For the love of Roquette

Thanks to the wonders of the internet {shout out to google and Ben & the Pinterest team} I will never have to purchase another cookbook, nor eat another boring salad.

One of our favorite salad mediums @ The Bungalow is roquette {arugula}, which has been surprisingly difficult to score in our little corner of the Midwest! It's available randomly, and often in various stages of wiltedness when I do discover it. {apparently love for this peppery green that belongs to the not to the lettuce family, but is a leafy herb of the mustard fam, has yet to take hold.} So whenever I make it into a slightly more urban grocery, I grab as much as I think The Johnson's can consume in the window of a week.

We throw the lobed leaves on pizza and sandwiches, wilt it in pasta dishes, but mostly we eat it in salads.

Although I think roquette can stand alone undressed as a side salad and add a low calorie, high flavour punch to any meal; we usually dress it simply with olive oil, lemon juice & honey, and then dress it up with any combination of the following ... avocado, shaved parm, left over chicken, or prosciutto. {With these options the salad can become the meal.}

I generally think "savory" when I consider roquette, but decided this week to branch out and try it with sweet.



Using the recipe I found here:
{http://ohsheglows.com/2012/04/30/spring-salad-with-strawberry-lemon-basil-dressing/}
And then tweaked slightly, I added a basil and strawberry dressing to roquette tossed with chiffoned basil and sliced blackberries and strawberries. Next time I'll add honey goat cheese and nuts. Ooh, and there's a strawberry basil lemonade I'm anxious to try as well!

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Dining Alfresco

In the spring and summer we eat outside as much as possible. It's almost always cool enough on the covered front porch of The Bungalow.

The whirring ceiling fan {that a decade ago we up-cycled from an upstairs bedroom & painted white, & planned to use for just a season, or until it gave out ...} keeps the air moving and bugs at bay.

Right now the mock orange and peonies are blooming, and our outdoor eatery is especially fragrant!









Last night I got to use my Mother's day gifts ... An olive tray and slate cheese plate.



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Hanging Out With the Readers

Today I helped chaperone a trip to the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. It was a reward trip for four students at the local K-8 where The Three attend. {The K-8 is located exactly two minutes from The Bungalow}.

Two eighth grade boys, a sixth grade girl, and EHJ, who is in the fourth grade, are the top readers in the school. The junior high students had to accumulate 600 accelerated reader points to be able to attend. For elementary students the bench mark was 500.

We were pretty sure EHJ would make the points. {First semester she came home and casually mentioned she was an "outlier" in the AR program. By Christmas she had reached 250 pts, and her nearest competitor was @ 75.}

The junior high english teacher and I accompanied the students. It was a beautiful day. The trees where lush and the lawns green. We strolled the grounds, walked the maze, ate lunch in the scenic window filled restaurant, and in general had an enjoyable day.





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The First Grader's Garden Party

{april 2012}

Crane Beach

Ipswitch, MA

April 2012

Cinco de Mayo Birthday Fiesta

i mustache you a question

{Compost}

One week ago a semi arrived at The Bungalow with eight steamy yards of black gold. I had ordered this delivery and scheduled it for Wednesday. What I had not anticipated was the size of the delivery truck, which did not fit down my leaf lined drive, or in fact my neighbor's. So, instead of having an extra large pile of evolving cr@p deposited in a discrete and manageable space near my raised beds and rain barrels in the back yard by the barn, it has sat for the last week in my front yard.


Don't get me wrong. 


I. love. compost. 


{In a huge pile in my front yard, not so much!}


We have spent the last week shoveling and loading the nutrient rich organic matter around every plant and shrub on the property. We have filled our raised beds with it and all of my planters. We have worked in along the roots of the peonies and the rhubarb and the lilacs. When I put in twelve new hosta lilies along the now tamed hedge I back filled with compost. (When my friend Sarah visited last summer, she said, "That's a hedge?!?" about the monstrous, leafy 15 foot high expanse that separates our property from our neighbors to the North. It's now a more manageable six feet tall. The width of the expanse that we cut back allowed us to use the space to create a six foot wide mulched bed.)


We have offered compost to all of our gardening neighbors. We sent it in trash cans for my MIL's rhubarb. If you live in drive-able proximity, please come help yourself! We have whittled the pile down to about a third. Which means we still have the equivalent of two pick-up beds of compost available. 


Compost is magic. It feeds plants, keeps down weeds and is living. It's warm to the touch. (This kind of freaked my kids out.)
* Side note: my oldest promptly volunteered for all dishwasher and laundry duty to avoid any contact with something that is warm and steamy!


When we bought The Bungalow a dozen years ago we were thrilled to stumble upon the garden files of Phyllis, the thoughtful perennial gardener who lived in The Bungalow with her husband in the 1970s and 80s. The owners between Phyllis and The Johnson's had let everything become overgrown, but with the help of Phyllis' garden maps, sketched on yellow legal pads, we were able to decipher what plants where popping up around the yard. We transplanted the rhubarb and asparagus, that was overgrown with trumpet vine to a sunny spot in the back yard. We moved peonies, that after thirty years of tree growth where then in the shade, to a sunny row in the back. With all of these transplants we used compost. For good measure we tamped it around other beds as well, and threw it down with grass seed on bare spots in the lawn. It was miraculous.


After our five years in China, The Bungalow was looking pretty overgrown again. But with the sweat equity of four of the five Johnson's, and with the help of compost, we are hoping to bring it back to the glory it once knew in Phyllis' care. 


Thank you compost.

Boston {a view from the Harbor}

The original Custom's House (circa early 1600s) 

customs buildings converted into high end condos 

a barge

One of the many daily flights out of Logan over the Harbor

Whitey Bulger (infamously depicted in The Departed)
is being tried in Boston's new courthouse.
The glass panels are supposed to represent
a wave of justice washing over the city.

Birthdays, Boston and Business Trips

In spite of most likely "missing the window" of timeliness of posting, I'm going to anyway ...

We've had a fun series of busy weeks. I really haven't blogged properly on China, probably because I'm still ruminating on the many ways the trip was important for me and my oldest girlie ... We've had Bei Bei's friend party ... belatedly, but not without lots and lots of six and seven year old energy ... The girlies are playing academy soccer again this fall, MGJ {just} finished up her scholastic bowl, and EHJ is taking a cool equestrian focused art class ... This weekend we hosted MGJ's class for her thirteenth birthday party. She has {so far} lived up to her name and gracefully entered her teen years. We celebrated her coming of age cinco de mayo style with streamers, and tacos and a kiddie version of the wonderfully refreshing citrusy lime and minty mojito ... Mr Johnson seems to be living with his roller case and hanging bag packed. He's been to Deutschland again, and makes other trips around the Midwest more frequently lately. He flew into Beantown the last weekend in April where he met his Tai Tai and girlies for a fabulous long weekend in Boston and beyond ... It seems like it's hard to catch our breath sometimes with everything that is going on, coming up and needs to be done. {Now that I've attended to the laundry that managed to reach the first story laundry chute door in the kitchen, I feel like I can take two minutes to do some quick updates!}