Tuesday: Warm Sweet Potato Salad with Black Beans, Feta and Lime
Wednesday: Fish Tacos
Thursday: Mediterranean Chili
Friday: Pizza (a different kind)
Saturday: Sushi and Edamame Beans
Sunday: BBQ Salmon with Dill Sauce, Roasted Potatoes, Broccoli and Cauliflower in Cheese Sauce and Salad with Vanilla Ice Cream, Strawberries and Peanut Butter Cookies
Tortellini Soup
I manage to keep my cool in many situations...and not in many as well. But getting out the door to get to an activity on time is starting to take it's toll. I like to be on time, I actually get worked up into a little bit of a frenzy when we're going to be late, it stresses me out and to what end, really? What's the worst thing about being late? I mean, besides the fact that it's completely disrespectful, I guess maybe it's a value thing with me. Anyway, I decided today that I'm done rushing Hannah over and over again to get to her activities. I asked her four times today to get ready, only to find her playing in the bathroom (this is a whole other pet peeve) with Harper instead of getting ready and I was ready lose what ever "it" I had left. So I took a deep breath, thought about how much she loves skating, grabbed my book and sat down on the couch and started to read. I've decided that I'm not going to stress over getting her there on time if she's not going to be concerned about it. I think it backfired.
I was hoping that she would be upset that we were late and it would spark a little hustle in her the next time we were getting ready for an activity. When we arrived at the rink, late, she looked around and said, "There's no one here, are we early?" I was exasperated, this whole life lesson exercise I was sitting on my hands and biting my tongue to teach her and she had no clue, and I had mentioned to her that we were late! So, she skated onto the ice, joined her class barely noticing that she missed anything. On the up side, although it was difficult for me to keep my mouth shut, it was nice to not leave the house in a big huff of stress of guilt. I may be teaching her it's alright to be late (cringe) or apparently nothing at all, but I think that I may stick with this plan and see where (or when) it takes us.
Recipe
I made this tortellini soup recipe inspired from Alida's Kitchen. I love having soup Monday, because I can make it ahead of time and have it ready for when we get home from skating, also because I'm always freezing from sitting in the arena. This wasn't knock your socks off good, but it was a solid meal, we all liked it and it was super quick and easy to make.
glugg of olive oil
2 small onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 tsp oregano
1 28oz can whole tomatoes, chopped
5 cups veggies stock
12 oz fresh cheese tortellini
1 bunch of kale, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Heat the olive oil over medium low heat and cook the onion until soft, add the garlic and oregano and cook another minute. Add the stock and tomatoes and bring to a boil, add the kale and pasta and simmer for a couple minutes until the pasta is ready. Adjust seasoning if needed and serve.
Warm Sweet Potato Salad with Black Beans, Feta and Lime
We weren't really sure what to do with ourselves this evening. We had the guy come and assess our house today (weeks of work, he was here for about 15 minutes), and the house is so clean that Dave and I didn't want to mess it up. We started chores with the girls this week and so it was Harper's turn to do the dishes (she gets a little extra help) so that was done early. The girls were a little out of sorts in this clean house and occupied their time randomly strewing toys about, to make it feel like our house again. Harper was running around in a shirt, her underwear and a pair of leg warmers so naturally we all took a break to sing Maniac (Good 'ol Flashdance) and do a little running on the spot. Imagine, we could be doing this all the time if we had a clean and organized house!
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| I couldn't stop laughing at Hannah's face in this picture! |
Recipe
It felt like spring today, it was beautiful out and it was light out when we had dinner, so this salad from the wonderful blog of Catherine Newman was perfect! I strongly recommend trying this, or invite us for dinner and ask me to bring a salad, because this is the one I will be bringing for the next little while.
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes
6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
salt
2 limes, 1 zested, both juiced
½ teaspoon chipotle puree *
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup green pumpkin seeds
1 can of black beans, drained and rinsed (or 2 cups cooked black beans)
A few handfuls of greens
½-1 cup crumbled feta
*Because Hannah hates anything with a little spice to it, I omitted this and added 1/4 tsp smoked paprika for the smokey taste.
Preheat oven to 450F.
Toss the sweet potato with 2 Tbsp of the olive oil and 1 tsp salt and them spread them out on a cookie sheet and bake on the bottom rack for about 20 minutes. Flip, (don't go crazy trying to flip all of them, use a spatula and flip as many as you can...) and bake for another 10 minutes, until they are nice and brown and caramelized.
