Everything about the last 2 days was stressful. And I figured out why I’m so obsessive with the pre-trip cleaning. It’s a big stress reliever. The cat was acting ill again, throwing up orange liquid and hiding under beds. We’ve arranged extra care for him while we’re gone, but I really hope he makes it till we come back. He’s shrunk to nearly half his size and looks so much smaller, like back in his kitten days. But once in a while he’ll still act spunky and do things he shouldn’t do, like jump on top of the blue velvet chair with a look on his face as if he’s ready to scratch the hell out of it (he generally doesn’t scratch furniture). It’s got me saying, “Just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want!”, every time he gets mischievous.

But we did make it through the last few days, including sending a million marshmallows out in the mail and fulfilling a large wholesale order that came in right after Mark closed down his last shift at the kitchen. Mark said it was like “seating a party of 20 in a restaurant half an hour after closing time and having them order the 15 course tasting menu.” Can’t say I’ve ever been in that situation, but I’ll take his word for it. You know we love our customers, so of course we accommodated even though he was SO done.

Speaking of, thank you thank you thank you to all who purchased this month during our summer sale. You have no idea what it means to leave the business for 3 weeks with a little peace of mind knowing that August wasn’t a complete wash like we initially planned. Now we can, you know, buy each of the kids their own gourmet artisanal doughnut instead of making then split one (I kid, I KID!).

Good bye New York. See you on the West Coast.

We’ve become one of those parents. oh you know, the ones who bring their kids to parties where there are no other kids. But we aren’t totally obnoxious like that. We cleared it first with the hosts. The hosts being gojee.com – have you heard of it? It’s a recipe database culled from a network of food bloggers, and oh look, here’s our goofy photo.

Anyway, getting back to this party in Williamsburg, on a rooftop where many vegetables and fruits were being grown in containers, delicious tacos, homemade chips and salsa was served. The girls ate a million tortillas and had a blast riding around this old tricycle they found. They created this game and rode a hundred laps around the roof in hysterical laughter. Mia even told her first party joke which wasn’t intended to be a joke, but she answered a question as only a kid could. “How many feet in a yard?”, she was asked. “Depends on how many people are standing in it”, she answered.

When the sky turned dark and it was time to go home, they didn’t want to go. Party animals.

She’s not bad at folding the laundry. And I got Mia doing the dishes now too. They think it’s “fun”. But nobody’s touching the vacuum. Oh hell no. The most satisfying chore ever and it’s mine.

I’m taking the concept of cleaning the house before a vacation to the next level. I’m usually obsessive about it, but who else cleans out every junk drawer AND touches up baseboard paint AND caulks the kitchen backsplash AND organizes the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator before a trip? Yeah, thought so…

It’s the laundry, always the laundry. For being such a neat freak (and a bit OCD, I admit), folding and putting away the laundry is my least favorite chore ever. I’d rather scrub the bathrooms than deal with the laundry. See that pile there? It’s full of clean clothes. It’ll sit around unfolded in the basket for days, even a week. Once it’s folded, it can sit around some more before it gets put away. Can’t always blame it on being busy; it’s just one of those things that gets procrastinated on. I have a theory about this too: people who hate doing laundry also hate unloading the dishwasher (hate hate hate). True or false?

I am so very glad some of you tried the quinoa recipe! Actually, we’re always pleasantly surprised when people try recipes and report back here. Can I let you in on a little secret? It sounds kind of bad, but it’s just a testament to Mark’s chefness. Sometimes when we post recipes, Mark won’t remember how he made something so he’ll ask to see a photo and improvise in his head. It’s only because he won’t get to writing it down for days. He’s definitely done this with some of our more popular recipes that we’ve gotten feedback on, so don’t worry, we’re not sending you down some wayward road of culinary disaster. But as we soon learned from a friend who tests recipes for cookbooks for a living, sometimes chefs are the worst at writing recipes down for “normal” people.

Claudine and I have spent the whole week together as she was done with camp a week before Mia. It’s a lot easier when the kids are home together because they occupy each other so well, but when it’s just Claudine and me, she tends to follow me around the house most of the day. I took her on a girly date with me in Soho yesterday and we had a blast. She was a very good companion and we had a lot of fun trying on headbands and necklaces at J Crew and browsing through lipstick and nail polish colors at Sephora. You ever go shopping with a 4 year old? If you didn’t already know, they have a lot to say about these things.

Oh, did we say we didn’t have time to post recipes anymore? Bah, don’t listen to anything I say. Although this was the second time we made these and the second attempt to post a recipe, and I believe Mark make these quinoa cakes again solely for the purpose of writing the recipe down even though I told him that I had already announced on the blog that I had given up hope of ever posting a recipe again. He probably did this just to annoy me.

