Karl and Cindy's Grand Adventure

The kids have been away and while the cat's away....Mom and Dad do play! Here are the pictures from Montreal, the Berkshires, and our latest meal...

Flower Auction

Here in the Great White North our frost date is May 28th. I don't plant my flowers until Memorial Day weekend. Usually I start buying flowers around May 1st. I move them in and out of the garage until the all clear sounds. Why I do this I am not sure something about the best ones selling out. This year has been so cold ( tonight it is suppose to be 35 degrees!) I just haven't been motivated but life does roll on and my friend convinced me to go to the Mennonite auction on Friday. I have been going the last five years or so. You can't beat the prices. Seven dollars is the typical hanging basket price. Okay, you have to buy at least five baskets at a time but with a friend to split things with it works out. It isn't only the prices that draws me though, I just like the atmosphere. I like being around the growers and farmers, I like the banter back and forth between the crowd and the auctioneer, and of course the Mennonites themselves are interesting. Oh yes, I also have an auction nemesis. What ever I want he is sure to bid on. *&%#!

In some ways I find the Mennonites very appealing. I know, strange for me. Not really a feminist life style but their sense of community and their groundedness has merit. Mennonites don't seem to feel the need to hire landscapers! Nature, not so scary for them. Friday there were several young men holding the hands of toddlers in calico bonnets or straw hats. To say they were picturesque would be an under statement. I didn't get any shots of the kids because I am pretty sure that would be frowned on but I wish I had.

The drive home along the lake and through the vineyards which are just budding out was just awesome. The clouds were clearing, the grass is deep deep green ,and Dame's Rocket is blooming all along the roads. My favorite patch of Brown Swiss cows was at it's best. ( I like that patch of cows because they get to keep their babies and live in huge grass field not a small muck lot.) We do live in an area full of calendar shots.

Local Food

I have had some recent requests for me to resume blogging. I am pretty receptive to flattery so here I am writing again. I have to say part of the reason I haven't been writing is that technology got the best of me after all. I got a new camera for Christmas which I still haven't adapted to, The Flip is great except it takes hours each time I want to edit a movie, and worst of all we had to get a new computer which runs Vista! Okay, I can only handle so much new technology stress before I go running for my book....well...my book which is of course on my Kindle!

We had a good weekend, good company, great food, and fabulous weather. Saturday, Karl and I drove to Rochester to visit with my brother and his wife who were visiting Mom and Dad. We all went out to dinner at our latest favorite restaurant, Lentos. And we all had a meal that couldn't be beat. I had the lamb and I indulged in the rhubarb tart for dessert. I wasn't able to resist the wonderful spring rhubarb. The restaurant is all about using "in season" ingredients from local farms. They use local produce, local organic meats and local cheeses. I believe the menu even tells you the miles your ingredients have traveled on the back. I am heartily in favor of this but I admit we live in a pretty easy area to eat local as we are surrounded by farms, vineyards and orchards.

Keeping up with the eating local theme I drug Karl and Inga out to the Ithaca farmers market Sunday morning. Inga and I shopped while Karl talked shop with a graduate student he ran into as soon as we arrived. We bought fresh picked asparagus, spinach, kale, and some potatoes. Purple and pink potatoes! But the big hit of the trip was lunch. Inga was able to find red bean paste buns and cookies. She developed a real love for red bean paste in Japan so this find made her eyes twinkle. Even better than the red bean paste, at the Vegan,Gluten-free, Raw food stand we came across ice cream that Inga, who is lactose intolerant, could actually eat with pleasure. It was even creamy she proclaimed! When your child is in heaven life is after all very good.

Well, Get Some More Mom!

Things seem quiet around here without our Japanese family members. This morning at breakfast Erik declared we should just get some. Order some up! The last night we went to the Sayanora party which was pretty sad. All the exchange students get together and put on a small performance for the host families and friends. Unfortunately, they had prepared some sad songs about leaving and flying away. These poor kids were up on stage with tears streaming down their face. Ouch.

