At the girls' 4 month well visit, our pediatrician advised waiting until closer to 6 months to start solids since a) they were a month early and b) Quinn's muscle control is a little behind. At their 6 month well visit, she was impressed with their muscle control - even miss Quinn's! - and basically implored us to start solids asap given their weight for length and Avery's drop in percentiles (I DO think that was due to the Sickness more so than her solids intake, given that we've (well, Chris) has gone from being 12 hrs ahead on milk to 24 hrs ahead without thawing any...).
So after I picked them up from daycare on Friday, we popped into the grocery store to get some baby cereal. The pediatrician said to get a whole grain (rather than white rice) so I opted for oatmeal. I don't really think there's any nutritional value to baby cereal, but figured we'd give it a shot as a first food (and we haven't had time to make anything for them yet).
We made the first batch super thin. Avery loved it and sort of whined each time Quinn was fed instead of her. She also grabbed the spoon and tried to eat it.
We decided to give gifts of food (who doesn't love some cookies. And poop on a stick. And spicy pretzels.) to our coworkers and some family this year. A bit of our baking extravaganza (icing fabulousness mostly courtesy my sister in law)
My only comment - they don't really change color in the oven, so keep a good eye on them! When firm, they're done!
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. milk
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in to the pumpkin mixture. Add flour mixture and mix well. Add vanilla, and stir until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.
Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm. Move to wire rack to cool completely.
This sounds a little weird (to us non-vegetable eaters), but it is actually quite good. We got this at Wegmans one day, and it was awesome, so we decided to make it at home (Wegmans posts recipes online!)
I modified the original (linked above) a little since we had whole squash from our pumpkin picking and only have olive & vegetable oil in the house, but it worked out OK.
I will warn you this made a lot....we only ate half at thanksgiving, so I think for a normal meal + leftovers half of this would be PLENTY.
2 butternut squash, peeled and diced
2 large red unions, peeled and diced
Olive oil to drizzle
Salt & Pepper to taste
1 bag baby spinach
1/2 lb dried cranberries (we got it from the bulk bin. I'm honestly not sure how much it was exactly, but it was $4.44 worth! I probably used more than needed, but its the holidays...might as well be sweet and colorful!)
So far the highlight of September is the re-appearance of Candy Corn.
This does nothing for the fact I've gained 4 lbs since my last fitness related post despite my ravings (over months) about getting back in shape, but it does improve my mood. Especially the pumpkins no one else seems to like!
Kind of eh actually. My tomato plants have seriously dropped off production, down to a couple a week. I think I should have thinned them more and theres just too many in a small space (and based off my findings in the yard, I think we have a bit of critter theft). After two nice cucumbers, the cucumber vine seems to be dying. And my peas died too before ripening. I think the roots were eaten. But we did get a couple of cute little peppers this year!
Monday: weights. same as last Monday. Tuesday: practice, and I ran 2.4ish miles over lunch. Wednesday: weights, same as last Wednesday. I did upgrade to 10 lb dumbbells for the shoulder move though! I also keep running into this guy from work - this guy who is second in command at my school - and its a little awkward. At least we both always have on the same clothes and are equally dirty!!! Thursday: practice. I think I also ran 2.5 this morning. Friday: 2.4 or so miles. Saturday: 2.2 miles via HIIT intervals. Sunday: 4.4 miles with 200x10 with 2 min walking rest. I was below a 7:30 min/mile pace for all the intervals, peaking at a 6:15 pace for 2 (about 48 seconds). You can kind of see in my splits where I went uphill and where I went downhill. It is a little sad though. I was working pretty hard and can't hold a "fast" pace for long. I think the dream of a 21 min 5k is far, far away (of course, I still need to achieve a 24 min 5k!).
14.1 miles for the week, plus 2 crosstraining (practice) and 2 weight sessions of 30 min. OK. I still need to get back to 15 miles/week for the "non-training". My goal is to do the 15 miles in any form as long as it includes one 5+ easy run.
