$11 buys a Few Books for a New Teacher's Library

We went to the Minneapolis Central Library for the Friend's Seasonal Book Sale the first day of the $2 a paper sack week. Our intent was to stock Matt's youngest sister's first grade classroom on the Iron Range. She'd been buying books once a month or so, but this is a much more efficent way to accomplish the same purpose at a significantly less cumbersome cost. $11 bought her kids 186 new to them books for their classroom. Books about sports, letters, numbers, science, geology, space, other countries, persons of historical interest, story books with accompanying audio tapes. . .we scored-- big time, and thus, so did the kids.



Once we'd accomplished our book mission we spent a few hours in the library, perusing engineering texts about materials and calculus,




and wandered through The Precious Object. An exhibit sponsored by the Twin Cities Decider, mnartists.org, and Hennepin County Library. It was amazing.





If you go, do make sure to examine every nook and cranny on this sculpture. It merits a trip to the hands and knees. . .

Art Lunch

Spent my lunch hour perusing the new show, Vital Culture, at Gallery 13; the gallery that's taken over two spaces in the building behind US Bancorp Center. They used to house a hairdresser and box store and now they're filled with Buddha trees and Barbie pin ups--a huge improvement in my opinion. The husband-wife team that runs it always talks to me like an old friend when I stop in, artfully reintroducing themselves in a way that doesn't admit that they don't remember my name. I'm thinking I'll make it easier next time, and just wear my badge, if I ever find it.

A lot of the pieces they have are on their website: Gallery 13 on Fine Art America

These are the ones that sucked me in today. . . and I'm sure next week will bring more.

Godzilla! Get him!!



Blök what is your story? I wish I'd made the opening so your creator could tell me.



Not blocks for your toddler to stack!

Barbie pin ups, but not my favorite, which was a Barbie with a wine glass and some of her garments on a line.


The Buddha tree!


Close up of the paper molds.



I actually returned to the office refreshed, how refreshing!

Project Feerwatch on Woodlawn

Project Feederwatch started in November, and with it the Musich Family Citizen Science Project for the winter. I originally heard about the program on MPR, in June, asked the boy about it and signed us up, knowing we would be in our new house, and hoping that we'd be able to sit on the couch together and enjoy the peace of watching birds and keeping our hands busy with some needle arts.

This weekend we nearly accomplished that vision of domestic bliss. I was sitting on the couch watching the birdless feeder as I drank my coffee and Optimus put in his bird song CD. He followed along in his guidebook curled up in the nook of my knee, letting me know when the bird we were listening to was one we might see at our bird feeder because it had a year-round range that included our spot on the map of Minnesota, occasionally throwing out tidbits like--"look, this bird lays eggs in other birds nests" or "this one we might see at our feeder in the summer, because it comes here then."


The bird activity is nonexistent in the morning. Maybe the birds don't like the chill that early? The early afternoon though is amazing for the volume of activity that occurs in the general vicinity of our bird feeder. These pictures are a sampling of the three most common birds we see at our feeder: House Sparrows, Black-eyed Chickadees and Northern Cardinals (both the male and the female have put in an appearance, but the male is pictured here.). We even had a Black-eyed Junco put in an appearance for good measure.


Black-eyed Junco


Black-capped Chickadee and House Sparrow (on top of hook)


Smug Male Northern Cardinal


House Sparrows

Sunday Afternoon Canning with Jane

My childhood friend Jane joined me this Sunday to try our hand at making Jam and Jelly--two of the recipes from the canning class I took through the MN Horticultural Society on Tuesday. I started the process before she arrived, so we could get both the Pomegranate Jelly and the Ginger Apple Fig Jam done before the end of the day. Figs are surly little buggers to process, I can see why you don't see them included in many processed foods.

Let me start by saying we accomplished our goal in about 5 hours, with an hour of downtime where I taught her how to embroider (two domestic skills learned in one day!!!) and she proved that it is possible to make something look as nice as our grandmother's handiwork.

I tried to incorporate all the tips I'd noted in the margins of my recipes and managed to forget one of the most important--stir your Jam with a sterilized chopstick! Why would I do such a thing? To work out the air bubbles of course. Air bubbles cause your Jam to heat unevenly, and can cause the chunks of fruit to dry out in the spots that are touching the bubble. I'm new at this, so I'll be ok with it this one time.

For some reason, the Pomegranate recipe said I would only have a yield of four 1/2 quart (8 oz.) jars, and I was left with seven. Did we mis-measure? Maybe. Did she mis-type the yield, maybe. I'll have to try and make it again, then let you know.

