Healthy Recipes that Don't Suck and I Didn't Screw Up.

Part of my "it's-not-really-a-New-Years-Resolution" resolution was to be more healthy. That meant being more active and eating healthfully. So far I think we've been doing pretty well. As such, I've compiled a few of the recipes that have worked out for me. (see the Recipe tab at the top) Or to put it another way, healthy things that tasted good and I didn't totally screw up. Strangely enough, I'm seeing an improvement in my cooking lately. Maybe it's because we are using fresh ingredients more or healthy just tastes better. Of course it could be that I'm actually following a recipe as opposed to making stuff up and not actually caring how it turned out. Hmmm. The more you put effort into something and the more you care, the better things turn out. I should remember that. The vast majority of the recipes are vegetarian or vegan. Frankly we just feel better after we've eaten them. In our old age *cough, wheeze* too much meat and dairy makes us feel kinda yucky lately. My days are too busy to stop for a nap after every meal. I've scoured the internets looking for tasty food and linked back to where I found them so you can explore further if you like. Any how, I hope you try some of them out I'm sure you'll like them.

#7SuperShots: Photos that I love, that mean something to me

A friend of mine, Karen, asked if I would participate in #7SuperShots. You basically post seven photos that are important to you and why. It's apparently a new meme that's been going around and she thought it would be fun for everyone to participate in. Did you see how I used the word meme like I had some idea what that was? Yeah, I'm pretty hip in the ol' blogsphere. Did you catch that one too? No? Hey, we can't all be rock stars. It's ok.



A Photo That...Takes My Breath Away

This was the first time I saw the little girl that was going to turn my life upside down and make me somebody's mother. Up until that point it was still hard to believe that it would actually happen. If someone had told me "sorry lady, we made a mistake, you're not actually pregnant" that would have made more sense to me. That day it really dawned on me, "we're actually doing this!"

A Photo That...Makes Me Dream

This was a photo taken with said little girl during a walk. She's no longer a baby but a little girl looking out to face her future. I wonder what the world holds in store for her and what sort of person she'll be? I dream of a confident young woman bolding going...wherever she wants.

A Photo That...Makes Me Laugh

I get this expression all the time. She's dead serious and frustrated with me, but I find her expression hilarious! I can't help but laugh and it just makes her so mad! Body language says so much, doesn't it?

A Photo That...Makes My Mouth Water

I'm not super good in the kitchen, but I am getting better. These were one of my first successes and were delish! I can't recall, but I really hope I didn't eat them all.

A Photo That...Tells A Story

This is a photo of my first daughter giving me a hug while waiting to meet her sister for the first time. I believe I was in the tenth hour of contractions at that point. Only fifteen more to go! She knew something was up and she would get to meet her soon.

A Photo That...I'm Most Proud Of

This is a photo I took of my husband and daughter number two while on a hike. I'm not a skilled photographer by any means. I have a whole album of photos I took of my thumb. This turned out really nice even if it was pure luck.

A Photo That...Makes Me Think

This is a photo of my daughter on her first day of school. She was so excited to go! I can't help but think if she'll always be this confident and outgoing? She's a very social, kind, and enthusiastic person. Always willing to reach out to those who are more shy or having trouble fitting in. I don't think she'll have trouble "fitting in" as she gets older. I think she'll create her own path and invite everyone to follow her.

Butternut Squash Soup

This as an absolutely fantastic soup! It has a wonderful sweet taste to it and a warmth that is perfect for grey rainy days or crisp fall ones. Normally when I've made butternut squash soup I've blended everything. In this soup the only thing pureed is the squash. The rest of the vegetables are diced which makes it seem all the more hardy. It is probably the best butternut squash soup I've made thus far.

I thought cutting and peeling the squash would be hard. That's a pretty tough skin! Once I peeled a portion off with a knife, I was able to use a regular peeler to finish the job. Of course I didn't figure that out until I tried to peel nearly half of it with the knife first. That took for ever! I'm a slow learner.

