August 2017 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Kitchen Tip: Preparing Artichokes

Sometimes I learn a kitchen trick and wonder why I ever did it differently. That’s certainly the case with freezing sliced bagels and toasting them straight from the freezer, and freezing overripe bananas for future baking. I recently learned a different way of preparing artichokes, and can’t imagine I’ll go back to the old way.

Growing up, we ate artichokes occasionally as a special treat, always prepared the same way: top of leaves and stem chopped off, spiky bits of remaining leaves trimmed, then boiled for 25-30 minutes. I had already modified that to steaming in recent years, I rarely boil vegetables anymore – and the stems are left longer to get to the bit of heart in them. (Sometimes I save the stems after cooking to make a single serving of artichoke dip.)

Artichoke preparations — Upper left: unprepared artichoke, steamer, and dish with lemon juice. Upper right: artichoke cut down the center. Bottom left: split artichoke with fuzz removed. Bottom right: cooked artichokes.

When I started grilling this season, I went looking for a grilled artichoke recipe. What I found quickly became my favorite way of preparing them; it eliminates stopping halfway through eating to clean out the fuzzy bits on the heart. After the prep that I’ve always done, I slice each artichoke in half, top to stem, dip each side in lemon juice to reduce browning, then loosen the artichoke fuzz with a knife before scooping it out. It gets another dip in lemon juice, then set in the steamer basket while I prepare the rest.

The artichokes can be eaten steamed, with a dipping sauce – mayonnaise or garlic butter are traditional options – but we’ve settled on grilling them while it’s warm out. I pour a marinade of olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper over the artichokes before placing them sliced side down on the grill for 10 minutes or so. (This will vary based on the type of grill; as mentioned before, the cooking time on a Big Green Egg is shorter.) My grill can easily hold four artichokes. Inconveniently, my steamer only fits two, and that barely if they’re massive ones from Costco, so I steam two batches before grilling.

Taking a trip back in time

“It’s hot, over-priced, and historically inaccurate.”
“But it’s fun.”

I went to my first Renaissance Faire in Ft. Lauderdale during college. We borrowed my Dad’s minivan for the hour drive from Miami, spent a good part of the February day at Faire, then went home and had a pool party. Because you can do that in Miami in February.

When I moved to Chicagoland and discovered there was a nearby Renaissance Faire that lasts two whole months, I was delighted! So delighted, in fact, that I’ve only missed it one year since I moved here; my daughter was born mid-season.

Dirk & Guido, the Swordsmen — Dirk & Guido, Bold & Stupid Men

Cirque du Sewer, during a rat’s performance

Bristol Renaissance Faire has so many choices, you can’t possibly cover it all in one day. I think the perfect day at Bristol includes seeing a classic performance and trying something new. Examples of Bristol classics would be The Mud Show (dirty, yet kid-appropriate), Dirk & Guido, the Swordsmen (Bold & Stupid Men! I have the button that says so), Adam Crack’s Fire Whip show, or even the Joust. (By no means is this a complete list.)

Which shows we see varies on each visit, partially dependent on who we’re wandering the Faire with. Last year, the new act (for us) was The Dread Crew of Oddwood, and oddly entertaining music group that describes itself as “Heavy Mahogany debauchery from Southern California.” This year, as we wandered between lunch and shopping, we encountered a lady with a rat, hawking her Cirque du Sewer show. It was delightfully amusing to see how well the cat and rats have their human trained.

Bast's Garden — Bast’s Garden, a menagerie of winged plush

Twisted Spiders — Beautiful spiders dangling from the ceiling.

And then there’s the shopping. The shopping opportunities are extraordinary, from apparel, jewelry, decorations, books, games, and more! We always visit our friends at Bast’s Garden, which usually results in yet another winged plush coming home with us, and I like stopping at the game store (just in case I need more dice). This year’s new find was Twisted Spiders, a booth dedicated solely to beautiful spider jewelry and adornments.

It’s never a dull day, and if you’re lucky, you get perfect weather too.

Exploring new possibilities

I usually peer in the window, then wander off. It’s safer that way. But I was spotted and invited in, so I took a chance.

