Tahini Halawa

Halawa, or halvah, is a traditional Middle Eastern sweetmeat, considered by some to be the first candy ever made in recorded history, with sesame seeds and honey. Nowadays, halawa is served in many cultures all over the world, using ingredients ranging from semolina flour to almonds to yams but the most traditional recipe calls for tahini (sesame paste), honey, and pistachios. My aunt says that she remembers my Lebanese great-grandmother cooking up big batches of this sweet, though nobody thought to save the recipe she used because halawa wasn't one of their favorites.

I can understand that. I do like halawa, but I admit that it is kind of an acquired taste. The texture not exactly fudgy, slightly flaky, slightly creamy. It's not super-sweet like most Western desserts, and the tahini gives it a faint smoky taste (I've heard some people substitute the tahini with almond butter which sounds intriguing though I've never tried it). But it's also incredibly addicting. I find myself craving it sometimes, and when a halawa craving hits, nothing else will do. There is literally nothing else like it in the world.

I've been making halawa a lot lately, to try and get Anouk in touch with her Lebanese roots (she didn't like it at first but seems to like it more and more every time she has it). Though I don't have my great-grandmother's specific recipe, it does make me feel a connection with her every time I make this and I love that.

Ingredients:

1 cup honey
3/4 cup roasted, unsalted pistachios
1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup tahini, stirred

Directions:

Over medium heat, cook the honey until it reaches 240 degrees F, or the "soft ball" stage (when dropped in water, the honey forms a round, flexible ball). Let cool slightly, then stir in the nuts and vanilla. Fold in the tahini, then stir well to combine. Pour mixture into a lightly greased dish (we find a standard bread loaf pan works well for this). Chill in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Cut into pieces and serve at room temperature. Makes about 1 pound.

Bacon's Castle

Another day trip with Molly and the kids -- this time to Bacon's Castle in Surry. Seems like we do a lot of stuff in Surry these days -- probably because it's a really good distance away. Just a little over an hour -- short enough so that the kids don't revolt in the car but long enough so that it feels like you're really going somewhere. Surry might as well be another world compared to the HRVA metro area -- there are gravel roads, fields of soybeans and tobacco, picturesque white farmhouses, the works.

Bacon's Castle is a 17th century Jacobean-style home, one of the only surviving examples of Jacobean architecture in the Western Hemisphere and the oldest house in Virginia, built in 1665. The house has a long and storied history, was home to a prosperous planter and his family, and a landmark during Bacon's Rebellion (which gave the house its name). The house has been expanded over the years, and underwent extensive renovations in the 1980s, but the past still feels very close when you're inside it. It was mind-boggling to peek into rooms and imagine the people who had lived in them, to touch a hundreds-year-old wooden banister and think about all of the hands that had touched it over the years.

We had thought that we would probably be allowed to roam the house, as we did when we visited the Moses Myers House a few weeks ago, but actually, the folks at Bacon's Castle prefer to take groups on a tour of the premises. Older kids will enjoy it, thanks to the interesting and very knowledgeable tour guides, but our little ones were antsy and wanted to run, which was a bit awkward at times. However, once the tour was over and we turned them loose on the grounds of the 17th century garden and the nearby slave quarters, they were able to whoop and holler to their hearts' content. Add in a picnic lunch under the trees on the house's wide lawn, and you've got a wonderful way to spend a summer afternoon.

Bacon's Castle is open from Friday to Sunday, March through November. Block admission can be purchased with Smith's Fort Plantation, another Preservation Virginia site that stands just across the James River. In addition to seasonal events, Bacon's Castle also offers group tours and has one of the best gift shops we've seen in a long while. Click here for more info.

5 Places to Have a Picnic (in Norfolk)

Did you know that July was National Picnic Month? Neither did I -- until July was almost over. (National Picnic People, make sure you publicize this a little better next year!) However, we did manage to have two picnics in the last week of July -- one with friends at Bacon's Castle in Surry (post on that forthcoming) and one in our very own backyard.

There are so many wonderful parks and beaches around the area that are ideal picnic destinations, but I thought I would share five of our favorite off-the-beaten-path places around town that are just perfect to visit with a blanket and a basket of goodies.