After I cut it up into small chunks I boiled it for about 30 mins. Which is good because I've been trying to avoid using the oven. Over ten cents a kwh during peek times, which of course includes dinner time, I don't think so.

Of course I don't have two big pots. No that would be too easy. After putting aside the boiled squash, including the liquid, I cleaned out the pot and cooked the rest of the veggies. Here's a top tip, have two big pots on hand!

After the squash was pureed and added to the rest of the veggies everything smelled great! The combination of fresh vegetables and spices was very inviting when you walk into the room. The recipe I used was from The Green Door Restaurant. Vegetarian Cookbook. It is a local restaurant in Ottawa that has a great reputation for making tasty food. I guess then I shouldn't have been surprised that this soup turned out so well. Other than the obvious point of me being the cook in this case. If you would like to try it, and I recommend you do, here is the recipe. Better yet, why don't you head down to the restaurant and save yourself the dirty dishes?

Ingredients

• 5 cups butternut squash
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 large diced onion
• 1 large diced celery stalk
• 1 large diced carrot
• 1 leek, sliced
• 1 tsp freshly grated ginger root. (I used half a tsp powder and it still tasted great)
• 2 cloves garlic
• pinch of cayenne (optional but I used it)
• salt to taste
• 2 bay leaves.

Cook squash in water until tender, approximately 30 mins. Do not drain.

Heat olive oil in soup pot on medium high heat. Add onions and cook until transparent Add celery, carrot, leek, ginger, and cayenne. Add 1-2 cups of liquid from cooked squash. Cook on low heat until vegetables are soft: 20-30 minutes. Add salt to taste.

In a blender, blend the cooked squash with remaining liquid and combine with soup in pot. Add bay leaves. Adjust seasoning. Bring to a boil again on low hear. Serve.

Serves 8-10



Mac N' Cheese, Hold the Cheese.



Lies, all LIES!

 I've been trying lately to get our meals on a healthy footing. This has meant researching different recipes and making weekly meal plans. Oh so much fun! I've had a few successes and a few failures. We don't need to talk about the gluten free skillet cornbread. It's best if we all forget that ever happened. I think it made Scott feel sick and I actually refused to eat it. That was probably the only sound judgement made during the whole affair. Oh well. Nothing ventured nothing gained, right? Scott would have disagreed with that I think.

Ideally I would LOVE if the kids ate what we ate. Especially seeing as we've decided to improve our diet. So far they've ate every new thing I've feed them! What? No, you read that right. Miss. A, the worlds pickiest eater, has eaten everything I've presented her with so far. Baby K? Well if it is even technically classed as food she'll eat it. Thank goodness for that! Now don't get me wrong. We've never eaten poorly. As a whole I'd say we are pretty healthy eaters to begin with. Most things have been whole foods as opposed to processed, and a lot of things have been homemade. Where we've fallen short is in the variety department. There is always room for improvement. The goal is now to add more variety to our diet. There is a whole world of healthy foods out there to benefit from.

A kid friendly staple is of course Kraft Dinner. With that in mind today I made Mac n' Cheese for the family. It contains no actual cheese though. Which is the sneaky part. Just lots of healthy things I wouldn't normally be able to get the kids to eat.  Potatoes, onions, cashews, carrots and a few other things all mixed together. As soon as I put it on the table in front of them I held my breath. Would they eat it? OMG! THEY'RE EATING IT! I tried to look all nonchalant about it like why wouldn't they eat it? They had NO IDEA! It was awesome. Any who, I found this recipe on a food blog in case you are interested. It's called The Brazen Kitchen, and there are definitely a few other recipes I'm going to check out.

Here is the recipe that I used. Enjoy!

