This was the “bagel with cream cheese” (made from cashews).  So colorful!!!And back home we go.Here’s Dale, trying to nap.  But then I looked down there and she’d found a light up bouncy ball.  Not the most conducive to sleep.

Harriet now sleeps on those very sheets.

3 weeks ago my 94-year-old grandfather passed away.  While it’s been hard to see my grandma deal with her grief, if was a good time for our family.  And it generated a little story.

So that relatives from Germany could attend his funeral was 15 days after his passing.  For 15 days the kids observed me scrambling to get dress clothes for them for the Presbyterian funeral, and getting ready to host my brother and his daughter.  A lot of excitement.  Harriet even got new shoes.  On Easter Sunday Harriet said to me “Mom, guess what tomorrow is?”  She was asking me in a way that was like a game.  Not sure what she was getting at I replied, “I don’t know.  What?”  She chirped back, “Funeralllll!”  While making excited 3-year-old jazz hands.  She wasn’t exactly sure what a funeral was, but since she got new shoes and a cousin to play with it had to be good.

This is Beatrice.  As in B is for Beatrice. My brother, Jed, flew in from San Francisco area with his middle daughter and stayed with us of a couple of days.  Since they have 3 kids and live in the Bay area and we have 3 kids and live in Michigan we don’t get together nearly as often as we’d like.

Jed and Bea taught us a great card game for the kids that they call Garbage.Bea is a rock star when it comes to pretend play.  That little lego horse had a lot to say.Cousins.When I’m shooting kids I like to keep it fun for them.  Giggling kids are much easier to photograph than annoyed kids :-)  Often I ask kids to make different animal faces or noises.

Bea definitely wins the “roar like a lion” prize.  I think that it’s the curls.I’ll give the “fish lips” to Harriet.Sometimes I throw in an odd one just to keep the kids laughing.  When I said “smile like a moose”  This is what Win did.  Yep, his hands are moose antlers, or horns or whatever they are.I think that Harriet inspired this face.  Harriet and Bea have a similar zaniness.  I wonder it it’s being the second-born or if it’s just their personalities.Dale snuck in one last hold from Bea before they left.Really!?!  Those eyes.  Those curls.  And she has 2 sisters equally as stunning.  

So every week all winter long Jared has been picking up 10 pounds of beets from Visser Farms on Wednesdays.  Then Wednesday night we fill up the big roasting pan, roast them, peel them and chop them.  Every Wednesday night the house fills with the smell of warm yummy beetness.  We chop them up, sprinkle them on salads, and eat them plain.  There are so many things that you can do with beets.  Thanks to Melissa I even have a recipe that uses beets in cake (like carrot cake).  But good beets need very little altering.  Just eat them.

If this post is making you super jealous and you just can’t hardly wait to get your hands on 10 pounds of your very own beets, I’m willing to share my secrets.  All winter long Visser Farms has been supplying our habit.  Every week I email lindsey@visserfamilyfarms.com with my order.  On wednesdays from 4-6 they bring a truck to the farmer’s market and we pick up our order.

And here’s how you too can cook beets just like the Hendersons!  :-)

Step 1.

Put the beets in your sink and fill it with water.  Let them soak for 10 minutes or so.  Drain the sink.  Don’t worry about washing the dirt off of them.  They just need to get wet so that they peel easier.

Step 2.

Place beets in a pan.  I use this huge Le Cruset knock off that I picked at Ikea clearance.  But any pan will do.  A glass 9x 13 pan works perfectly.  After they are in the pan drizzle oil over the wet beets, I use olive oil.  Pick up each beet and rub it with your hands to spread the oil all over the beet.

Step 3.

Cover beets and bake at 375 for an hour and a half.  Tin foil works great to cover.  This is when your house will start to smell like an upscale restaurant.  Then check the beets for doneness.  Do this by vertically stabbing one with a knife.  Keep holding the knife vertical and pick it up.  If the beet holds on to the knife then roast a little more.  If it picks up a little and then falls off it’s ready.  Or just peel and eat one and decide if you’d like it softer or not.

Step 4.

Uncover the beets and allow them to cool enough to handle them.  Meanwhile rip some paper towels off the roll, about one per beet.  Once cool enough to touch, place one beat in one paper towel and wrap it up.  Using the paper towel rub the skin off of the beet.  It usually slides right off and the beet is ready.

Chop and refrigerate for salads.  We use this chopper for super easy chopping.  Eat them whole cold or warm.  Chop them in quarters and serve them alongside any meat for dinner.  They really don’t need butter or salt or anything.   Or look up any of a zillion recipes.

They are low in calories AND super good for you.

And they are Dale’s favorite food.  She opens her mouth so wide when I’m serving beets, but not for anything else yet.  We’ve been calling her pureed beets borscht.  Then we started mixing some avocado into it and that became Borscht-amole.

We have a picture of my little sister at about 1 year old in 1982.  She’d just fed herself beets from our garden and managed to get it everywhere.  In her hair, on her eyes, everywhere.  It’s really cute.  I wish I had that picture to post.  Too bad my parents have been dragging their feet about getting our family pictures over to Scan Cafe (I don’t know how to insert a  passive aggressive stare emoticon)

Beets.  It’s what’s for dinner…and lunch and breakfast.

***Update

Johanna scanned that picture in and emailed it to me.

This roll is called “Sexy Girl”  It’s a new one we tried this time and we will certainly be adding it to our favorites.  If you’re ever looking for yummy sushi in Holland I recommend this roll.Dale seemed to like her first trip to Wild Chef.

Then we came home and opened presents in the evening.

The kids got a subscription to Ranger Rick from their CA cousins.They also got some cute clothes from our good friend Denise.Today, both kids wanted to wear the new clothes that Denise gave them.  Win looked all the hipster in his plaid shirt, short tie and skinny jeans.  Harriet calls her new skirt her present-polkadot-tutu.  I wanted to take pictures of them in their new duds and this is the pose that they chose.  I think that they might have a future as engagement photo models.

Lest you think that my children are some sort calm serene models the pose quickly deteriorated and this is the last picture I took before Harriet went careening into the sofa.  Adding another scrape to her back.

On Friday my parents brought the kids back to us.  It was good to have them away for the week of crazy tiredness, but it was really nice to have them back.  We had a really nice weekend as a family of 5.

I snatched this picture from my mom’s camera.

On Sunday Jared’s parents (Goose and Grandma Jan) swung by for a couple of hours.  We ordered takeout from The Biscuit, one of the kid’s favorite restaurants.  We introduced Dale and had a really nice afternoon.  The kids chased Goose around the house requesting tickles and “silly time.”

My dad has a raccoon trap.  He likes to set it the night before we come with the kids.  Then they get to check the trap with him.  I think that Win is playing taps.