Curried Chicken Salad

Dinner last night consisted of Curried Chicken Salad, Mediterranean Couscous, and Roasted Red Pepper Hummus alongside homemade Tandoori Bread (Naan).  After testing out the curried chicken salad on the family, we will never again eat plain chicken salad!

So, I must share!

Curried Chicken Salad:

• 3 medium chicken breasts
• 1 1/2 tsp of curry powder
• 2-3 tsp of orange juice
• 1/2 tsp of ginger (ground)
• 1/4 cup of dried apricots
• 2 green onions
• 6 tbs of mayonnaise
• salt and pepper as desired

Where has the time gone…

Let me just tell you where it has gone…it’s been dedicated to a little 11 lb  sweet smelling baby girl. On Labor Day, we gave birth to our second daughter and life has been wrapped around her little finger ever since.  We’ve also been spending many a day adjusting to life with two children, one being a very demanding, independent, and energetic two and almost half year old. We have been in that new parent survival mode stage, where you just try to get some sleep and couple time when you can (albeit rare for both). But I’m feeling like it’s time to get out of survival mode!

Ah life is well and we are blessed.

Now that fall is well under way, and I have nine weeks under my belt as a mother of two…I feel as though I may have a minute of down time to breathe and perhaps blog. With that said, I hope to start sharing some fun recipes  and other random tidbits that may or may not be that important! I’m also looking forward to reading and catching up with the blogs that I have enjoyed following over the past years!

 

 

Ready, Set, Go

I haven’t posted since June.  Not because I feel blogging to be less important, I have just been finding other things a little more important this summer.  Like having my husband home for the summer and soaking up every minute with our Little Miss A before Bébé 2 comes along. The countdown is on, and we more or less have 24 days before our new arrival.

We have spent time prepping for our new arrival which could be any day between now and the beginning of September. We have also been doing our best to balance work around the house, as it seems when it rains it pours with maintenance problems, while saving time to have fun going to the lake, playing in the sprinkler, visiting the zoo, or walking around town.

I am READY. Pregnancy is such an exciting time in life, watching your body grow and morph to enormous sizes, feeling wee little flutters to humongous kicks, all kinds of hormonal ebbs and flows, and an insatiable desire for sweets…oh wait, maybe that’s not a pregnancy thing for me.

I have enjoyed all that comes with pregnancy, but I am ready to have my body back. I am ready to be able to bend over without the aches, ready to be able to sleep flat on my back, ready to jog and exercise, ready to be more mobile again, and ready to be able to flounder around on the floor with Little Miss A and Handy J.  But I’m also ready to hold that tiniest little bundle in my arms, see the similarities and differences between babe #1 and babe #2, ready to smell that fresh baby smell, ready for the all-nighters, ready to relive all of the new baby firsts,  and ready to show #2 the world!

It is a marvelous blessing to have a child, a wonderful family, and a life full of love.

Flower Power

Well after a small break from blogging and with really nothing much to say, I have decided that the flowers in our yard need a little spot light. Plus it helps for my own memory to have a list or pictures of these flowers recorded down to reference at later times.My husband sent off last year for all of these free seeds from a seed savers exchange, and boy did we make out with some beauties. He started all of them from seed, and they are magical. Of course, not all of the ones pictured in this post are from the seed savers exchange, but they are pretty nonetheless. So we know we can grow them, now we just need to get more organized with placing them in the garden beds because a few of them are in odd locations for their size.

Who Has The Time?

Who has the time to blog when the weather is so absolutely gorgeous?

Not I…

I’d rather be waking up by sunrise to welcome the glory of each new day in it’s splendor with my cup of coffee in hand as I take a quick walk around the gardens. It is such an alive feeling to wake with the sunrise.

I’d rather be grilling up something tasty in our backyard for dinner and eating outside listening in on all the chirps and tweets of our neighbor birdies who are working so vigorously to keep their own little ones satisfied.I’d rather be taking Little Miss A to the park and helping her to discover that she can master the small slide all on her own. And then try in my best power to step away, even though I desperately want to jump in and scoop her up as soon as she tumbles.

I”d rather be digging in the dirt and planting our heirloom tomatoes with Handy J and taking in all of his instructions on how to plant them properly (even though secretly, I kind of already know most of what he is telling me).

I’d rather be watching the little creatures that have inhabited our yard frolicking and mingling about, preparing nests and moving to new ones. Man the stamina and focus of a squirrel, bird, bee, or rabbit is like no other!

I’d rather try and walk to the library with Little Miss A only to realize about half way there that this pregnant momma is not going to make it that far; therefore turning around and heading back home to grab the car instead. But still feeling positive that at least I gave it a try!

I’d rather be soaking up as much of these beautiful days as I can because the one nice thing about hard winters is that it truly makes me appreciate the sun, the warmth, and the growth that spring and summer bring.

Hope everyone else is enjoying the weather and this spring season!

FULL and COMPLETE

What a wonderful and relaxing Mother’s Day it was.  The best way I can describe my feelings after this weekend, would be to say full and complete. I am completely filled up with love.

The weekend was full with lots of tiny projects in and around the house getting completed during the day.  Then in the evening, I hunkered down with a couple of movies and/or a good chick lit book and a cup of chamomile tea which was a perfect way to end each day. That always feel like a good combination of productivity and relaxing to me.

