Potato Salad, The Official Food of Summer Potlucks

I like potato salad.  More specifically, I like home made potato salad.  The way my mom makes it.  No pimentos, no vinegar, nothing weird.  The most exotic thing about it is the paprika sprinkled over the top. 

Some will say that its not worth the hassle to make potato salad when you can walk into any store and buy it by the bucketful.  It is a fussy dish, I will agree.  Lots of chopping.  Other than that, its not hard.  Just a little time consuming.  But so worth the time.  Trust me.  The ingredients are simple and easy to come by.  This recipe makes a big bowl full.  Enough for about 16 man size servings.

Potato Salad:

5 lbs. potatoes

3 ribs celery

1 sm. onion

2 big dill pickles (plus a little juice, optional)

half a jar mayonnaise

yellow mustard

3 boiled eggs

paprika

fresh chives (optional)

Boil potatoes with the skins on until just tender.  You can use whatever kind you like, but just plain old white russets work the best.  When they're done, drain and let cool completely.  Stick them in the fridge if you like. I usually do this the night before I'm going to do the salad.

Here comes the tedious part.   Finely chop the onions, celery and pickles.  Once potatoes are cold, peel and roughly chop them into bite size pieces.

Dump all your chopped stuff in a bowl and add enough mayo to coat.  Then add a good size squirt of plain yellow mustard. If you like, you can add a bit of pickle juice here.  Stir it up and smooth out the top.

Slice or roughly chop boiled eggs and put on top for garnish.  Three is enough for my bowl, but you might want another one, depending on the size of your dish.  Don't skimp on the eggs.  Sprinkle with paprika.  If you really want to get fancy, snip a few fresh chives and add over the top.

Refrigerate for a few hours before serving.

Take it to your potluck and don't plan on bringing home leftovers :)

Hello Sunshine!

As I mentioned in my last post, we've been spending more time outside now that the weather is nice.  These mild, sunny days seem like a reward for making it through the long snowy winter.

The seeds Natalie and I planted a few months ago have done remarkably well.  As in, they GREW!  This has never happened for me before.  A few days ago, I moved them out to a makeshift cold frame to harden off.  Some of the biggest ones were ready to plant, so they went into Natalie's little barrel garden.  The big garden isn't ready yet.

Natalie's little barrel garden with grape tomatoes,
cucumbers, peppers, nasturtiums , zinnias and creeping  jenny (on the left).

The chicks are completely feathered out and have moved into the coop with the big chickens.  Egg production is up.  Probably as high as we've ever had.  We've been getting about  6-8 eggs every day and we have twelve adult hens.  I'm pretty sure that my dear little Peg doesn't lay anymore, so I figure eleven layers.  Some of them are pretty old too. So, not too bad.

Our little ladies peeking out into the yard.  The one in front is a Rhode Island  Red
and the stripey one is a Marans.  They are roughly half grown.

The flowers are coming up.   A cluster of yellow mini daffodils bloomed all last week, and the regular daffodils are in bloom at the moment and I think there will be bleeding hearts very soon.  The real treat is going to be when the crab apples and lilacs bloom.  They make the whole neighborhood smell wonderful.

I even found ants already hard at work on peony buds this morning.  I love peonies.  Maybe even as much as  Matt loves them, and I'm so happy to have them again after so long.  (We used to have peonies growing all along the side of the house and they got ruined by a careless contractor).

If you look closely, you can see tiny red ants working their way around the bud.  Yay, peonies!

Wanderings- The Frog Hunt

With the arrival of spring we've been spending a lot more time outside.  Every day it seems there is something new to see.

One evening last week, we took the kids for a "frog hunt" down a nearby logging/hunting trail.  We had been hearing the frogs singing for a few days by this time and the kids were dying to catch some.  With nets and buckets in hand, we set out to see what we could see.  We did catch one wood frog (thanks to a daddy with sharp eyes and quick reflexes).  

But, we saw so much more.  Water spiders, fiddlehead fern shoots, deer scat, frog eggs, a female wood duck, tiny white flowers, wild strawberry plants, a buck scrape and a funny daddy climbing a tree like a monkey. 

