Kosheri Recipe

I got this recipe from Ottolenghi, which is an awesome restaurant in London, which we enjoy as frequently as we can. They are all about really fresh ingredients and it's YUMMY!

So, as requested, I'm sharing the recipe (which I hope is legal. If not, I'll take it down!).

Make the sauce first:
-Fry 2 crushed garlic cloves and 2 hot red chillies in 4 Tbs of olive oil (and use gloves or you will end up with welts on your face, lips and pain in your eyeballs when you try to remove your contacts) for 2 minutes
-Add 8 chopped tomatoes, 370 ml of water, 4 TBSP of cider vinegar, 3 tsp salt, 2 tsp ground cumin and bring to a boil. Then simmer for 20 minutes until the sauce thickens a little.
-add salt, pepper and coriander to taste

Cook 10 oz of green lentils

-Wash 7 oz of basmati rice and then drain
-heat a couple of tablespoons of butter in a heavy saucepan and fry a handful of broken vermicelli noodles (uncooked) until they are golden brown.
-Add the rice and stir until it's coated in butter
-add 400ml of water, 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg, 1.5 teaspoons of salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
-Boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 12 minutes

Heat 4 tablespoons of olive oil and fry, until dark brown, 2 thinly sliced white onions.

Combine lentils with the rice mixture and add most of the onions, leaving some for garnish. Serve hot with the spicy tomato sauce. YUMMY DELICIOUSNESS!

First Spring Picnic

We're back to rain today (Monday), but the weekend was incredible and sunny with fake looking clouds and green, green grass. It was idyllic and about as good as it gets in London, weather-wise, so we decided to go on a family picnic in Hampstead Heath.

Evie was suited up in her Sunday best with her "Dimanche" Babar bib (courtesy of Linda Hall) on and her fabulous sun hat (courtesy of Nana and Papa), of which she is not a huge fan. She was good sport, though, and really seemed to enjoy her first picnic.


After a lot of winding around and bumping Evie's stroller through various fields punctuated with muskrat or rabbit holes, Jim finally found us the perfect picnic spot under a big tree.


It wasn't long before we were joined by this greyhound doggy friend, who was wearing...a Gucci collar. I took that opportunity to explain to Evie that if she wants something Gucci at some point in her life, she is going to have to save her pennies and that we would NEVER be buying our pets designer collar wear! The dog was pretty cute, though, and went off at lightning speed when his owners called him.


Evie experienced her first grass yesterday, as well. We have a patio with trees and ivy and leaves, but no grass, so she was tickled (literally) to spend some time in the grass.



Trees are also a great thrill, so Jim took Evie over to gaze up into the branches of the big tree that we were sitting under.


Future Photographer. She takes after her Dad!


Idyllic weather!


The excitement that is grass (she got a little TOO excited and toppled into the grass on her face, which she didn't like too much):


Flying with Daddy!


Playing with Mom.


Eventually the novelty of the picnic wore off and we moved on. Hampstead Heath has several swimming ponds: the co-ed pond, which gets really crowded and full of people who obviously have checked their modesty at the door and don't mind changing into their bathing suits in full view of everyone at the pond or are wearing far too little; the all woman pond, which is secluded and shaded; and the all man pond, which has a reputation for being a gay pick up area and is, in my opinion, the nicest pond area. I would swim there if I were a man...but NOT at this time of year. That splash in the distance of this picture is a man swimming. Apparently some guys swim year round. Impressive. Or insane?


Duck Butt:


Post-picnic status:


Meandering along a shady trail:


A man and his girl among bluebells and green leaves. Yay for spring!

Evie's first banana

She's not ready for solids yet, but she's definitely interested, so lately I've been letting her 'taste' (lick) the fruit that I'm eating. Today she tried her first banana!

Sunday Morning

We were all together on Sunday morning. Jack contributed the soundtrack, by digging in the kitty litter.

Evie and the steel drum guy

As promised...

I want this guy to play that thing in our living room every day. It was very soothing!

