There's a little place the girls and i have dubbed Nature Land and it's a mere 10 second walk from our front door -- it's our neighbor's front yard and sidewalk! Once again, I have no idea what kinds of trees they are (big, leafy) but they drop the prettiest darn leaves you've ever seen. Today, Addie insisted I come back behind the bushes to the place they like to go, so i did. It was magical... just like the kinds of places i used to frequent when i was little! Do you remember when you were little? Just going behind a bush and crouching down puts you into another realm. This little place is a small clearing, shielded from the sidewalk by juniper bushes almost impossible to see through they're so dense. And a lot of good leaves and pine cones back there for the picking. I felt honored to be back there with my girls. Too honored to take a picture.
After we depleted their front yard and sidewalk we walked up toward the school yard, stopping every few feet or so to collect something different - red berries, big orange berries, big green berries, more leaves, big pinecones, and little pinecones on the ends of pine needly branches. It was amazing. How much you see when you look! When we got home we made leaf necklaces -- turns out pine cones don't take kindly to being sewn with a needle, it's pretty darn impossible to get the needle through a pine cone!
Earlier in the day, we made soup! I have to tell you that I normally chase my children out of the kitchen (i'm such a good mom) so i can get some cooking done - call me crazy but something about trying to delegate tasks to 4 year olds that inevitably lead to bickering and arguing and messes is something i like to avoid! But today i realized there was actual work the girls could do to help make the potato leek soup! And they were so good. I chopped up the leeks and threw them in a big bowl of water and Josie sifted her hands through them to clean them. Thinking fast, I got out the kitchen scale (Addie's favorite kitchen gadget) and asked Addie to turn it on while I grabbed the potatoes. We weighed out 2 lbs (threw in some russets to make up the difference) and I threw the red potatoes into a shallow bowl of water (it pays to have an ingrained understanding of each child's temperment when you are cooking with children on the fly) and asked Addie to rub the dirt off them. I quickly peeled the couple of russets and had her rinse those in the bowl of water as well. They proceeded to not only do their own tasks without getting distracted but also to let the other one come over and have a look/feel at what they were doing... in other words sharing. Remarkable.
I started the olive oil & butter heating in the soup pan while we drained the leeks in a colander. Then I let the girls sit up on a stool in front of the stove and put them in the pan. I don't usually allow this but today it just seemed the right thing to do. At this point, Josie's dislike of getting dirty kicked in and she realized she wanted little part of the actual cooking and proceeded to do the dishes (her idea) while Addie was in hog heaven stirring the leeks until they got "shiny and soft" and then the potatoes (luckily they only had to be quartered) and broth. Brought the soup up to a boil, covered and simmered it for 20-30 minutes. Blended it with an immersion blender, salted the *beep* out of it (with Luke's favorite T-giving leftover, truffle salt!) and let it sit on the back of the stove. Had it for dinner tonight with mother and it was darn-tooting good! The recipe is from one of my new favorite cookbooks The Homemade Pantry, by Alana Chernila. Highly recommended even if you buy it, as I did, based solely on the fact that the cover photo is homemade pop tarts. Which are quite good also - of course i've already made those!
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