Author: Shane

Ballet Recital

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Evie is still loving ballet, and was very excited about her big performance (although possibly not as excited as she was about missing swim class). This being her second year, she was even less phased than last year. I can definitely see her improvement, and the way she does the different moves and poses really starts to look like a ballerina.

If nothing else, she certainly has the smoldering look down:

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This year, Sara volunteered me to help out backstage. I was more than a little nervous about this especially since I normally have no involvement with ballet whatsoever, so I had no idea what I was doing. Not to mention the fact that I would undoubtedly be the only daddy involved, so any stupid mistakes would only be magnified. I felt like I was representing my entire gender. My volunteer duties covered both the actual performance and the dress rehearsal, for double the fun.

However, the whole thing was a breeze. The kids pretty much take care of themselves at this point, so we really only needed to help them with their costumes and herd them in the right direction. Sara gave me tissues and lipstick to take in my pocket (I’m told all the best backstage mommies have lipstick in their pocket), and I managed to be Johnny-on-the-spot with both items, impressing several actual backstage mommies (thanks for making me look good Sara!)

For the actual performance, I couldn’t have had a better seat. I was just offstage, maybe 10 feet from the action. It was so much fun to see Evie performing. She just absolutely nails everything, with her usual meticulous attention to detail. You can see in the video that she is exactly on beat with the teacher on every step. One of my favorite parts of the video is right at the start of the free dance, about 2 minutes in, when Evie launches into it before anybody else even moves. I know she’s been thinking about this for a long time and practicing, so it was nice to see all of her hard work pay off.

Evie is such a little ballet teacher. When we were backstage, she was stressing over when we were going to go, warming up, and making sure everybody was lined up properly in the correct order. She was assigned to be the “caboose”, perhaps to make sure everybody in front of her was doing the right thing. Well anyway, that’s the way Evie took it, and she planned to do her job properly.

You’ll see what I mean at exactly 1:02 in the video. When Evie sits down, she catches the eye of the boy across from her, and then quickly demonstrates to him on how he should be holding his arms. This cracked me up so much, because it’s just Evie in a nutshell, knowing every single piece of the performance and “teaching” everyone how to do their part. You’ll also notice at the very end, when they all line up, she quickly corrects her feet to their proper position.

So anyway, without further ado, I give you the Dew Drops:

ETA: Since I wrote this post, Evie has informed me that she’s started a “dance school” for her classmates. She has choreographed a “tulip dance” (because “our arms look a tulip when we do the circle”) and she is teaching her pupils in preparation for a performance she’s arranging on the final day of school. She demonstrated a little bit of the dance for us, and I assure you it is as fully featured as the one performed above.

May Food Swap

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I’m a little late in posting this, but Sara attended the May Food Swap.

In exchange for:

  • whole wheat honey bread (6 loaves)
  • yogurt (5 14 oz jars)
  • cantaloupe vanilla jam (3 4 oz and 1 8 oz jar)

We received:

  • Cinnamon pecan butter
  • Preserved lemons
  • Overnight French boule
  • Focaccia
  • Orange sea salt caramels
  • Hot pepper jam
  • Strawberry rhubarb orange preserves
  • Potato, cheddar & chive frittata
  • Rhubarb curd shortbread bars
  • 2 copper river heirloom tomato plants
  • 1 wapsipinicon peach tomato plant
  • Garlic & oregano butter
  • Plum with vanilla orchid tea jam
  • Cardamom peanut butter
  • Cashew butter with candied Pomegranate
  • 4 chocolate peanut butter Whoopie pies

May Food Swap

Naturally, the desserts are always the favorites at our house. In this case the Whoopie pies carried the day, with the rhubarb curd shortbread bars a close second. However, for my money, nothing beat the garlic & oregano butter / focaccia combination.

It was also a cool idea to get tomato plants. We’ve planted them in the garden, so hopefully they take off (I believe they had been started from seedlings, so two of them at least were little tiny baby tomato plants). If they do, they are certainly “worth” a lot of food compared to a loaf of bread.

Speaking of bread, that was a lot of bread! I was baking bread for 2 days, since I did 6 loaves for the swap, another two loaves for us, a couple of batches of granola, and a batch of oatmeal cookies on top just for funsies. Seems like it was worth it though, since Sara traded all the bread, including even the one that she had sliced up for samples. Besides, usually Sara makes everything for the food swap, but i do a lot of the eating, so it was probably time to pull a little weight.

As always, very glad to have an opportunity to try a bunch of unique homemade items!

Quote Monday is never as it seems

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Evie: “Would you rather be with a shark that ate yesterday, a tiger that ate yesterday, or a lion that ate 10 weeks ago?”
Me: “Well, the lion would be hungry, and I don’t want to be under water, so I guess I’d go with the tiger.”
Evie: “Wrong! You’d rather be with the lion because he’d be dead if he didn’t eat for 10 weeks!”

Ollie: “Here Grandpa, you can use some of our sun scream.”

Ollie: “Hey, did you write on my picture?”
Sara: “Oh, sorry buddy, I was researching tomatoes. I really like your picture though. What was it, a spider?”
Ollie: “A zombie.”