While the Fig/Sugar/Lemon Juice mixture finished out it's first several hour stewing in your own juices stint we got to work on the Pomegranate Jelly. Measuring out the ingredients and getting it cooking on the stove. I used the opportunity to test my new candy thermometer (worked great) and we made sure to take some candid jam/jelly making shots for posterity.

Do you know the story of the pomegranate?


Cutting up apples


Sure that's gel stage


Checking the thermometer to be sure


Mixing the texture back in


Magnetic stick too short? Improvise!


Embroidering the lotus with appropriate seriousness. . .



Finished Product

Canning the Fresh Girl Way

I took a canning class through the MN Horticultural Society last night, taught by Ana Micka of the Fresh Girl's Guide to Easy Canning, and it was fabulous! I've canned tomatoes before, but she opened my eyes to so many more opportunities! I had expected to be sweating over a pot of boiling water for an hour and a half, so the pleasantly comfortable conference room and PowerPoint presentation accompanied by scones topped with Carmel apple and thyme jam hit the spot.

She walked us through the basics, then launched into the how-to's of some of her favorite recipes for holiday gift giving. Just listening to the descriptions that accompanied the recipes had my mouth watering. I'll be trying a few of them out in the coming weeks, so I'll post pictures of the process and final products.

Summit Brewery Tour

This morning was lovely. The sun was shining, I survived moonlight bowling at the Park Tavern without a hangover or any bowling ball blisters, and we were scheduled to tour the Summit Brewery with 8 of our fermented beverage loving friends.

The tours happen Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Saturdays must be scheduled in advance, so this has been on the docket for quite some time. We lobbied for carpools so we managed to make it there in four cars. It would have been really nice if someone had a van, but somehow, none of us have gotten to that point in our lives where a van has seemed like a rational purchase.

Upon arrival at the brewery we needed to prove our age (21+, and that's all I'll admit to) and receive our wooden beer tokens. Then it was a waiting game with seductive glimpses of the brew kettles in the room to our right.

Once the "tour" started, we were given a breif overview of the brewery's history, some statisics about how much beer they make--approximately 83 thousand barrels a year--and how many states they distribute to--15--and things like that. Then we moved on to the REALLY fun part, the actual tour.

It can start in one of two ways, ours started in the kettle room, where they make the wurt in giant copper kettles rescued from a defunct brewery in Germany. The entire brew process is controlled by a wall of fancy electronics, but they didn't get into too much detail about that.

After the kettle room we went into the fermentation hall, where there are beautiful stainless steel (or aluminum, I couldn't tell) tanks for storing the beer while it ferments. The process can take anywhere from 2-8 weeks depending on the kind of beer they are making. As the beer ferments it creates carbon dioxide that is partially captured to carbonate the bottled and kegged beers that they sell, so next time you're drinking a Summit, remember that that CO2 is the product of the fermentation process, because how cool is that? Very. I wish I could post the smell of the fermentation hall for you here, because wow it just smelled incredible. If you've ever made bread, its sort of like that, but with more grain smells, and hops. . .ok so it's nothing like that.



The bottling line is new from the last time I was there, much shinier, and the stacks of bottles seemed much more impressive next to it.





After the walk through the kegging line and the cooler we headed out to the bar to sample what was on tap, which is pretty much everything that is available retail at the moment. . . yum. Beer is good food.

Kristoff at Westminster!

I spent my lunch break at Westminster Presbyterian Church today listening to Nicholas Kristoff talk about the theme of the book he and his wife wrote about empowering women. You can listen to it here.


Yes I was one of the 98% of people that raised their hands thinking there were more women in the world than men (true in the developed world, not true of the developing world--or the entire world when considered together for that matter.)showing the poor man how many people in the audience still had yet to read his book.

I've always finished his columns feeling inspired, and this speaking engagement was no different.

Day of all things Apple

Our friends, Saul and Noel, recruited us to crush and press apples this year with a promise of 10 gallons of cider for fermenting. I don't think we really understood how much work the process involved.* We showed up around 9 (thinking we were early) and discovered a lot had already been done and hadn't seemed to have made that much of a dent in the bags of apples chilling on the back porch, so we got to work, rotating through jobs as they became tedious or something else needed doing more immediately.

Some of the apples


Removing the flower



Throughout the day other friends and family members stopped by to chip in and drink freshly pressed juice. The crusher/press that we used is a family heirloom, that Saul borrowed from his uncle. Who purchased it sometime in the seventies when the family owned an orchard. It worked like a charm.