1. Pagoda and Oriental Garden: This spot is so secluded (usually) that it's easy to pretend you're all by yourself right in the middle of the downtown waterfront. There's also a lot to do -- from watching the ships on the river to making friends with the fish in the carp ponds and a million places nearby to walk to. A really convenient place to stop for lunch if you're out and about of an afternoon.

2. Norfolk International Airport Overlook: There are so many other wonderful things to see at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens that the airport overlook (where you can watch planes take off and land and listen to chatter from the control towers) is often overlooked (see what I did there?) You'll have to pay admission to the garden for the chance to climb the hill but for an airplane-obsessed kid, this is pretty much heaven.

3. St. Paul's Church: For this spot, you'll need to be able to disassociate yourself from the whole graveyard thing a little, but if you can, the churchyard is the perfect place for lunch, beauty and history wrapped up in one (free) package.

4. Moses Myers House: We reviewed the MM house last week. While there, I couldn't help noticing the wide sweeping lawn to the side of the house and imaging a blanket spread out there, under the trees.

5. The Hague: A lot of people in Norfolk don't know about the Hague as anything other than the body of water they pass as they drive over the Brambleton Avenue bridge west of downtown, but around the Hague are extensive areas for running, biking, or just plain lounging and taking in some of the best architecture in the city (we love looking at the Queen Anne homes that line the seawall). Our favorite picnic spot is the crescent-shaped memorial pavilion near the Chrysler Museum (which might be closed off due to construction right now) but there are luckily plenty of other spots to choose from.

What's your favorite thing to pack in your picnic basket? Our family isn't really into sandwiches but we can whip up a mean pasta salad quick as a wink. ;) This also gives us the chance to use the dishes and silverware that came with our picnic basket -- somehow things always taste better when you're eating it off of miniature plates.

Happy weekend!

Books Without Words

I think one of my favorite things about this stage of Anouk's development is that her imagination is really starting to grow in leaps and bounds. All of a sudden, she is inventing the most hilarious conversations between her Barbies, putting plastic toys in her shoes and pretending they're airplanes, crying a pirate's "arrrr!" as I wheel her around the grocery store in her "pirate ship." (Less adorably, she will also sometimes tell people that J. and I have pinched or bitten her, which is taking it a bit far, I think). 

So lately when we go to the library or the bookstore, I've been seeking out books without words to encourage her to use her imagination to understand what's on the page instead of me reciting it to her. Every day lately, before naptime or bed, we will lay down together and she will "read" me one of her books. Below are some of our favorites, the creme de la creme of an overall great niche of the child lit genre. 

Chalk by Bill Thomson

On a rainy day, a group of friends finds a bag of magic chalk at a playground. Everything they draw comes to life, which leads to sometimes sticky situations, and the friends must scramble to draw new pictures to deal with the ones they've already drawn. Not only are the drawings in this book amazing, but the premise is a good way to introduce complicated concepts like problem solving and actions and consequences to kids who might not yet have the vocabulary to follow a verbal lesson on the subject.

Tuesday and Flotsam by David Wiesner

The beauty of Wiesner's works is that he tends to sets unfamiliar things in familiar places -- frogs floating over quiet suburban streets in Tuesday, an antique camera washed up on the beach in Flotsam -- and encourages you to go from there. Wiesner has several other books, but these two are our favorites, and I tend to buy them again and again to give as birthday presents for the kids in our crowd (spoiler alert for the few of you reading whose little ones' birthdays are upcoming). Funny, sweet, haunting and strange. A good mix.

Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole

The concept of slavery is still way beyond Anouk's pay grade at the moment but I brought Unspoken home as an experiment because I wanted to see how her little mind would interpret the complicated story of a white girl helping a runaway slave hide from patrolers. Unspoken is designed (it feels weird to say "written" when there are no words) well enough that she was able to get pretty close, pointing out the "bad men," understanding that the runaway character was hiding from them. I will note that she did seem to find a couple of the (beautiful, graphite) images a little disturbing, namely one of a pair of eyes peeking out from a haystack. So maybe this one isn't for the very youngest readers, but I think 4s and up should enjoy it (when we're reading it to A., we just skip that page and have no other issues).

