We’ve got one off to kindergarten.

One off to preschool.

And one determined to go wherever her brothers go.

You try to stop her.

We’ve invited some friends over on Saturday night to celebrate Labor Day with us. We’ve hardly fired up our bonfire this year.

Usually, that’s one of my favorite summer pastimes: we tuck our kids in bed and hope they stay there, while our friends walk down to our home in jeans carrying six packs. Together we drink and laugh, watching the flames flicker and the smoke rise.

Only this year the summer passed with Matt in a courtroom while the kids and I traveled East. So on Saturday night, we’ll enjoy the last of the summer nights before the crisp air of fall sets in and we worry about bedtimes once again.

This week, we’ve got zucchinis and tomatoes from our CSA box to get rid of. We’ll make zucchini salsa, which you can use on top of salmon or brats. We’ll dish it up with chips at our Labor Day party.

Zucchini Salsa, adapted from Taste of Home:

• 5 cups shredded zucchini (about 5 medium)
• 4 medium tomatoes, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 medium green peppers, chopped
• 1 small sweet red pepper, chopped
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1 jar tomato paste
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 teaspoons ground mustard
• 2-1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon each ground cumin, nutmeg, cilantro and turmeric
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper

Mix together zucchini, onion, green pepper, red pepper and salt. Let stand for a few hours or overnight. Drain.

Combine zucchini mixture and remaining ingredients in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.

Let cool.

She’d lost her husband and both her boys to cancer. “People are afraid of me because I’m old,” she said. I was relieved to see our children weren’t, that they were so giving of their time.

Before we left for the cabin, my friend Meg dropped off a book she’d been reading, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.

I’d wanted to read it ever since I read in New York Magazine that children don’t make you happy. Which didn’t surprise me. When it comes to relationships, we always say, “Nobody can make you happy but yourself,” yet we put that expectation on our children and then act surprised when they alone don’t fulfill us.

But they sure are cute.

I wanted to read her book to find out what did make you happy. Because like the author, I am happy – I’ve got a wonderful husband, three adorable children, and a dog to boot – but sometimes I feel I get lost in the busyness, when what I want to do is celebrate the joy my life brings me.

One of her insights into being happy in marriage is, “Don’t Expect Praise or Appreciation.”

I’d been self-righteously telling myself that I did certain chores or made certain efforts “for Jamie” or “for the team.” Though this sounded generous, it led to a bad result, because I sulked when Jamie didn’t appreciate my efforts. — Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project

During our vacation, our 1-and-a-half-year-old got sick. While Matt was off drafting his fantasy football team with his buddies, I cleaned up puke. When I finished wiping up the floor, while comforting our toddler on my hip, I couldn’t help but think Matt owed me. Big time.

I felt myself simmering. Sulking. And I saw what Rubin was saying, how much resentment sours things. Because really that’s what parenting is about, being present in the moment. And sometimes the moment you get sucks but you’re there. You get to be there. And that, in itself, is reward enough for me.

I took a picture to remind myself how peaceful it was, although at times it didn’t feel so.

We’re wrapping up our week at the cabin. Our boys caught sunfish last night, which their cousins cleaned and I dredged in Bisquick then fried. We’re barbecuing by the shore tonight so I’m off to marinate steak. Thanks, Sean, for guest blogging and making us laugh on our last day here.

Turning over a new leaf
by Sean Dilley of Wool Gatherer

I’ve decided to become a tea drinker. (Yes, the title of this post is a terrible, terrible pun. Unforgivable, really.)

I’ve enjoyed coffee since I was a little kid (no doubt I stunted my growth), but for some reason I haven’t really developed a fondness for tea, apart from an occasional glass on ice (or the delectable Long Island variety, which has no real tea in it.). Oh yeah, and I love bubble tea, but that’s more of a dessert than a drink.

Anyway, lately I’ve decided that I should work towards changing my attitude about tea. I have several reasons for this attempted conversion.

• Tea smells really good.
• Tea is pleasing to the eye.
• Making tea and drinking can be a soothing ritual, and I’m all for being soothed.
• Tea involves nifty little accessories and gadgets. Some accessories one can buy, others one can knit. Either way, who can resist? It’s all good.
• Tea is a great way to get a dose of mid-morning or afternoon caffeine with fewer jitters that one can get from coffee.
• Tea offers a good excuse to enjoy a cookie or scone. (Not that I have ever needed much of an excuse.)
• And finally, since my pinky finger is always prissily extended when I drink things anyway, I might as well be sipping tea like a regular lady.