So you know, quinoa. I’m a lukewarm fan. I know it’s good for me so I’ll gladly eat it, especially since it’s a good flavor sponge for anything it’s cooked with, but I never got really excited for quinoa until Mark made them into little cakes, like crab cakes. The outside is lightly crispy and proves once again that just about anything tastes good when it’s fried. We ate them as sides with our dinner both times, but my impulse the first time I tried them was to put a poached egg on top for breakfast. We had one left over from this batch and guess what? My instinct was right. It’s *perfect* for poached eggs (Mark wants you to know that he hates poached eggs and runny eggs in general and would never eat them this way).

Quinoa Cakes (makes 8-12 cakes, depending on size)

2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup quinoa, washed and drained
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon kosher salt
black pepper to taste
1 cup Panko Japanese breadcrumbs, for coating
1/2 cup olive oil

Bring the broth to a boil in a small saucepan, then add the quinoa. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until all the liquid is absorbed and quinoa is fully cooked. Transfer to a mixing bowl. Let cool for a few minutes. Gently mix in the parmesan cheese, egg yolk, salt and pepper. Form into patties about 3-4 inches in diameter. Chill them in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large frying pan. Gently press each side of the quinoa cakes in the breadcrumbs to give each a light coating. Fry in batches for several minutes on each side, until golden brown and crispy. Let them cool on paper towels, and serve immediately.

Friends, there have been really dark days recently in the world and I admit that I have been taking the news really hard, but after a night of becoming distressed over things I can’t control, the morning seems more calm. It’s hard to understand the events of the world right now. I can understand hopelessness and helplessness, but I can’t understand violence. Seeing some photographs of citizens banding together to clean up after the riots in London gave me some hope. Watching the girls go about their day, totally oblivious to the news that’s going on around them, is also a kind of normalizer. Their enthusiasm about rock climbing at camp for the first time, or their giddy anticipation for an airplane trip next week is infectious.

I think going away will be good for me. A break in routine. There’s usually a tangible excitement in the air a week before a big trip, but I’m not feeling it. Mark’s been very busy at the kitchen (thank you to all who have participated in our summer sale so far!), but I have wrapped up my projects last week and there’s a fair amount of uncertainty in what’s lined up for fall when we get back in September. We’ve been through tight times before. We know what to do to get through this. I also know that our family is lucky. Stay safe.

When Fairway opened up in Red Hook Brooklyn in 2006, we, like most Brooklyners, cheered on and declared that grocery shopping would be changed forever. Well, we did start shopping at Fairway like most of our neighbors, but after a month or two of driving 15 minutes over to the waterfront and parking in the spacious parking lot like suburbanites, Mark and I decided to stop. It had nothing to do with the quality or selection of the food. Quite the opposite really – Fairway did live up to its reputation, but we found ourselves falling prey to the Target syndrome. You know, you can’t leave the store without spending under a hundred bucks?

We were still in super frugal mode in 2006 and $100+ trips to the grocery store weren’t going to cut it, especially if the groceries weren’t going to last a week. The problem with Fairway is that there are so many good looking things to tempt you as you walk through the store, you just end up throwing all kinds of stuff that you wouldn’t normally buy in your cart. It’s like vacation spending.

Even though we’re no longer on a super strict budget like those early years when we became parents, our grocery budget and shopping habits haven’t changed at all. We still keep food purchases to about $450 a month for our family of four. This doesn’t include things like toothpaste, toilet paper, bottles of ketchup, shampoo, etc. which we buy in bulk a few times a year at Costco (yes, that does mean we have ridiculously large bottles of ketchup in our fridge), but it does include all food, including trips to the farmer’s markets (edit for clarification: this doesn’t include the occasional takeout or restaurants. When we were on a strict budget, this would happen maybe once a month). The good thing is that food is never wasted or thrown away. We only buy what we need, usually from a list. The bad part is that we rarely ever have fun stuff to just snack on around the house when we’re feeling snacky. If you were to just drop in on us one day for a surprise visit, We’d have nothing to offer you (sadly, my friends can attest to that. So if you want to drop by, give us some notice to shop, ok?). The only big change in our spending habits from those days is that we may eat out or get take out a little more frequently, but Mark still cooks pretty much 90% of the time.

I was thinking about those extreme budgeting days when we shopped at Fairway this morning. It was one of those Sunday mornings when the weather forecast derailed our original plans to go to the beach and we were trying to think of things to do (it didn’t at all rain, by the way). Exploring a neighborhood we haven’t gone to in awhile seemed perfect. I was also thinking that we needed to revisit those budgets that we stuck to 5-6 years ago. Remember that post about all the news bringing me down? Well the news didn’t get any better last week, did it? I am really trying not to freak out about the economy. For ourselves, our friends, my parents. But I don’t want to live in a bubble either and ignore what’s going on.

Oh, and did we manage to avoid the Target Syndrome at this Sunday’s trip to Fairway, our first in years? Almost. $94.

ps. that black building there in the last 2 photos? It’s across the street from the Fairway parking lot. The girls and I must have stared at it for a good 15 minutes. We even played “I spy”. Mesmerizing.

