38th Week in Pictures

38 weeks pregnant today! Still having lots of pressure down low, but no contractions so far!  Hopefully she'll decide to make her appearance sometime soon! It's getting too hot for me to be this pregnant, lol!

Kelly's mom was transporting five puppies between shelters on Saturday, so she called us over to let the kids play with the puppies for a while.  They had a blast! I think the puppies had a good time too;  they slept all the way to the next shelter!

Saturday night, Marcus took Hunter to a Boise Hawks baseball game.  It was Hunter's first time going to a baseball game and he had a blast!

The bat "boy" was a dog!!

Whoa! That's some intense looking nachos! I guess ball park food has changed since the last time I went to the stadium!

Panorama view of the stadium

The Hawks ended up winning in the bottom of the ninth with an RBI triple!  There were fireworks after the game and Hunter couldn't stop talking about how much fun he had.  I love that there are all sorts of things to do here with the kids that we might not have had the opportunity to do elsewhere.

I had to end with the sweetest picture ever from naptime today.  Melts my heart...

Cooking Lessons

Taylor is getting to the age where she wants to help me cook all the time, so we've been working with her on kitchen safety and cooking skills.  So far, she's made pancakes, scrambled eggs, various baking projects and helped me mix things together when I'm making dinner. 

Sunday night we made chicken salad and corn on the cob and the kids had a great time shucking the corn:

We only had one ear end up in the trash. I'll give you one guess who dropped it! ;-)

I taught Tay how to chop eggs (carefully!) and she did three by herself.  The only thing I did for the chicken salad was to boil and shred the chicken!

 

Last night, we made stuffed green peppers and Taylor helped me brown the ground beef, saute the mushrooms, and mix the filling together. 

 

 

I am loving the fact that she wants to help because its like having my very own sous chef!  Actually, I'm doing more of the prep and letting her do more of the cooking, so maybe one day I'll become the sous chef! :-)



Eating Real Food

Lately, I've been feeling very convicted about how we eat as a family.  Not because we eat terribly, but I've been allowing too many processed sweets into our normal diets instead of them being occasional treats.  I have been watching several documentaries on food and how the obesity epidemic in the United States is getting worse all the time and it honestly scares me.  I read a statistic last week that in 1996, less than 20 years ago, the states with the highest levels of obesity were less than 20% of the population.  Today, the state with the lowest level of obesity (Colorado) is at 21.3%, while the highest states are at over 35%!!  You can read the study, as well as see the list of states by obesity levels as of 2013 here. 

Raising a growing family and seeing these trends makes me realize even more how much of a responsibility I have to my family to give them the tools to eat healthfully and to be able to prepare healthy food for themselves as they grow up.  I feel like we've lost the art of cooking in our society and become so busy all the time, that as a result we've seen the numbers of convenience foods explode in grocery stores.  While convenient, most of these foods contain way too much sugar, salt, and preservatives for me to consider them a healthy choice for my family.

Thanksgiving 2013 (Stephanie, Mom, and Me)

I am so thankful that my mom showed me how to cook growing up and passed down the basics of preparing meals and baking, as well as ensuring that even if we ate out because we were busy, we ate dinner as a family most nights.  But most of all, she showed me how it was a privilege to feed your family and she instilled a sense of pride in a well-prepared meal.  From her example and encouragement, I have since expanded my skills to include learning different techniques as well as learning how to make more things from scratch, especially with regards to baking.   

So what does all this mean for our family?  I don't think we were doing too bad to begin with, we don't drink sodas at all and we try to eat dinner as a family every night.  But I had allowed convenience to trump healthiness and we were eating way too many Pop-Tarts, breaded chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas and way too few fresh fruits and vegetables.

So, as Step 1 in our quest to eat more whole foods, I am making a concerted effort to include lots of fruits and veggies at every meal.  For example, this morning for breakfast, instead of cereal, we had Greek yogurt with fresh fruit and a slice of sourdough toast with homemade strawberry jam. 

Last night for dinner, we had stuffed green peppers, which I filled with tomato sauce, ground beef, brown rice, and sautéed fresh mushrooms, topped with mozzarella cheese.  Every day at lunch, I've tried to include a bowl of fruit and/or sliced tomatoes for sandwiches or baby carrots for dipping.  Not all of the kids eat every bite, of course, but I have noticed that with more exposure, they are more willing to try and even enjoy the veggies.  It does take some time to prep everything, but I think it will pay off huge dividends in the long run.

