Our weekend

For this weekend's baking festivities, Jim made a Jamie Oliver recipe for potato-rosemary foccacia. Very delicious. Jul also made pesto potato salad for a church cook-out, and pilgrim's bread (for us), using some more of the corn meal that we bought a few weekends ago at Spring Mill state park.

And today, Sunday, we decided to snap a few shots to meet the demands of a particular friend down in Texas... This is the belly at 25 weeks. Baby Gieser is in there rolling around and doing her kung-fu kicks. Honestly my belly feels a lot bigger than it looks in this photo but it I guess it's accurate. This morning after I got dressed, Jim said, "Oh! My pregnant wife!" And the little one's only going to get bigger from here on out, gaining approx. 6-8 oz. per week now.

What a handsome guy.

Early summer flowers

Jim snapped these photos at the farm in southern Indiana where we stayed a few weekends ago (the cottage at Rose Wind Farm). Beautiful. The first is an herb (chive), second is an iris (one of my most favorite for its intense scent) and the last two are wildflowers.

Some recent happenings

Now that it is the end of the 'full throttle academic year' and Jim is heading into a somewhat quieter summer schedule (though it seems to keep getting busier than he expected...), we've been able to do a few fun things together.

Two weekends ago we visited the Lilly Library on campus. This is an archival library with over 400,000 rare books and 2,700 manuscripts - an incredible collection! The exhibit this past semester showcased its most treasured and prized items which are not normally on public display. A few highlights of what we saw, 1st editions (except the Aurelius book):

• Gutenberg Bible, ca. 1454
• Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, ca. 1476
• Euclid's Elementa Geometriae, ca. 1482
• Shakespeare's First Folio: Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, ca. 1623
• Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, ca. 1752, from the library of John Adams (with his notes)
• Declaration of Independence, ca. 1776
• JJ Audubon's The Birds of America, ca. 1827-38 with author's drawings
• manuscripts from Ian Fleming, Orson Welles, Kurt Vonnegut, Nadine Gordiner and Raymond Carver, with notes and revisions on the manuscripts by the authors
• plus works by Copernicus, Milton, Bunyan, Darwin, Newton, Poe, Marx, Whitman, and many others

Here we are outside the library in front of the Birth of Venus fountain (I'm sure Mom & Dad H. remember this site).

And here's Jim in front of the library. What a privilege to see this collection.
And as of this week we really ARE official residents of Indiana, as Baby Beluga Tazz the Zippy can now attest. Jim says, "I always wanted to live in a state that only requires a license plate on the back of the car."

Of course the weekend wouldn't be the weekend if Jim wasn't fixin' up some goodies in the kitchen. Here's Saturday morning and Jim's verygood cinnamon roll scones (a belated 'Mother's Day' treat for Jul - who protested, "What? Mother's Day for me?").

YUM!!

Two food shots

After we got home from our jaunt down to southern Indiana, we promptly made corn bread with the fresh corn meal - AMAZING! We are both convinced that the fresh ground meal from the mill makes a tremendous difference to the texture and taste of the bread. Now to find a mill nearby that grinds flour...

And here's Jim with his successful venture into calzones, roughly following a recipe from a Martha Stewart magazine. The filling was spinach and chicken (plus homemade sauce and cheese). Yum!

End of 1st Year Getaway!

In celebration of the end of Jim's 1st year of doctoral studies (Yee-Haw), we went for 3 days/2 nights down into southern Indiana, land of rolling hills and farms, close to the Ohio River. On the way we stopped for a picnic at a state park that also has a "Pioneer Village". Really cool! The mill is still functioning and we even purchased some cornmeal ground that day.

Of course we had to take a photo outside the house of Pottery.

We stayed at Rose Wind Farm, a bed & breakfast cottage in a quiet farming area, and located less than 2 hours from Bloomington. It was a beautiful place and a great cottage set-up. Lots of birds, beautiful flowers, and an outdoor patio to just relax on for hours. I got a bit confused one day and forgot where we were...is this the Western Cape? No...it's Indiana. Jim even read some fiction of his choice. Now you know it's summer break.

Both nights we toasted marshmallows. How could we resist?! We decided that whenever we have a house with a backyard we must get one of these enclosed fire pits.

This is the barn on the Farm property.

And a cool tractor at a local family restaurant where we had a fried chicken dinner. Sorry, Jim, I got your head in a halo.

The wine industry has been growing rapidly in Indiana in the last decade, and one farm (Huber's) was a five-minute drive from the cottage. Not only do they have a large selection of estate wines, they also have vegetable and fruit farms in season. Apparently in October they get upwards of 10,000 visitors a day.

Jim got chatting for a long time with the employee who was giving him tastes, discussing cultivars and residual sugars. Very interesting. And really good wines, says Jim. (Jul agonizingly had to stay away of course...) For comparison's sake to previous posts from South Africa, here is the outside of the winery's tasting room (a barn).

Just to make us even more "Cape-homesick", it was a very windy day. Ahhh.

Now it's Monday and back to the work and school schedule. Jim starts up a summer class today, and continues working 20 hours/week. I have 3 weeks left of my nanny job before public schools are out. Baby Gies (23 weeks) is doing well, kicking lots, and hopefully will be starting to gain big weight in the upcoming weeks.