The next morning they got up to say good bye to Inga, Erik, and Karl. It was nice of them to make the effort to get up at 6AM when they really didn't have to. They packed and we enjoyed one last dog walk in the fleeting Upstate sunshine. We arrived on time at the hotel where the bus was to pick them up for their final trip to NYC. Every thing was good until passport check time. They forgot them at our house. Their tour leader thought I was joking at first but no, I was serious. Its good we only live a few minutes away. I did briefly think about just keeping them since I was going home anyway! However, I returned them with passports in hand and they boarded the bus after tears and sad faces. I told them they were ichi-ban exchange students which was true. This past week was our best exchange experience by far. The girls were hearty travelers, game for anything, cheerful, and interested in everything we had to show them. They told us their favorite part of the visit was just spending time talking with us. Erik has decided he would also like to go to Japan and Inga leaves in three weeks.

Cooking Craps

I have to say this has been our most successful home stay visit yet. The two girls that are staying with us now are extremely hardy travelers. They have boundless energy and seem to thrive on four hours of sleep a night. Homesickness has not been an issue at all. They always seem to be full of smiles and giggles. We have managed to communicate quite well in spite of the language barrier. I just talk to them like they are fluent, and they pick out a few words, and we hand signal, and then we get there.

The other night we took them out for cheese burgers which they loved. During dinner Akane asked us if we liked crap. We laughed but didn't have the heart to explain it. She got out her electronic translator and we discovered what she was really asking was, "Do you like Crepes?" We were puzzled because you don't normally think of Japanese kids eating crepes. I thought well, maybe there is a French food fad going on among Japanese teenagers that I don't know about. Handily, Akane takes pictures of everything she eats and then stores the pictures on her cell phone. She showed us several pictures of Japanese crepes on her phone. They looked like little bowls of fruit and ice cream. I pronounced them yummy looking. I didn't really think much about the conversation.

The next evening they asked me to take them back to the grocery store. I assumed they wanted to buy some American candy or some such to take home. I promised to take them the next day after school. So, I picked them up and carted them over to the store. In the parking lot on the way in they told me, "We are going to cook for you!" "Craps!" Okay. They had carefully translated the words for everything they needed, eggs, flour, milk, sugar, bananas, chocolate syrup, and heavy cream. We rolled around collecting everything and that was it. Now they wanted to go right home.

At home I thought they would store everything for a little cooking later but no they wanted to make craps right now. I have to admit I was dubious but I gave them bowls, spatulas, etc. They seem to measure arbitrarily and the batter was pretty lumpy so I was still just going with the flow here. I was pretending to read at the kitchen table in case I was needed for anything. They were laughing and giggling have a grand old time. The making of whipped cream involved a lot of taste testing. But I kept reading. All of a sudden I heard one girl say, "Oh My God" in a perfect Valley girl American accent. They had successfully flipped the crepe and that was their reaction. I completely cracked up. It sounded so hilarious imbeded in a perfectly good Japanese sentence.

They put their 12 inch Japanese crepe in a bowl and filled it with whip cream, bananas, and chocolate syrup. So much for diets! At first they insisted it was to be eaten with your fingers but when I showed them my hands covered with goo they let me have a fork. In fact, we all got forks and demolished it happily. Cultural exchange at its best.

It's A Cultural Thing!

Yesterday afternoon we went over to the Hilton to pick up our Japanese exchange students. They will be staying with us for a week. In 2005 we hosted a student for 9 months. She got so homesick and miserable during her stay that I became involved with a local sister city exchange program in the hopes that seeing a few Japanese faces would cheer her up. For awhile I had three Japanese kids living with us! It didn't help her much( She was actually jealous of them!) but Inga really hit it off with one of the girls and they exchanged letters a few times. Every year Inga talked about applying to go to Japan but never did after applying once in 7th grade and being turned down. This year she put together a fabulous application and she was "In like Flynn"! And so here we are again , hosting. After five days of cleaning our house is fairly presentable and ready. I even took down the scary poster of John Coltrane in the guest bedroom and replaced it with framed Molas from Panama. We bought little gifts. I lucked out at the credit union and managed to trade some paper dollars for two gold Sacajawea coins. I was told these make good welcome gifts. We also gave them New York Yankees hats but they didn't seem to be fans.

