Minnie’s a scholar

 Minnie's teacher sent an email to note that the class is studying farmers' markets, which CRACKED ME ALL THE WAY UP. 

Studying! LOLz. 

 I decided that we needed to support our tiniest family's member's serious inquiry into the subject, and Minnie, Dorothy, and I hit up Madison's most awesome  capitol square market while Harry, Ben, and Coop drove to the Chicago burbs for a baseball tourney for Coop's travel team, and Jack languished in his sick bed with a gross cold that's going around his school.

Taking things Very Seriously as Very Serious Scholars do

To organize our trip, I told the girls we needed to buy dinner supplies at the farmers' market. We decided we would make THIS viral pasta but use fresh tomatoes instead of canned and add some seasonal veggies. Plus we wanted hot and spicy cheese bread, cinnamon rolls, and flowers. A perfect and easy-to-accomplish shopping list!

Minnie also requested a zoo trip, and since I wanted to fill as many of the daylight hours as possible because weekend solo parenting is a DRAG, I agreed happily.

I remembered pretty quickly WHY we don't usually go to the market: SO MANY PEOPLE. It is difficult to pull a wagon through the throng, and if you want to go against traffic or dart back to a booth you passed by but actually want to patronize? HA! THAT'S A TRICK! IT CANNOT BE DONE!

Dorothy played a fun game called guess what people are protesting, and, I must say, some of the groups did not make their message clear AT ALL. Like, ideally, we should be able to name that social movement based on signage alone, you know? (We saw pro-solar energy, anti-abortion, pro-TA union raises, and pro- trans rights groups, but it took awhile to parse out these messages-- except the solar people who were holding a huge paper mâché sun).

Minnie was mostly interested in running through the leaves on the capitol lawn, so we did that, too, but it was hard to maneuver her, the wagon, all of our produce, and the little chains that rope off the lawn from the sidewalk. Still, we made it all the way around the square, fulfilled our list, engaged in some satisfying people watching, etc.

All Minnie really wanted to do at the zoo was see a lion (check) visit the porcupines (check), ride the merry go round and the train (check and check) and get ice cream (check), so that list, too, was easy to fulfill.

We finished our day by baking a (delicious!) apple pie for dessert, and when the boys got home and Jack emerged from his cave (feeling a little better but still yucky. He had a sore throat, but his strep test was neg-- both the rapid test and the full 48-hour culture), we had a delicious pasta dinner and a bubbly apple pie waiting for everyone.

(we ended up using roma tomatoes in the pasta and adding chopped purple Brussels sprouts, broccolini, and fresh basil-- and I get why that recipe went viral It was super easy and really customizable-- will make a variation again).

Coop had three sports over the weekend (although diving and hockey are still in practice mode), and he has more of the same next weekend. Fall baseball is lovely, though— none of the freezing weather we almost always get in the early spring, but more bees. SO MANY BEES.