Meanwhile make your dressing and toast the pumpkin seeds. In a pan over medium low heat, heat 2 tsp of olive oil, add you seeds and toast until nice and brown. In a jar mix together lime zest and juice, rest of the olive oil, sugar and paprika or chipotle and shake until it's all blended, taste and add a little salt if needed.
Once sweet potatoes are ready put them in a bowl, add the black beans and dressing and mix well. On a platter spread out your lettuce (I used romaine and green leaf because that's what I had to use up, but arugula would be really nice), top with bean and sweet potato mixture and then sprinkle with the feta and pumpkin seeds. Serve immediately.
Fish Tacos
Sometimes leaving the house in the evening is like a fire drill. You need to let those around you subtly know what's going on, but without causing too much fuss or confusion. Never run, this draws too much attention and can lead to the trampling of small children as they throw themselves at your feet or attach themselves to your leg in a panic. Walk briskly, making no sudden movements and taking only what's necessary. The most important thing is to be sure to turn and wave as you leave and then NEVER look back.
Recipe
Really there are many little variations you can do with fish tacos, but tonight we went plain and simply. Corn tortillas, pan fried fish, guacamole (a must), tomatoes mixed with cilantro and red onion and banana peppers! I love fish tacos because they please everyone, every time.
Mediterranean Chili
Some days getting out the door to get Hannah to the bus stop on time takes a lot out of Harper and I. Sometimes when Hannah gets on the bus all we can do to relieve our frustration with each other, mine because she won't get ready to go right away and doesn't want to wear her winter clothes, hers at the fact that she can't finish her task and eat an extra meal and wear her slippers and rain jacket, that all we can do is move slow and spend a very quiet afternoon giving in to almost all of Harper's whims (I'm sure guilt plays no part here). Today it was painting, I never want to take out the paint, I'm not sure why it always makes her so happy and really only takes an extra few minutes to take out and clean up.
The idea for this recipe came from Tasty Trix, I altered it for what I had in the house. Next time I will leave out the saffron as we discovered, Dave does not like saffron and it turned him off of the dish, Hannah and I gobbled it up, Harper didn't even taste it (she was so tired tonight, I was just happy she didn't fall asleep with her little face in the soup). This dish would still have great flavour if the saffron was omitted and I will do that next time.
1 onion, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
1/4 - 1/2 tsp chili pepper flakes
5 cloves garlic, pressed
1 lemon, zested and half the juice
4 cups veggie stock
1 large pinch saffron - optional
2 tsp oregano
5 sprigs fresh thyme
2 - 19oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/3 cup kalamata olives, chopped
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
Banana peppers
Feta cheese
Salt and pepper
In a large soup pot heat the olive oil and cook the onions and shallots until soft; add the garlic, chili pepper flakes and oregano and cook for another 30 seconds. Add the veggie stock, chickpeas, lemon juice and saffron, bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Puree half of the soup and then add it back to the pot (or use a submersion blender) and then add in the thyme, olives and lemon zest and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook until they soften, about 5 minutes, adjust seasoning to taste.
Serve topped with chopped banana peppers and feta cheese.
My cousin and his wife had their third child this morning, a beautiful baby boy. Welcome to the world little one!
This is the baseline difference between Dave and I. In the wee hours of the morning (4am) we woke up to the sound of an alarm. Not an alarm in our house, it sounded like a car alarm going off on the street, but somewhere close by. The clock was flashing and it was all very confusing so naturally I listened for the kids, heard nothing and pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep. Dave got up checked the whole house, noticed the PVR was flashing like crazy, rebooted it, noticed a breaker had been flipped when he was checking the basement (?) flipped it back, set the clocks, rechecked all the doors and came back to bed. I'm curious, if he had been away would I have done that, or would I have done the same thing that I did do? I honestly don't think I would have gotten up and I definitely would not have noticed the PVR or gone down and checked the basement...it's about complimenting each other's personality (and perhaps picking up the slack here and there), right?
Recipe
We actually had a different kind of pizza today. I had planned on the same kind but we ran out of a few things and it was kind of snow stormy out today so I decided to only venture out on foot, meaning in the yard and to the bus stop and back, so we made due.
Harper and I made the dough, she was very focused on kneading it...
The recipe is actually the focaccia bread recipe from Best of Bridge: That's Trump, but just plain.
