Safron

(Please feel free to ignore this post if food doesn't make you swoon. I deeply love food, and am highly motivated and entertained by it.)

Tomorrow is game night with my siblings. My sister in law and I offered to make dinner. (Okay so I volunteered her to help me.) I am making a Moraccan Lentil Stew I had at a friends house that is to die for and she is making naan bread. YUMO! Today I was shopping for ingredients. First Walmart. If you have read this blog at all you know my feelings toward the store.  Safron - $15.49. It in an envelope, in a standard size seasoning container. The weight states.03 oz. Now I had been told that safron is expensive, but I am starting to realize that this is probably traded illegally. I mean who puts a spice in an envelope in a spice jar?  I kept looking.


The next store is Smiths (They have cereal on sale as well.) No luck, same senerio higher price.


Now one of the few perks of where I live is that there are three, yes three middle eastern food stores within a few blocks of my house. I try the closest first. I open the door and am barraged with the smells of every good spice known to man. All the spices are in bulk right next to the entrence. I don't know if it was deliberate but it definitely made me want to give them lots of money to have those smells in my home. It was also encouraging that most of their spices are much more reasonably priced than I find at standard grocery stores. Unfortunately they are out of safron (which is kept behind the counter). Fortunately they have tahini which is a seasame paste for making hummas (Yum number 2).

On to Middle Eastern Market number 2. The wonderful lady at the cash register only had a 4"x4"x.5" container of safron...for $39.99. But she told my about store number three.

Finally at a Pakistani store (I only know this because the lady at the previous store said the owner was Pakistani) a nice middle aged gentleman gives me a sellection of safron, all from behind the counter. I bought two teaspoons for $6.00.  I have never cooked with saffron before so I dont know which spice is responsible for which flavor when I have eaten middle eastern food. But I must say this had better be worth all of the effort.

On, the up side, I think I will be shopping at these stores more often. I love the smell!

December and Christmas

We have had family in town since December 16th when Russ's mom flew in and immediately started watching our children while I took Russ to the best concert we have every been to for his birthday. Bela Fleck and the Flectones Christmas. Listen it is AWESOME. There is a reason he has won more Grammys than any other artist.

We enjoyed the next few days with Laura as she reenthroned herself as the premeire playmate for my children, and then she was off to Russ's sisters home.  But while Laura was at our house my brother and his wife arrived in town. So Abbie and Savannah have been well entertained by many non-parental people who love them for a few weeks now.

On Christmas Eve we continued the Ebert family tradition of going skiing. However this year my parents went crazy got brave and wanted all the grandchildren daughters to go with us. All I can say is that the Solitude ski school instructors do not make enough money. I don't know how much they make, but it is not enough. They took my shy, cautious, three year old with zero pain and discomfort tollerance and made her love the hour she spent skiing down the mountian. She now says she "LOVES' skiing. Thank you Solitude!

Christmas Eve night we spent having a nice dinner with my family. I can honestly say I have been more excited for Christmas this year than I have since being a child. Abbie raced down as soon as she awoke Christmas morning and tore through her presents, overwhelmed and in awe at what she considered a big pile of loot. (This was all captured on our new video camera - our loot - from my parents.) Savannah slept in for an hour and then joined in the fun! There really is nothing like seeing your kids so excited.

This week has been spent continuing the holiday parties and spending time with cousins. All in all a wonderful time of the year. We have been very blessed this year and have enjoyed taking the time to revel in our greatest blessings- our family.

Really?

Last Friday when the air around Salt Lake Valley turned the consistency of split pea soup, Abbie develped a cough. No other symptoms. She has asthma so this is not at all surprising because the air warnings were something like, "If you have a chronic condition, move far far away."

Her breathing was fine. There was no weasing, no retracting and no laboring. So we upped her meds and watched. The cough got worse, and worse.... and worse. By Tuesday she had the deep, wet, exhausting cough every few minutes (I timed it.) We decided to go into the doctor's. She still wasn't in distress but the cough was terrible and the with Christmas coming I didn't want to run into a real problem when the office was closed.

The morning of our visit we ran a few errands, the bank, the store, running back home. I timed her cough in the car. Every one to three minutes she would have an episode. It sounded awful, painful and tiring. Then we went to the doctors.


