Tuesday: Rice Wraps
Wednesday: Chickpea Piccata
Thursday: White Bean, Pasta and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
Friday: Costa Rican Black Beans and Butter Honey Plantains with Pita Chips
Saturday: Dave and I are out, the kids are having Mac'n Cheese
Sunday: Salmon, Roasted Brussel Sprouts and Beets, Asparagus, Couscous, Salad, Bread and Pineapple Upsidedown Cake
Leftovers
This picture is actually from last week, but this occurs every afternoon on the way home from the bus stop. There are these two huge pine trees and you can always hear tons and tons of birds chirping in them -winter, spring, summer or fall. Harper loves these trees and always stops and sticks out her hand to try and have the birds come land on her. She often looks up at me disappointed, "Why won't the birdies 'ome, I won't hurt dem?" I explain that they don't know that and, (here she interrupts me) "Dey want to be FEE (free)!!!!!" After a couple minutes we move on, but it is pretty much a guarantee that we will stop the following day.
Recipe
We had sloppy lentils again, Dave and I added hot banana peppers to ours tonight and it was really good.
Rice Wraps
The girls are still sleeping together and I have to tell you I love creeping in and seeing them all curled up together. They usually chat for awhile...actually, Harper chats and Hannah continually asks her to stop because she's trying to sleep. Often Harper gets up once or twice, but on the whole it's really working out well. They have woken up in the middle of the night and started arguing a couple times (seriously, will the fighting never end?), but I'm really able ignore this while I'm half asleep.
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| She's such a good helper, but this is her letting me sneak an action shot! |
This week the girls each chose a meal, Hannah chose rice wraps which you can find here.
Chickpea Piccata
Deep breath, today was a day of taking deep breaths. Hannah hit Harper, twice. The first time was this morning and all the dust settled and we talked about it I was sure that she would not hit Harper again...today. I was wrong, they were playing outside and Harper was not doing what Hannah wanted her to do and she hit her again. I opened the sliding door and asked her to come inside...she threw snow at me...can you imagine how mad I was? In the two or three seconds that followed my head was swarming with what can I do, take toys away? TV tickets? Cancel a play date? After all these and other thoughts, I knew I was mad and trying to make her feel like me...not super productive and not really teaching a lesson. I just looked at her and shut the door (Harper did come in). She continued to let off all kinds of steam back there and when she settled down I called her in and we talked about it (the hitting and respect), she apologized to Harper (who had really forgotten what happened and was just sad that Hannah was not coming in), but she said to me, "I was telling her and telling her, and she wasn't listening and I just got so frustrated that I had to hit her!" The thing is I can really relate...well, not the hitting part, but the frustration. I'm trying to figure out how much we need to focus on helping her deal with her frustration and how much she really needs to kind of figure it out on her own (hopefully not by hurting too many bystanders in the process). Deep breath. It's not the actual hitting and throwing snow that makes me take deep breaths (actually that's a lie, I was practically hyper ventilating to not scream at her when she threw snow at me) it's the potential of screwing her up. Deep breaths.
Recipe
You can find this recipe here and it's really very yummy. Even Hannah, who uttered her new regular, "Yuk!" reaction when sitting down to dinner, later volunteered a, "This is really yummy!"
White Bean, Pasta and Roasted Red Pepper Soup
Well, I have been 30 days vegan. I'm looking forward to a little fish next week and having my regular cup of coffee in the morning (with cow's milk), but the idea of jumping right back into cheese and eggs gives me a nervous feeling or something. I'm not really sure what will happen, the thought of eating eggs cooked in something is fine, but the idea of an egg just sitting there staring at me...I'm not quite sure about. Same with the idea of eating copious amounts of cheese. Harper has chosen mac'n cheese this week and I've purposely put it on a day that Dave and I are going out because it just sounds so heavy (and it is seriously one of my favorite meals). I guess this challenge has kind of done what I was hoping it would, change some habits and the ease and frequency at which I would eat cheese and eggs. I'm sure that I will be back eating all these things soon, but hopefully in smaller portions (mac'n cheese as a little side part of the meal instead of the main). One of the really great things is that I discovered black bean hummus which none of us can seem to get enough of around here. I am really looking forward to fish though...and if I'm entirely honest milk chocolate!
Recipe
This recipe is from epicurious and it was a good and a nice change. I find that I get stuck on tomatoey soups a lot and this was such a nice change (there are sun dried tomatoes in it, but it's totally different). I doubled the recipe and used one can of red kidney beans and one can of white because that's all I had in my cupboard.
