Back from Maine

We're back from a week on the coast of Maine... alas.
We spent a cold, rainy week in a cottage with my mom and sister - I realized quickly that this was the first time since little bean was born that I've had absolutely nothing to do (aside from take care of him, but he's pretty reasonable these days). It was SO restful.
Of course, we did do a few things: threw many rocks in the ocean, spent lots of time at the playground outside our front door, did crossword puzzles, played boggle, and took a day trip up to Acadia National Park. Most of the pictures are on my sister's camera, I'll round them up and post a few soon; papa bean took this one in Bar Harbor.
And now we're back... and the black raspberries and mulberries are ripe, the tomatoes are twice the size we last saw them, and summer seems to be in full swing... and I'm ready!

The weekend roundup

On a whim we went strawberry picking on Saturday evening - it took us a while to find a farm that still had berries, but once we did...
40 pounds and some ice cream cones later we returned home happy and exhausted. Little Bean was amazingly cool with the whole crazy procedure, even getting home an hour and a half past his bedtime. I'm excited to think that he's getting to an age where he's more flexible and we can do more wild stuff. Adventures are being planned.
After Papa took the bean to bed, K and I hit the strawberries. She made a huge stock pot full of jam and I froze 7 cookie sheets worth. Another trip like this and we might just be set for the winter. Halfway through some folks showed up who had met A last summer and were hitchhiking across the country and needed a place to stay on a very thunderstormy night. We chatted for quite a while and they stayed in the guest loft. I like being able to offer hospitality as part of a group, I think it makes it more graceful all around.

Also, this weekend, the choir I sing with performed the entire Messiah. Little Bean managed (with a bag of Os in hand) to sit through the whole first half hour of it! And by that point Papa was ready to make an escape too, so they listed to the rest from the lawn outside the window. The singing was super fun though - I love getting to sing with an orchestra, it is really exhilarating.

We also took a moment this weekend to send a little welcome package to brand new baby Peter! A summer swaddle blanket made of linen and my favorite squishy, chewy, grabby baby toy. Made with some really awesome bug fabric:

And to cap it all off, I made some surprisingly great tomato/corn/feta salad for dinner tonight. It was one of those throw everything you've got into a bowl dinners, and it turned out to be the saving grace for a pretty rough day.

Here's the general gist:
Lots of tomatoes, cut into bite size chunks
A little red onion, diced
Plenty of parsley, chopped
Cooked field corn (dry corn plus slaked lime (1T for each cup of dry corn) in the pressure cooker at full pressure for 40 minutes - rinse very thoroughly after cooking while rubbing with your hands)
Sunflower seeds
Feta cheese
Dressing made of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic and salt

And the tomatoes, onion, parsley and corn were grown by people we know, how lovely!

The Wagon

Little Bean has been loving the wagon that grandpa made for him last Christmas. We wagoned over to the park for a picnic dinner Saturday and the next day to the other park for some playground time. Both days he was happy as a clam - singing, talking, craning over the side to check out the wheels, getting out to pull. Good times.

Homemade torillas!

Yesterday K cooked beautiful multicolor field corn from scratch, ground it by hand, hand rolled it into tortillas and fried them. And they were the most amazing thing in the universe. Yum.