Summer Garden Painted Tiles
Art Camp for Two
Last week, my young friend, Grace and I invented our own “art camp.” She stayed with me for four nights and we had 3 full days of creative fun. I sure hope we get to do this a couple more times this summer. Hanging out with young people fills my cup, especially when they are as enthusiastic about life and learning and creativity as Grace is. It was super cool that we got to do so many projects and have some adventures just the two of us. Actually, it was three of us — Charlie came along too.
I promised Grace I would teach her how to make a blog post, so I am going to leave the DIY tutorials until she comes back for our next art camp. In the meantime, here are some photos of some of the things we did and made:
Healthy Low-Calorie Spring Rolls
I love taking spring rolls to potlucks or serving them at gallery receptions. They are as healthy as the ingredients you roll up inside the rice paper wrappers. They require no cooking (unless you opt for vegetarian rolls with steamed spinach — or my favorite — shredded chicken breast marinated in a soy-sesame-ginger dressing.) Anyway, I for this batch, used pre-cooked crab so they were super easy to make.
They’re also unusual at potlucks, so likely to be a big hit. And if there are any leftovers, they’re great for lunch the next day if you wrap them tightly so they don’t dry out.
Get all of your ingredients ready before you start rolling these. Once you get the hang of rolling them tightly, assembly goes quickly. There are different ways to roll spring rolls: two open ends, one open end (as in the photo at top) and closed ends (as in a burrito.) See the notes at the bottom of this post for some links that show how to roll spring rolls.
HEALTHY SPRING ROLLS
INGREDIENTS
- Rice Paper Wrappers
- Cucumber, peeled and cut into long pieces (I cut the cuke in half crosswise, then seed it, then slice about 1/8 inch thick slices
- Cooked Crab, Shrimp or Chicken Breast (for chicken breast instructions, see below this recipe)
- Leaf Lettuce, washed and spun dry in salad spinner
- Fresh Cilantro
- Fresh Basil
- Green Onions (I use just the green part in the rolls, reserving the white ends for my dipping sauce)
- Thin Rice Noodles, cooked according to directions, then marinated for about 10 minutes in a soy-mirin dressing, and drained til dry. Cut the noodles into small pieces
PREPARATION
- Prepare all of your spring roll fillings ahead of time and set on kitchen counter on plates
- Fill a large flat container with warm water. This is used to soften your rice paper wrappers, so the container needs to be large enough to accomodate the size wrappers you have. I used 12 inch diameter wrappers, and a 12″ stainless frying pan for my water
- Dip each wrapper in the warm water for just a couple of seconds, hold over the water to drain excess water off of the wrapper, then lay it on the counter. (I do two wrappers at a time)
- Assemble the fillings in the middle of the top half of the wrapper. I put down the meat and cilantro first because whatever is on the bottom of your pile of filling is what will show on the outside of the wrapper and I think that makes it look pretty.
- Put down one piece of crab or a couple of shrimp, a green onion, a couple sprigs of cilantro, some basil leaves, a slice of cucumber, a dab of rice noodles then a large lettuce leaf, torn in smaller pieces.
- Fold the bottom half of the wrapper up over the top half, then work from one side and tuck/roll tightly until you have a nice tight roll. The lettuce and green onion can stick out of the top of the roll.
- Repeat until you have rolled all your wrappers.
- If you have trouble with the wrappers not rolling you may not be waiting long enough for the wrapper to soften before trying to roll it.
- If you have trouble with the wrappers tearing when you roll them, you may be putting too much water, or waiting too long and they get too soft, thus tearing. Experiment until it comes easily, because if you do this process enough it’s something you can do in your sleep.
- Cover the spring rolls with plastic wrap so they don’t dry out. Serve soon after you make them.
- Make the dipping sauce. enjoy!
DIPPING SAUCE:
- 1/4 cup light soy sauce
- 2 teaspoon rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon lemon or lime juice
- 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
- 1 T coarsely chopped roasted unsalted peanuts
- 1 T sugar (or to taste – some like it sweeter)
- 1/2 tsp. sesame oil (optional)
Combine all ingredients and let sit for a few minutes. Serve in small bowls or tiny plates.
NOTES AND LINKS
- This is the best photo tutorial I’ve found for rolling burrito-style, closed-end spring rolls
- Lovely collection of spring roll recipe ideas … you really can put just about any filling in a spring roll. I’m intrigued by the bacon and grilled asparagus spring rolls. That’s next on my list!