She did not cough once, not once, the entire time we met with the doctor. Not a sound.

Really?     Really.

She played. She joked. She told the doctor what she wanted for Christmas. But not a single cough.


I could have screamed.

Thankfully, I have a wonderful doctor who believed me and she proscribed decadron to help. Bless her for it.


Abbie proceeded to cough the entire way home from the doctor's office.

Opposite World

In our family, no means yes.

At least for Savannah. We will ask her if she wants dinner. "No" she says as she shakes her head emphatically and runs over to her high chair straining to pull herself in. We will ask her if she wants a story. She will again say no as she grabs the book in one had, my hand with her other, and place the book in my hand.

I have tried to get her to say yes. "Say Yes, " I coach.


"Pleeeeeaaase." Although it comes out more like, "Peeeaaassss."

I don't quite understand where this misunderstanding came from. Thankfully though we know what she means, and she knows we know what she means, so the world is still a happy place.

Closet or Castle

This is how my closets look these days.

 

 

The first closet is supposed to contain boxes that we packed up when we re-carpeted. The second holds food storage, and the third is the floor of my linen closet.Those are the items that are supposed to be there.

The toys are not.

Abbie has commandeered these sites as her castle and her house. In reality they are the new repository for all of her toys. Believe it or not, these toys have all been meticulously placed, and any moving around or putting away is met with extreme frustration and anger on the part of the mistress of the castle.

I vacillate. Something in me loves this nook and cranny aspect of creating your own space. Something else in me screams for order and a clutter free world. For the moment you can see who is winning.

A Ghaustly Little Tale

I am not a big fan of Dickens. Oh, I know I should be. I have read a good handful of his books and clearly the man was brilliant. The way he can describe a scene down to the minutest detail makes you feel like you are there. The smells, the sounds, the feel is all there. Unfortunately for me that is half of the problem. Dickens spends SO much time creating a scene that I'm already bored of it by the time the set up is made. I know this doesn't bode well for me to criticize one of the English language's greatest writers, but I am being honest.


There is however one exception.


A Christmas Carol. I love it.

Now let me be clear, I am not into the movies, the plays or any adapted version. I love Dicken's Christmas Carol. For as much as I enjoy the story I love the language and description with which it is told. I love that Marley is dead as a doornail, but Dickens doesn't know what is so particularly dead about a doornail, as he would have supposed that a coffin nail would be the deadest piece of ironmongery. I love that Scrooge makes a lame joke to Marley saying, "There is more gravey than grave in you," and Dickens mocks the lameness of it. It is brilliant.

I love all the asides that so tellingly observe human nature that are as relevant today as when it was written. I love that even though it is somewhat of a cheesey moralistic tell, in the actual telling the characters are true and real, while at the same time creating the perfect stereotypes with which we can all relate. So what I see as cheese in the plays and movies, is in the book an uplifting message that the birth of the Savior we celebrate means even the most ornery of us can change.

So while I will probably never get through Great Expectations (and I'm sure more's the shame), I will pick up my old friend once more this year to enjoy.

Before and After and Snow

(I wasn't good about taking before pictures, so I'm using old ones. I would love it if my house were spotless in the after pictures. I am just happy to have it in one piece.)

Before

After

 

Before

 

After

 

Before (look at the tile not the baby)

After

I am so pleased with how everything turned out and happy to have it done before the holidays!

In a completely unrelated turn last night was our first real snow so we celebrated by going out and building snowmen.

Abbie could have stayed outside all day, and frankly so could I, but poor Savannah has a hard time walking in boots and was pretty miserable. All in all though, it was a successful snowman building adventure.

Sickness and Remodeling - Part Three

I think the universe is trying to tell us something. Not sure exactly what but for every remodeling project we have had in the last month someone has gotten very sick. Well, universe, you win. We are done remodeling. Now please keep us healthy. (Please don't tell the universe that we were done anyway. I want it to think it won.)