It’s actually a pretty good zombie picture. But how does he know what a zombie looks like??

zombie picture

Crêpes!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

The first Friday of the month is reserved for recipes. You can see additional First Friday Food posts here.

The Reason:

I’m still trying to burn through some of my stored-up food posts, and that means pancakes! So you’re getting another First Friday Food that is not on a First Friday.

As far as the reason to make crepes, one day it just occurred to me that I could make crepes. With whole wheat flour no less! We’re always looking for good pancake recipes, and crepes are a significantly different form of pancake.

The Journey:

First off, I’d like to specify that I originally learned how to make crepes from an actual frenchman. I don’t have his fancy pan or fancy crepe-scraping tool, but make no mistake, I know how to get the job done.

All that being said, flipping crepes is no joke, even if you don’t flip them in the air. There is certainly a skill to it. Be prepared to have ripped up and shredded crepes, even after making hundreds and hundreds of the things. Making crepes is somewhat stressful, and requires your full attention. But afterwards, you get to eat crepes, and the ripped up ones taste the same as the nice ones!

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The recipe calls for the ingredients to be mixed in a blender. Do it! I tried everything I could to avoid it, including mixing with a mixer. It doesn’t work. If you get chunks in your batter, they will stick to the pan, and then you’re not going to get nice looking ones.

Also, use a LOT of butter on the pan, in between each and every crepe. You really can’t over-butter it. Just remind yourself you’re cooking like a French person, and throw an extra pat on there. You’ll thank yourself when you try to flip one.

The Verdict:

Making crepes is not that difficult, but it is a LOT of work. You have to make LOTS of them, because people will eat them way faster than you can make them. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

But, might I add, they make you look very fancy pants impressive.

Crepes are so versatile. You can basically put anything on a crepe. Even setting aside savory crepes, you have jellies, jams, curds, marmalades, peanut butter, nutella, and just plain sugar. You could have these every day of the week and not get tired of them.

Well, not get tired of *eating* them. But you will definitely get tired of making them.

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The Recipe:

Recipe from 100 Days of Real Food.

  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1 cup milk
  • ¾ cup water
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon butter, melted + extra for cooking
  1. Put all ingredients in blender and mix well. Let stand about 15 minutes.
  2. Melt and swirl around a small pat of butter in an 8 or 10-inch frying pan over medium heat.
  3. Angle pan and pour enough batter on one side to thinly and evenly cover the pan. Very quickly swirl the batter around to cover the pan in one thin layer.
  4. Immediately use your cooking spatula to push down the thin edges of the crepe around the perimeter.
  5. After about 1 minute (and once it is golden brown on the bottom) carefully flip it over without tearing the crepe.
  6. Fry for 1 more minute on the other side (until it is golden brown as well) and then roll up each crepe.

Zombie Preparedness Hobby: Canning

/ Shane / 4 Comments

This post originally appeared on the Zombie Preparedness Initiative website.

We all need hobbies to take our minds off of the daily grind, and relax. However, there’s no reason these hobbies can’t also help to hone skills needed in the case of the inevitable.

At its heart, canning is about sterilization and food preservation, two things very near and dear to our hearts. The general idea is to heat the food and container to a temperature that will kill any bacteria, and then vacuum seal it to prevent contamination. Canned foods can last up to five years (or even longer in some circumstances), require no refrigeration or electricity, and are self contained in a package suitable for travel.

Low-acid foods, such as meat or vegetables, must be canned in a pressure canner. (Note: a pressure canner is not exactly the same as a pressure cooker!) High-acid foods, such as fruits or pickled vegetables, can be canned in a simple hot water bath. Recipes can be more or less complicated, but this can be as simple as filling a sterilized jar with fruit and sugar water and dropping it in hot water for 15 – 20 minutes.

The equipment for hot water bath canning is easy enough to come by. The hot water bath itself is easily improvised with a large pot and a fire. However, the more difficult part to obtain are mason jars, lids, and rings. Jars and rings are re-useable, but lids are not.

In my experience, small, local hardware stores are surprisingly one of the best places to get canning supplies. Since you will undoubtedly need to raid a hardware store at some point, be sure to stock up on lids. This should be especially easy, since the foolish or short-sighted will probably not be thinking of this long-term item. Jars can be obtained at the same place, but vast, undiscovered caches of jars are living in the basements of old ladies everywhere. Jars can be reused, so you can also start with a few and grow your collection over time. Just be sure that there are no chips or cracks around the edges of the jars, since these will prevent the jar from sealing.

There is a little bit of an art to canning, so it is smart to invest some time now, while you have the luxury. In the long term, you have a relatively sustainable way to preserve the vegetables from your rooftop garden (you are planning on having a rooftop garden, right?) to help sustain you for years to come. And the best part? This is a useful hobby to know in a non-post apocalyptic world: nothing beats homemade jam!

For reference books, I suggest the old standby, the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving. However, if you’re looking for something a little more modern, I’d recommend Food in Jars or Canning for a New Generation. For an online reference on canning (as well as a literal map on where to head for food when the collapse comes), check out pickyourown.org.

Shane is a programmer and writer who blogs at shanehalbach.com about zombies, bacon, pirates, and his children (not necessarily in that order).