foodie friday - thou art everyday my valentine

Last year I went all out for Kat's class Valentine treat with these Valentine Brownie Bites.  But I'll be the first to admit this year I just didn't have it in me.  Losing my mom has really taken a toll.  This year, too, was 15 years since losing my dad.  Frankly, the week has  been one I'm working on just getting through.  I leave tomorrow for a week in Michigan to handle estate matters and, as best I can, begin to catalogue the contents of my mom's home.  Dread, dread, dread, dread, dread.

So, all of this was hanging over me while I muddled about what little treat to add to the Valentines for her classmates.  How to come up with a happy treat when I wasn't feeling very consistently happy??!  Because I spontaneously burst into tears, reading a recipe was out of the question. Who can read a recipe with eyes full of tears?  No, this treat (aside from being happy) needed to be really, really simple!

This one was a no-brainer.  All you need are lollipop sticks (hit up Michael's for these), a bag of marshmallows, a bottle of seasonal nonpareils, and chocolate.  I used semi-sweet baking chocolate, but any kind of higher grade chocolate will do.  I'd avoid chocolate chips only because I don't thing the chocolate sets up nearly as well.

Melt the chocolate over a double-boiler or very slowly in the microwave.  Insert your lollipop stick, dip the top half of the marshmallow in the melted chocolate, and sprinkle with the nonpareils.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!  They were a huge hit with the kids and only took about 25 minutes from start to finish.  I bagged them individually in cellophane Valentine bags and secured them with a decorative twisty-tie.  Voila!  A super easy, inexpensive, and pretty holiday treat.

With love from The Valley of the Sun.

garden hope

The garden has been more than a little neglected this season. With my being out of town for so long tending to things in Michigan, Daddy-O had to play double duty: dad and mom, lawyer, cook, chauffeur, homework checker, grocery shopper, bill payer, etc.  You get the picture.  Gardening was the least of his worries.


We went out over the weekend to have a look around and discovered, amazingly, gardens sometimes can fend for themselves.  Considering everything was started from seed, I think we're actually doing pretty well.

We have a few critters feasting, so we need to come up with a natural way to discourage their devouring the broccoli before we do!  Natural, that is, in some way other than squishing them with a stick.

Grand Rapids variety lettuce.

Brussels Sprouts.

Peas.

The beginnings of our first head of broccoli.

All-in-all, provided we can keep things moving in a positive direction, it looks like we'll have some bounty from our lack of labor.  I'm most excited about the Brussels Sprouts - although Kat will probably have a different opinion about that.  They're my favorite winter veggie and I've been stockpiling some good recipes.  Speaking of great Brussels Sprouts recipes, I made this one at Christmas from The Steamy Kitchen.  The cranberry pesto was delicious!

With love from The Valley of the Sun.

mud

I've missed November completely, and December has disappeared without anything to say.  Not that there hasn't been anything going on; the goings-on have just been really, really sad.


I lost my mom on November 29, 2011.  It was entirely unexpected.  It was not supposed to be this way.  I simply wasn't ready.  But, who is?  Even if I'd had her for another decade, I wouldn't have been ready.  The hole in my heart is very deep and very wide.  Yesterday marked the first month of my life without her in it.  A month.  Thirty days.  Yet, the sadness I feel is as fresh as it has ever been.  So far, time is not doing much in the way of healing.


For those of you who knew my mom, you know she was active and involved and engaged in living a bountiful life until the very end.  She was here in Arizona until November 8, and there were absolutely no signs she was sick.  As I pieced facts together later, the first indications something might be wrong didn't manifest themselves until somewhere around November 20, when she began having episodic nosebleeds that were slow to stop.  In a short span of time, she later told me she had had some bleeding from her gums, and on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving she was diagnosed with a small retinal hemorrhage in her left eye.


None of these things, individually, were a huge concern to anyone.  Collectively, though, they were symptoms of a very acute and aggressive form of leukemia.  She was diagnosed during an ER visit on November 27.  By that evening, she had suffered an inter-cranial hemorrhage and was on life support in the Critical Care Unit.


I flew to Detroit on November 28, and though she never regained consciousness, the medical team encouraged me to talk to her, which I did.  I told her things she had already heard a thousand times before: I love you, Mom! I love you, I love you, I love you.....


At 4:10 a.m., I made the hardest decision I've ever made.  The thought of a life without her was, and is, unthinkable. But I knew it was a decision for her, not for me.  I knew her wishes, even if they weren't my own selfish wishes.  I knew God's plan, even if it didn't exactly comport with mine.


I was able to be with her when she died.  As devastating as the realization was, it was truly a very peaceful, quiet death.  God took her gently from this world and for that I will be eternally grateful.  Lingering through a slow and painful death would have been devastating to my mom; a woman whose connection to her church, her friends, and the Grosse Pointe community was deep and fulfilling.


There are no regrets.  My mom and I were very, very close.  She knew I loved her very much, and I knew her feelings for me where the same.  We talked often, saw each other regularly given the distance between us, and shared a friendship only adult daughters can share with their moms.  I will always miss her.

With love from The Valley of the Sun.

cinnamon sugar crisps

When we leave for school in the morning, Kat inevitably lugs along a lot of unnecessary stuff - like, 7 stuffed animals, or the biggest coloring book she can find and a basket of 113 crayons, or a pair of butterfly wings!  Monday she climbed into the car with her Royal Recipe Collection cookbook.  I have no idea why.