Mackin’ Cheese

(Ersatz and Enjoyable all at the same time)
Serves 6 but I ALWAYS double this. Because, well, why not?
Based on VegNews’ Macaroni and Cheese
4 quarts water
1 tablespoon sea salt
8 ounces macaroni or penne pasta
4 slices of bread, torn into large pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons shallots, peeled and chopped
1 cup red potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup carrots, peeled and chopped
1/3 cup onion, peeled and chopped
1-2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 cup water
1/4 cup non-hydrogenated margarine (I use Earth Balance soy-free)
2 tbsp. olive oil
1/4 cup raw cashews
2 teaspoons sea salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
¼ teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon paprika
In a large pot, bring the water and salt to a boil. Add macaroni and cook until al dente. In a colander, drain pasta and rinse with cold water. Set aside.
In a food processor, make breadcrumbs by pulverizing the bread and 2 tablespoons margarine to a medium-fine texture. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a saucepan, add shallots, potatoes, carrots, onion, and water, and bring to a boil. Cover the pan and simmer for 15 minutes, or until vegetables are very soft.
In a blender, process the cashews, salt, garlic, 1/3 cup margarine, mustard, lemon juice, black pepper, and cayenne. Add softened vegetables and cooking water to the blender and process until perfectly smooth.
In a large bowl, toss the cooked pasta and blended cheese sauce until completely coated. Spread mixture into a 9 x 12 casserole dish, sprinkle with prepared breadcrumbs, and dust with paprika. Bake for 30 minutes or until the cheese sauce is bubbling and the top has turned golden brown.
Gourmetzations:
- drizzle with truffle oil right before serving
- Add some finely chopped spinach or kale when you toss the sauce and noodles together
- Add chopped garlic and some garlic powder to the breadcrumb mixture to make a garlicky topping
- Top with minced chives and/or parsley
- If you want a smoky flavor, add ¼ tsp of smoked Spanish paprika to the sauce mixture
- Saute leeks AND leek greens and fold into the sauce and noodle mixture

The Grass is Always Greener. Except on our lawn.

This fantastic topic is brought to you by my darling husband Scott! I imagine it is inspired by the realization today that our lawn is...umm...total crap. Honestly it looks dreadful! You know the grass you walk on after a concert or on a school playground? Well ours looks only slightly worse than that. I think the only way to save it is to rip it up and re-sod the whole thing. It's a pity really, we have a nice corner lot and lots of space, but the grass is just not showing it off like it could. So we went to Canadian Tire today and bought grass seed; like we do every year. It won't grow; like it doesn't every year. I asked why do we bother doing the same thing if we know it won't work? "It works a little, we just have to do it every year." It doesn't work. The grass looks like a balding man trying to grow a few straggly hairs on his head. Or better yet, Scott trying to grow facial hair. Patchy and thin. Bazzinga!

However, it's not just the lawn. Scott has proclaimed this year The Year Of Home Improvement! (Best read in a monster truck announcer voice.) The hedge will be reclaimed from the wild. The lawn made thick and lush. The garage painted. The gardens landscaped and less weedy. The counter tops will lose their pink complexion and take on something in keeping with this century. Curtains would be nice; very nice. At the very least it would be nice to lose the forest green blinds. Yuck! The deck needs tending to, but it will have to wait until next year. Hopefully no one will fall through between now and then.

I admire his can-do attitude! It would be nice to see a few positive changes around the house.

Yummy Treats That I Didn't Screw Up

The other day I was looking for something to do with Miss.A. It was a rainy, cold, I-don't-want-to-go-anywhere kind of day. I had been lurking around on the Internet, as I often do, and came across an amazing looking recipe for Mint Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies. It happened to be a vegan recipe that used an egg replacer instead of eggs. Which was great because I only had one egg in the house. They looked super yummy and there wasn't a whole lot of calories in them. Which is good, because I'd probably end up eating twelve of them.  After a whole day of fiddling with it, I came to the conclusion I was using the wrong egg replacer (well I think I was), and gave up for the day. However I'm not defeated, I'll eat you at some point my pretties.

