Berries Galore

While Aiden was busy at Camp Invention this week, Nathan and I got a lot done. We took part in quite a few fun activities and one of those was berry picking. We wanted to get some strawberries before the u-pick season ended, so we headed out armed with a Groupon for 50% off berries at a local farm. One of the very great things about living in the Portland area (especially on the west side) is that we are only 10-15 minutes away from more farms than we could possibly count. We have our favorites for sure, but it's always fun to check out a new one. This time we were headed to Hoffman Farms and we definitely loaded up on berries!

We were there during a bit of a lull, so there weren't very many people (and at one point it was just Nathan and I in the strawberry field). It was quiet, warm, and I took a few minutes to admire the beautiful valley that we live in. Ahhh....

Strawberries!

When it was all done, we had 8 1/2 lbs of strawberries and 1 lb of raspberries and 1 lb of blueberries. We now have three jars of raspberry jam and ten jars of strawberry. We ate the blueberries. Sorry, let me rephrase: Aiden ate the blueberries.

I still had some strawberries left over (more than I wanted to freeze for later use), so I decided to give homemade fruit leather a try. It was so amazingly easy and it's SOOOO good. It takes quite a bit of time in the oven, so you have to be prepared to give up your oven for most of a day, but it's worth it.

I put 1 1/2 lbs of strawberries and a 1/2 cup of sugar in the food processor and pureed it for one minute. I did add about a tsp of lime juice just for an added kick, but it's probably fine without it.

After pureeing, I poured it all into a saucepan and brought it to a boil. Warning: it does tend to foam up a bit, so you may want to opt for a large saucepan. Once it was boiling, I simmered it for 10-12 minutes to let it thicken.

Once it was thickened, I poured it onto a cookie sheet and spread it all out evenly with a spatula.

I then put it in the oven around 175-ish degrees (it was the "warm" setting on my oven) for about 6 hours. Basically until it's no longer massively sticky and it looks like your standard fruit leather. Let it cool all the way and then eat it as your heart desires. You will notice that there are no "after" pictures here. Yeah. It's that good.

Now we can't wait for boysenberries, marionberries, and blackberries!

So Much

Pardon the lack of blogging. On top of John recovering (which took a little longer than anticipated), the boys both ended up with stomach bugs, I've been dealing with chronic back pain, and we spent time at OMSI, Oaks Park, friends houses, the library, and various parks and farmers markets. It's been busy to say the least. We were going to go to the Children's Museum as well, but we ran into some less than desirable behavior from our resident six year old and everything had to come to a screeching halt on Thursday. I canceled all of our plans through Saturday and told Aiden that we were not leaving the house until his attitude changed. That did seem to help and things have been better this weekend. We were able to have a successful, tantrum-free outing to church and the farmer's market to pick up our CSA box (yay for different veggies to try!).

We seem to be having an issue with him being bored now that school is out - although I can't see how with all of our activities. I guess it's not the right kind of activity he needs to keep his brain occupied. He begins Camp Invention tomorrow, a day camp through the US Patent Office. It will go from 9am to 3:30pm all this week, so hopefully that will give him enough mental stimulation to wear him out for the week. After some discussion, John and I are going to request that he complete testing for TAG either before or soon after 1st grade begins. Seeing as we spent part of the afternoon teaching him organic chemistry and his "Preparing for 1st Grade" handbook covered basic shapes and colors, I would like to avoid any potential boredom issues next school year.

So, the past week has been a tad stressful. And because John and I are terrible at planning regular dates for ourselves, we are going to spend the evening cooking together and eating a quiet, candlelit dinner now that the boys are in bed. It might not be "date night" worthy, but it definitely helps!

Snipped

When John and I started dating, we knew we wanted two children. When I was pregnant with Nathan, we decided that if we did not feel like we wanted a third child by the time John was about to turn 30, we were done. John turns 30 in August and we feel very done. I know this kind of decision isn't for everyone, but we made the choice to make it permanent. We feel like we've moved out of the "baby stage" and into the "raising stage". Another factor is that my body tries to bleed to death when I give birth (I can thank my Irish heritage for that). Another birth was really not in the cards for me. So, John was very brave this morning and had the procedure done.

Warning: If you're squeamish, you might not want to read this, although I will try to keep it pretty basic.

What is normally a one numbing shot, 20 minute procedure took nearly an hour and almost couldn't be completed. Apparently what gets cut is typically in the front and is easy to get to. For John, it was in the back and took some searching. Additionally, the main nerve was wrapped around things (this is unusual), which made the numbing shots not work. John was given 12 (two directly into the nerve itself) shots to attempt to numb the area. After 12 shots, John was still yelling out in pain and the doctor was considering giving him an epidural. Thankfully, he couldn't be heard out in the waiting room. The doctor said that it was the most difficult one he'd ever done on a willing patient. John looked a tad shell shocked after it was all said and done, but he was able to walk out of the hospital on his own. I still say natural childbirth is worse, but I do feel bad for him!

He seems to be doing fine and we plan to rest at home this weekend. When we scheduled the appointment, we didn't realize that it was Father's Day weekend. That made us laugh. He'll be taking things pretty slow for the next week (but does plan to go back to work on Monday) and then he has a follow-up to make sure that everything is healing correctly. So that's our fun Father's Day weekend here at the Minthorne house! I'm sure John would appreciate prayer for good healing, especially since things ended up being much more rough than we had anticipated.

The Start of Summer

We kicked off summer yesterday by sleeping in, eating a massive amount of chocolate chip scones, playing Mario Kart on the Wii, getting teeth cleaned at the dentist, and a trip to the farmer's market. We ended up with a deliciously filling dinner thanks purely to things we picked up at the farmer's market - along with some yummy feta from Whole Foods. We had a gigantic salad, plus fresh hummus and pita. It may not sound particularly filling, but we were stuffed!

We had plans to spend all day at OMSI today, but Nathan ended up with an upset stomach this morning (he may have swallowed some of the fluoride treatment yesterday) and we didn't feel like risking it happening again at OMSI. So instead, we made jam with the flat of raspberries we bought at the farmer's market, made more chocolate chip scones, have drawn funny faces on the glass in some picture frames with a dry erase marker, and will head out to a park in a bit.

There are so many plans for this summer, I just hope we find time to do it all!