Pacific Science Center

I can't even remember how many weeks ago we did this play date, but I haven't taken any pictures since, so you get to see this outing anyway. We've been having weekly play dates with a friend and this one was a definite success. I'm considering purchasing a membership to the science center because Gareth loved it so much (but I'll probably wait and see how busy we are once preschool starts before shelling out the dough).

There's a ton of stuff to see/do there, though obviously some of it is a bit advanced for Gareth yet. They have a great kids play area that he loved and a place where you can pet star fish and such. The butterfly house was cool - he enjoyed watching butterflies eat some bananas (which the one below is not doing).

The kids all enjoyed climbing on any statues that were around.

And he loved the "rocket ship" so much we had to go stand in line to play with it twice.

They also have fountains outside connected to water gun type things you can spray into the water. Gareth was pretty bummed that we didn't take the time to do that this time around, so we'll have to be sure to play with those on our next visit.

Vanilla Souffle

For my birthday, Ryan gave me Mastering the Art of French Cooking. We're excited to try out some of the varied recipes, but there are some we'll skip. Specifically the recipes for cow and lamb brains. Saturday night we made our first recipe from it - a vanilla souffle. For whatever reason, I've never whipped egg whites before, so Ryan thought it'd be good to not only read up on it in the cookbook but also watch a video of Julia Child making a souffle. Turns out a souffle is pretty simple.

We started by buttering our mold and dusting it with sugar.

Next up was making the sauce.

Ryan whipped the egg whites.

Here Ryan's folding the egg whites into the sauce.

Then we baked it, not sure whether it'd actually turn out or not. The recipe said there should be 1 1/4 inches between the top of the mixture and the top of the mold. We didn't have that, so we made a collar for the souffle.

It turned out very nicely, if I do say so myself!

Space Needle

We very well might have lived in Seattle the rest of our lives without ever entering the Space Needle. It's quite expensive (eighteen dollars a piece or thereabouts) and to us the cost isn't worth a view of the city. But we have a friend who is working at the Space Needle right now and he's able to take a few others up with him for free. So a couple of weekends ago we hopped on the bus and met our friends there.

Here we are, with Lake Union behind us. Gareth really wasn't interested in taking a family photo - I was having to fight a bit to keep him in my arms. What he wanted to be doing was looking through the telescopes at the boats on the lake, the buildings, whatever he could see. He got to do plenty more of that after we took the picture, so in the end he didn't mind that we put him through one picture. On the elevator ride up he made most of the adults chuckle as he said, "Wow!" over and over and over as we went up.

I'm glad we went (especially since it was free) because it made quite the impression on Gareth. When we were driving past the next weekend he was excited to see "the building we went to yesterday!" from the car.

Father's Day

Our Father's Day dinner may have been a complete flop, but our breakfast certainly wasn't!

We made up this granola, and this time around we layered it with plain yogurt, bananas and blueberries. I often have this granola with yogurt for breakfast and then again for lunch and have even been tempted to serve it for dinner, it's so delicious. I cooked up some sausages from our local co-op market to serve alongside. Ryan then spent the day reverting to teenage-dom by playing Starcraft II. And while we didn't have a great dinner, we did enjoy some pastries from our local Larsen's Bakery for dessert.

More Fabric

Today I went to my local quilt shop again (I seriously lucked out with this place being so close) and found the rest of my medium and dark fabrics for Gareth's quilt. I was only planning on buying eight different fabrics total (and I already have two), but there were so many awesome options that I ended up buying a little less of these new ones in order to purchase more variety.

And even with ten fabrics there were some it was hard to give up. Going to the quilt shop on a Saturday is a must from here on out - it's such a rejuvenating experience when I don't have Gareth along with me! This particular shop is awesome in that they have a corner with toys to play with, so Gareth isn't pestering to leave or getting into all the fabric, but it's obviously still easier without worrying about him bugging everyone else. I'm excited to go back for my lights, but in the meantime I can start washing and cutting!

Produce

Just a few weeks ago our garden looked like this:

Now it looks like this:

If you remember, Gareth loves lettuce. He asked to go cut some off while I was practicing this morning:

I distinctly remember disliking lettuce as a kid, so he's a bit baffling to me - but I'm not going to complain!

Pancakes

Since we've moved in here we've started a new breakfast routine: on weekdays we have oatmeal (with steel-cut oats!) or toast or some other every-day easy thing, then on weekends we do something more time-intensive (and usually less healthy).

When Ryan and I got married we were given a cookbook that I haven't ever used much. I've often looked through it, eyeing the sumptuous-looking dishes contained therein. But, most of them are intended to make enough for two people and many of them have very expensive ingredients. So I always figured I'd use it when we were empty-nesters and had more money. When we decided to try to make exciting weekend breakfasts, I needed ideas and thought it'd be worth a look.

Turns out their pancake recipe is marvelous. And the berry sauce/syrup that goes along with it as well. Ryan actually prefers the berries to maple syrup because they're not as sweet.

Melted Berries:

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries

1/4 cup sugar, plus more as needed

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter

pinch of kosher salt

fresh lemon juice as needed

Pancakes:

1 1/4 cups flour

2 tsp. granulated sugar

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tsp. baking soda

unsalted butter, melted

To make the berries you combine the berries, sugar, salt and butter in a small saucepan and cook until the juices flow (we use frozen, so we basically cook them until the berries are thawed.) I gave you the amount they call for sugar-wise, but we actually put in much, much less. Partly because the only frozen raspberries at our store are already sweetened and partly because that's just way too much sugar for our taste. We put in a couple of tablespoons, though I've also done it without any added sugar and it works fine that way as well. The lemon juice is optional.

For the pancakes: stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt (if I remember rightly, I use less salt than they call for) in a small bowl. Then whisk the eggs in a medium bowl and add the buttermilk (I use soured milk), sour cream, and baking soda. Add the flour mixture and mix it all up. Stir in 1 tablespoon of melted butter. To cook them, I melt a little butter on our griddle before spooning the batter on.

I usually double the recipe to make sure we have enough (depending on how much berry mixture people use you might or might not need to double that - one week we didn't need to, another we did). We usually have some leftover batter, which stores well in the fridge for one day, so we always make the leftover up either the next day or later the same day. Ryan likes them so much that he wanted me to be sure we shared the recipe with everyone. And, as you can see, Gareth loves them as well!