Costa Rican Black Beans and Butter Honey Plantains with Pita Chips
You know there's those things in life that are expensive, but you bite the bullet, pay for them and then admire them for a long time like, furniture, my new front teeth, that really great dress, your kid's dance/hockey/tae kwondo/insert expensive activity here, and then there's those things that you spend money on and it's like you just lost that money. You know those things, that work hard and silently in the background. They are often some of the most expensive and they improve your quality of life by a bijillion (it's hard to spell words that aren't real), but really when you pay for them it feels like you've just handed over all this money to someone leaving your house with a large array of tools. This is how I felt after the guy from Citywide Heating left my house. I know that he installed a new hot water tank for me after I found the contents of the other one all over the floor this afternoon, he was even leaving my house, done, two hours after I discovered the water, but it just kind of feels like I paid him for nothing - I checked out the new tank and it even looks the same (they should really sell them in flashy colours or something, make something fun about it). Although, I noted that the temperature of the water heated up much faster and I am grateful (grateful, grateful, grateful) that it was not the furnace, I just kind of wish I'd gotten to pick the colour.
Recipe
This recipe is from Warm Vanilla Sugar, I was going to make it with brown rice but the water was off while the guy installed the tank and so I made pita chips instead. We all really liked the beans and the plantains. I cooked two plantains for us, but still used the same amount of butter (I used vegan marg) and I only made one recipe of the beans (it said it served two), which was plenty for all of us but no leftovers.
1/4 cup diced onion
1 fat clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 can (15 1/2 oz) of black beans, drained and rinsed
2/3 cup vegetable broth
1/4 tsp chili powder
3/4 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
Juice of 1/2 lime
Chopped cilantro
Heat a medium skillet over medium heat, and add the canola oil. Once shimmering, cook the onion until translucent. Stir in the garlic, tomato paste, and bay leaf until the garlic is fragrant and the tomato paste has cooked off a bit, about 30-60 seconds.
Add the beans to the pan and using a wooden spatula, smash about half of the beans. Stir in the veggie broth, chili powder, cumin, and oregano. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until flavours meld and most of the broth has been absorbed, about 10 minutes. Stir in lime juice and season to taste with salt and pepper as needed. Sprinkle cilantro.
2 tablespoons butter
Drizzle of honey
In a non-stick skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Add plantains, in a single layer. Cook plantains on each side, for about 3 minutes, or until they reach a caramelized brown color. Drizzle with honey just before they are ready. Transfer to a plate covered with paper towel and allow to drain for a minute
Out for Dinner and a Play
Dave and I dream big when it comes to our house. We have all kinds of plans and hope to be here until we are too old to walk up the stairs. We are also pretty good at starting projects, we are really bad at finishing them. I mean embarrassingly bad. So, we have been living in a house with a bunch of little (and big) unfinished projects and now, we are having someone come and asses it (because we want to start some renos, not because we're moving) and so we are trying to finish up all these little projects as well as clean and organize the entire thing. Every time I finish something, like painting the bathroom ceilings, I think wow that was easy and didn't really take very long at all. But, it also feels like for every little project we finish two or three more little ones seem to pop up on the list. Today, I did something that wasn't even on the list, which is totally annoying because writing it down and then crossing it off - not at ALL the same satisfaction. It does feel good to get things accomplished though. We will be puttering away all week!
Salmon, Roasted Brussel Sprouts and Beets, Asparagus, Couscous, Salad, Bread and Pineapple Upside down Cake
We headed out to a play today with the girls, The Cat Came Back. Have I ever mentioned how loud Harper is, she is very loud - like most two year olds. So we're in the theater, the play's on and Harper is talking loudly pretty much throughout the entire play. I am shushing her, but really it's a kid's play and there are plenty of kid's talking all over the place (of course not right where we're sitting). The poor little girl in front of us was very stressed out by Harper and kept turning around and shushing her, much to her frustration Harper was oblivious. There's one point in the play where the whole theater is singing The Cat Came Back very quietly in an attempt not to scare the cat, the whole theater that is except for Harper who is singing it at the top of her lungs. I leaned over and started to say, "Can you sing quietly like everybody else, like you're whispering?" Except all I got out was, "Harper can," and she turned around and (extremely loudly) said, "Whaaat - I'm singing! THE CAT CAME BACK..." she was a hit with the rest of the audience, not the little girl in front of us though.
We had a lovely Sunday Dinner at my cousins (they too are Sunday dinner orphans). The meal was delicious (salmon, I was so excited I had two helpings) the kids played quietly, and we sat and chatted and played a game called Sequence - which was really very fun.
I hope the sun shines down on you this week!
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