Garlic, mmmmm

I love garlic. Pungent and nutty and rich and savoury. Mmm, mmm, mmm. I love it in salads, in stir-fries, in dressings. I love it minced, raw. Sauteed. Roasted.

In fact, roasted garlic is something I discovered relatively recently. A pizza recipe I discovered has you roasting some cloves, then mashing them with a bit of Dijon mustard, and smearing the resultant paste on the naked dough, before adding the sauce and fixings. Oh, my! Yummy.

So when I came across not one, but two recipes for roasted garlic soup? Well, now! A garlic-loving, happy-in-the-kitchen woman just has to try them both! We had one batch last week, from a favourite website of mine, and we tried the second this week.

The verdict?

I like ’em both. The second one is a sweet and creamy-rich vegetable soup with lovely earthy underpinning of garlic. The first is primarily garlic, rich and creamy. So, what will I do?

Combine, of course! The next time I make this — I tell you, vampires will stay miles away from our home for the next whatever — I will use Alanna’s recipe as my base. Because, really? Four heads are better than two!! I loved the sweetness that the carrots provided, though, so I’m going to toss a couple in as well. I’m not sure if I’ll double the onions, as per the second recipe, though obviously they added sweetness as well. That’ll be for next week’s batch!!

Heehee. I love cooking.

And for the curious? Did the tots eat these soups? They did indeed! Some liked it and went for seconds, some merely tasted it, but they all ingested some. And next time it appears, some of the former dubious will be a little more enthusiastic. We draw them into adult eating in baby steps, but they get there!

Easter crafts for Nail-Polish Excess

I own far more nail polish than I can reasonably use. I own nail polish colours I have worn once then forgotten about. I own nail polish that’s gone goopy in the jar (and yes, I know how to remedy that, but for now? goopy).

There does come a point when even the most acquisitive nail-polish lover realizes she really does need to let some go. So when I stumbled across an Easter craft involving eggs and nail polish, I was ready. We’d been blowing eggs for three weeks or so — every time I needed an egg or two for a recipe, it was blown rather than cracked, so we had a goodly stash of eggs. And goodness knows I have a goodly stash of nail polish.

I asked the children their favourite colours. Pink, purple, and blue, it turns out. I brought down an array in various hues.

This is not a tutorial post, so I didn’t take pictures as we went, but the method is simple: put a centimetre or two of water in the bottom of a small dish. Drop, drip, or spatter the nail polish onto the surface of the water. (Some beaded into balls and sank. I lifted them to the surface with a pin.) The polish spreads over the surface, forming a skin. Roll your eggs, one at a time, on the surface of the water. Ours, being blown, floated. I would think that if you’re using hard-boiled, you’d need to hold them at the ends and roll it on the surface, but who knows? Maybe if they sank, the polish would still adhere all over. I dunno.

Then let them dry.

Aren’t they pretty?

These are 100% fresh: you can see the beads of water still on them. After they’d had a few minutes for the polish to dry a bit, I patted them carefully to remove the water. No rubbing! The polish was not set, and would have smeared.

In an hour or so, when everything is well dried, we’re going to hot-glue ribbons to them, and then tie them to the pretty branches we painted yesterday.

Easter trees!

What they lack is logical follow-through

“Dis yooks yike a ditar pit.”

Oh, sorry. You don’t speak Daniel. I’ll translate. Daniel is holding up a plastic button from our lacing box. I’ve always seen it as oval, but it is more pointed at one end than the other.

D: This looks like a guitar pick.
M: Heh. You’re right, it does. Does someone you know play guitar?
D: No.
M: You don’t know anyone who plays a guitar?
D: No. I don’t.
M: Then how do you know what a guitar pick is?
D: Because my daddy has one. He keeps it with his guitar, so sometimes he hits the strings with it to make the music come out.
M: ….