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1 3/4 cups warm water
1 tsp sugar
4 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tbsp olive oil
Add yeast and sugar to warm water and let stand 5 minutes. Work in 4 cups of flour, salt and 2 Tbsp of olive oil. Knead dough, adding as much of remaining 1/2 cup flour as necessary to form soft dough. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour, or until doubled in size. Here I just divided the dough in two, stretched and rolled each piece out and put it on a parchment lined pan.
We topped the first pizza with:
Marscapone cheese (leftover from the Mushroom soup last week) mixed with a little balsamic for flavour, spread all over the dough like sauce
Sliced pears
Caramelized onions
The second pizza with:
Pizza sauce
Caramelized onions
Roasted red peppers, chopped
Sun dried tomatoes, chopped
Feta cheese
Bake both in a 400F oven for about 20 minutes.
Sushi and Edamame Beans
My new parenting strategy is going to be slow down and think about saying yes before no. I feel like we rush around so much to get to the next activity, get supper ready, sneak in a run here and there, get the kids to bed on time - it's too much racing. Have you ever seen that youtube video where Joshua Bell plays in a subway station in Washington at rush hour and all these people rush by him barely paying any attention? He captures the attention of many children, yet most often their parents rush them along...I would totally rush my kids along (on most days at least). What am I doing? Don't get me wrong I am in no way saying I need to stop and enjoy every moment, because that's simply too much pressure and honestly there's a lot of moments in a day that I don't enjoy and I'm not going to beat myself up over it (revisit last weeks potty training rant, for example), but when I slow down and put things in perspective it seems, easier or something (like this weeks painting). Today started rush, rush, rush with lots of power struggles between us and Hannah and nothing really in particular that needed to be accomplished. Finally around 1:00 we kind of looked at each other and thought what are we doing? We all sat down and played chess together, Hannah and Dave together and Harper and I (heh, I'm sure you can guess how me and Harper's game went, but she wanted to play and we have two sets, so we practiced moving our pieces around. It's been so long since I've played that I feel like we were pretty evenly matched). For the rest of the day I said yes to almost everything (reasonable) and they played happily, were patient and much more understanding when the answer had to be no. We ended the evening with game night! We played Gobblet Gobblers, which my parents brought back for us from Australia. If you have little ones and can find this game it's fantastic! It's like Tic Tac Toe but you can move your pieces around on the board and gobble up other players pieces.
All in all, the day started out poorly, but ended quite well. Stay tuned next week for when my new parenting philosophy becomes, rush through everything and always say no first!
Recipe
Sushi was Hannah's choice because she loves making it and eating it. The instructions for making it can be found on this post, or on the back of the package of nori wraps. We filled ours with different combinations of:
Smoked salmon
Cream Cheese
Avocado
Roasted red peppers
Cucumber
I had bought a sweet potato and was going to cut in cubes and roast it in the oven and put it in the sushi, but I completely forgot.
BBQ Salmon with Dill Sauce, Roasted Potatoes, Broccoli and Cauliflower in Cheese Sauce and Salad with Vanilla Ice Cream, Strawberries and Peanut Butter Cookies
Hannah had a gift card to Chapters from her birthday and Dave took her out to spend it today. He said she was so excited she flitted from one thing to another trying to decide what to buy. Dave texted me saying that she wanted to buy this science kit that makes candy and cupcakes, knowing I would not be happy about it. As I was texting him this very long winded text about how these were things that we could perhaps do at home with our own ingredients, and had he looked at the chapter books with her? It really went on and on with other options, while the control freak in me thought, "I wish I would have gone." He texted me (before I finished mine and sent it), that's what we got. Shit. In the end it isn't that bad, I thought it was going to come with all sorts of premade cake mixes and stuff but really the only ingredients it comes with is baking soda and sprinkles, and lots of test tubes and things. There is some flavored crystals that I'm not thrilled about, but apparently the alternative was a manicure kit (although, not really, because she's not allowed such things - but that's a whole other rant).
In the end we ended up doing one of the experiments this afternoon which was making cupcakes, test group A without baking soda and test group B with baking soda.
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| The scientist. |
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| Group A and B. |
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| Testing and concluding: "Baking soda makes things taller...I think it's rise, and fluffier." |
I am starting to tweet, follow me @littlebellies, although I am a newby and a little slow to jump on (just keep that in mind)!
I hope the sun shines down on you this week.
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