It feels like speed dating – is that still a thing? – where you rush in and meet everybody with at most a couple minutes to grasp each personality before moving onto the next. It’s not as structured, it just seems pointless to backtrack if your first impression is that you won’t click. Or that the rest of the household won’t click.

June and Diane — We’re either sleeping or in motion; we will not look at the camera for you.

My girls have fairly aggressive personalities. They’re not outright hostile, simply a handful, and I won’t subject a timid personality to that. I’m also not sure how they’d react if I brought someone new home. We walked out of PetSmart without adopting another cat.

It’s been over two years since we lost our third cat, Mungojerrie, at the ripe old age of 19. Well, our first cat really, since he was the oldest. I adopted him at 10 weeks old, along with his brother, Rumpelteazer. (Yes, they lived up to their names.) We had lost Rumpel to cancer eight years before. At the time, we had a third cat, Missy, who almost became friends with Mungo before she passed away. When we lost her, he was lonely, howling for attention in the middle of the night until we (quickly) conceded and adopted Diane, our beautiful black and white cat.

A few months later, we had a brief, and tragic, interlude with Marianna, a cat who gave the most wonderful hugs, but didn’t absorb salt properly into her system. This caused her to pursue odd food sources, including climbing into a garbage can for some French fries that had been thrown out. She was a strange one.

After losing her, we adopted June, our polydactyl tortoise shell (she’s a Hemingway cat… an extra toe on each front paw). She was a young mother, being adopted out at the same time as her “kittens” (they were as large as her already, and she’s not particularly small), and she rounded out the family perfectly.

This was the first time since we Mungo passed away that I’ve stepped into the room to meet the adoptable cats. I’m not sure we need a third cat, or that we’re ready for one, but there was a cute Siamese I wanted to meet. As it turns out, he was sweet, but too shy for this house. Maybe next time.

Birthday Party Planning

There isn’t one right way to plan a kid’s birthday party; every child is different, so every party should be too. Every party planner is different too. I like having a theme to plan towards, and luckily, my daughter is willing to work with that. Some years, deciding on the theme is a chore in itself, though her eleventh birthday was super easy to pick – that had to be Harry Potter themed. (I suspect her 111th birthday will have a Lord of the Rings theme, though I also suspect I won’t be available to celebrate it.)

The hardest part about making these dragon handouts was finding the large eggs.

Some themes only affect the party favors, such as the year we handed out crocheted dragons. The rabbit theme impacted the food too, I served carrot cake, along with the traditional banana bread mini-donuts that I’m required to make for every birthday party. Carrot cake happens to be my favorite cake, so I had actually suggested it for a couple years before the theme finally

This dementor made the mistake of showing up at a wizard party with a Hawaiian theme.

Harry Potter had the most elaborate planning, with a home-made dementor piñata, a castle cake pan, and a lathe where kids could customize their own wooden wands during the party. There was even a golden snitch being hidden repeatedly; each time it was found, the house was awarded points, and it was hidden again. The planning started more than a year in advance, with bits and pieces coming together as we added the Hawaiian aspect (for a summer birthday) and came up with the different activities.

I don’t think you need many organized activities at a party – once they have an idea or two, kids will generally keep themselves entertained. And the adults can relax while they do that (except, of course, if you’re the adult supervising the lathe).

This year’s theme took a while to pick, we finally settled on a party at Brookfield Zoo, which is one of the two large zoos in the Chicagoland area. There are playgrounds for the younger kids, educational information for the bigger ones, and an awesome selection of animals for everybody to see.

I made good use of our zoo membership, visiting multiple times earlier in the summer so I could gather clues for a scavenger hunt. I took tons of photos of educations signs that I normally wouldn’t have, just so I could review the information at home while planning the hunt. Cassandra suggested having a word scramble from the answers, so I went with that idea. I briefly considered giving more clues than letters needed for the word scramble, then decided not to be that mean… this time.

As a bonus, I printed up Brookfield Zoo Bingo cards, so the teams worked together on the scavenger hunt and separately on their Bingo cards. The one downside we hit was the time limit – I told people to be back at our picnic area in an hour. Some of the Bingo cards were fairly thoroughly marked off, but in that time, only one person finished more than half the hunt; I included clues from opposite sides of the zoo. This one really takes two hours… try it, if you’d like. Brookfield Zoo Scavenger Hunt (Answers available on request.)