A lot has changed for the Jungwirths in the last couple of months. For instance, we moved all the way across the country to Beaverton, Oregon, a suburb just west of Portland. But I’m just stopping by to tell you about a few food discoveries of the last couple of days.

First, I made really good popsicles. I got the recipe from Pinterest, and the link is here. All you do is blend a can of pineapple with it’s juice, a can of coconut milk, a banana and half a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Freeze in popsicle molds. They taste like a pina colada, but you can give them to your kids.

Second, I made these yummy things that are sugar free, grain free, vegan, and made only of good for you stuff, but they taste like heavenly little balls of peanut butter cookie dough rolled in coconut. I based it on this recipe, with a few changes. I ground 1/3 cup whole almonds up in the food processor, removed them, then ground about 1/2 cup or a little more (1/3 cup was not enough to hold the mixture together) of whole, pitted dates, then ground them both together until is was finely ground. Added 1/3 cup peanut better, ground some more, than 1/4 cup finely ground coconut (unsweetened). It still seemed like it wasn’t holding together like I wanted, so I added about a tablespoon of softened coconut oil. Rolled them into little balls and then rolled in more fine coconut to keep them from sticking together. They were a little soft, but firm up in the refrigerator and are totally addictive.

Finely, I have discovered my own personal crack. I have wanted to try traditionally fermented vegetables for a long time (most commonly known as sauerkraut and kimchi, but can involve a whole host of vegetables). I’ve had real kimchi but not real sauerkraut. I just found my own personal crack dealer at the Beaverton Farmer’s Market, and I am in love. I crave this sauerkraut and am currently eating it straight out of the jar with a fork. Luckily, she teaches classes, which I am going to have to take in order to not have my children going without food in order for me to eat a jar of this stuff every week. I tried her gingered carrots today and I think I will need a jar of those next week. I have a container of regular, vinegar soaked sauerkraut in the fridge, and it tastes mushy and weird next to this crunchy, vibrant, salty/sour real sauerkraut. Not only is it delicious, but I think the process of making it is rather magical (there’s nothing but cabbage, salt, and pepper, but it ferments into this wonderful sour vinegary crunchy concoction over two months). I hope to have crocks lined up on my counter this fall.

Also, I have learned to like radishes. I never really liked them before. But I’ve been eating them like the French do, with butter and coarse sea salt, and decided they were pretty good! My lunch today after coming home from the market was just radishes with butter, a salad of radish greens and dandelion greens and a bunch of market berries. Not bad!

So there are my food discoveries of the week. You’re welcome.

I thought I’d start documenting our Saturday family picnics around town, especially since hopefully soon we’ll be exploring a new town…more on that later :) Today we went to the Horticulture Center at Fairmount Park. Really, we need to go back in about two weeks, since it was chock full of cherry trees just about to bloom.

First in the arboretum:

This was apparently The Thinker made of . . . compost.

Paul looked around the greenhouse and said, “Everything in here is in my parents’ yard.” True.

These are all cherry trees. We’ll definitely come back in a week or two.

Miriam found some flowers to eat. This became the theme of the day.

Papa slept. This also became a theme of the day.

Every time I tried to take a picture of James by this statue, he jumped down. I have about five pictures of him jumping down off of this statue.

Miriam found more random detritus to eat. I spent most of this part of the day fishing stuff out of her mouth.

You should see how much stuff she’s stuffed in to her mouth at this point.

Papa slept some more.

James found a friend. Every time he sees a dog, no matter how far away, he exclaims, “Want to kiss the puppy!” Actually, he says this about cats, turtles, and fish too. He did not understand why fish do not want to be kissed.

Papa slept some more.

They are so close to blooming!

Can you see the stick hanging out of her mouth?

Lunch. Miriam managed so stuff not one but two very large cucumber spears into her mouth. I have no idea how she fit them. Our picnic today was:
Pesto Pasta Salad
Vegetable sticks with hummus
Chocolate Whoppers (cookies)

Then Papa went back to sleep for like an hour, so we wandered off to find something interesting to do. James thought these horses were pretty cool.