The evening started out as a search for the elusive singing frogs and ended as a game of being Grizzly bears.  For some reason, this particular area had seemingly hundreds of dry poles from two feet to eight feet tall.  The kids got the biggest kick out of pretending to be bears knocking down trees.  Naturally, the batteries died in my camera before we got to that part of the trip.

We were only out for about an hour and a half, but we covered a lot of ground.  For me, the best part is always watching Matt in his element, teaching the kids what he knows about nature.

Spring at Last

I think I can safely say that it is finally Spring.  Since I last posted, a few feet of snow have melted, fallen, and melted again.  We have lots of bare ground in our yard and experienced our first rainfall of the Spring this morning.  The birds are slowly returning.  I saw this confused looking robin from our living room window last week.  I like to think it was asking the red squirrel what's going on.

In my head, their conversation goes something like this:
Robin says to squirrel "What's with the snow?  I heard it was all melted?"
Squirrel says to Robin "That was last week.  You missed it."

We've been busy during this time of waiting for green grass and sunshine.  We got an invite from some friends of my Dad's to go see their newborn calves.  A visit to a farm is always fun for us. We met a day old calf and her ornery mama, two big dogs, some bunnies, a flock of chickens and a duck.  The kids had a blast!  And, I asked them a million questions about their chicken and rabbit setups.

The General leads Matt and the kids into the birthing pen.

She does not look happy to see us.

We celebrated Easter.  The kids dyed eggs, we went to Easter Mass and out to brunch with Matt's family.

We've had a few birthdays in the family.  Joey turned 4 and had a party at the local bowling alley the same weekend as Matt's sister, Tina celebrated her birthday.  Their birthdays are two days apart and both of them were born on Good Friday.

We got our spring chicks. We added five Rhode Island Red pullets, five Marans pullets, one Buff Orpington, and one Brown Leghorn to the flock this year.  I am especially excited for the Marans because we've never had them before and they lay eggs that are very dark brown.  We've lost a few hens since the last time we bought chicks and a few more are getting pretty old and rickety and may not make the year, so its time to add some new ones.  I hope to add two more chicks this year also.  If I can get to L&M when they have them, I'd like to get a couple of Buckeye pullets.  They are a reddish brown chicken that looks much like a Rhode Island Red, but they were developed in Ohio and have a "propensity for catching mice."  I'm all for anything that eats mice.

One little Rhode Island struck a pose for me.  She kind of looks like Paris Hilton.

We have begun cleaning up from the winter both indoors and out.  Matt finally took down the deer bones that have been making our front yard look like a scene from a horror movie and I've been organizing.  We've finally taken down the Christmas/winter decorations from the porch and replaced them with more colorful cheery warm weather things.

Thrifted buckets, crate and flower art.  The chicken and silk flowers are from Walmart.
The red thing is a piece of sidewalk chalk that happened to be laying there.

  

The spring flowers are starting to peek up through their blanket of leaf mulch.  Seeing the peonies coming up always makes me smile.

I see a few more crowns than last year.  This is promising!

I've tried several new recipes.  Cinnamon Roll Cake is heavenly.  The recipe says to serve it warm, but I think it tastes better the next day.  Chicken and Dumpling Casserole got mixed reviews.  We'll see how the Rutabaga and Carrot Mash goes over tonight.  It looks tasty and Joey informed me this morning that he just loves rutabagases, they're from Canaba you know.

I've been doing some thrifting.  In my travels, I've found some clothes for the kids, a few more vintage bowls for me,  toss pillows for the living room, some metal and ceramic containers to serve as planters and several books for me to read.  I also picked up a family size George Foreman grill and a waffle iron for very reasonable prices.

I hosted my card swap group over the weekend. There are five of us in the group and we meet every other month to share cards.  We each take a turn hosting, have a potluck lunch, stamp and gab.  Its nice relaxing girl time.  And, the cards are always beautiful.  I'm very happy with this last bunch.