Saturday we moved all of the furniture around for the carpet installer to come bright and early Monday morning. He said between 8:00-9:00. He came at 11:30. (Soap box about the curtesy of promptness, or a phone call when you are going to be late another time. Especially when all toys, TV, music, and access to the kitchen is blocked by furniture.) That night we spent moving the furniture into the rooms that had carpet so the remaining rooms could get recovered. Just as we finished, Russ said, "I don't feel so good." We thought being a week out from all of us with the stomach flu meant it had passed him by. No such luck.

  Thankfully, Russ has an iron will, and stomach because while he felt like pure misery he didn't loose his lunch, dinner, or any of the previously eaten meals. He did however take a sick day off of work. The first in the seven years I've known him, so I know he was feeling as badly as I had been.I can say though I am truly grateful he chose to get sick after the furniture had been moved or we would have been up a creek.

Now our carpets are done, counters done, and tile done...when we get everything back where it belongs we will take pictures and post our beautiful new house.

Sickness and Remodling - Part Two

Clearly having the Swine Flu while we were getting new tile was not enough to fully stress test our family.

That nasty bug of gastroenteritis visited me first late, oh so late Monday night. I can honestly say I have never been so ill. I will spare you all of the gory details but I will just let you know there are a lot to spare. I spent the next day trying desperately to recover and made a brief appearance at YW in Excellence where I was the speaker, and then returned miserably to bed.

By Wednesday night I was doing much better...just in time to clean up Savannah barf all over the floor. (Yeah for new carpets on Monday!) After getting the girls down, sanitizing everything in sight, and preparing to hunker down for a long night of 18 month old stomach sick, Abbie was attacked. Her attack came more along my lines -- pure misery for several hours. Savannah thankfully never woke up in the night.

Then early this morning as I was trying to recover from a "Up-Half-the-Night-with-a-Sick-Kid" hangover, the phone rang. The counter top installers are coming today at 12:00....not tomorrow as originally scheduled.


At least now they are ripping out our old counters for free because of the mix-up!

Halloween Candy Disapearing Act

I have been trying to figure out for days how to rid our house of all of the Halloween candy that we have lying around. We have limit her to a few pieces a day, and while this limits sugar intake it means that without some intervention that candy will be here well past Easter. Candy has never been appealing to me but I feel like Abbie's teeth are rotting away by the minute. Each night I have taken and thrown away hand fulls of her candy  but we have had a long way to go.

 This morning I read this blog in which the mom gives her kids free reign on the candy for two days and then they give the rest of the candy to the Halloween Witch, and she leaves them a toy. Absolutely brilliant! I ran to Russ with the idea. Probably more practically he doesn't want to invent a fake charecter but said we should just give her a choice. Less fun but easier. So I tried it.

"Abbie do you want to give me all of your candy and then we will go by a car (note this is a toy car from the movie Cars although the other option might be appealing when she is 16)?"


"Yes"

She ran immediately over to her candy took one last piece and watched as I threw the rest in the garbage.


I feel like a success! I got rid of the cavity, hyper inducing candy and it only cost me $3.00 and no fits!

Happy Halloween!

From Goldilocks and the Three Bears!

Sickness and Remodeling

In addition to normal busyness, Abbie decided to get the swine flu, which has made things a little interesting around here. Thankfully, thus far it is running pretty much like the normal flu with no serious complications. We did get her vaccinated so we were told that it would make it a more mild case. It looks like her fever is slowly abating as I type.

For better or worse we got the swine flu at the same time we had people tiling all of our bathrooms and dying the grout in our kitchen, dining room, and entry way. We were not aloud to walk on any of them for an entire day. Thank heavens for grandma's house.

Despite the chaos the sickness has added I have been thrilled at the look of our new tile and grout! Even just the dye job has made a world of difference. We had a dark brown almost black grout when we moved in and have hated it every day since. We dyed the grout a nice light brown grayish color that I am just loving.

Finally, because of the flu and quarentine rules it looks like Abbie wont be able to trick or treat. After all the drama with her costume this is most unfortunate, but I've decided we are going to do a small family Halloween party instead. We will play pin the smile on the jack-o-lantern, decorate cookies, and watch a Halloween movie. Honestly to me it sounds more fun than trick or treating anyway. Thankfully with Abbie being only three I don't think the switch will cause too much drama.