Then Miriam went to sleep, and Miriam cannot ever take a nap without a kiss from James.

The Japanese gardens are closed for the winter still, but we peered through the fence and watched the koi. There were lots of really large, bright koi that James loved to watch swim by. You can probably see a couple bright orange ones in the picture.

And a little turtle lazily floated by.

Just a few trees are coming into bloom. I’ll bring the kids back when it starts raining pink petals!

Miriam has spent the last nine months sleeping in a cradle by our bed. However, she made it quite clear a couple of weeks ago that she was getting to be much too big a girl to stay in the little cradle, by attempting climb out of it. I put her down for a nap, and when I peeked into check on her, I saw this:

So I tried putting her in the pack ‘n’ play in James room, which even with the bassinet attachment is deeper and more steady. But nope, she wanted to climb out of that too:

Hi Mama! I’m not sleeping!

So she had to go to the low pack ‘n’ play. It’s kind of a pain to have in our room, since we often move her out to the living room. The cradle rolled easily wherever we wanted it; we have to totally break this down to move it. Oh well, we did that every single night with James in our old place, so we’re used to it. Mostly she just stays there in our room anyway.

She’s awfully cute, that little monkey.

We packed a lunch and went to walk along the Wissahickon River today.

James had “Jingle” with him. He is a dog that barks when you say certain phrases, like, “And Jingle was a good dog.” He drives me bonkers and I’m always scheming about how to get rid of him, but unfortunately James has become quite attached to him. We were watching this chocolate lab swimming out to catch sticks over and over. At one point I heard James mutter something like, “Jingle go swimming too” as he went running toward the river. It registered just soon enough for me to yell, “No, James! Jingle can’t swim!” James didn’t quite understand why the other dog could swim in the river but Jingle couldn’t. It didn’t occur to me until later that maybe that was my chance for the talking dog to go away.

Much of the afternoon was spent throwing rocks into the river at every opportunity.

James was extremely nervous about going over this covered bridge. I practically had to drag him over. Then on the way back he decided it was cool and wanted to keep going over it.

I took about a hundred photos. I had Paul take one of Miriam and I to prove we were there too.

Splash!

See his rock up in the air?

We got a little wooden stool for James to stand on at the sink, and Miriam promptly used it to learn how to stand up.

She was so proud of herself.

She wore a pretty pink dress for Valentine’s Day.

Papa’s sleepy little Valentine.

Two more pilot hats, a brown one for my nephew Simeon Tolmie, and a blue one for my Miriam Anna, who has decidedly grown out of her pink one (really, she grew out of it before it was even finished, but she’s been wearing it every day anyway). Both modeled by Miriam, since Simeon lives far away in Washington state. Both in 50% wool/50% alpaca. I’ve made four of these hats now, and still make several mistakes on each one. I’ve switched to a different pattern for my nephew Canyon’s hat, and if it works out, I’ll make another for James, since I don’t like how his pilot hat turned out at all.

I also made a Christmas tree skirt a while back from this tutorial. My mom was nice enough to do the binding when she came to visit, since I had no idea how to go about it. It sat at the base of our tree unbound until after Christmas. I didn’t want the big bows on it like in the tutorial, so my mom put two snaps on the opening to keep it closed. I really want to make curtains out of the red fabric with the larger pattern, but alas, I can’t find it anymore.

On the second day of Christmas, we gave James beloved squirrels and birds their Christmas treats. I thought this was such a great idea when I saw this family’s Christmas for the animals, and thought, “Someday when we live out in the woods and have chickens and goats, we’ll do that.” But then remembered that we do in fact have animals here in Lansdowne, and James wakes up every morning and talks to the squirrels outside his window. So today was their Christmas feast.

After a lazy morning snuggling with his new doggy…

James and Mama got to work making an animal feast. Papa popped us some popcorn, and James handed the popcorn and cranberries to Mama to string (although he seemed to have a “one for you, three for me” kind of system).

