Strawberries.

So Dominique and I made these this weekend... and there are pretty much no words. 

 They were AMAZING. 

Try them. You won't regret it.

They were so beautiful.

Smoothie.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I have been craving smoothies lately. After making a strawberry/rhubarb/assorted other berry pie, I had lots of leftover juice and fruit. (Convenient side effect of using frozen berries... there will be LOTS of juice.)

I made some tarts with some of the leftovers, but that only worked until I ran out of crust. I put the rest of the juice (there was a bit of sugar and cornstarch in with it) in the fridge until I decided what to do with it.

I ended up getting inspired to buy bananas and greek yogurt, and made myself a smoothie. Which was divine.

Rather than leave the rest to be forgotten about (bananas do not have a quick turn around in my house) I decided to make lots of smoothie, and store it in a mason jar in the fridge.

Genius. Takes no thought in the mornings.

Flowers in a re-purposed ice wine bottle.

Spring clothes.

The world is full of adorable dresses... and it's up to me to wear them!

New favorites.

Time.

I had a student tell me the other day that he "still doesn't believe that time changes depending on how fast you go".

Because we live in a low-velocity, high-friction world, it is a constant challenge to get teenagers to let go of their misconceptions of how physics works.

From here.

Everyone today understands the idea that motion is relative. Galileo first outlined this principle. This is pretty much the idea that if I throw a ball up while I am traveling in a car, it will return to my hand, regardless of the speed of the car. The motion of the car and the motion of the ball are independent. In the car, I see the ball travel straight up and down. Someone on the street will see the ball travel in a curved path, since it is also moving at the same speed as the car. This, in a nutshell, is relativity.

Special relativity (proposed by Einstein in 1905) explains what would happen if the car started traveling really, really fast compared to the guy standing in the street. In 1881, two American scientists, Michelson and Morely, confirmed that light travels at a constant speed. Einstein took this fact to some interesting conclusions. Light always travels at the same speed; so if you gave a flashlight to a guy on a train and a guy standing in the station, both see the light from their flashlight travel at the same speed. Galilean logic tells you that the man on the train should see light go faster, since the speed of the train is being added to the speed of light. But no matter how fast he goes, the light beam will always travel at the same speed away from him.

To keep light at the same speed, distances must shrink and time must slow down for fast moving objects (speed is distance/time).

Lucky for this kid, he doesn't need to believe in time dilation for it to be true. I say "lucky", because if special relativity were not true, his cell phone wouldn't work, and then he'd actually have to do something other than play Plants vs Zombies on a regular occasion.

Spring.

 Is it too much to hope that Spring has finally sprung?

Lemon.

Tried out some new recipes last week. One in particular was for a Lemon Creme Torte (recipe from the good ol' Williams Sonoma Baking Book).

Wasn't my favorite (too sweet: too much condensed milk, not enough lemon) but it was very pretty, a challenge to make and smelled divine.

I learned several things while making this pie...

1. Apparently rice is not always the best substitute for pie weights.
2. A thumb is a perfectly acceptable substitute for a lemon reamer (as long as you don't have any paper cuts)
3. Decorative lemon slices are easier to make than you'd think.
4. Making candied citrus peel is much more involved than candied flowers.

I also made these using leftover pie crust and saskatoon jelly.

Lime.

For Easter, we had a large group supper at the lake (starring that massive turkey). I decided to make some lime squares, rather than my usual lemon, after being inspired by this blog. I didn't bring any green food coloring with me, so they were au natural. They were super delicious, and I will definitely be making them again!

Know what else I want to make? These...

Easter.

Pussy Willows.

Spent a gorgeous Easter weekend out at the cabin with family and friends. Ate lots of turkey. Got a sunburn. Cut some pussy willows. Glorious.

The turkey was a whopping 24 lbs!

Found a birds nest.