This weekend, my mom came up for a visit!  The last time she was here, we put her to work with all kinds of cleaning and painting and new-house craziness, so it was great to have a FUN weekend where we could just enjoy ourselves and so some summery things. 

Mom came up Friday after work, bearing all kinds of goodies, including these flowers from her garden: 

She also brought up some homemade summer corn chowder that we ate for dinner, along with some bruscetta.

For dessert, we had some blueberry tartlets, which I had made the night before.  ((delicious and very easy, but not an authentic French recipe.  I’m going to try some other ones)).

After dinner, we headed over to see Julie & Julia (a movie about food?  and blogging?  and LOVE??  Yes, please!)  We both loved it.  I am going to keep my eyes open at the thrift store for an old copy of Julia Child’s “The Art of French Cooking”. 

Saturday, we headed over to Clintonville, bright and early, to hit up the farmer’s market.  We were mainly there to buy berries and cucumbers for the canning we were going to do later, but we also bought some cheese, peppers, zuchini and heirloom tomatoes. 

After some window-shopping on High Street, coffee at Cup O Joe, and some real shopping on High Street ((Sobo Style, a random antique store, and a very inspiring fabric store called “Sew to Speak”)) we headed home to make some blackberry jam.

Mom and I also made some bread & butter pickles ((the sweet kind)).  It was a little easier than making jam.

After a quick dinner at home, we headed to Bexley for some Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream.  For those of you not from Columbus, it’s a pretty expensive, gourmet ice cream place.  ((They have flavors like Thai Chili, Sweet Corn & Black Raspberry, and Black Coffee)).

Mom opted for a scoop of Salty Carmel and a scoop of Dark Chocolate.

I had a scoop of Wildberry Lavender and a scoop of Goat Cheese with Roasted Red Cherries.

On Sunday, we woke up early and headed over to visit the Gibbons across the street.  Aren’t they cute?

We also saw a Capuchin monkey over there.  I’ve learned a little more about our monkey neighbors the last few months.. there are 8 Gibbons and 2 Capuchins.  Most of them are rescues from people who could no longer take care of them, and a lot of OSU Veterinary students take shifts volunteering.  Pretty cool.

Mom and I did some stuff around the house, headed to church, and then had Panera for lunch before she headed back to Massillon.  Very fun weekend.. and much of it revolved around food!  I think you could call my mom and I “foodies”.

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I have a extremely busy next 7 days ahead of me.  Tonight is my only free night, so I’m going to spend it getting myself ahead on photo editing and housework.  I love summer, but this one has been so busy.  I think I’ll be relieved when fall rolls around and my life slows down a bit.  I miss getting to do leisurely things like reading books, playing my guitar, and sewing!

I ordered a new charm pack ((a pack of pre-cut fabric squares for making a quilt)) and also this fabric today:

Isn’t it pretty?

I hope you all have a lovely week.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 10th, 2009 at 3:26 pm and is filed under cooking + baking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.