Wave by Suzy Lee

This one is charmingly simple: A little girl and a wave play with each other at the beach. At first the two are separated, with the girl on the left pages and the wave on the right, but slowly as they jump, dance, and roll toward one another, they are drawn into the same frame. This was a fabulous book for helping A. overcome some of her fear of the ocean and just really cute overall.

You Can't Take a Balloon into the National Gallery by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman

A boy and girl visit the National Gallery of Art with their grandmother, and the little girl leaves her balloon outside with a bystander, who accidentally lets it go and must scramble to find it. The balloon takes him on a chase through Washington, DC, encountering all sorts of people and famous landmarks, while the children and grandmother study paintings that reflect the balloon's movement through the city. (My favorite is a George Bellows painting of a boxing match juxtaposed with an argument on the floor of the US Senate). The National Gallery was one of our favorite places to go when we lived in the DC area, and it was nice to see it again, even in book form. Plus, we also really love the fun, Eloise-y vibe.


Have you read any of these books with your kids? What are some of your favorite wordless picture books?

Just-Because Cake

We got this idea from The Artful Parent, another project we did with Cousin K. A box of plain vanilla cake mix, a can of white icing -- a blank slate, if you will -- and two kids. What would they come up with?

The answer: A sheet cake, decorated with a LOT of pink frosting, some blueberries (as a nod to health or a color contrast I'm not sure), and a plastic princess for good measure.

This one was barely a craft, requiring minimal effort and I debated posting it. But in then I decided that I would as a reminder to myself if nobody else. In this age of competitive Pinteresting and overplanning, it's nice to just go with the flow sometimes, to have no idea how a project is going to turn out, to make a cake and have a celebration just because you can. It was a joy to watch the girls with their cake.

It was also pretty nice to eat it when they were done. Yum!

Moses Myers House

Our playgroup visited the Moses Myers House the same day we visited the Norfolk Police and Fire Museum -- after all, they are right next door to one another. I had visited the Myers House last October for a ghost walk but I was excited to see it in the daylight as the house is truly one of the most beautiful places in Norfolk, with original 18th century furnishings, stunning ceiling filigree, and ornate Wedgwood fireplaces.

The Myers family was the first Jewish family in Norfolk, arriving in 1792, and remained one of the most prominent until the 1930s. They had a lot of tragedy befall them, leading to some sad but interesting stories (and a lot of ghost lore -- some of the Myers House staff can tell spooky tales of encounters with the former residents).

While at the house, we were also excited to see an original sculpture exhibit done by glass artist Beth Lipman, called "Adeline's Portal" after one of Moses's daughters. The exhibit features hundreds of clear glass pieces modeled on artifacts found throughout the Myers House; we could have looked at it all day and still found new things to admire.

Truthfully, I think our brood of toddlers were just a little too young to fully appreciate all the house had to offer, but they did enjoy exploring, especially in the house's rambly back garden. I think the 5-and-up crowd would more inclined to appreciate the history of the place and I'm looking forward to making more visits in the future -- with and without A.

Norfolk Police and Fire-Rescue Museum

A. and I have passed the Norfolk Police and Fire-Rescue Museum on Freemason Street probably a hundred times while on our way to other places. I've been reminding myself for almost a year to make a trip there, but it wasn't until last week that we finally stopped in with our playgroup -- three moms and a gaggle of eager two-year-olds.

The museum -- which is actually two museums in one building -- houses artifacts that represent the police and fire departments' long and storied histories -- helmets, badges, boots, insignia, etc. We had fun peering in the cases and at the old photographs, but I think the big highlight of the trip was the old police radio and flashing siren perched on the front desk. The kids took turns playing with it for the better part of an hour (with varying degrees of cooperation).

For me, it was a special moment to see my great-uncle (whom I never met) listed in the register of fallen firefighters, a little bit of a personal connection to all that history. It was also really eerie to be able to run our hands over the piece of the World Trade Center that stands by the door.

The Norfolk Police and Fire Rescue Museum is open Wednesday-Saturday from 10-4 PM, and Sunday from 12-4 PM and admission is FREE. And they give you your own badge, what more could you ask for?

Have a great weekend, everybody!