while chanda was in ballet class, i hung out at moomah cafe.
i've been reading a wonderful book about venice titled, venice revealed, by paolo barbaro. he writes about many of the changes taking place in his city, such as people communicating via their cell phones and computers and not leaning out their windows and shouting to their neighbors out in the street or across the way. he misses these voices. he also misses the old red paint that they used to use when retouching the buildings. they now use white, and he writes about how it creates a very different type of feeling when reflected in the sun and the water. not bad, but different . . and something to grow accustomed to.
i combined several grains this morning for a breakfast cereal we like to have in the fall and winter . . not that the air is feeling particularly autumnal lately! it's been 78 to 80 degrees everyday with 97% humidity! stores and restaurants and dance schools still have their air conditioning going . . however, it being the end of september seemed to compel me to make ancient grain breakfast cereal from cynthia lair's feeding the whole family.
while i worked on the cereal in the morning, chanda read the time for kids magazine that greg periodically brings home from work. i usually like to read these also . . i can read it quickly and have a nice idea about what's going on in the world!
in the kitchen, i combined brown rice, red quinoa, almonds, wheatberries, sesame seeds, amaranthe and millet. i rinsed them off and then toasted them in the oven until a nutty aroma ensued.
while the cereal mix was toasting, morgana and chanda were measuring and then cutting out chanda's skirt for the medieval faire.
morgana made up the pattern based on a character in a movie . . lucy in the narnia series. the dress she chose to copy is from the prince caspian movie, and is called the red narnia outfit (according to a fan-produced website called the wardrobe door).
chanda is very pleased with the result! still to be done are the sleeves and bodice.
by this time of the day, the cereal had finished toasting and been stored in a jar; ready for tomorrow morning?
chanda and i baked bread today, and talked about how yeast is a fungi like mushrooms. it feeds upon the sugars in the dough, breaking them down and turning them into carbon dioxide; the same gas we exhale, the same gas the trees take in and turn into oxygen through photosynthesis. and like the mushrooms it feeds from a living substance and transforms it.
the recipe we used was an old one from the girls' playgroup in brooklyn. basically, a tablespoon of yeast is sprinkled over one cup of warm water or milk mixed with a spoonful of honey. 
after it bubbled, we added olive oil and sea salt and spelt flour . . 
mixing until a ball was formed and it was firm enough to knead on the counter.
then we oiled a bowl, covered it, and let it rise for an hour.
then chanda punched it down and formed it into a loaf.
she rubbed the top with egg and milk.
we baked it at 375 degrees for about forty minutes. it was so good that i almost didn't get a picture of it . .
in the afternoon, before running off to ballet class, morgana made almond pulp crackers, from elana's pantry. she had made almond milk in the morning, and wanted to use the leftover pulp.
she added flax meal (i had ground flax seeds in our electric coffee grinder a few weeks ago, and kept it fresh in the refrigerator), fresh thyme . .
olive oil . .
and sea salt.
elana's directions say to dehydrate at 135 degrees, but my oven only begins at 170 degrees, so i kept it in for about 10 hours. they turned out very good!
korrina had been in new jersey for the weekend, visiting with her friend. she was supposed to go right to her babysitting job this morning, but instead blew in and settled on the bed to peruse a book for a new knitting project. while getting onto the bus to come home, she dropped her bag and broke her needles . . or she threw her bag down on the seat and a heavy item in the bag broke her needles . . ummm . . something like that. anyway, she found a fun new project from knit.sock.love. and i gave her the sock yarn i had won at purl by the sea in march. i saw the project this evening, and it looks beautiful (she's working the wedge pattern).
no, not the little furry kind . . but the big giant kind that will terrorize poor mary in nutcracker this year . . i watched a bit of the mouse rehearsal this afternoon and it looked like a good time . .
i was cleaning up the kitchen this morning, after making pancakes for the sleepover girls, when i heard loud music in the air . . and my feet started moving, and my body started swaying and i yelled, "hey! it's bobby!" and it was. bobby hardin. in the westbeth courtyard. spreading joy and love.