- Diane Cu’s entertaining post on how her food blogging made her gain weight and spring rolls helped her slim down
- Diane’s recipe for pork and shrimp spring rolls with photos showing how to roll her two-open-end rolls
Chocolate Chunk Cookies with a Toddler Tweak
My young friend, Meria was about 3 years old when I recorded her instructions for baking cookies. That was a couple of years ago.
She had just finished helping her mom make chocolate chip cookies and I asked her to tell me the recipe so I could record it. She was exuburant in the telling, to say the least. I love listening to her on this recording (translated below.) The other voices on the recording are mine and my friends voices, Brenda’s and Tiffany’s (Meria’s mom.)
If you have trouble getting the recording to play, try clicking the volume button on the right a couple of times. Also wait a second after clicking the start arrow — it takes a sec to load.
Ready set go! First you roll roll roll. And you smash smash smash. The cookies are circles. And we make little pieces squish apart.
Fat cookies for big kids and fat cookies for big people. You don’t put m&ms, you put chocolate chips on them.
(Meria kept getting distracted by the needle on the recording device …)
After you make the cookies into circles, you make make make make, then put them in the oven. After they are in the oven you eat them!
(Bit of a discussion about sharing …) Let’s just share. Once I cook them, then I’ll share. I don’t share to boys. I share to girls. I’ll share with Mr. T (one of her favorite adult guys) I’m going to share with Mr. T! I’ll share with Gretchen, and you (Brenda) and you (Maureen) and mom and the new baby.
That’s how you make my cookies! — Meria
I made the cookies pictured above last week and offered them to gallery visitors over the weekend. They disappeared pretty quickly. My recipe is a slight variation on the traditional Toll House chocolate chip cookies. I add twice as many nuts (pecans) as called for in the recipe, decrease the sugar by 1/2 cup, triple the vanilla, add organic coconut flavoring and I use chunks of Extra Dark Shaman Organic Chocolate instead of chocolate chips. These are so scrummy.
My New Favorite Season: Spring Near Yellowstone
Hearing robins singing has always been my first sign of Spring.
We’ve tried to arrange for our shamanic study group to meet in Montana, our home-ground, for almost 20 years. Well, they came this spring! Yay! And I kinda think everybody pretty much fell in love with Montana’s beauty and wildness. Yellowstone Park, the Yellowstone River and Paradise Valley to be specific.
It’s been a long time since I have visited Paradise Valley and Yellowstone Park in springtime. Starting when my sons were little, we camped in Yellowstone but usually after school was out for the summer, or in the fall. I’d always heard about the incredible spring surge of baby wild mammals and birds there, but I’d never experienced that awesomeness until this retreat. Fall was always my favorite Montana season. I’ve changed my mind, though.
My new favorite season? Spring-near-Yellowstone. Yes. That is a season. Springtime-near-Yellowstone. Not just plain old Spring.
In early May, Mother Earth is waking up in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Waking up in a big way:
- Her trees sure woke up — fast! In just a couple of days, before our eyes, the aspens and cottonwoods dressed their bare branches in mists of green, then fully clothed themselves in designer-leaf-garments.
As spring days grow warmer, Earth’s sacred waters awaken. Snow melts. Soft rains come. Rivers swell and fill their banks. The water covers sand bars, willow thickets and ancient boulders. Listen to the sound of a small stream feeding a big river and notice the beauty filling your heart:
During the night the land sleeps. Mists cover the bottom of Emigrant Peak in the Absaroka range. With sunrise, the clouds lift to reveal a snowy shawl on the mountain’s shoulders and, as the day warms, her shawl unravels into rivulets that feed the swollen river. Earth’s sacred waters take many forms.
Mother Earth is waking up with babies. Every kind of wild-fertile-life-explosion-of-exuberance baby: bison calves, wolf cubs, fox kits, fawns, elk calves, gopher kits. Eaglets, goslings, osprey chicks and kildeer chiclets. A hatch of mayflies and a hatch of trout fry, bunnies, ducklings, loonlets and grebelets.
Birds mate, nest and raise a brood. Or they just pass through, feeding all around us – energy for the journey.
- A grebe mother floats by with a brood of grebelets on her back. Two of them are just behind, tucked up against her tail as close as they can be, in the wild, rising waters.
- Yellow-headed blackbirds sing their water-in-the-throat-joy
- Dusk brings the chortling call of sandhill cranes, their color that of deer, goose and fallow field
- Canada geese stand on a snag midstream, high water all around them, calling their distress in not-quite-unison
- White pelicans glide downriver — a silent line on invisible rolling air-hills
- Mama eagle brings home a snake, then a rabbit, a duck, a fish — she’s a good provider
- Nuthatch, woodpecker, chickadee, siskin, finch — the timbre of bird-song in a meadow swells to a symphony of beats, noise and vibrant texture
- The cottonwood grove where we met around a fire, is alive with aspen-catkin-fluff dancing in the air to the rhythm of bird-song
- Above our heads, baby gracklets (made-up-word-warning) strain their wobbly necks from a hole high in an old snag. Their begging calls must fill the parent birds with urgency — bring more bugs! Bring more bugs!