I know that there are several other steps that I'd like to implement in the near future, such as baking our own bread, switching to raw milk, and buying only local meats and produce, especially when we get to Boise and can begin gardening and canning again, but we're taking it one step at a time so that we don't become overwhelmed.  I'm sure I'll be writing about those ideas in the near future!

Pinterest Inspired Dinner and Dessert

Let me preface this post by saying that *normally* I meal plan by the month, so that I don't have to worry about it being 3pm and I still have no idea what to make for dinner.  But I've gotten a bit off track with the pregnancy and getting ready to move, so meal planning has taken a bit of a backseat.  Every once in a while when I'm not feeling inspired, I turn to Pinterest to find something that sounds good.  I've made this recipe before and everyone loves it.  I just throw four chicken breasts, a can of corn, a can of black beans, a can of Rotel (or diced tomatoes), and a whole block of cream cheese into the Crockpot with cumin, garlic, and onion powders and let it cook for six hours on low.  I shred the chicken and let it cook for another 15-30 minutes.

 

I served it over brown rice with all the burrito fixin's:  tortillas, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, and sour cream.  Yummy and filling!

 

For dessert, I had some grapes and bananas that were getting towards the end of their useful life, so I decided to make a fruit salsa and cinnamon-sugar tortilla chips, which I also found on Pinterest.  I diced up some grapes, strawberries, bananas, and a pear and added three tbsp. of homemade strawberry jam to make the salsa.  For the tortillas, I cut the tortillas with a pizza cutter into fourths and brushed melted butter across them.  I then sprinkled cinnamon sugar across the tops and baked them at 350 for about 8 minutes.  They were delicious and the kids loved them!

 

A yummy dessert using ingredients I already had on hand.

 

Pinterest recipe link for chicken here and dessert here.

Raised Gardens

We have lived in South Carolina for almost three years now.  For two summers, we have tried to have a backyard garden.  For two summers, whatever we planted has been overrun by weeds or killed by a combination of nutrient-less soil and the HOT SC summer sun.  Seriously, we have YET to eat anything that we've tried to grow in our yard.  So this year, we are doing a lot more planning and preparing for the gardening season. 

I will still be working full time and we will have a newborn baby in the house, so I don't expect to have hours to spend on ANYthing, much less gardening.  With the time constraint in mind, we decided to build raised garden beds to cut down on the weeding we'll inevitably have to do.  We first drew out what we wanted on a piece of paper and then made the decision to go with half cinder blocks for the walls.  The half blocks are only 4" wide versus 8" wide for a regular cinder block.  We went with the half blocks because it would still give us enough strength, especially after filling them with wooden stakes and sand, but also give us more planting room inside the beds than a full cinder block would give. 

The area in the yard was already cleared out from last year's feeble garden attempt, so we just covered the section of ground with clear plastic to keep the weeds out of our beds and started the first row of blocks.  Marcus build three beds so that we would have room to walk in between them to make weeding and harvesting easier.  We also used left over fencing stakes and fence wire to fashion homemade trellises next to the fence. 

After making sure everything was secure and stable, we filled the three beds with organic topsoil that will (hopefully!) be much more suited to growing vegetables than the sandy soil that we are blessed with here on the beautiful coast. 

To make everything more visually appealing, we painted the blocks a light green.  We wanted to add the lattice to cover up the cinder blocks, but it is turning out to be more of a pain than we originally anticipated, so we may just leave them alone.  We filled the pathways between the beds with river rocks and trimmed everything out with metal edging to keep the lawnmower from shooting rocks everywhere. :)

The three small planter boxes on top of each bed are the kids' gardens (we even have one for Mason!).  We think it's important that they know where food comes from, so they (especially Taylor) will have a hand in everything that grows in those planters, from picking out what to plant, to weeding, watering, and harvesting. 

We are still in the process of deciding what to plant where, so my OCD/nerd self created a diagram on Excel that we can fill in and change around depending on what we want to grow.  The goal is to get the seeds in the ground before Mason arrives, so we'll probably be planting around the end of February. 

I can't wait to see what we are able to harvest this year!  I'm looking forward to (hopefully!) making homemade baby food for Mason and exploring how to can and freeze what we are able to harvest!