Barcelona with Evie--Part 2

On Easter morning we woke up to find that the Easter Bunny had brought Evie a very cool present: a xylophone!

I'm afraid she was more into the wrapping paper than the actual xylophone, but Jim had a lot of fun with it! I'm not sure how much natural talent for playing the xylophone Evie is going to inherit. I know that my brief career as a xylophone player in the sixth grade band was pretty disastrous. Fortunately there was another xylophone player upon whom I was quick and able to blame all of the missed notes (it's amazing how well you can hear the xylophone, despite all of the other instruments in a band!).


We played Flying Nun for a little while, had a few spit ups, changed into dry and warm clothes and then headed out in search of the beach.


It's always easiest to travel as a two headed monster.

I'm trying to impress upon Evie the importance of a great appreciation for costumes and boas. She seemed nonplussed.


She was so not interested in the beach (and who can blame her in THAT weather) that she almost slept through it again...


Eventually, though, she woke up and charmed the pants off some waiters with her happy smiles and was keen to check out the sand and sea.

Watching the waves:


She wasn't so interested in feeling the sand...


so I tried a different angle.

We'll know who to blame if she ends up hating sand later in life.

As we left the beach we were lucky enough to catch this great band:

And then our camera died, thus ending picture taking in Barcelona. It was a great first trip with Evie!

My Grandpa (or Dickie Dixon as he was less formally called)

Sadly, my sweet and wonderful Grandpa died last night after struggling with Alzheimer's for a number of years. The picture above was taken on Thanksgiving 1977 at a family reunion. That big, fat baby looking so happy in the picture is me! Even then I adored Grandpa, just like everyone else who knew him.

Grandpa had a distinguished career as a well-respected psychiatrist at the Cleveland Clinic. But, in addition to being an incredible and much loved doctor, he was also a really fun and much loved grandpa. Every Christmas we piled into some large vehicle at some ungodly hour in the morning and drove from Louisiana to Cleveland, OH to see Virginia and Grandpa. The long drive, which usually involved some sort of family drama along the way and always was divided in half by a stay in a Howard Johnson (Mom and Dad in one bed, Kate and me in another and Will always on a cot) and a dinner at Shoney's (fried shrimp!), was always worth it because at the end was Cleveland, snow, and, the best part--Virginia and Grandpa! It was our custom to honk the horn as we drove into their driveway and Grandpa would always be down the stairs and waiting for us with big bear hugs when we got out of the car. He would usher us inside like we were royalty and fix us ginger ale. The wooden reindeer would be out on the back porch and the snow would be sprinkled with bird feed because he had a passion for birds and never failed to feed them. Everything I know about birds, I learned from Grandpa, including the silly poem about the Pelican:

A fabulous bird is the Pelican
His beak can hold more than his belly can!


When we were very young, he had two yellow labs who he named Charles and Diana. He had a picture of Winston Churchill above the kitchen sink and had great respect for the Queen, who he met once or twice during his previously mentioned distinguished career. Although he had lived in the US for many, many years, he was incredibly proud of being English and was thrilled when he found out we would be living in London.

He loved our grandmother, Virginia, warmly, thoroughly and until the end. It sounds cliche, but their love was great and true and what we all hope that we'll be lucky enough to experience. He used to tell the story of having just moved from England to the States and being set up on a 'blind date' with Virginia. 'Blind date' was not a term he was familiar with, and so when he met Virginia he was surprised that a woman with such beautiful eyes could be blind...over fifty years later, he was still enamored of those eyes and his strong and beautiful wife.

I think the most wonderful thing about Grandpa was how happy he made everyone who knew him. He always had a joke or a pun at hand and he even made learning good manners fun. He entertained us for years with his raggedy old puppet 'Blackeyes,' took us sledding, escorted us to the ballet, and made us feel like we were the most important and special people in the world. And he was one of the most important and special people in the world to us, too. I'll always see Grandpa, out in the road with his flashlight waving and waving and waving until we finally couldn't see him anymore.