Generally, the 15 minute drive to school is full of chatter and questions and singing.  This particular drive was eerily quiet.  As it turned out, she was flagging pages in her cookbook - an afternoon snack wish-list of sorts, and then asked if we could make one of them after school.  Nothing like planning ahead...especially when snacks are concerned.


So, this is the one we chose:  Cinnamon Sugar Crisps.  They were super easy to make (you don't even really need a recipe for this), and fun to eat.


Ingredients:

• 3 or 4 small flour tortillas
• Non-stick cooking spray
• 2 tsp granulated sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375° F.  Cut each tortilla into eight wedges.  Place tortilla wedges in a single layer on an un-greased baking sheet and spray them lightly with cooking spray.

Mix together the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl, combining well, then sprinkle evenly over tortilla wedges.

Bake for 7 to 9 minutes or until light brown.  Let cool and serve.

We ate ours with a small bowl of Sprouts Natural Applesauce and they made for quick and easy after school snack.


Bon Appetit from The Valley of the Sun.

message in a bottle, err....banana?

I found this cute idea while having lunch and trolling the Internet one afternoon; the Mistress of Multitasking that I am.  Well, that's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but at least I managed to keep my Siggi's yogurt off the keyboard.

Anyway, I don't normally pack a banana in Kat's lunch because, like the chicken breasts you find in the grocery store these days, the bananas are always so huge she can't possibly eat the whole thing, or, if she does, she's too full to eat anything else in her lunch.  Earlier this week, Sprouts got a shipment of not-so-super-sized-steroidal bananas and this morning I tried the "message on a banana" trick.

I always write her a little love note on a napkin, but I hope this one gave her an extra dose of Mom Love mid-way through the day.  Sometimes that's all you need to make it to 3:05!

With love from The Valley of the Sun.

seekers hike - sedona, az

There is a group at our church that does a regular monthly hike once the weather starts to cool down.  That's a relative term, of course.  "Cool" doesn't mean the same thing here as it does in most other places.  Let's just say, they start to hike again once the temps hover only in the low triple-digits.  Usually, though, early in the season they choose hiking locales with a little elevation, so that helps bring the average highs down in to a more reasonable range:  mid 80s, or so.

Two weekends ago we went with them for the first time.  They were hiking the Soldiers Pass trail in the Coconino National Forest in Sedona.  For all its kooky, new age, centeredness, Sedona is one of my favorite places.  I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on the red rocks back in 2003.  I can honestly say it took my breath away.

Living there would be another ball of wax, of course.  I think every tourist in the Valley eventually converges on Sedona, so traffic is horrible and the roads inadequate.  Also, I no longer know all the words to Kumbaya!  But beyond that, it's an easy drive from Scottsdale and offers a nice reprieve from city life once you get your Red Rock Pass and hit the trail.

We ate lunch perched in one of three arches offering pretty expansive views of the trail below us and the amazing rock formations all around.  


As one of our fellow hikers reminded us: The art of God.  A truly spectacular creation.


With love from The Valley of the Sun.

quiessence - phoenix dining

Way back in June (it does seem like years ago at the moment), we celebrated our 7th anniversary with dinner at Quiessence in The Farm at South Mountain.  I'd heard about the restaurant a number of years ago, but in February 2011, Travel and Leisure Magazine put Quiessence on their list of America's Most Romantic Restaurants.  This year it also received a "Four Diamond" rating from AAA.  All the accolades couldn't have been for nothing, right?  So we decided to give it a try on what I, jokingly, referred to as our fourth real date (kidding)!


Hey, these things happen when you meet, marry, and have a baby a year later.  Dating?  What was that?


We mapped the directions but actually missed the driveway the first time passed.  When we got ourselves turned back around, we discovered why; the entrance to the property is a non-descript, dusty, gravel drive shaded under a canopy of pecan trees.  It was the most amazing transformation out of a harsh, desert landscape I'd ever experienced.  We felt like we'd been miraculously transported to another place.

The grounds are lush (there are 12 acres of gardens and pecan groves), and peaceful.  Most of the buildings, I believe, have been refurbished from an old farm that used to occupy the property.  The restaurant itself is fairly understated; not overtly fancy or pretentious, but rustically elegant.

It really was an amazing dining experience.  We ended up ordering the Farmer's Feast, which is essentially a downsized seven course meal created to give guests a true flavor of what Quiessence is all about.  The initial offerings included homemade breads, artisan cheeses, homemade cured meats, and pickled and marinated seasonal veges from the chef's garden.  The servings were smaller, but we each received different selections at every course and there was plenty to share.  The sommelier then paired our particular course with an appropriate wine selection. 

I'll say two things about this place to really sum it up:  extraordinarily good food (the prosciutto wrapped quail and baked fluke were notably fabulous), at extraordinarily high prices.  In hindsight, we probably could have gotten an equally good feel for the "culinary journey" by ordering straight off the menu and skipping the Farmer's Feast.  When we go back, I'll do just that and not have to wallow in diner's remorse over the obscene cost (....and did I mention gluttony??).


I know, I know, it's all (or mostly) organically grown and fresh and I won't have another dining experience like it.  But, really.  Costwise, I think our dinner last year at Tarbell's was just as good (read, extraordinarily good food at much more reasonable prices), and I didn't leave the restaurant on the verge of that uncomfortably full feeling.


Either way, our fourth date was a success...great company, amazing food, fine wine.  We're looking forward to celebrating another year of marriage, and our fifth date, next year.


With love from The Valley of the Sun.