eclaire (what's in a) name?

this weekend, linnea graduated on saturday and on sunday we celebrated father’s day. as you may be realizing after reading my blog for half of a year, any celebration in my family includes multiple and/or copious quantities of food. this weekend did not disappoint.

we began the feasting with delicious home made raspberry muffins and mimosas at linn’s house, followed by the graduation and culminated the day with an amazing buffet dinner at chaminade that left us stuffed to the brim. pics of all of these are here.

the next morning, we ate a huge tofu-veggie scramble to begin father’s day and then headed up to coastways to pick some olallieberries. after picking a combined 14 pounds of olallieberries (there were four of us pickers), i made a tasty crisp.

ollalieberry crisp

serves 8-10

• 4½c ollalieberries
• 4T white sugar
• 1c flour
• 1½c oats
• 3/4c brown sugar
• 1t ground cinnamon
• 1/2t ground nutmeg
• 8T butter (or fake butter)
  __________________________

1. mix ollalieberries with sugar and spread in a 9×13 pan
2. in a separate bowl, combine flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and butter (or fake butter) and sprinkle the mixture over the top of the berries
3. bake the crisp in a 350º oven for 35 minutes, and voila!

the second fire in santa cruz county in the past two months raged in bonny doon this afternoon (a solid 10 miles from our house), but we had a pretty clear view from our backyard. all of our neighbors were outside, snapping pics, complaining about the heat, and feeling pretty amazed at the power of fire. i felt a mixed combination of relief that the fire was far away from my home and sadness for all the homes that were burning and lives that were changing. mike and i walked around a bit to try to snap better pictures, and we saw several empty uhaul vans being driven FAST up western towards the blaze, which we could only assume were about to be filled to save their belongings from being destroyed.

check out more fire pictures here.

while you’re on flickr, check out pics of linnea’s last resident string quartet performance and linn’s 22nd birthday.