Food wise I did ok. I did have two giant (expensive) salads for lunch, but I also had too much in the way of (unhealthy) snackies. I tend to munch when bored/frustrated/etc at work (definitely the culprit last week). I need to bring more fruit and such to combat these moments. More water won't cut it...I already drink about a 3/4 to 1 gallon of liquids a day (depending on workouts).
Weight: 169.8 Monday am. Good, back to 2 weeks ago and 2.2 lbs below my "restart" 3 weeks ago. I'll take it. 15 more to out of overweight :)
We recently (OK, almost a month ago) went to a family wedding in Cincinnati. Princess Charming's dad's family lives out there, so we loaded up the Subaru with snacks and my sister in law and her boyfriend, and headed out for the 11 hour drive. (sidebar: I really, really hate road trips. Give me a plane anyday.)
Thanks to some diligent research on the behalf of persons other than myself (as I am most interested in ending the time on the road), we took a couple of side excursions (which DID make the drive out seem faster than the straight-through drive back, I admit!)
one of many "Phils" in....
Puxsutatawney, PA! Home of the Friendly February Weather Forecasting Groundhog!
With "Phil" outside the local Weather Museum (aka the defunct Post Office)
Our garden has been so incredibly fruitful this year already (despite being mostly in pots!). We gave away our first dozen Roma tomatoes since they ripened when we were heading out of town. As of this weekend, we had probably another 3 dozen...so...homemade pasta sauce! We tried our hand at canning (ok, mostly Princess Charming). Not too hard actually, just a little time consuming. We're going to keep this up through the summer and hopefully have some nice, organic and extremely healthy items to break out in the dead of winter (not to mention, it'll be a nice source of veggies when they're super expensive!)
And we've had a few cucumbers! A photo of my favorite new super fast to prepare and super healthy recipe (just beans, red wine vinegar and cucumbers + chicken breast).
The peppers - hot and bell - are almost ready too!
I have a little love affair with hummus. Its sold in big, affordable containers at our friendly neighborhood BJs (ok, so its our amicable not exactly around the corner giant store). There's usually coupons. Did I mention a giant vat there is the cost of about 2 spoons full at the supermarket?
So, I only got to wholesale place every other month or so, generally when we're low on dog food or detergent, or I need stuff for rugby. So we run out of hummus sometimes. And I got the bright idea to make some! It can't be that hard right? Chickpeas (canned even!), tahini (Fresh Market has this!), water (easy!), garlic (easy!), etc.
Exceppttttt.
Our food processor is MIA.
More accurately, our food processor motor is MIA.
I'm not sure if it got packed with the little bit of house stuff we put in storage for the showings (unlikely, since we have the top parts...though not the blender attachment...) or stolen during a showing (also unlikely, seeing as it was in a cabinet behind our giant Kitchenaid mixer). Basically I have no idea where it is.
Except I didn't know this until I openned the cans of chickpeas.
Three cans of them, so not exactly something you can toss in a salad.
So, lessons learned:
A hand mixer in no way is capable of mashing/blending/pureeing anything remotely bean shaped.
The immersion mixer I got as a college graduation gift (7 years ago) can actually handle this task, in bite sized quantity.
So now we have a vat of not-exactly-smooth-and-creamy hummus. I think I'm going to bring it to work with pita or bagel chips tomorrow. It isn't bad, just a little bland...with the texture of natural peanut butter.
For Princess Charming's surprise party, I ordered cake balls from Jaime at Are We There Yet?
I got vanilla with chocolate frosting and chocolate with chocolate frosting.
They. Were. Amazing.
The Birthday Girl Mid-Cake Ball!
Everyone loved them, especially the vanilla, and they just FLEW!! I got 2 dozen, and I kind of wish I'd gotten more! If you have an event coming up, you should definitely consider ordering from Jaime!
I've been seeing Spaghetti Squash for a while now in healthy recipe articles and some of the blogs I read (Jessica & Katy). I saw some in the grocery store, and it sounded easy enough, so I decided to try it out.