We've also checked out the new Cherry Berry frozen yogurt place in town, (it was ok, but over priced and not enough tables), been to the public library, had some play dates and a sleepover with the neighbor kids.  

Springtime is getting off to a good start.  I just hope it doesn't decide to be winter again until about mid-December.

Here's to Sunshine! :)

Thinking Spring

We've all been getting a little antsy for spring to come.  Layers of bulky coats and boots are getting old and we're ready for bare feet and t-shirts.  It is looking like a long wait still.  We have snowbanks about 8 feet high all along the edges of our driveway/parking area with paths to bird feeders and the critter houses.  The rest of the yard is pretty much inaccessible.  

But, we're being positive.  We're thinking Spring.  We're sorting seeds and making plans.  Last weekend Natalie and I started some seeds.  

I just love these little yellow pots.

We've never had very good luck with starting our own plants, but this is going to be my year.  By the way, I say that every year.  I just know this is really going to be the year that my seeds turn into healthy little plants by the time all this ever loving snow goes away.  

Natalie watering the seeds

After we had the seeds all planted and watered, I was talking to my father-in-law on the phone and he advised that I cover the pots loosely with plastic wrap and set them on top of the fridge until they sprout.  The top of the fridge is always a little above room temperature and will help the soil warm up.  The plastic wrap keeps things from drying out.  That way, I only had to water them when they were first planted, then not again until after they come up.  He was right as he always is about these things. Unbelievably within a few days we already had zinnias, bachelor's buttons, pansies and cucumbers sprouting. Now we're starting to move seedlings to the windowsills during the day (putting them on top of the fridge at night since it gets cold still.).

My tomatoes and Natalie's flowers all lined up in the sun.

Keeping my fingers crossed that spring will indeed come.  Soon.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Heroes in a half shell. Turtle Power!

The Daddy of the house had a birthday last week.  He generally prefers this to be a non-event.  However, when your kids are at the age where birthdays cannot exist without cake and parties, you get a party whether you want it or not.

This was the case for Matt.  The kids heard us talking about his upcoming birthday and decided that they needed to take action.  Natalie is positive that her dad just absolutely loves Hello Kitty, so it was only fitting that he had a Hello Kitty cake.  Joey has recently discovered the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and really thought that we needed party hats.  He and I went shopping the day before the party and he put quite a lot of thought into picking out paper products and favors  We ended up with Ninja Turtle plates, cups and masks, Toy Story napkins, rubber bugs and party blowers for everyone. 

Party blowers and rubber bugs.  It doesn't get any better than that!

The event itself was small and brief.  The guest list consisted of Matt's parents and my dad and the whole party took about an hour and a half.  It was the best party I can remember.  Simple, laid back and fun.  Even the grandparents got in on the masks and everyone enjoyed a nice piece of kitty cake from a local bakery.  

Who is that masked man?

Big Ron as Leonardo

Mayno & Dennis as Raphael & Michelangelo

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Chocolate Cinnamon Bread

Most Saturdays I meet my Bestie for chai at our local Starbuck's.  We often get a bite to eat and a beverage then wander around the store (our Starbuck's is conveniently located in Target).  

Lately one of their snack offerings has been Chocolate Cinnamon Bread.  This stuff is heavenly.  It should be for $2.25 a slice.  Naturally, I felt challenged to see if I could make this stuff at home.  By the power of the internet, I found a copycat recipe that another blogger had so kindly shared and Joey and I got to work.

We did make one change, and that is that we used regular cocoa powder because I couldn't find Dutch process cocoa at any of the stores I shop at.  It worked fine.

chocolate coma

Joey thought this was a good project.

"Mom, take a picture of my silly face!"

Here's what the pans look like when they go in the oven.  The recipe calls for coarse or sanding sugar in the topping, but I didn't have any of that either, so I omitted it as there was plenty of regular sugar involved.

                        

They rise up beautifully in the oven and if I had a longer attention span, I would have made sure to get a picture of the finished product.  If you click on the link at the top, it takes you to the cute blog where I found the recipe and she has really good pictures.

This stuff is guaranteed to fix even the mightiest of chocolate cravings. :)