Because 2 days is never enough.

My dream came true and Mindy and Erik finally moved to Brooklyn last week. I can’t tell you how many times I have cursed the distance to their old neighborhood. This grumbling was particularly pronounced when Mindy would call to tell me about some delicious dessert she was baking or when I was taking a never-ending late night train ride home.

I had imagined that once Mindy got to Brooklyn, that our separate powers of creation would increase exponentially and 3Day Weekend would take over the world. Or something like that. Well, guess what? I think I may have been right.

On their first weekend in the borough, Mindy and I joined forces to create the most perfect post-bike ride, sunny-summery day treat. Mindy’s homemade vanilla almond ice cream and my rhubarb ginger compote really could take over the world.

Karl and I had some friends over tonight and we finished off the compote with some vanilla ice cream that Tyler brought over. It was in a carton and it tasted good enough; everyone liked it. But I felt sorry for them because they didn’t get to try the power couple of fruity dairy goodness we had the day before.

Rhubarb-Ginger Compote

About a pound of rhubarb (in season right now at a farmer’s market near you!) chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup water

1/4 cup honey (I used a bit less, because I like a tart final product, you can also use sugar)

1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger (or more if you like it to have some zing)

Bring the water to a boil and add the rhubarb. Boil for 5-7 minutes until the rhubarb has started to break down. Add the honey and ginger and cook for another 5 minutes. Allow compote to cool in the refrigerator a couple hours before eating. With a bit less honey or sugar, could be an interesting sauce for a dinner dish (fish or meat?).

Quick Vanilla Almond Ice Cream

1 cup cold organic milk (I used 2%)
a little less than 3/4 granulated sugar
2 cups cold organic heavy cream
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup unsalted roasted sliced almonds

Add milk and sugar to a medium bowl and use a hand mixer or whisk to combine them until the sugar is dissolved. Stir in heavy cream and vanilla. Pour mixture into an ice cream maker and let it do it’s thing. Add the almonds in when the ice cream maker only has 5 minutes left.

Top with fresh fruit compote (like rhubarb ginger!).

Silk was first created in China between 6000 BC - 3000 BC, so it only made sense for Erik and I to visit a silk factory while we traveling in China this March. The silk factory and mini-museum we visited was in Suzhou, which has been an important center for the Chinese silk industry since the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD).

Silk comes from the larva of the bombyx mori moth (silkworm), which feeds almost exclusively on mulberry tree leaves.

The silk strand is generated from a filament spun into a cocoon by the silkworm and can be up to 600 meters in length. The strand is attached to a large machine that “unwinds” the cocoon and then “rewinds” the strands into a spool like thread. The machine typically unwinds and rewinds about 8 cocoons at a time.

The spool of silk thread is then woven into cloth by large looms that create patterns from punch cards.

Suzhou is also home to classical gardens, which are a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the Suzhou Museum designed by native-son IM Pei.

View all of our China/Japan photos>

I have a new must read blog in my life. Sew Green is a group of women who met through craft blogs and realized they had a shared interested in living more environmentally sustainable lives. In an early post, one contributor describes the site’s mission,

I think most people in the world want to live more environmentally responsibly, but there are so many obstacles to doing this. Hopefully this blog will be a way for us to remove some of those obstacles for ourselves and each other, by sharing what we’re learning and figuring out who to try to influence {industry people, institutions, politicians} on a grander scale, to affect change.

What is so awesome about Sew Green is that the contributors aren’t preachy or self-righteous about their goal to reduce their footprint on the earth. Their earnestness comes with equal parts DIY delight and girliness. Recent posts that caught my eye had to do with finding organic and sustainable yarns for knitting, suggestions for cutie pie little boutiques that carry local designers and environmentally friendly fabrics, ideas about non-toxic nail polish, and recipes for homemade bathroom cleaners. So far, I’ve learned some things I didn’t know and gotten a lot of good ideas.

The toughest (and best) thing about the blog is that once you learn something, it’s harder to plead ignorance and keep doing things the easy way.