Sausage, Spinach, Mushroom Calzones

Do you know the difference between a calzone and a stromboli?  A stromboli has the pizza sauce baked into it, kinda like a Hot Pocket.  A calzone however, only contains the "toppings" minus the sauce.  The sauce is usually served on the side for dipping.

I found a recipe from a FB friend of mine for calzones and they sounded delicious!  Here's her original recipe.  I didn't have quite the same ingredients that she used in my pantry at the time, so I improvised.  I mean, calzones are pretty much the same as pizza in their versatility.  So I used pizza dough that I made previously in the bread maker and frozen.  I also heated up some frozen sausage patties and cut them into chunks, thawed and drained some spinach, and threw in a can of mushrooms, along with some ricotta, mozzarella, and a little fresh Parmesan cheese!

I started by thawing the dough and rolling it out into a big square(ish) shape, haha. I mixed all my toppings together in a bowl and then spooned them onto half of the dough, leaving a few inches on the three sides that will have seams.

I just added sausage, mushrooms, and cheese to the kids' calzones, only because I didn't want Taylor to decide not to eat the whole thing, just because she saw something green inside.  She's going through a phase lately where she doesn't like broccoli or spinach.  Strange, huh? :)  Let's just hope it doesn't last until she's an adult!

After I folded the top over the rest of the dough, I sealed the seams with a fork and poked a few holes in the top to vent.  I also brushed the tops with a little butter before baking.  I think that a little bit of Italian seasoning and/or garlic powder and onion powder would have been great to sprinkle on the top, but alas, I didn't even think about that until just now as I am typing this... :)

They may not be perfectly square, but that's one of the things I like about these.  You can tell they're homemade.  And please disregard the wax paper, apparently I have trouble reading sometimes and instead of using parchment paper, I grabbed wax paper.  Oh well, it didn't catch on fire and it didn't stick to the food, so all's well that ends well. :)

 Here's the final product.  Don't you like the awesome food positioning?  With just a little bit of cheese oozing out of the warm, doughy shell?  Yeah, that was Marcus's idea. Hopefully it makes you hungry and you go try these!! ;)

Easter!

This year the kids were actually old enough to take part in some of the traditional Easter activities like dyeing eggs, Easter egg hunts, and helping me make Easter-themed cupcakes.  Saturday our church had an Easter carnival with puppet shows, bouncy houses, a hot dog lunch, and an egg hunt.  Which turned out to be more like an egg stampede, haha.  There wasn't a whole lotta huntin' goin on. :)

After the kids naps on Saturday, I boiled a dozen eggs and we bravely decided to let the kids help dye them.  Although, we realized that they, especially Hunter, were probably going to make a mess, so we took all our supplies out to the driveway and dyed the eggs there.  They had a blast, until they realized there were no more eggs, so they took to re-dyeing the ones they had already done. :)

Notice there are only 10 "finished" eggs.  I'm sure you can imagine how we managed to have a couple casualties along the way. :)

Once the eggs dried, Marcus took them upstairs to the playroom and we hid them and let the kids hunt them four different times.  Don't worry, we made sure to count the eggs each time so we didn't wind up with a stink bomb in a few days!

After dinner Saturday night, Taylor helped me bake cupcakes and I made a big batch of butter frosting that I  colored four different colors.  

I put the frosting in Ziploc bags and snipped the corner to do the base color.  Then I used alternating colors to draw designs and Easter eggs.  I think they turned out pretty cute (and yummy!).

On Easter Sunday, we got up and the Easter bunny had come to our house to visit!

After breakfast, we got dressed and went to church. 

Don't they look so precious? Little blondies  :)  Here's Marcus with the kids:

So handsome! :)  And here's me with the munchkins:

I hope ya'lls Easter was as fun-filled and blessed as ours! He is risen!

Good Eats!

Good Eats is my new TV obsession.  I love, love this show!  And Marcus just happened to overhear me raving about it and bought me the whole first season!!  I can't wait to watch all of them.  It reminds me of watching Bill Nye as a kid because it was science, but interesting.  This is the same way, but with food science.  Alton Brown has a way of making you think about cooking in a more abstract, fluid way than just following a recipe.  It gets to the bottom of how foods react when heated, why certain cooking methods are preferred to achieve a desired result, and what type of heat to use to attain a specific texture, just to name a few things I've learned.