After stringing our popcorn and cranberries, we made a terrific mess smearing pinecones with peanut butter and rolling them in birdseed. Mama filled the suet feeder with leftover suet from the plum pudding.

Merry Christmas, squirrels and birds! As Paul and I were sitting here in the living room, there was quite a ruckus outside as the squirrels hung upside down to get to the pinecones and fought over the nuts.

Christmas Eve was spent mainly at church, first at Christmas Eve liturgy at a church nearby in the morning, and then Christmas liturgy at our home church (an hour north) from about 7 pm to 10:30 pm. The kids were very good, despite it being way past their bedtime, although Miriam got a little cranky. I don’t know why our kids won’t sleep at church. Both of them stay awake for multiple hour services, late at night. James has stayed up through two Pascha services (which go from about 11:30 pm to 4 am). Three- and four-year-olds were dropping like flies and my seven month old and two year old were wide awake. Anyway, it was a beautiful service, and James just laid down with his blanket whenever he got tired, and then popped back up when he wanted to participate. At the end, when we were filing up to kiss the cross, our priest said the traditional greeting of “Christ is born!” to each person as they came up. James beat him to the punch, marching up and exclaiming “Christ is born!” to Fr. Noah. He’s been saying “Christ is born!” or “Jesus born!” to us ever since. He said the traditional response, “Glorify Him!” a few times but now settles for just “Glory!” It seems he is a Baptist now. Since we spent most of the day at church, I don’t have many Christmas Eve photos, but here they are in their Christmas outfits.

The kids didn’t go to bed until 11:30 pm. Sadly, that didn’t mean they slept in much. So we woke up to what has become our traditional Christmas breakfast (because if you do it twice, it’s a tradition) - poppyseed sweet rolls, sausage and egg casserole, coffee, orange juice, and prosecco for the grown ups.

James and Miriam played with their new stuff while I made breakfast. James is showing off his new trucks and Miriam is after her new spoon.

The house looked like a bomb hit it.

After all that food, it was time for a walk.

This is James’ favorite rock-throwing place. He just calls it “water,” as in, “Mama, go water?”

Miriam didn’t quite make it all the way home.

Miriam woke up to play with her new things - a new bowl and spoon, since she will start eating big people food soon-ish, and a felted ball with a jingle bell inside that Mama knit her. She’s so adorable. Even though she’s very bald :)

She loves her Papa.

Christmas dinner was kind of a bust. All the side dishes (leek gratin, roasted carrots, shredded brussels sprouts with bacon, cranberry-almond-goat cheese salad) were good, but the roast lamb smelled TERRIBLE. After lots of investigating and calling my grandmother, it seems that the smell did not mean it was bad, just that some lamb is smelly. But we’ve both eaten lots of lamb and none of it smelled like this. Arielle couldn’t eat it. Paul made a valiant effort. No one got sick. But Arielle went out and bought a ham to eat with the other leftovers, and we’re tossing the lamb. But it was made up for by a dessert that we got to set on fire! Arielle’s first steamed plum pudding, which we doused in flaming rum after the kids went to bed.

Merry Christmas!

Last night we set out our shoes…

And when we woke up, St. Nicholas had been here!

(gold coins, oranges, nuts, pomegranates, owl ornaments, and a couple of knit hats)

Saint Nicholas, Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra, defender of the faith, and patron saint of children, pray to God for us!

In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,

an image of humility and a teacher of abstinence;

your humility exalted you;

your poverty enriched you.

Hierarch Father Nicholas,

entreat Christ our God

that our souls may be saved.

Pattern: Mostly made up, with Wee Legwarmers by Ginny Sheller as a starting point.
Yarn: Rabbit Ridge Designs handpainted alpaca
Needles: US 6 double pointed

Is it just me or does Miriam often look concerned when I’m taking her picture?

Really, this entire post is an excuse to take pictures of baby feet.