mushroom chicken tubing

Sorry I haven't posted recently. Things seem to have been a bit hectic at home. We are in a rut of Frost-playdate-strut-eat-candy-draw-limits-Wren-yelling-cook-dinner-playduplo etc.

I am a bit frustrated by it.

However, I have just spent 20 minutes sampling coffee with the Zoka staff and I am feeling better. Its very like wine tasting. I learned all about the beans and how they are prepared. Then I learned how to inhale the freshly prepared espresso from a spoon. You have to slurp it very noisily into your mouth to aerosolize it without it hitting the back of your throat. Then you spit it out into a cup. Some coffees were very smoky, others were sour. It was quite informative. I feel gratified to have had this experience - if I come away with two new obsessions from my time in Seattle it would be appropriate that they are mycology and coffee.

I think as a parent you have to have an activity, a life beyond the needs of kids even if it is something you share with them like birdwatching or mushrooms. It needs to be something you really like for itself not because it keeps the children happy/educate/out of your way.

Along these lines, tomorrow we are going to the farmer's market to buy a shiitake mushroom log (and leeks, coriander, potatoes, etc). Its not really a log. Its a a compressed stump like thing innoculated with shiitake spores. I have told Frost that if he buys the log I will buy shiitake from him - for $4 a punnet. I think he is interested in them growing but not in eating them.

Wren is quite excited by our plan to buy chickens to live in the garden. He loves the neighborhood chickens (there are 3 coops we visit). We are going out to Stanwood to buy a coop on Sunday afternoon and chickens will follow. We will be looking for a house-sitter if we go on Vacation - to watch 2 cats and 2 chickens!

Tomorrow we are going snow tubing at the Snoqualmie Summit. Frost is very excited but Wren is just worried. He is quite anxious at the moment - in particular he hates his snow coat, the thought that I might give him a bath or the idea I may wash his hair.