It IS easy. Microwave for a couple of minutes to soften the hull (husk? I'm not sure). Cut in half. Remove seeds. Put in baking dish. Bake. Remove meat (I think its called meat anyway. I don't feel like googling this right now, clearly). Mix with sauce. Eat.
OK, it does look like spaghetti, or at least angel hair. And the texture isn't that different from whole wheat pasta. And I hardly eat anything without cheese. But this needed a LOT of cheese. It just tasted...squashy. I know its super healthy and all...but eh. I'm not sold on spaghetti squash in lieu of pasta.
We LOVE a good chili, and in the winter months it is in our crock pot regularly. We've made 5 already this season (and there's 3 bags in my freezer for rugby season!).
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast (about 2)
1/2 cup barbeque sauce
1 tsp onion powder (or half an onion, chopped)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can tomato paste (6 oz) *****
1 1/2 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp chipotle powder, optional
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 can pineapple chunks (used whole can, a big can)
1 can black beans or kidney beans, or half of each (15 oz total) (drained and rinsed) (used one can of each)
1/2 jar salsa (1 1/2 cups) (used a whole jar, one of the midsized ones)
1. Chop raw chicken into bite-sized pieces. Put into crockpot.
2. Add spices, beans, pineapple juice, and salsa. Reserve pineapple.
3. Cook 8-10 hours on low or 4-5 hours on high. Add pineapple and cook until warm (about 15 min on high).
4. Serve with buns or cornbread. (We did oyster crackers. And no cheese which is super weird for me but the pineapple meant we didn't need it!)
**** The first time we made this, we didn't have any tomato paste, and we loved it so much we made a batch a week later...with tomato paste. We ended up adding a WHOLE bunch more BBQ sauce. It was just so...tomatoey. OK with the extra BBQ sauce but we wouldn't have made it again if it was like that the first time. I will make this again though, sans tomato paste!
My fav. thing about the recipe (besides the BBQ/Pineapple combo) - the chicken goes in raw!
I returned to the east coast from our Colorado vacation yesterday. As is par for the course for my 2009 flights (see Food Poisoning, and also lets recall that I almost didn't make it back from Nashville for my dad's triple bypass due to US Air's affinity for cancellations) I hit a delay coming home.
Now, I admit, an extra two hours on a layover (on the occasion I have an unfortunate layover - I avoid them like a plague) isn't too big of a deal. Sure, I didn't have my laptop and was pretty bored reading a bad novel in the terminal. But its not tragic. Just ugh.
My layover was in Kansas City. I've never flown through here before, and didn't know that the gates don't all connect within one terminal. Imagine my surprise to emerge from the bathroom and realize I needed to go through security again. Also imagine my surprise when I walked a few more feet - on the same level as the gates - and found baggage claim. There are several interspersed through the gates at this supposedly international airport. At this point, I only have my coat, purse and our Wii (which Princess Charming had brought to St. Louis to share with the cousins for Christmas), since my rolling carry-on didn't fit in the tiny overhead bin of the Denver-KC plane and the flight attendant had been nice enough to check through for me free of charge. So I set out to get some dinner, seeing as I now had three hours to kill instead of 45 minutes.
As it turns out, KCI does not have actual food, at least not in terminal C. I could get coffee, magazines, $5.99 bags of trail mix, really bad bagels, and a beer, but there were no burgers to be found. This is incredibly disappointing when you want to bury the sadness of flying home from vacation, alone, when you know you won't see your spouse for more than 3 days in a row again for at least 5 months, AND you're landing too late to get home-home and will need to spend the night at your parents house in the guest room. All I wanted was a freaking burger. I ended up with a bad midwestern frozen bagel and a bag of chips.
To give you an idea of the condition of this airport - which is also peppered with posters about KC's past sporting phrases like "Although Kansas City is not as well known as St. Louis, it was also integral to the ...." - here is my favorite sign:
I surmise this mid-sized airport is falling victim to the reduced flights and airport consolidations. Gates 61-64 (based on the color scheme) used to be Northwest.