It wasn’t all work over the weekend, we managed to squeeze in some fun with a Mother’s Day brunch served at our table in the backyard. It was a beautiful morning with the sunshine warming us all up and our bumble bee friends swirling around us in the nearby gardens.   Another fun thing we did over the weekend, thanks to an idea I copied off of my cousin, was pudding painting!  Little Miss A got to do some major artwork with pudding paints!  She loved it. We don’t generally eat a lot of pudding or keep it in the house, but luckily enough I had some stored away.  We added a little food coloring, some sprinkles to top it off, and she became quite the little artist full of focus and concentration (of which you can see with her tiny little mouth).It’s hard to believe I’m a mother to this awesome little girl and soon to be boy/girl, but what an amazing blessing it is to love someone so unconditionally and completely. I hope you all had a Mother’s Day FULL of hugs, kisses, and COMPLETE with a little “you” time.

Alliums in bloom!

Got Lemons?

The weekend was full of delicious meals starting on Friday night with a huge steak (on the grill), mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, and asiago bread followed up on Saturday night with cheesy lasagna, bruschetta (the good mozzarella cheese, sliced tomatoes, pesto), and homemade french baguettes.

To top off our Saturday night meal, I whipped up a Lemon Pound Cake w/ homemade blueberry sauce from a recipe in Cooking Light. Don’t let the magazine title “Cooking Light” fool you, the only thing light about the recipe was the low fat buttermilk that it called for.

We have been on a lemon eating frenzy that last two weeks making lemon/strawberry shake ups, fresh lemonade, lemon poppy seed muffins (which totally bombed, imagine inverted cupcakes…yep that bad), and the oh so delicious pound cake.  It was truly a hit! Now top it with the blueberry sauce and it just put this dessert on the top of the list for a warm weather favorite.Lemon Pound Cake Recipe:

• 3 C. of all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 C. sugar
• 3/4 C. butter, softened
• 2 large eggs
• 1 C. of low fat buttermilk
• 1 tbs of lemon rind
• 3 tbs of lemon juice
• 1 tsp of chopped mint
• powdered sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 350, combine flour, powder, soda, and salt in a bowl, in a separate bowl use a mixer for the sugar, butter, and eggs until light and fluffy, add eggs one at a time mixing well between each egg, add flour mixture to sugar mix alternating with buttermilk ending with the flour, add rind, lemon juice, and mint, beat until just blended. Bake for 45-50  minutes or until toothpick comes clean in the middle.

Blueberry Sauce Recipe:

• 1 C. water
• 1 C. sugar
• 1 C. berries
• 1 tsp. butter
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Boil water and sugar until sugar dissolves, then add in berries and remaining ingredients, stir often until sauce thickens a bit. Pour over cake and enjoy!

Homeschool Part 1: Research Phase

“Non scholae, sed vitae discimus”

We do not learn for the school, but for life.

My husband, Handy J, is an elementary school teacher in a great public school district where the parents take an active role and most teachers are invested and continue their professional development.

My husband is a great teacher, not just by my account, but by tons of kids, their parents, and his coworkers. He’s passionate about teaching and kids, tries to instill the importance of lifelong learning and to learn not for school but for themselves. He challenges them to think critically, explore their creativity, and that it is okay to be or do something different. But even with the best of teachers, those students are still stuck inside the box. The box of their classroom, school, and of the school district/ government that determines what is important for them to learn and how to learn it. And even with the best teachers, there is no getting around the fact that it is generally a 30 plus to 1 ratio. And even with the best of teachers, I think you catch my drift…

John Taylor Gatto from his book Dumbing Us Down on national curriculum: “such curriculum produces physical, moral, and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum content will be sufficient to reverse its hideous effects.”  These are just a few reasons why we have decided that homeschooling would be a wiser option for our family, at least up until Jr. High, or until Little Miss A expresses an interest in trying compulsory schooling.

Another striking quote from Gatto talks about the overall mental structure of schools: “school, as it was built, is an essential support system for a model of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows as it ascends to a terminal of control.”

I’m excited for the opportunity to help our little ones learn in an open and nurturing environment where curiosity will be cultivated and not bound to the walls of a classroom nor confined to the performance of a standardized test. It will be a place of reflection, introspection, and most of all learning in an individualistic democratic way where subjects will have no boundaries and connections can be made in real and enriching ways.

So here is my shout out to any and all those that homeschool or will be…what resources would you recommend: books, materials, etc., etc.  Our research phase has now started!

Fresh Fruit Smoothies!

Little Miss A has never been a lover of vegetables and so that creates a multitude of concerns regarding her well being and health. She loves fruit but veggies are another story.   I constantly put different vegetables in front of her and offer them at various times, but to no avail…stubborn she is.

We all love fruit smoothies, and I try to make them often especially when the weather is nice and warm.  A while back a friend suggested adding spinach to our fruit smoothies as that is one way she gets her little guy to eat some veggies. Brilliance at its best I say!  And so, I added a little spinach to the smoothie and voila…blended secretly amongst the sweet fruit smoothie my little one is now getting at least one veggie.  Oh the tricks of motherhood .

Strawberry/Pineapple Smoothie w/out spinach!

Our Fruit Smoothies:

• 1-1/2 C. of fresh or frozen fruit (strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple make a great combo)
• 1 C. of milk
• 2 tsp of sugar
• 1/4 C. of spinach