So, my mom's garden is in full swing now that the heat of summer is upon is. Has been for a couple of weeks now. And, being my mother, she planted more of everything than she wanted, "just in case." Which means we have been swimming in beans--not that anyone's complaining, since fresh beans cooked with bacon is a hard dish to beat. But we also have lots of tomatoes, peppers (which my mom is allergic to, so we can only really cook them when she's not around), cucumbers, and . . . eggplants. Most of this abundance we can cope with, since we know more or less what we can do with them. But eggplants have posed a bit of a puzzle, since we're not really familiar with its culinary qualities. So I've sort of taken it on as a personal mission to figure out how to cook eggplant (at least, a better option than the semi-fried stuff Dan foisted on us last time his parents were here). I've learned, among other things, that eggplants are less bitter when you purge them (i.e., cut them up, salt them liberally, and leave over some sort of strainer for half an hour or so to draw the water out of them. Then you wash the salt off and cook them). We've tried three different recipes, and I have to say that all of them have been quite good. (All from the Food Network, of course). We tried an eggplant and tomato pasta dish (Dan thought the eggplant tasted just a bit like cooked dill pickles, only, of course, much tastier than that sounds), an eggplant pasta dish (from our favorite Alton Brown), which tasted a little bit like a linguini alfredo, only with eggplant instead of actual noodles (very good, very rich--the recipe used real cream!), and, most recently, what was supposed to be stuffed eggplant, only none of the eggplants were large enough. So we made the stuffing according to the recipe and stuffed garden fresh tomatoes instead. (I put the tomatoes under the broiler). I thought they looked so pretty, I had to include a picture here. And of course, I was rather proud of myself for using so many fresh ingredients--the tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers were all picked fresh from the garden. At any rate, I think I'm starting to become an eggplant convert--a very versatile little vegetable.
My little culinary adventures notwithstanding, this past week has been a little crazy and more than a little hectic. Grandma Collings' funeral was Monday afternoon. It was surprisingly well attended, considering that she's spent her last couple of years in nursing homes, and the service was very nice. My aunt read the transcript of Grandma's life story (from an interview with one of my cousins) and I have to admit I was surprised by some of the things that Grandma had done, like her involvement in the Primary for many years in California (for some reason, Grandma never seemed much at ease with small children), or her years of work in genealogy.
I also started working on my new job in earnest--along with the outgoing coordinator, I met with thirteen of the professors we'll be working with in the fall (about two hours a day M-Th). Since my babysitter (my mom) was out of town with my dad (Grandma was buried in California), this meant a lot of scrambling on my part to find different people in the ward to watch the kids (and Dan took both of them one day, wonderful man!). It worked out okay--I think Andrew enjoyed interacting with different people, but I felt a bit bad about his unsettled schedule. It will be much better in the fall when things are a little more organized.
On Friday, Jeni and I decided to try taking the kids to the Utah County Fair. Like all of our expeditions, this required a bit of maneuvering. Luckily, the day of the fair was beautiful--the high for the day was in the low eighties, so it was sunny but not too hot. Our outing started out pretty inauspiciously--Evelyn woke up almost immediately and started to fuss in the stroller, so I tried to find an inconspicuous place to feed her. Jeni offered to take Andrew along with her, in their double stroller, but was back almost immediately because Andrew was having a come-apart and wanted to stay with me. And of course, almost immediately after she left again to explore with her kids, Andrew wanted to go with Jacob and Emi. He did okay staying by me (which is always something we struggle with, with Andrew), only straying to the nearest games where I could still keep an eye on him. When Jeni came back, however, I was trying to buy tickets and keep Andrew with me, but he was fascinated by a carnival game that involved ducks in flowing water, and he couldn't seem to mind to save his life. So we strapped him into the stroller, with much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Andrew was placated, however, when he realized that we were heading to some of the fair rides, something that we indulged our kids in partly because we never really got to do that when we were kids, because the rides were too expensive (and they were, but somehow that seems like part of the fair experience). The fair as a whole had nothing on the Grange Fair, in PA, but we had a pretty good time. No fair food, though, because we spent all our combined money on the ride tickets!
A note about the above picture. Andrew, being Andrew, kept trying to stick his hands in the water (and tried once to drink it--gross!), and even tried to stand up a couple of times until the guy manning the ride yelled at him.
Friday night, I went with my mom (and Evelyn) to a couple of receptions, including one for my friend Cristie's younger brother. I really only went to see Cristie, whom I haven't seen for some time. Andrew wanted desperately to go with us, despite the fact that both Dan and my dad were emphatic that they didn't want to go, because receptions were "boring."Saturday morning, Cristie, her husband Steven, their three boys, and Karin, Mat, and their two boys, met up with Andrew, Evelyn and I at a local park. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera. We had a lot of fun catching up with each other, and the kids seemed to have a good time running around the park. When we finally got home, Andrew was ecstatic to find that Emi and Jacob were once again visiting at our house, and the three of them ran around together until it was time for Andrew's nap.
And in case you missed pictures of Evelyn in the above account, here are a couple, including the obligatory Sunday dress-up shot (the pink one). I put her in the blue dress for the wedding receptions.
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