Remember when we used to post recipes? Yeah, me too. Good times. Truth is, after feeling some irrational guilt about not posting recipes for so long and endlessly bugging Mark about coming up with dinners and meals that we can post on the blog, I’ve sort of given up.

I really like the idea of having recipes on here and we did a much better job of that in the past, but to be honest, it’s the last priority on Mark’s list of tasks. It’s also a lot of work to photograph the food. There was maybe a time when I fancied food styling, but I have since admitted to myself that it’s something I don’t really enjoy that much when I’m being really honest with myself. I don’t need to add extra stress to our lives, and for what? I still enjoy taking photos of food, but I have since decided that I’d like to focus my photographic efforts elsewhere, especially since there are so many food photographers out there, particularly here in the city.

So…after saving this image for a few weeks because I thought we could maybe post a recipe for miso eggplant (you can find the stuffed zucchini flowers here), I just present you with a photo. We ate this.

When I watch my kids struggle with something they are working on, whether it’s riding a bike or drawing a picture and I see how frustrated they get, I urge them not to give up, to keep at it, to practice. As a parent and as an adult, it’s sometimes hard to understand what goes on in the minds of kids, particularly when we think the answer or solution is so painfully obvious to us. I remember my mom would be so flustered at me and my brother because we weren’t the eternal optimist that she was. She couldn’t understand why we dwelled so much on worst case scenarios, why we worried about things we couldn’t control. In short, we weren’t like her. I, in turn, couldn’t understand why she expected us to be something that we were not. My brother and I have learned to tame those pessimistic demons now that we are adults and parents of 2 kids. In fact, I feel like I did have a light bulb moment earlier this year and my outlook on things have changed considerably. It feels almost life-changing. Still, sometimes old ways can rear its ugly head and I wonder if we can really completely change how we are wired.

That shiny new bicycle with the wicker basket up there? Mia learned how to ride a bike in a single afternoon. But since then it’s been a series of disappointing bicycling attempts. Now, the new bike gets barely touched and sits on our balcony. She’ll just deflect the question whenever we ask her if she’d like to go on a bike ride today.

When I see how my kids are so quick to give up on something when things are not going their way, I have to remember, our kids aren’t us. My impulse would be to keep trying, push harder, practice until I get it right (or so I hope. Honestly? Sometimes it feels easier to just quit), but I can’t expect them to react to situations the way I do just because that’s what I want. Sometimes the girls will pick themselves up and work harder at something. Other times they will completely walk away, dejected. There are moments when I’ll catch myself saying those annoying “mom” things you thought you’d never hear come out of your mouth when you were a kid: “How do you expect to get better if you don’t practice?” “Don’t be a quitter.”. Honestly, most times I don’t know whether to let go or to push. It’s a delicate balance between gently nudging them with guidance vs being an overbearing taskmaster. As parents, we always want to do the right thing, but sometimes this is hard because we don’t always know what the right thing is.

Do you know we do wedding favors? We’ve been doing them since our first year when a customer asked about favors, and now the hearts and pillowy packages of marshmallow cubes are the most popular favor requested. These are some recent(ish) favors we’ve sent out.

So…in exactly 2 weeks we’ll be on an airplane headed to our annual August Seattle trip to visit the in-laws, but this time we’re tacking on Northern California first to go visit my brother and his new baby (yes, I have a brother!) and some old friends. I haven’t been to San Francisco in 15 years and it was just a day stop when Mark and I drove across country to move to New York, but prior to that, the last time I spent any amount of time in the city was in 1990 during one of my many traveling adventures. We’ll have 4 full days there and no doubt will cram as much in as possible. Any thoughts on things we should hit?

We’ll be away for nearly 3 weeks which is the longest we’ve been away from the business. We’re nervous about leaving the cat, who is still hanging in there despite his illness and his occasional bad days, and we’re nervous about shutting the business down for 3 weeks and not making any income during that time (a HUGE compromise when you don’t get paid vacations from an employer). But we’ve made a promise to travel with the girls as long as it’s something we can swing financially without too much sacrifice and it’ll give Mark a nice break before we regroup for the Fall and the holidays. In the meantime, we’d like to keep Mark busy in the kitchen for the next 10 days, so we’re having a little summer sale (if you follow us on Facebook or Twitter, then you may have already heard). Use code SUMMERSALE11 on either our website or our Etsy shop and save 15% off of your total order until August 12th. After the 14th, our shop will be closed until September 2nd.

ps. thanks for all your comments on the whole ad thing. You know I appreciate your comments, right? And if I could get threaded comments to work on here, it’d be so much easier to respond to each of your comments, but as it is, I don’t always get a chance to respond back. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about ads yet, and given my lack of motivation to do anything these days, probably nothing. How’s that for a lame answer? I think this vacation can’t come soon enough…