Got cucumbers? Here's a nice fresh salad:

creamy cucumber salad

My cucumber plant is loaded. I have already made refrigerator pickles and now I'm trying some new salad ideas.  This recipe came from Lemontreedwelling , a nice blog.  I started with her recipe and then tweaked it a bit:

3 cups thinly sliced cucumbers

1 cup thinly sliced red onion

1/2 cup sour cream

1 Tbs white wine vinegar

1 Tbs fresh dill - fresh is so much better

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 /2 tsp shallot salt

Combine the dressing ingredients and pour the dressing over mixed vegetables.

Chill for at least 2 hours....overnight is what I did and the salad was perfect

We'll try this in Nana camp soon

Now I'm looking for another recipe...maybe without dairy

The art of doing nothing - according to Gabriela and Reina

Nana camp is fun and some work but we usually take a little time to read or chat or tell stories.  I found this video to share with the girls.

The art of doing nothing:

Nana camp part II, watercolor, citrus week, rock star week

So then we took camp outside and did some water coloring of flowers we found blooming in our gardens

Reina's tulip

Gabriela's leaves

my poppy garden

The next week was Citrus week!!!  Special request for Key Lime Pie!!!!

While we waited for our Key lime juice to arrive Nellie and Joe's  we made felt coasters in the design of citrus slices:

Thank you to Purl Soho for the free pattern:

supplies for citrus coasters

assembled pieces

pieces in place

pinned in place

stitches in top layer with some seed spaces

coaster set

"grapefruit" coaster and wine glass

OK  Now for the Key Lime Pie

recipe from Williams-Sonoma-classic Key Lime Pie

The Nellie and Joe's 100% Key lime juice arrived and the girls did a great job.  They used graham crackers for the crust; I used the Ginger snap cookies.  They whipped up their cream right before the served it to their parents that night.  I topped mine with a little toasted coconut:

classic Key lime pie with gingersnap crust and toasted coconut

So citrus week was complete and yummy.  Good work girls!!!

The word of the week....."scurvy"

The next week the girls were rock stars.  We studied rocks....well we painted rocks.  The girls found smooth rocks around their yard (remember we're under quarantine- how dare we go off the property) about the size that would fit in their hand.  We collected paints and paint pens and thought about positive phrases we would like to be reminded of:

supplies for rock painting

Reina's rocks "Be Happy"

Gabriela's rocks - love the confetti, don't you?

my rocks - "Dream big"

OK then back to the kitchen to make rock cookies

We used the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the Nestle bag and added "rocks" in the form of chocolate chips, white chocolate chunks, M & Ms, caramel bites and Heath English toffee bits:

Gabriela's rocks

rock star cookies

word for rock star week - "lapidarian"
Stay tuned for the next three weeks

Nana camp

My girls in Seattle like so many have been home from school since March.  Their teachers have been sending them assignments for home study and we decided to start some fun learning via FaceTime.  For 12 weeks we have been learning and doing.....lots of fun.  We started with paper beads: made crackers in the kitchen; moved on to felt art, citrus and Key lime pie.  This week we switched from sweet creations to salads and nutrition....it's all fun.  I am enjoying my virtual time with these precious girls..

We started March 23 with paper beads:

black and gold paper beads

the above beads came from this magazine page

the girls chose these pages

cutting isosceles triangles from paper

paper beads drying

words of the week: "isosceles" and "corrugated"

The next week we made a collage of more of our magazine paper and created an iconic Seattle architectural structure:

Many well known artists used "collage" as an art medium

Reina chose 

Seattle Public market

No trouble identifying this famous sign.

Amazon campus 3 spheres

I have yet to see this one but there are 3 spheres on the Amazon campus in Seattle.  Gabriela chose this soon to be iconic structure

And I chose this:

Eiffel tower collage

See the black cat on the left front leg?

word for the week - "iconography"

Now we've done a couple of weeks of Mod Podge.  Can you get enough Mod Podge?

My Seattle girls and I all love to be in the kitchen so week 3 was doing a little baking.  We explored 3 recipes---all crackers.  Well it's nearly impossible to find yeast in the markets these crazy days and we're "not allowed" to go to the markets except for essentials  so we had a "use what you have" theme this week:  The girls did great  We made cheese sticks from Puff pastry and cheese:

cheese straws, mis en place

cheese straws

Crispy flat seeded crackers

seeded flat crackers

seeded flat crackers in a glass

and Savory cheese biscotti

savory cheese biscotti

We learned quite a bit about substituting ingredients that we did not have for those that we did.  We used different flours, different (or no) leavening and a variety of nuts and seeds.

theme of the week: crackers

word of the week: "leavening"  and as many French words as we could use in our virtual Boulangerie

Yep  They're good