Keep It Local: Strawberry Picking at Shlagel Farms

As we've both started spending longer days in school, and our weekends have started to fill up with scheduled activities, we have had less time to venture out for full-day jaunts. So we were all quite happy to take advantage of a recent day off of school to hit the fields for strawberry picking. At that time, Shlagel Farms was the only spot with berries, so that's where we headed to meet up with some school buddies.

It was an overcast day and it started to rain on the drive there. And we were both cranky. But we didn't care at all about the spitting sky when we got out hands on a berry basket. We picked $30 of berries in about 10 minutes. And the rain eventually hit the road, giving us some great time to play on the playground and sand pile. We took a little break to visit some chickens and have our picnic lunch (plenty of picnic tables are available), and then resumed our reign over the sand pile (there were a few turf wars with other kiddos, but all in all, we kept it together).

We've had strawberries at almost every meal since: strawberry smoothies, strawberries and goat cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread (drizzle a little balsamic, yum), chocolate covered strawberries, strawberries on cereal, strawberry salad, and on and on. And we've got a nice frozen stash too.

Shlagel Farms was perfect picking for us -- low key with a few extra activities available. If you're jonesin for berries, you might also want to check out KidFriendly DC's in-depth coverage of the 2013 strawberry picking season.

Grub It Up: Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

We don't need a good reason to bake goodies in our house, but when we have one, we jump on it. So, to show a small token of thanks to our teachers during Teacher Appreciation week, we baked these SUPER yummy chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and gave one each to our teachers in a little bag with a sweet sticker mom made. Of course we ate a bunch ourselves as well. These are definitely worth baking and don't bother to ask what's in Crisco Butter -- it doesn't matter. It makes these ridiculously delicious.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (adapted from Redhead Can Decorate's recipe)

Ingredients: 
- 1 cup butter flavored Crisco
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 2 cups flour
- 1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- 3 cups uncooked oats
- 1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375. Mix Crisco, sugars, eggs, and vanilla. Add flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. Mix well. Add oats and chocolate chips, mix well. Form 1 inch balls onto cooking sprayed or parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake about 20 minutes. Let cookies cool on baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely. 

Keep It Local: Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes at the National Gallery of Art

I've been after mom to let me take ballet lessons, so she knew that I'd be way into the new Ballets Russes exhibit at the National Gallery. We headed down there on a recent girls morning and were seriously blown away. The exhibit is a true multimedia installation of costumes, set designs, paintings, sculptures, print and drawings, photographs, posters, music and choreography visuals. And its ginormous.

Diaghilev founded the Ballets Russes in Paris in 1909 and brought together some of the most creative artists of that time, including Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Coco Chanel. The costumes were unbelievable and I loved getting to sit and watch some of the pieces being performed on screen. My most favorite was probably the costumes from the undersea fairytale Sadko -- I could have used a seahorse ballet costume at my mermaid birthday party. Just saying.

The lifesized costume art and small snippets of visual choregraphy make this a great exhibit for kids. There is plenty of room for littles to toddle around, but keep in mind that some of the costumes are right out in the open, so if your kiddo is still learning to "look, but not touch," you'll have to keep an eye on them. I should also note that if you have an overly skittish kiddo (i.e., one easily scared of moody music and dark lighting), there are a few parts you might wish to move through on the quick -- there were some sections I told mom were scary for those reasons. No biggie. I perked right up when we came to Coco Chanel's wool knit swimwear costumes for the ballet set in Monte Carlo. Swoon.

Diaghilev and The Ballets Russes will be at the National Gallery until September 2nd. Put it on your list!

Miscellaneous Madness: Hieroglyphics

My name means "hard headed" in Gaelic and I'm nothing if not true to my namesake. I can pick up and recall random concepts at will, but if there's something I don't want to learn, good luck getting me to do it. And even though I love books, mom has had a heck of a time getting me to sit down and practice letters. So when I took up an interest in all things Egyptian (I just love me some gods and goddeses), mom recalled a fantastic hieroglyphics stamp set she had when she was little and thought it might do the trick. The newer version (she just found the one she had on ebay and wished she bought that instead -- it was sturdier and had a better inkpad) has a nice book explaining the history of hieroglyphs and how Egyptians used them in practice. Turns out that it's a bit tricker than just your "A, B, Cs," -- we only have to learn 26 letters; Egyptian kids had to learn over 250 before they were considered literate. Yowsers.

We read through the stamp book and this basic hieroglyphics book as well (which also comes with a stencil) and then took to trying it out ourselves. Today is my shabbat day at school and I wanted mom to read some of my books on Egypt to the class, so she thought it would be nice if I made each of my friends a bookmark with their name in hieroglyphs. Mom cut bright strips of paper and then wrote each of my friends' names on a piece (top to bottom, like the Egyptians wrote). There are all kinds of tricky rules for translating English to hieroglyphics, but mom decided to keep it simple and do one stamp for every letter (ignoring some of the vowel and sounds rules of hieroglyphics). She asked me to identify each English letter and find it in the stamp book along with the appropriate hieroglyphic. I picked it up quickly and after a while, I didn't need to say the English letter, I'd just say "that's one reed leaf,"  "water," etc.

