{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

inspired by soulemama.com 

The Walden School

It's amazing to me how difficult it was to choose a name for our home school. It was required of some paper work I had to file. So I had to come up with one. Coleman suggested: "Totally Awesome Education Academy". That can be our tag line, I suppose. Walden School, a totally awesome education academy! The name comes from, I'm sure you can guess, Henry David Thoreau. I happened to be reading "Walking" by Thoreau around the time I needed to choose a name. We do a lot of walking in the woods, Coleman, Kitty and I. The whole spirit of the book struck me as perfect for us. And so, that's our school name.

Coleman has gone back to drum lessons and is learning to read and write music for the drums. He's pretty keyed up about it. Me too. He spends 3 mornings a week in Karate. He likes to get there a half an hour early and practice before class, so he spends almost 5 hours a week doing karate. Our karate routine: we drive to town, park the car, he runs up the stairs to the dojo and I go to the Ugly Mug to either do some freelance work or surf the web to plan more lessons...Sometimes I just read.

We're trying to eat more healthfully, with as much protein as possible. The boys went for their well-exam a couple weeks ago and Coleman discovered he may be an inch and a half shorter than Max when they are grown-ups. I told him if he ate more protein he could catch up. I hope I'm not lying. The boy eats so little, more food has to add up to more body somehow. Hopefully it will amount to vertical inches.

Egg yolks, it's what's for lunch, for Coleman. (shh, there's spinach, egg whites, tofu & probiotics in his smoothie)

Spider, it's what's for lunch for a bigger spider. (photo taken on our hike Vienna Woods)

Extra curricular activities; self portrait by Coleman.

Fun with math - not. But at least we got to write on the wall.

Home Projects: Towels and Bread

We've got hard water and  I use environmentally friendly laundry soap (which, let's face it doesn't work as well as the toxic stuff).  Our white towels were icky. They were perfectly serviceable, however. So Coleman and I made a quick change to them this week. Coleman chose a color called Golden Ochre from iDye, I bought two packets. Set the washer on the hottest setting, placed towels and dye into the washer and two hours latter; Voila! New towels. Check out the fancy one that had a man-made fiber in the design (top image).

Ah, that's better.

home made bread, mmmm

I've been baking a lot of bread these past few weeks (except the week my back was hurting me). My favorite recipe so far is from The Complete Tassajara Cookbook, which Chris gave me this year for my birthday. It's for potato bread, which is white bread, yes. Indeed it is. I'm working on getting the boys to expand their dietary horizons, but they are committed to white bread.

Tassajara Potato Bread
Makes 2 Loaves

1 Tbs dry yeast
1 3/4 C warm water
3 Tbs honey
1/3 cup milk powder
3 C unbleached white flour
2 to 3 small potatoes, uncooked, or 1 1/2 C cooked potatoes, mashed
2 tsp salt
3 Tbs oil (I use canola)
3 to 4 C unbleached white flour
Egg wash (1 egg + 1 Tbs water)

Dissolve the yeast in the water along with the honey. Add the milk powder and 3 Cups unbleached white flour. Beat thoroughly to form a thick batter. Cover and set aside in a warm place and let rise for about 45 minutes.

Cook the potatoes. When they are done boiling, remove them from the wter and mash well. (I save the water from these and use it in the above step).

After the batter has risen, add to it the salt, oil and mashed potatoes. Mix well to blend. Fold in two or more cups of flour, turning the bowl a quarter turn between folds. When the dough comes away from the sides and bottom of bowl, turn it out onto a floured board and begin kneading. Knead for 5 minutes or so, adding flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking. Place the dough in a n oiled bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 50 minutes.

Punch down and let rise again, until doubled. About 45 minutes.

Shape the dough into 2 loaves, place in oiled pans, and let rise until doubled. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees while the loaves are rising.

Slit the tops, brush with egg wash, milk or butter. Bake for one hour or until golden brown on all sides. I prefer it with the wash, but the crust stays softer if you don't do a wash at all, and that's the way the boys like it, so that's what I do. Also, I have had mixed results with the slit top, so I've stopped doing that as well. I really like the way it looks, but if your timing isn't right and you've waited to long on the last rise when you slit it the loaves will fall.

Coleman choppin' up the potatoes for our potato bread.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

inspired by soulemama.com

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

tradition from soulemama.com

. . . . . . . .

Lizarding!

Max caught this one all by himself. These guys are feisty fellas. We were in a remote part of Wilder Ranch.

Look at the color, this is the first time we encountered these particular lizards.

Up-close portrait of Fence Lizard.

Western Fence Lizard, or Blue Bellied Lizard detail.

Family Portrait, That's Chris and I on the right. Don't we look slim?

Max, double fisted with Aligator Lizards.

At New Brighton Beach in Capitola on Mother's Day. Very successful lizarding day.

That's what we call hunting for lizards (and if we find a snake while we're at it, all the better). We've had a number of outings, some more successful than others. We all enjoy it, quite a bit. Mostly, I like to take pictures of it. Not that I wouldn't hold a lizard if I had to. But, well, I'm satisfied with photographing them. I do absolutely love that my boys are exploring the wildlife.

Scenes

Is That a Snake in Your Pocket? And Nana!

Nana graced us with her ever-lovin' presence recently. We were all sad to see her go home tonight. Max wishes for a tele-port machine so the 3,000 miles can be reduced to the equivalent of a walk down the block. I'm with him. To walk out the door and down the street for a cup of tea with Nana. Such a delight. Well, we didn't even have to walk that far. We had her within our own walls. And we enjoyed her visit tremendously. She should be touching down in Boston Tuesday morning.

Yes, that is a snake in his pocket! Well, actually it's slithering up his shirt. On purpose.

Same snake, checking out his captor.

Guess who? Same snake, Coleman is showing off his purple/blue eyes. He's molting.

An early morning chat with Nana, Max and Kitty at the window.

Happy Nana, knitting on the sofa. Likely an early morning. Gotta love the morning. 

A walk through the Forget Me Nots. Henry Cowell State Park.

Max with a lizard.

Showing off the beautiful markings of newly discovered lizard.

Same lizard with his pal and captor, Coleman.

Coleman and Kitty going for a skate/run.

The neighbor's dog visited us for a couple days. Max is in his true form, click to enlarge this pic!

Coleman and Bazooka, a lovely hen.

That's a big tree.

Forget Me Not.

Coleman, Tese, Max and Rose - Kitty, too!

A quiet moment with me and mum. Reading about bread. Drinking a hot cup of Joe.