Those Late Bloomers Sure Are Tasty

We're already half way though September and I'm just now picking the first eggplants from the garden. I don't know what took them so long to get started...I mean, we planted them way back at the beginning of May. I kind of gave up on them several months ago, but before we left for vacation, I noticed a few tiny eggplants starting to grow. Now, a few weeks later, I have several that are ready to be picked.

So before I have eggplants coming out of my ears, I've decided to declare it eggplant week. I kicked things off by making a pasta dish with roasted eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms. It was super delicious, but it gave Rick heartburn for some reason...that means the leftovers are all mine.

Next I made my own version of eggplant parmesan using grilled slices of eggplant and a sauce that I concocted out of a can of pureed fire roasted tomatoes and the usual sauce suspects (onion, garlic, olive oil, fresh basil). I topped it all off with a mixture of mozzarella and parmesan cheese.

Again, super yummy!

Next on the meal plan is an eggplant marianara sauce that uses the pulp of an oven roasted eggplant mixed with a can of crushed tomatoes. Throw it on top of some penne rigate pasta and call it a day. I wonder if eggplants are high in iron because I'm giving blood in a few days, or at least I'm attempting to....we'll see if my iron levels pass the test. Maybe I should have made it spinach week instead.

Sweet As Pie

With Summer coming to an end, I had one thought in the back of my mind....yikes, blueberry season is almost over! Not being one to let fresh fruit picking opportunities go to waste, I took Tyler and headed straight to our favorite blueberry patch.

We're regulars over there, so we were able to grab our own buckets and start picking without any instruction.

My worker bee is easily distracted.

That's more like it.

We brought home 3-1/2 lbs of delicious berries, which isn't bad for an hour's work, and is more than enough to make a blueberry pie. It was late in the afternoon by the time we got back home so I had to put off the baking until today. I started by making the crust while Tyler was in school and then we assembled and baked the pie once he got home.

It's looking good so far. I used a Martha Stewart recipe for the crust, although I did substitute half of the all-purpose flour for whole wheat pastry flour. For the filling, I used this recipe from allrecipes.

Yum, now that's what I call dessert....with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Saturday Bustle

I started the process of baking some quick bread yesterday while Tyler was off at school. Somehow, though, it didn't turn out very quick.

I wanted to make some banana bread since I had a ton of bananas sitting around in the freezer waiting for such an occasion. But since I'm still in a tropical frame of mind, I wanted to find a recipe that incorporated coconut. It would have been too easy to simply add coconut to a recipe that I already had, though. So I spent x amount of time searching for a recipe that I swore I saw in one of my cookbooks...but which one? Ugh, I finally found the recipe in a magazine I had hidden in a drawer upstairs.

It's called Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze. I left the glaze off and just sprinkled the top with unsweetened coconut.

I didn't get a chance to cut into the bread until this morning and thought....ehhh, it doesn't taste much different than regular banana bread. I was hoping for a much stronger coconut flavor. Oh well.

Speaking of this morning, I informed Tyler last night that I planned on sleeping in. After waking up early every day this week I was ready for at least one extra hour of sleep. I thought we were on the same page about it, but at 7:15 this morning, it became clear that we weren't. I guess the good thing about waking up early is that there was no possible way we were going to be late for the Lowe's and Ace building crafts today.

Our first stop was at Lowe's to build a noisemaker, er, I mean a drum.

Bang...Bang....Bang.....Bang!

Next we stopped at Ace to make a refrigerator magnet clip. Tyler decorated his with an array of buttons, pom pom balls, and sequins. Ahh, now we something to use to hang up some of the artwork that he brings home from school.

One Week Down

Tyler finished his first week of school today and he's having a great time...he just loves it. That is except for the tiny incident in which he wasn't allowed to go into the room with the "nappers". He was actually getting upset just telling me about it. Huh? I can't pay him enough to take a nap at home and now he's suddenly upset that he can't take a nap at school? Maybe he thinks it's like a sleepover....I told him he's not missing anything.

The worst part about Tyler being in school all day is that he literally does not get to see Rick at all during the week. Rick is always asleep when Tyler and I leave in the morning and by the time he comes home in the afternoon, Rick has already left for work. It kind of stinks. I guess it just means that the boys will have to make the most out of the weekends.

Today the weekend kicked off promptly at 3:00. Rick went with me to pick up Tyler from school and we headed straight to the ice cream shop to celebrate.

After that we went across the street to the bowling alley to play a game. We were the only ones there so it was kind of nice.

Tyler chose the between the legs method, which worked well for him.

Lastly, we stopped at the park for no other reason than to enjoy the beautiful weather we've been having.

While The Child Is Away...

...Mom will play. I think that's how it's supposed to go, anyway. Tyler had his first day of school today and I had the house all to myself for the first time in, um, forever.

Tyler is doing the "school day" session of preschool, so he's starts at 8:30 in the morning and finishes at 3:00 in the afternoon. With six hours to myself, you'd think I could find something interesting to do. Instead, I was stuck doing some catch up work around the house. I finished washing our vacation laundry and finally got outside to work on getting the garden back in order. It's been unattended for quite a few weeks now and the tomato plants were really starting to sprawl out everywhere and I had so many over ripe sungolds that they were starting to attract fruit flies.