When you get right down to it, I like just about everything about tea.

Now, if I can learn to enjoy how the darn stuff tastes, then we’re all set.

That’s really what it comes down to for me. I don’t think tea tastes bad. I don’t think it tastes very good, either. To me, tea seems like a cup of hot blah. Hello, flavor??

On the rare occasions when I do drink tea (usually to make my partner Darren feel happy that I might finally be growing in my appreciation of the finer things), I’m always reminded of Anne Rice’s novel The Mummy. The mummy, Ramses, upon awaking in nineteenth century London, happily acclimates himself to nearly all the traditions of the new era—except the custom of drinking tea.

“To him it tasted like half of something.”

I’m with the mummy on this one. If I make it weak, the tea tastes like dishwater. If I let the tea steep a long time, I get a bitter brew that is also unpalatable. It’s all rather frustrating.

For the short term, I’ve decided to stop worrying about how tea tastes. Darren buys high quality tea by mail and at a local tea shop, and he has picked up some really good stuff for me to drink at work.

So. My plan is to make several cups of jasmine oolong or green tea each day, enjoy the soothing aroma as I watch the pearls unfurl in the hot water, and I will sip my tea like a good boy.

For now, I’m concentrating on tea’s health benefits, but over time, I hope that my taste buds will start to discern and appreciate subtleties that have escaped me until now. Who knows, I might even grow to really enjoy my daily cuppa, just as I love the satisfying flavor of an espresso.

There is precedent for the transition I’m trying to make. Until I was thirty-five, I detested the taste of beer. One or two swallows were all I could get down before my gag reflex asserted itself. (And I was a German major—imagine my shame!)

But for some reason I kept forcing myself to try different types of beer, and when I was vacationing in Austria in 2002, I finally began to enjoy it. Layers of flavor started to become clear to me, and at long last, my brain made the linkage between beer and bread.

Yeasty, wheaty, carby, mmmmmm.

Did I need to start drinking beer? Certainly not. In fact, my waistline and I were both better off without it.

However, if I can teach myself to enjoy something that’s not good for me, I figure that I should give healthy tea at least as much chance as I gave beer. Only seems fair.

Just one question, though. How many cups of oolong does it take to get tipsy? Because so far, I’m feeling nothin’.

~ Sean Dilley

We’re here at the cabin, doing our best to stay out of touch with the world. Which doesn’t always work when you’re used to being plugged in. But for the rest of the week, I’m turning my blog over to my amazingly talented friend, Sean of Wool Gatherer. He’s hilarious, a David Sedaris in the making. I hope you enjoy his posts as much as I do.

It is, I daresay, an example of my decadence

by Sean Dilley

When Darren and I were in Germany two years ago, I rediscovered the simple pleasure a perfectly soft-boiled egg at breakfast.

I imagine that many of you recoil at the notion of jiggly eggs in the morning or any other time. I’m untroubled by your reaction.

Either you enjoy soft yolks or don’t. I realize that there’s little middle ground on this point. One of my good friends gags at the mention of even an over-easy egg, and I’m sure that the words “soft-boiled” would send her into a light coma.

I, in marked contrast, can barely choke down an egg if the yolk is hard cooked, and scrambled eggs have always sickened me. (I do make the rare exception for a good breakfast burrito, but there has to a lot of guacamole and gooey cheese in there to hide the horrid dryness of the eggs.

But I digress.

In Berlin, each morning our friendly server would offer us an egg to round out our Continental breakfast. We could have it fried or boiled. Darren always declined, but I went for the soft boiled egg every time. It arrived under a little crocheted chicken cozy. (No, I never asked for the pattern.)

In the fifteen years since my previous stay in Berlin, I had lost the knack for cleanly decapitating my egg, but even if I did have to discretely spit out a few bits of shell as I ate, I still loved the combination of the hot, soft egg on top of the fresh crusty German bread, cheese, and pepper bacon. That’s some good eatin’. Mmmmm, köstlich!

As our European trip was nearing its end, I found myself making my usual list of the things I’d miss when we got back home. Somewhere on that list, I won’t say how high, were those morning eggs.