You know I still pretended I didn't know how to spell my own name in English, but what fun would it be if I didn't give mom a hard time? We've also enjoyed reading National Geographic's book on Ancient Egypt and this fun "travel journal style" book about the search for Osiris' tomb. And it was The Magic Treehouse "Mummies in the Morning" that got me on this Egypt kick in the first place. Mom promised we could make our own papyrus soon, so stay tuned!

Keep It Local: The New Elephant House at the National Zoo

We know, we know. We haven't had a good balance of local trips vs. art project posts lately, but after a winter spent inside, all we want to do is get out and explore. We recently accidentally spent one of the busiest days of the year at the zoo (a day the zoo throws a fab shindig celebrating Easter Monday) checking out the newly renovated elephant house. It wasn't a great day to do that -- the zoo was totally slammed with people for the holiday -- but we still had a good time seeing the pachyderms' new digs.

The elephants were all out in the yard, although we could see a few roaming in the back, but if you can catch them inside, you'll get a nice up and close view. We enjoyed the new educational resources (how much poop do elephants poop a day? A LOT), weighing ourselves on the elephant scale, and reading about the personalities of elephants currently at the zoo. When we'd had our fill of being inside, we hopped on down to the outdoor viewing area to eat our picnic lunch (it's our favorite spot to do dine at the zoo). It's a great addition to the zoo and we look forward to visiting again on a less busy day! (So, realistically, next fall. when it gets cold again.)

ALSO, totally off-topic, but we've forced mom to get with the social media times. You can now follow us on Instagram (@notsosahm) and Twitter (@notsosahmdc), so if you want to see where we are and what we're doing in real time (as opposed to weeks later when our scribe, erm, mom gets to blogging about it) ... FOLLOW US!

they eat all this in one day. and over to the right? they poop all that. 

Keep It Local: Watkins Regional Park Nature Center

Since the commence of her stint at home with us, mom has really mastered navigating the city. We know all the nooks and crannies of Rock Creek Parkway, the best shortcut to the Arboretum, and where to score sweet parking on the Mall. But outside of the city? It's all the same to her. Which is why a few weeks ago after our field trip to the Montgomery County Recycling Center, mom thought "OK, we're in Maryland. Where else can we go in Maryland while we're out here?" Watkins Regional Park! Turns out that is nowhere near Montgomery County and actually required us to drive past D.C. to get there, but you know, it all worked out.

We'd been to the farm, train, carousel and mini golf before, so this time we stopped first at the playground for a bit, which is pretty standard as far as playgrounds go (although we acted like we'd never seen a tire swing before, for some reason). And then continued on to the seriously sweet nature center. The center has a little bit of everything -- great educational displays, a good variety of animals (even mom couldn't deny that the little owls were so cute and I spent a fair bit of time speaking parsel tongue with the snakes), a puppet theater, lots of naturey things to touch and explore. But by far our favorite was the kids clubhouse -- we holed up in there are read books forever while watching over the center's frog pond and bird feeders. It was perfect. And then they gave us balloons. Beyond perfect.

There are lots of outdoor trail hikes as well, but we hung out in the nature center so long, we didn't have time. No problem -- we'll be back!

Grub It Up: Bomb-A Lemon Chicken with Olives

There is no question that I inherited my taste buds from mom. If it involves goat cheese, avocado, briny olives or sourdough bread (or really any other crusty bread. OK, FINE, any carbohydrate really), I'm in. So this Cooking Light "Chicken with Olives and Lemons" was a homerun in my book. I had to rename it, though. CL's name does not do this justice. Kane doesn't like olives, but mom picked his off ahead of time and he didn't say word one (and sometimes he can throw a fit about non-regulation food items touching his dinner) -- the chicken really was that good. Mom served ours with herbed orzo (a pasta shaped like rice? that's like a total twofer).

Bomb-A Lemon Chicken with Olives (altered in name only from Cooking Light's "Chicken with Olives and Lemons")

Ingredients
- 2 tsps grated lemon rind
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1 tbl extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 1/2 tbs minced fresh garlic
- 4 (6-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, halved crosswise
- cooking spray
- 2 tsps chopped fresh oregano
- 1/2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 15 oil-cured olives, pitted and sliced
- 1 large shallot, sliced
- 1 lemon, thinly sliced

Preparation
- Preheat over to 400.

- Combined first 4 ingredients in a large zip-top plastic bag. Add chicken to bag; seal. Shake to coat chicken. Marinate 15 minutes at room temperature. Arrange chicken mixture in a broiler-safe 11 x 7 inch glass or ceramic baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle chicken evenly with oregano and  the next 4 ingredients (through shallot); top with lemon slices. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

- Remove chicken from oven. Preheat broiler to HIGH.

- Place chicken 3 inches from broiler element; broil on HIGH for 3 minutes or until chicken is browned and done.