12 kids are visiting our little town. The sister city comittee puts together a pretty intense itinerary for them but we get them to ourselves a bit. We have two 17 year old girls this time. They speak more English than we speak Japanese but of course we only know about 10 Japanese words. We expected them to be really tired but they weren't ready for bed until sometime after midnight. We had nice dinner, Italian wedding soup, homemade rolls and quiche. They pronounced the quiche very"delicious" which endeared them to me. I sent them off to the mall with Inga after dinner. Not much going on in our little town and that is the hang out on Friday night. While they were gone I put a pan of brownies in because one of them said she wants to eat lots of yummy American deserts while she's here. They came back cheerful and the brownies were a big hit.

Today we are off to the nature center, ice skating, and then the formal welcome dinner. Last time no one told me it was formal and I showed up with five kids all in jeans. Much frowning occurred. This time we know better! It will only be the colored hair thing now...but everyone seems to like Inga's new Bubble Gum Pink color. She was the first one they pushed out in front of the news cameras to be interviewed. We taped it and watched it this morning. She's so cool.

Well, they are up enjoying waffles. More later....

Philly Flower Show

Inga and I went down to visit our buddies from Albuquerque last weekend. We had a grand old time living it up in the city! We drove into the city Friday night with the aid of our now much beloved GPS. I am not sure we could have managed night time driving in the city without our new gadget. (I love my new gadget so much I named it, Ralph)

Saturday we went to see a Cezanne show at the art museum. Very enjoyable. Great museum. We did the audio tour which I could only tolerate part of the time since I always disagree with the commentary or at least a good fraction of the time I seem to think they are wrong. They always know what the artist "meant" to say don't they? Wannabees. Inga and I found all the emo paintings including her favorite, a still life with threatening forks. Cezanne did have his dark moody side. He wasn't all about light fluffy mountainscapes we discovered.

We zoomed over to Philadelphia's alternative street to buy hair dye and eat lunch. Dye is much cheaper there and we do buy a lot of dye! Punk rock clothing stores always love me. They are so polite. Go figure. We ate at lunch in a tiny Greek restaurant which was too perfect. The room was about 15 feet square and the NJ lady at the next table told us exactly what we should eat. We laughed and ordered something else. I tried something new and it wasn't my favorite so maybe I should have listened. Kibbeh kabobs I think it was. Wonderful lemonade though.

Liz and I went to Ikea. I believe that store is the only store I have ever been in that actually overwhelmed me. I just couldn't figure out what I needed. Couches? Chairs? Lamps? Curtains?
I kept putting things in my cart and then ditching them later. Help! Ikea is only for those with a plan. By the time we were checking out I was ready to move into a pup tent that would never need decorating.

We had Thai for dinner. Yummy as always. Inga still loves Phad Thai. She doesn't share. I guess I stuck to my usual too, Duck Panang. I did also steal some barbequed beef from Brad's plate! The waiter was so nice and perky and his nephew came out to entertain us for awhile. He was 4 which he showed us with his fingers of course.

Sunday we got up bright and early for the flower show. We wanted to make it down there by 8AM to beat the crowds which we did. The theme this year was Venice. I guess Venice is really dark because some of the show was so dimly lit I almost couldn't see the flowers. But oh, the flowers I could see were wonderful. Going to the flower show for upstate New Yorkers really should be covered by health insurance since we are often emotionally devastated by the weather we have to suffer with every year. All the colors and perfumes really do bring you back from the dead. I like all the wild and crazy exhibits. My favorite wild and crazy thing this year was the collection of shoes made from flowers. I wasn't the only one who loved them even at eight in the morning there was a huge crowd of admiring woman all around them secretly wanting to steal just one pair.

We snuck over to China Town for one more meal before leaving for home. We have a favorite Vietnamese restaurant that we discovered after last years flower show. They serve Bubble Tea which has nothing to do with tea or bubbles. It is like a fruit smoothie made with tropical fruits and poured over tapioca. The tapioca is not like the tiny stuff we are used to each pearl is about a quarter of an inch in diameter. I don't eat many tapiocas but the smoothie part is scrumptious. We always get vermicelli noddle bowls with spring rolls and they are always yummy.

Once we found all the parts to our GPS we navigated out of Philly just fine. ( Hint GPS's might drive you in circles if they are missing a vital part!) We beat the storm by a couple of hours and made it home by 8:30 pm. It was just in time to fall in bed totally exhausted.