- A red tailed hawk screams hoarsely from across the flooding river — an osprey answers at dusk
Our Earth is sacred. There are some places on Earth I can more easily feel and experience that sacredness. The Yellowstone ecosystem is one of those places for me. It is holy ground.
Just for fun, I found some recordings of some of the birds we saw and heard during our retreat. Listen here:
Sandhill Crane
Pine Siskin
Osprey on Nest
Mountain Bluebird
Yellow-headed Blackbird
NOTES:
- Yellowstone Naitonal Park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly intact ecosystem in the Earth’s northern temperate zone.
- Half of the world’s geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by the ongoing volcanism of the Yellowstone Caldera, world’s largest supervolcano.
- We stayed at River’s Bend Lodge and some cabins at Paradise Gateway, hosted by Carol and Pete Reed with help by their daughter-in-law, Holly. What a great place to stay — right on the river, surrounded by more wildlife than I’ve ever seen in one place. Thank you for opening your slice of Paradise to our group.
- Here is a Checklist of Mammals that live in the Yellowstone ecosystem.
- The Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness has the largest single expanse of land above 10,000 feet in the United States.
CREDITS:
- The River ©Eddie McHugh
- Recording of American Robin from Slater Museum
- Aspen Catkins photo ©Matt Lavin
- River Reflection ©Maureen Shaughnessy (me)
- Snow Clouds Cloak Emigrant Peak ©Maureen Shaughnessy
- Elk Cow and Calf ©Maureen Shaughnessy
- Yellow-Headed Blackbird ©Michelle Lamberson
- Bird Calls are from Xeno-Canto.org
- Recording of Pole Creek is by Maureen Shaughnessy
Just Want to Teach Art-love nd Nature-Love
I just want to teach art-love and nature-love to kids
I don’t want to get
a teaching certificate
I don’t want to go to art school
I don’t want to leave Helena
I just want to teach kids about
art … that they can make beautiful, powerful art
that changes people’s lives
I just want to teach kids about
nature … that they are part of what’s all around them and
help them truly feel that in their hearts
I just want to help them discover
that they have the soul of an artist and
the soul of a tree or a mountain
inside each of them
literally. that everything is inside and they are in everything.That’s all.
Am I asking too much?
Kids are usually just so enthusiastic about whatever it is they are doing. Loud. Silly. Engaged. Adventurous. Brave. Profound. Empathic. Helpful. Wise.
And even when they seem like they are bummed and struggling, as one little girl did this morning … I can usually coax them out of their shell, even if I can’t always do that for my own self.
As with lots of things I commit to doing … sometimes just before it’s time I get the willies — aka known as “cold feet.” I’m just not in the mood. I think. Maybe I’m overthinking it. Because when I make myself go and do it, I usually have a blast. I get energized. I am in my element. I get in the zone, the flow. Of sharing my gifts. Of connecting with young hearts.
And, if I can help them be happy, rounded, confident, generous lovers of all of life, then I have done something good.
So … that’s what I want to do with the rest of my days.
Oh. And make my own art.
And see it hanging on people’s walls.
Love,
Maureen
Budding Artist
Ema Blue spends Wednesday afternoons with me at my studio. She is my unofficial “gallery assistant” and art student. She dusts Tim’s furniture, sweeps the sidewalk, takes Charlie for a walk, fetches me coffee from across the street, and makes lovely sidewalk chalk signs in front of the gallery. Ema is 11 years old.
Ema is meticulous, creative, precise, funny, cheerful, interested, respectful and persistent. I enjoy her company immensely and I truly look forward to Wednesdays.
For the last few weeks, Ema has worked steadily on a mixed-media artwork. Inspired by the image transfers some of my women friends and I made during one of our Girls Art Nights, Ema started with some image transfers onto a canvas, then used water-soluble colored pencils and collage to complete her piece. I’m always impressed when a young person can sustain interest in a project over a period of days or weeks, and she did on this piece. She finished this one yesterday.
I will write another post soon with my thoughts on the image transfer technique we used, and how to enhance the transfers with other media to create something lovely. Hope you enjoyed seeing Ema Blue’s artwork. Please let her know what you think/feel about her painting by leaving a comment below. Thank you!
Old Fashioned Less-Sweet Pecan Macaroons