thanks bobby . .
chanda and i went up to the east side today, as she began her rehearsals for the yorkville nutcracker. she is very happy this year with her parts: babcock girl, and lead gingerbread. they are fun and busy roles, and she'll get to dance in each performance. morgana is also happy with her part as she's a mouse and gets to perform in the battle scene, as does our friend tessa who was chosen for lead mouse. battle scene is our favorite, and has been ever since korrina first performed the role of soldier two years in a row on stage at the new york state theatre with the balanchine nutcracker. morgana is also performing in her modern dance teacher's family matters performance at new york live arts during the same weekend the yorkville nutcracker is performing. she'll be very busy . . nutcracker on thursday and friday (december 8th and 9th) and family matters on saturday and sunday. korrina will also be working that weekend; as stage manager for ellen's show. we were not happy that these two shows fell on the same weekend, but . . c'est la vie!
it was a grey day, so we couldn't really see the sun at noon to observe it's position. we'll take note of the sunrise and sunset over the next few days, as it rises and sets more due east and west. the sun is lower now, in the sky. even with the days growing shorter, however, the air is still quite humid. we had a few crisp autumn like days at the beginning of the month, but summer is still hanging on during these later days.
we went on a field trip this morning to central park. we entered on the west side at 81st street and walked to a bare dirt area on which sat a huge mulch hill. vanessa, our keeping it green environmental educator, was there to instruct us in our work project: spreading the mulch around! However, first she talked about the different animals that live in the park: squirrels, hawks, pigeons, sparrows, cardinals, titmice, scarlet tanagers (all in all, about 275 species, as it's a major stop on the atlantic flyway), raccoons (who like to sleep in tree hollows), opossums (who also like to sleep in tree hollows), turtles, fish (bass, carp, goldfish, koi), bullfrogs, bats, and many, many insects.
she also talked about the different trees in the park (there are about 24,000 with about 17,000 of them healthy american elm). we talked about how much of the recent mulch was from hurricane irene. however, the severe thunderstorm during the summer of 2009 was more devastating for the park's trees than irene. it's sad when trees are lost during storms, but new ones are planted and the park keeps evolving. (morgana and i noted how we could also smell pine mulch . . and we thought, maybe, it was from our christmas tree which we had taken to be mulched in washington square in january . . !)
here morgana is digging into the mulch pile. our job was to spread the entire pile over as much of the dirt area as possible. it would serve as a ground cover so the soil wouldn't run off, and keep it rich in nutrients. the inner part of the pile was very warm! all the bacteria were busy doing their job of decomposing the plant material.
after morgana and olga loaded up the wheelbarrow, i rolled it to tessa and chanda who raked it over the soil.
a stinkhorn! they spout up in the funniest places. we saw one once by our favorite boardwalk down in tribeca. we had no idea at the time what it was. we were very perplexed!
the pile is shrinking!
voila! job completed after one and a half hours of work! (and one blister on my right hand.)
cassius helps with the final raking . .
in the evening, after chorus at third street, chanda and i walked home along 13th, past the new school's parsons building. korrina was inside attending her costume design and history course.
before i left to take chanda to chorus, i had made stuffed peppers. when we returned we sat down to eat with greg and morgana (korrina had already eaten before her class). they were delicious! it was my favorite meal of the week.
while chanda was in ballet class, i hung out at moomah cafe.
i've been reading a wonderful book about venice titled, venice revealed, by paolo barbaro. he writes about many of the changes taking place in his city, such as people communicating via their cell phones and computers and not leaning out their windows and shouting to their neighbors out in the street or across the way. he misses these voices. he also misses the old red paint that they used to use when retouching the buildings. they now use white, and he writes about how it creates a very different type of feeling when reflected in the sun and the water. not bad, but different . . and something to grow accustomed to.