Rick will be pleased to learn, however, that I still managed to crank out a batch of cookies this afternoon.

I promised him a batch of peanut butter cookies while we were in Hawaii, so here they are. I used a recipe out of my King Arthur Whole Grain Baking Cookbook, which uses all whole wheat flour. I thought they were good, but we'll see if they pass the test with Rick.

Getting Back Home

I loved Hawaii...it was beautiful, the water was so warm, but the weather was hot, oppressively hot. I'd go back in a heartbeat though. In fact, according to Tyler, we're going back next year. We'll see about that.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:00 on Thursday night, so we arrived at the airport around 6:30. Rick got on the computer to check us in, come to find out that our plane was already long gone. Turns out that the flight had been rescheduled and had left at noon, which meant that it had already arrived back in Seattle. Lesson learned: Call the airport to check your flight.

So here we are stranded at the Honolulu airport. We talked to one of the assistants working the check-in lines and she recommended a few hotels that were close by. We made arrangements with one of them to stay the night, which also had free shuttle service to and from the airport. Not bad.

A day later than planned, we were finally back on the way home.

Now let me get to the souvenirs, well just the food ones, because those are my favorite.

Coconut Syrup. I want an explanation as to why both of my sisters (that's 2 out of 2), who have both previously been to Hawaii, neglected to inform me that there was such a thing as Coconut Syrup. Are you kidding me? I almost died when I saw it. One night we went to a coffee house diner and had breakfast for dinner. I ordered pancakes with bacon and eggs. When the waitress brought the coconut syrup to the table, I couldn't even believe it. Richard said it was gross, but I'm not mad, that just leaves more for me. There was absolutely no way I was leaving Hawaii without some of my own.

I also got a few bags of coffee, some cookies, and a packet of Coconut Pudding Mix. The cookies are from the Honolulu Cookie Company and they're good! I got a cute little box full. Don't ask me why I bought a packet of pudding mix....I really should make my own, I mean it only takes like 3 ingredients. I do regret not buying any macadamia nuts, though. Costco had entire aisles devoted to them, as did practically every other store. But I wanted the ones from Costco, the giant bag of plain ones for baking.

For now, it's back to reality...Tyler starts school tomorrow...eek!

Water Fun

Our last few days in Hawaii were spent almost entirely in the water...as it should be. We took a shuttle to Hanauma Bay to try our hand at snorkeling. Neither Rick nor I expected much. We thought it would be fun to try, but didn't think it was a big deal. I mean basically you're just sticking your face under the water and looking around....right? But after trying it, I have to say it was by far the most awesome thing we did on our trip.

We went early and were in the water by 8:00 in the morning. The water was great...perfectly warm. The dark areas are the reefs where a ton of tropical fish are hanging out. The water is pretty shallow in some places leaving little room to swim over the reefs without touching them. The cool part is that the fish don't swim away at all, no matter how close you get...they just continue to go about their business. I'm kicking myself for not getting the waterproof camera.

Believe me, there is a learning curve when it comes to fins...you have to put them on in the water.

We tried equipping Tyler with snorkeling gear too, but it didn't quite work out. He had the mask on and could breathe out of his mouth using the snorkel, but he kept opening his mouth and that water is SALTY! So Rick and I took turns playing with Tyler while the other went out snorkeling. This is the castle I made with Tyler using our limited supplies and some quick drying sand.

Tyler had a blast despite not seeing a single fish.

And in case you wanted to know, Hanauma Bay is where the local chickens hang out.

After snorkeling for a few hours, we took the public transit to Kailua to go kayaking at the Kailua beach. Alas, I have no pictures to show for it. Since it takes so long to get anywhere on the bus, we got to Kailua towards the end of the day and were kind of rushed. After signing a bunch of paperwork and watching a 20 minute video and hauling our kayaks down the side of the road to the beach, it was finally time to get in the water. Rick went out with Tyler on a two man kayak and I went out with Richard. The kayaking was not my favorite thing because it was just so hard. The ocean waves were so strong that you had to continuously paddle like mad just to prevent yourself from being pushed back to the shore. So we paddled like crazy, didn't get anywhere, gave up from exhaustion and were immediately washed up on the shore. Then we had to drag the kayaks across the beach, back up the road to the rental place and begin our long bus ride back to the hotel.

We spent our last day at the Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park. I have a love hate relationship with the place. On one hand, it's pretty fun and was Tyler's favorite place. On the other hand, can you please tell me why a water park in Hawaii needs to close at 3:00 in the afternoon and be closed entirely on Tuesdays and Wednesdays? We first tried to go on a Tuesday and after a two hour bus ride to get to the place, we find out that it's closed. Grrrr! So we had to cross the freeway and walk into the town of Kapolei where we stopped at Costco and ate lunch. What a waste of a day! We went back, though, when they were actually open and had a great time.