On the last leg of our journey home, while we sat in the Newark airport at trusty old gate 41B (“my” gate for the seven years I flew back and forth between New Jersey and Minnesota during grad school at Princeton), I hopped online and ordered myself a set of egg cups. No big deal, really. Just $5 for four brightly colored plastic cups.

But then I got to dreaming about having a neater way to lop off the top of my eggs, and before I knew it, I had forked out $60 on a “Professional Egg Topper.”

Yes, spending $60 on that gizmo was kind of crazy. I have no problem admitting as much.

But as a lifelong lover of kitchen gadgets, how could I resist this marvel of engineering? Simply place the bell-shaped end over the top of the egg, pull back the spring-loaded black ball as though starting a game of pinball, and let the internal steel peg smack down on the egg. The impact creates a perfect crack around the bottom of the bell that makes it easy to neatly lift off the top of the shell. No muss, no fuss.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I figured. So I quickly purchased another implement that I never knew existed until that day, but I also knew I had to have, an egg pricker.

It, too, is a spring operated affair, with a sharp little steel needle that pricks a tiny hole in the bottom of the egg before it goes in the boiling water. In theory, that little hole lets steam escape from the cooking egg and prevents the shell from cracking. Well hey, sign me up!

Perhaps I didn’t need an egg pricker (yes I bought a German model), but could I really take that chance? And hell, it was only $8, which was dead cheap after the topper.

So now, on some nights when I think I’ll need a special treat to start the next off on the right foot, I’ll set my alarm to wake me ten minutes early so I can pull out my silly egg gadgets and make myself a nice breakfast before work.

Now if only I could find someplace in the ‘burbs that sells those crusty German hard rolls covered in all kinds of toasted seeds to go with my eggs…

[Homer Simpson drool sound.]

So, that’s my story. Strange yet still comfortably mundane.

~ Sean



PS. A shiny Euro to the first commenter who can identify where I got the title for this post.

If only I could feel this way forever, nothing ahead of me or behind me, just the water, the sun and the breeze.

We’re up at the lake this week, praying our children don’t actually catch a fish, because I’ve never cleaned one before and may pass out if I do. But nothing beats the sound of water lapping against the shore, especially when it comes from outside your bedroom window.

Before we left, I was thrilled to join the LoveFeast ladies, Kristin and Chris Ann, for their first Minnesota BlogLove event at Camille en Rouge in Prior Lake. Because building a house is one thing; decorating it is another.

And I like their style. They’re not about the latest trends or the price tag affixed to an object; they’re about what inspires you. What you love.

And how you welcome people to your table. Because what matters most isn’t that you know which fork to use, when to take a bite, or the artwork hanging on your wall, but how you make your guests feel.

Food provided by Edelweiss Bakery

At their event, I felt inspired by women like Janelle, who designed this apron…

And Amanda of I Am Baker, who baked these sugar cookies…

As well as familiar faces, like Jen of Grow with Graces and Molly of The Snyder 5.

Thanks, ladies!

All BlogLove pictures by Suzanne Jean Photography.

Back at Rehkamp Larson, Matt and I flipped through Jean’s first draft of our floor plans, while talking eating spaces: informal, formal, island seating, or maybe a breakfast nook?

Our conversation sort of made me laugh. Because this wasn’t the life I’d mapped out for myself. Not too long ago I lived in a friend’s furnished attic. It was all I could afford, as, like most recent grads, I was strapped for cash. Then I married Matt and my surroundings shifted dramatically. Most of the time I feel lucky. But occasionally, slightly disoriented.

Island seating, we decided, was out. Because we’ve got it now, and too often I clean while our children eat. It’s all about convenience.

I want to celebrate food in our home. Good food. What it is, and how to make it.

A booth I like, especially Liz’s, pictured below, which has a built in bench around it. According to her, it’s the perfect way to contain kids. Which appeals to us, since ours usually end up under the table.

Some consider a formal dining room a waste of space: after all, how often does your family wander in there? But I love a good dinner party, far, far away from the kitchen, where I can’t see the mess I’ve made. The pans I’ve burned. The flour the kids spilled on the floor. Especially on holidays, when you lengthen your table to hold family and friends.

But our design plans came back with more square footage than we’d like. And something must go. The key to a Not So Big House is not to have spaces that duplicate function.

Would you cut a formal dining room?

PS: After much debate, Matt and I decided to set our home traditionally on the lot. He, I think, is too traditional to turn it, and I’m too much of a privacy freak to have windows that face our neighbors’ home.