One of the biggest things I've noticed is that Alton uses the freshest, rawest ingredients possible to get the best flavor.  Which seems obvious when you think about it, but then again, look at how many "convenience" foods you find in the grocery store.  I get it, we're busy.  But seriously people, are we too "busy" to grate our own cheese these days?  (Not to mention the price difference in block cheese and pre-shredded.)  That's just one example off the top of my head, but I agree with Alton, if you want the freshest taste, you gotta use the freshest ingredients. 

Ok, now that I've stepped down off my soapbox, I have recipes! And pictures!  :)

The first thing I made from Good Eats was the Overnight Cinnamon Rolls (yes, from scratch!).  They are delicious.  Please try them because they're not hard to make and who doesn't like to wake up to freshly baked cinnamon rolls on a Saturday morning? Or a Tuesday for that matter? :)  So, here's the recipe from Food Network. 

I started with all my ingredients, since if I ever happen to have my own cooking show, that's how they do it (except I'd have prettier measuring cups on TV):

Cream the butter and sugar with the whisk attachment:

Add the dry ingredients:

Once it forms dough, knead on a floured surface, then cover with plastic wrap in a bowl to rise:

Once it rises, roll it out into a 12 x 18 inch rectangle, brush with melted butter, and add the cinnamon/sugar mixture, leaving the top inch or so empty to help prevent spillage.  I added pecans and raisins to mine:

Slowly roll the dough into a tight cylinder:

Then cut the dough into thirds, then each one of the three in half and then each one of those in half.  That should give you 12 rolls.  Put in a 9x13 pan and chill in the fridge ovenight:

Don't those look yummy?  Good, because that's the last picture I have of them.  The next morning, I got up, put them in the oven and realized when they didn't get big and puffy like the ones on TV that my yeast was probably a little past its prime.  Not a huge deal taste wise, they just stayed about the same size as the previous picture once they were baked.  I drizzled them (or swizzled, if you're my dad) with a powdered sugar/milk icing and we ate them up.  They were really good and I will definitely be making these again (with fresh yeast)!  :)

I am almost 100% positive that the more I watch Good Eats, the more posts you will see with me trying to recreate something I saw on the show.  So stay tuned! :)

Homemade pizza and movie night!

Yesterday we told Taylor that if she was good at daycare, we would have pizza and a movie night last night.  I got a good report when I picked her up, so movie night it was! 

I started making homemade pizza dough after I got my bread machine (used from a friend for $20!) and I think I've gotten better at it with a little practice.  Don't get me wrong, my first batch tasted good, it just was kinda plain and not shaped very well.  Since then, I convinced myself to spend the $7 to buy a rolling pin and I've learned to season the dough after I roll it out.  I think this makes all the difference in the taste of the final pizza.

I'm getting better at making a circle, yay!  :)  Anyways, before I put the dough on the pan, I sprayed the pan with Pam and sprinkled some cornmeal on top of that to keep the dough from sticking to the pan.   I seasoned the dough with a sprinkle of Italian seasoning blend, garlic powder, and onion powder.  Then I poked a few holes in the dough with a fork to keep an air bubble from forming and baked it for about 5-7 minutes on 400 degrees.  I learned to pre-bake the dough by trial and error because several pizzas I've made in the past were baked perfectly around the crust, but still tasted doughy in the middle.  Pre-baking the crust fixes that beautifully. 

Anyways, I made the pizza half with pepperoni and half with leftover taco meat and it was delicious!  We only had two slices left over, so I guess Marcus and the kids enjoyed it too! :)  And to make it feel more like delivery pizza, I heated up half a loaf of store-bought frozen cheesy garlic bread, cut it into 6 breadsticks, and served it with some marinara sauce for dipping.  Yum!

After Hunter went to bed, we snuggled up on the couch with popcorn (for me) and Cheetos (for Tay) to watch the movie Up.  Can you believe neither Marcus or I had seen it yet?  How this movie escaped our notice, I have no idea because it was great!  So cute and so sweet. :)  Marcus and I were laughing more than Tay was, especially at those silly, talking dogs.  Tay seemed to be completely enthralled with it and she actually sat and watched the entire movie.  :)

So we had a great Friday night!  Good food and a good movie and good family cuddle time!  :)