cheese. The gyst – make your pie crust and par bake. Roast garlic in the microwave for 1 minute. Slice your tomatoes and cheese. Let the par baked crust cool slightly, then smush the roasted garlic across it – I like to use a full head so that we have a nice paste across the whole tart. Layer cheese and tomatoes. You can add ribbons of basil. Drizzle with olive oil and then bake at 350 for 20-30minutes – until the exposed crust has browned, the cheese has melted and the tomatoes have brown edges.

Chiles Rellenos –
1. Prepare 1 reasonably flat pasilla pepper per person by placing over an open flame until the skin has completely charred off. Cut off the tops and remove the seeds.
2. Grate or slice monterrey jack cheese to fill each pepper – amount varies based on size of peppers. Fill your peppers
3. Whisk an egg with 2 tbs milk, prepare a plate of 1/4c cornmeal mixed with 1 tsp salt, pepper to taste, and 1/2 flour.
4. Dip each pepper in egg then flour. Attempt to cover all sides. Let the covered pepper sit for a few minutes, then repeat the process twice or until your peppers are completely covered in batter.
5. Warm 1/4 c of olive oil in a pan until it smokes. Prepare either 3 layers of paper bags on the surface next to this or 4 layers of paper towels on a plate.
6. Set each pepper in the oil, careful of the battered coating. Fry until the batter has browned. Flip to brown on both sides.
7. Remove the cooked pepper and place it on the paper bag/paper towels to drain.
We then coat ours in Herdez tomatillo salsa.

Calzones –
Ours are simply a basic pizza dough recipe stuffed with a mixture of 1 egg, 1c ricotta, 8 oz mozzarella, roasted garlic, broccoli, spinach, and occasionally 1 80z can of diced tomatoes or fresh cherry tomatoes.

Sylvie got to hold Ruby this weekend. Such a little mommy. I swear they come out this way.

My friend Anne just finished a blanket she’s been knitting. It is beautiful!

A few detail shots:

Movie night we watched “My Neighbor Totoro”. I’d suggest you don’t rent this. And I think we should plan an intervention for our friend, Jordan, who recommended it. I didn’t realize, until I saw this, that he has a drug problem. It’s the only explanation. He seemed so normal.

“I don’t like Monkey Brains.”

“Can we eat this after we eat our dinner?”

“I love you to gravity, gravity, gravity, gravity and gravity. That’s a lot, huh, mom?”

I think he means “infinity”.
We’re having some trouble with abstract concepts. But, I have to applaud him for the 50 cent words.

We’ve got a few budding artists in the house and so many piles of finished works. Our house already resembles the louvre with stuff piled from floor to ceiling, so we can’t handle much more.
What to do?

I’m making a book using IPhoto filled with pictures I took of Will’s artwork from his most productive years. We’ll be recycling most things, and keeping the few really precious things like the lamb with 4 sets of clothespin legs.

Writing this, I suppose I could just as well use the drawings as our wrapping paper.

Blurb is another resource through which you can make books of your lovelies.