Apples in the hopper


Pre-Press Crushed Apples


Going to town on the crushing


The bee volume was wild--they kept drowning themselves in the fresh press bucket (2.5 gallons) and getting stuck in the cheese cloth we used to keep the apple pieces in the press barrel. They were so ubiquitous that none of us even contemplated the possibility of getting stung, resulting in Optimus and Saul's brother getting stung within minutes of each other after flippantly grabbing pieces of cheese cloth with bees trapped inside. Even with the extra hands it was 8:30-9ish before we sat down in a daze to consume pizzas and admire the jugs of fermenting brews.

*Process in it's entirety:
1. Cleaning the apples
2. Removing the flower from each apple, and cutting away any rotted or pest damaged bit
3. Crushing
4. Pressing
5. Pasteurizing
6. Adding fermentables (sugars, malt, etc.)
7. Transferring to carboy
8. Pitching yeast

We made four batches and had an additional 15 gallons or so of cider left over, a giant mound of apple pulp and scores of dead bees when it was all said and done.

Oh, United Noodle, How I Love Thee!

Stopped by United Noodle tonight for some dinner ingredients and scored Teramisu Pocky and some Crunky biscuts for my ill husband. What do you give a man that is feeling Crunk? You guessed it!

Monarch Festival

The boy and I walked over to the Monarch Festival this morning to check out the festivities, and hopefully tag a butterfly en route to Mexico. On this glorious Saturday the boy and I partook in our first "event" in the new neighborhood. (Yes, yes, we've gotten doughnuts at Mel-O-Glaze, and it was an event for the taste buds for sure!)

The Butterfly Festival was held in the grassy glade between Lake Nokomis and the Nokomis Naturescape/Monarch Waystation.


When we arrived, we immediately spotted a tagged butterfly that will hopefully be found in Mexico and reported to the Monarch Watch group. If it is found in another region and reported, it will also help the scientific study as it will show the route that the butterfly was following on it's fall migration. Optimus thought the tagged butterfly was cool and all that, but what he really wanted was to try and tag one himself.




[You can search for MGA 502 here.]We joined the line of hopeful taggers and unfortunately were one too many people back, as the Monarch Lab had the little girl in front of us put their last tag on. The rest of us were given the informational lecture about why the tagging was being done, how to tell the difference between a female and a male butterfly (this one is a male) and how to hold one without hurting it.


Pointing out male characteristics. . .

We were then entrusted with the male monarch pictured above once he was snug in his "sleeping bag" along with two trays of monarch caterpillars to release on our milkweed plants back at the house.


We headed over to the stage, where a circle of expectant children and their camera inundated adults were ignoring an Anishinabe speaker debating whether or not she should have come to this festival to perform sacred rights of her people with such an inattentive audience. . . she had eventually decided to come when a Monarch flew past the window she was sitting in front of while trying to decide.


she locked onto Optimus after we joined the circle (since he was listening) and asked him if he was going to have children. In his typical precise manner, he said "I'm not sure yet, but quite possibly." Which got her laughing, and the rest of the nearby crowd listening and she told us about our water and the importance of it for our future generations and for the future generations of butterflies.


Then she and her fellow tribeswomen, sang a song to the earth and we released our little sleeping bag bound friend into the blue summer sky with his friends to begin their two thousand mile journey to Mexico. It was awesome. A spiral of orange and black dissipating with the breeze.

When the song ended the circle dissipated in a similar manner with people moving off to paddle the lake, get some gelato, or learn more about these beautiful creatures they were here in this clearing to celebrate. The boy and I walked over to the mudball table so he could produce three mudballs of seed to take back and plant, thus creating more butterfly habitat in our yard. He made three, one of butterfly weed, one of swamp milkweed and another of whorled milkweed. He moved from the pile of topsoil to the manure completely unfazed by the knowledge of the common name for manure, working the two into a cohesive ball in his hand, walked over to the volunteer manning the spray bottle for a few sprays of water to give the ball some cling and chose the seed to work into his ball of humus.

Completed balls were wrapped in wax paper and tied with twine alongside the tag identifying the seed within.

Photos of Milkweed Varities

Once his hands were clean we signed up to volunteer in the Nokomis Naturescape, ate gelato and headed home to release caterpillars and plant milkweed.

The caterpillars were placed on the leaves of our common milkweed that was a prolific member of our various gardens at the new house. They wandered around for a bit and started eating. Success!




The front yard has been envisioned as a home for two large rain gardens, slated for installation next spring sometime, so it was there, in a clump of other wildflowers, that Optimus planted his mudballs.




We even labeled them with our saved Popsicle sticks from the summer. : )