Then I had to go through security again. Since this is somewhat of a fiasco and I wasn't sure if there was a restroom within security between gates 61 and 69, and given that I a massive snow coat, a sweatshirt, snow-boots to remove and x-ray, as well as liquids and the Wii (which is apparently a laptop to the T.SA), I decided to use the bathroom again before embarking on this mission. Now, imagine my surprise when I see my supposedly checked through carry-on running around the baggage carousel all alone. Good thing I drink a lot and am not a camel.
So eventually we board and depart. Nothing eventful, a couple little jostles but nothing odd for a 60 seat plane. The flight attendant came around with beverages and surprised us me with snacks! Peanuts!
I am obsessed with the blondies sold by the coffee shop in my building.
OBSESSED. Obsessed to the point the cashier tells me on occasion, "You really love those." Or, doesn't tell me the total and just waits for my money. Thank goodness I don't have cash more than a couple of days a week...
Fabulous, but not great for the fitting into the pants project (since its not like I don't eat cookies at home if I have a blondie at work!).
Since September is here, time is of the essence. We both work full time, Princess Charming does a 90+ mile one way commute 2-3 days/week (and is away for work the other ones), we both coach club sports, and I am taking two doctoral classes and playing rugby. We, clearly, are insane time pressed.
So we've decided to expand our Cooking-For-The-Week into Cooking-For-The-Month. This month is kind of an experiment for us. In the future, we'll need to be a little more careful about recipe sizes. I think we have enough though, and it should help keep our food bill down since we'll have plenty of lunches and dinners - less excuses for unplanned eating out. Everything we made is relatively low in fat and includes something from our garden too! Big trays: 2 meat lasagnas (How is lasagna low in fat? Drain meat well and go easy on the cheese...and sub in cottage for ricotta (sad, and my nana is turning in her grave, but healthier - so I don't feel too bad about the AMAZING fresh parm on top!) 1 veggie lasagna
Small trays: 2 chicken, bean and cheese enchiladas 1 cheesy pasta
Bags: 2 Greek Pasta (ground beef, green beans, onions, and tomatoes in pasta...with Feta!!) 2 Turkey Kielbasa and Peppers in Pasta (and some extra sauce, oops)
Not pictured: Greek pitas (a massive bowl of shredded chicken breast mixed with homemade tzatziki sauce with cucumbers and tomatoes to be (carefully) eaten from a pita pocket).
Total time: about 7 hours with prep and finishing up. I think we'll come out ahead, since our weekend cooking is usually 2-3 hours!
Sunday, we bought two pounds of strawberries, two pounds of blueberries (I think anyway - it was a huge package) and a pint of raspberries. I made a huge fruit salad from it. I packed 3 cups of it with Princess Charming's food for the week (no, I am not a psycho ration-er, but she takes most of her meals with her to work 90 miles from home).
That left me with about half of a gigantic pyrex bowl full of fruit salad (lets guess 6 or 8 cups). Today is Tuesday. I am out of fruit.
My problem is that fresh berries are kind of expensive, and I want to go buy more tomorrow. I suppose this isn't a terrible problem to have in the scheme of things. It is a wonderful indulgence, and if I have a $30/week habit of fresh berries now till its out of season ($5 for a single half pint of raspberries in mid-winter doesn't work for me), I think that is ok.
Garden Harvest 2. Harvest 1 yielded about a dozen tomatoes, a few jalapenos, and two large green peppers I cannot name, a good chunk of which went into an adaptation of Jo's Texas Caviar (it ended up being, due to cabinet contents, three cans of various beans, half an onion, some tomatoes and a couple of hot peppers from the garden, garlic and red wine vinegar....blended in the food processor into a dip. Definitely a thumbs up).
Sadly, I think those might be the only three green beans I get. I had about a dozen flourishing plants Sunday with little seedlings. Now I have three and a bunch of, effectively, sticks. I have a feeling its the rabbit that's been taunting Bailey in the yard in the mornings...
But, in positive garden things, I had my first ripe blueberry off our new bush today, and that was pretty sweet!
