The Donut Queen Turns One

Ava celebrates her first birthday, Mr. Trashwheel, baking, and bulshdozers.

Welcome back to Baltimore’s premier cultural commentary and the hot spot for the ins and outs of Charm City. Oh, what’s that? We aren’t the premier blog? Well. We suppose we’ll need to adjust our marketing budget accordingly.

Fear not, dear readers. The blog saunters forth in this week’s update with or without our due accolades.

Happy Birthday Bean

Ava celebrated her first birthday this week! After one year we’ve learned a few facts about Ava:

• She loves hummus. And blueberries. And pasta. Not so much bananas.

• She is very silly and ticklish (like her brother).

• She is very strong-willed and will not put up with your crap. This manifests in the form of batting Grant’s hand away when he tries to pick out ear wax, or biting, well, others, when she is angry.

• She BEAMS at whomever she first sees each morning, which is why we fight over the privilege.

• She loves to mimic others and makes really ridiculous faces as a result.

Ava’s birthday was on a Tuesday, so we will be celebrating properly this weekend with cake. Turns out, it’s hard to throw a kid’s birthday party mid-week with two working parents. IYKYK.

Note: Grant isn’t “with it,” so he doesn’t K, and had to ask Angela what this means.

While You’re Here

This is a new section we’re adding to encourage folks to visit. The idea came to us when we saw a menu item at a cafe and said “Rosemary Stuebing would love that tea.” Therefore, in our inaugural edition of While You’re Here…

Hey, Rosemary Stuebing! Next time you’re in Baltimore, we’d love to take you to Artifact Coffee. We think you would love the Jasmine Green Pearl tea that they carry. Oh and assuming you guys will come together, they also have a really yummy cinnamon roll, Albert Stuebing!

Out and About

The weather was incredibly pleasant last weekend and we did not have plans, so we had a lot of fun improvising. One of the adults would say “I need to go to this place” and the other would say “can I come?” and we’d all pile into the car.

We finally visited Baltimore’s Little Italy to obtain some bread for our Sunday night dinner. This is a cute, quiet neighborhood where you can find Italian flags flapping in the windows, old churches, and restaurants with murals of the old country adorning the walls, inviting you inside for pasta (one presumes).

Angela wanted to see the Four Seasons, which is along the harbor. There is a beautiful monument to the Polish Katyn Massacre nearby. The subject is a little depressing, but to summarize, after Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia invaded Poland in 1939, Stalin ordered the execution of military officers and other potential dissidents.

Let’s shift topics. Look, it’s Mr. Trash Wheel! Check out those googly eyes!

This solar powered device scoops up trash as it goes from the Jones Fall river to the Baltimore harbor. It’s a pretty cool initiative to continue to clean the water source for locals. There is an entire family of them, including Professor Trash Wheel, Captain Trash Wheel, and Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West.

Kids are Cute

We celebrated Grant’s birthday by inviting two handymen to fix things for eight hours. Woo? Wesley was obsessed with them and insisted on watching them quietly for long periods of time. He kept asking where Jairo was (the name of one of them) and by the end of the day was “speaking Spanish.” The two handymen are El Salvadoran.

This led to some adorable - but also a little inappropriate - gibberish on Wesley’s part. But, that prompted a fun discussion about other languages and we are teaching him some words. Ultimately, as with fire fighters and garbage men and teachers and musicians, Wesley was excited to imitate and pretend he was one of them.

Bulshdozer (Noun): A big truck that does struction, sometimes on roads, and pushes rubble. “That bulshdozer was on the flat bed. Oh my gosh.”

Wesley also enthusiastically helped Angela bake Grant’s birthday cake on Saturday. He was very interested in all the ingredients, measurements, and observing everything.

Wesley loves to join us when we wake Ava. Lately, we open the window for her to look out into the backyard and the two of them get excited. It is pretty dang cute.

Between Two Breads

While this is unlikely to be a recurring section, unless demanded by our readers, it seemed criminal to not celebrate three outstanding sandwiches enjoyed this past weekend.

We visited Artifact Coffee on Saturday and enjoyed the Ham Jam: a buttermilk biscuit with egg, ham, greens, and a chili jam.

For lunch, we tossed some Montreal Brisket (Mon Dieu!) onto some Rosemary Sourdough - both from John Brown.

Finally, we made a pork schnitzel that we wedged between challah from Ovenbird Bakery. Nothing complex. Just fantastic ingredients from local businesses.

House of Sisyphus

The duo of handymen were at our home all day Sunday, but a lot was handled. Our bedroom now has a ceiling fan, which will really help keeping the room cool on warm nights, as it can get rather stuffy upstairs. They also fixed the attic, which is good, as we think it’ll be cooling off in a few weeks - unless this just jinxed us - and our winter clothes are tucked neatly into boxes.

In addition, our new bookshelf arrived!

This is a major piece of furniture for our living room that also helps us unpack several of our few remaining boxes. We also unrolled our rug. Look! It resembles a living room! No, please ignore the Magna-Tiles. And the Hot Wheels. Ugh. It’s still a kid’s playroom, isn’t it?

Crookneck’s Corner

Nemesis Nook

While a thrill (and challenge) of moving across the country is meeting new friends, a downside (and challenge) is encountering a new nemesis. And boy do we have one.

One of our favorite lunch spots is John Brown. It is just a few minutes from Grant’s office, but also a hint into the lovely Maryland countryside. They have a butcher and bakery with lunch specials as well as a coffee shop tucked into an old filling station. Under the awning a large wooden picnic table (big enough for ten people) sits where gas tanks normally would. Folks sit there to enjoy their coffee, eat lunch, and chat.

But also, four or five times now, our nemesis arrives. You first notice him waddling to order his coffee. This isn’t commentary on his size - he isn’t big - but the awkward *squeaking* of his full body motorcycle leathers. Remember, this is Maryland in the summer. It is very hot.

With his coffee, he sits in the middle of an area, crowded with people and children, slowly rolls a cigarette like a French playwright in 1926, then lights up, in the year of our lord 2024, and starts smoking. Disgusting.

If the government wishes to file a case and needs witnesses, you have two people ready to hit the stand today.

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Two birthdays, cool weather, and enough sandwiches for a family of eight. We had a fantastic week and we hope you enjoyed tromping alongside us. Good luck with back to school festivities!