June Bugs

I spent this week away, in Wisconsin, for a work trip where I spent most of the time hanging out at Frank Lloyd Wright's house and having no internet or cell service. I know the last part sounds terrible but it was actually pretty great.




Before I left our friend, Debbie, was visiting and she was finally able to meet the Wombats as we organized a plan to get them to the beach.





The beach trip went much better than expected and certainly much better than their first trip to the beach.


While I was at work Jen and Debbie went to the farmer's market where they picked up this baby fennel. I grilled it and put it in pasta with black olives, anchovy, chopped tomato, chopped basil, and Parmigiano-Reggiano.


Jen picked up the farm share this week. We got garlic scapes, bright lights rainbow chard, summer spinach, red leaf lettuce, romaine, green leaf lettuce, and butter lettuce.


While Jen struggled to pick up the farm share, I struggled to sample as many Wisconsin area beers as was humanly possible.

We all have our roles to play.


I got back late on Thursday night after many delays because of a tornado watch in New Jersey. Thursday was also Jen's birthday so we had a series of plans for Friday, all of which were foiled.

We were going to go to the The MoMA to see the Rain Room until we found out the lines could be almost six hours. Then we decided there may be better ways to spend a rare six hour chunk of time without babies. Most importantly: napping.

We then planned to go to Kykuit until the sour old bat at the desk told us that the only tour would be in three hours in the rudest way she knew how. We decided to go down to the park and see the lighthouse after that.


On our way to the lighthouse, past a group of people grilling and blaring loud Christian music, we came across this odd children's park with a dental theme. The benches were toothbrushes and there were giant molars you could climb on.


Then we saw the lighthouse and made our way to the path to it.


We were greeted with this sign informing us that we would not be seeing the lighthouse. If we'd been feeling more adventurous we could have easily crawled through the hole in the fence.


We then went to go see the beach and were greeted with this sign.


It was all for the best as a quick glance through the fence revealed that it didn't look like we'd be missing all that much.


Then we encountered the world's largest blackberry bush. I would have figured it was just a tree until I got under it.


That's when I saw lots of crushed blackberries and an empty container of bologna, the trademark of your average blackberry bush.



Back at home we were able to give the babies their first taste of both polenta and cannellini beans. They tolerated both until they got bored and decided to toss them both to the floor in disgust. I was not offended by this as lately they have become incredible picky.


For dinner I tried to use up some of the immense amounts of greens we had by making this lettuce soup out of green leaf, romaine, garlic, onion, vegetable stock, and almonds. I pureed this with a little salt and pepper then sprinkled with toasted pine nuts and drizzled with olive oil.


For beer I had this Fleur de Houblon from Brewery Ommegang. This was a really nice beer and bore a very strong resemblance to my first home brew.


On Saturday I woke up feeling lousy. Really lousy. We had our traditional biscuits for the first day of the Tour de France. I still felt lousy. At first I just figured I was really tired from travel and the wrangling of Bubses but after taking my temperature and going to the doctor it was determined that I had a virus so I took a monster two hour nap while Jen kindly took the babies out for the afternoon.



She took them on a great tour of local town swings.


And down to the shore so they could glower at some boats.


Back at home I miraculously felt tons better after sleeping and Martin showed me how much he missed me by trying to topple all the lamps in our apartment.


As fast as this virus came on me it departed and I even had time for a nice glass of wine with dinner.


This year I had to purchase Jen's birthday fruit tart to keep up with her lackluster birthday as well as my inability to make such things.



Today we had a nice afternoon visit from our friend Beth who had fun photographing the guys.



Afterwards, Jen went to drop Beth off at the train. While they were gone I started cutting stuff up for them for dinner. After returning to the living room I found them both completely asleep in their high chairs.


Here's a video of what I returned to after a mere four minutes in the kitchen.


For dinner I made a spicy seafood boil per Jen's request. I cut up onion, potato, sweet potato, garlic scapes, rainbow chard, chorizo, shrimp, corn, seafood broth, La Chouffe Blonde beer, black peppercorns, hot sauce, and bay leaf. The end result was great except that I keep forgetting Jen is unable to eat corn on the cob since Elliott knocked out her tooth.


For beer we had this Tripel from Kuka - Andean Brewing Company, a local New York brewery using ingredients from the Andes. It was one of the more flavortul tripels I've ever had and went very well with the seafood boil.

It was a trying week for Jen and merely a tiring week for me. Next week we head for Rhode Island. Here's to hoping all goes smoothly and they are just as worn out and ready for bed there as here.

If not, there's always Baby Benadryl.