Instead I found a recipe that used most of the ingredients I already had out. At Cooks.comI found a recipe for Paula's Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Mint Cookies. I'm not a big fan of chocolate cookie but these turned out really well! I think it was the mint that really made them. Miss. A had no trouble helping me make them and it didn't take very long to do. We were enjoying cookies for dessert fresh out of the oven. The best way to eat them, and my Dad had the same idea, was with a big cold glass of milk. The mint and the cold milk together just made the whole experience. Baby K now knows how to say "cookie" with very little problem!
Here is the recipe from the site:

Paula's Chocolate, Chocolate Chip Mint Cookies

1 1/2 sticks of butter or 3/4 cups
1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cups sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspon peppermint
1 1/2 cups of flour
1/4 cups of unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips
Cream butter, sugars, beat in eggs and spices. Add dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips. Bake 12 to 15 minutes at 350 degrees F on a greased cookie sheet

ream butter, sugars, beat in eggs and spices. Add dry ingredients. Stir in chocolate chips. Bake 12 to 15 minutes at 350 degrees on greased cookie sheet.



The next morning I found that we pretty much had NO food in the house. I had no idea what we were going to eat. No milk. No bread. No eggs. No fruit. We also had to eat quickly because we had places to be that day. I thought I would see if we could make muffins, maybe add some frozen berries in or something. I looked through a cook book...wait let me stop and explain. A "cook book" is a book that people used to look up recipes and how to cook them before the Internet. If you're still not sure what I'm talking about just Google it. Anywho, I found a recipe in The Joy of Cooking that I thought might work. "Basic Reduced-Fat Muffins" didn't use milk but yogurt instead. I just happened to have some non-fat strawberry yogurt left so I threw caution to the wind and gave it a try. The turned out really well! Two recipes in a row? What were the chances? And apparently each have only 4 grams of fat! Though I'm sure you were supposed to use plain yogurt, the strawberry added a nice subtle flavor to the muffins. It also had big chucks of berry throughout which baked in nicely. Usually when I add berries  the muffin around it doesn't cook evenly. This time no problems at all. It was a very quick and easy recipe. You could easily buy different flavors of yogurt to use depending on your taste. They were very moist as well and perfect for a quick bite for breakfast. I'll probably make them again. Here is the recipe from the Joy of Cooking I used:

Basic Reduced-Fat Muffins

Position rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the over to 400 degrees F. Grease or line a standard 12-muffin pan with paper cups.

Whisk together thoroughly in a large bowl:

2cups of flour

1/2 to 2/3 cup of sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/4 teaspoon of baking soda if using yogurt instead of milk

1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg (optional. I didn't use it)

Whisk together in another bowl:

1 large egg

3 tablespoons vegetable oil or 3 1/2 tablespoons warm melted unsalted butter (I used butter)

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 cup of non-fat milk or 1 cup of non-fat yogurt (Obviously I used yogurt)

Add flour mixture and mix together with a few light strokes just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Do not over mix; the batter will be light but fairly stiff and will not be smooth. Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with:

Cinnamon and sugar (optional. I didn't but I think it would be really good)

Bake until a toothpick inserted in 1 or 2 of the muffins comes out clean, about 12 minutes. (or longer for variations with fruit.) Let cool for 2-3 minutes before removing from the pan. If not serving hot, let cool on the rack. Serve as soon as possible, preferably within a few hours of baking.

20/20 Hindsight: Becoming a Mom

I recently attended a baby shower for a cousin of mine. It was beautiful and simple; just the way we dream motherhood should be. I'm sure no one seriously believes that it will be like that, but we still envision quiet nights gently rocking a cooing baby to sleep. It's easy to romanticize bringing a new bundle of joy home. In that new little person rests hope, love, and a future full of meaning and purpose. Whatever other choices you make in your life, you now have a guiding star to keep you on the right path and illuminate your way. Becoming a parent will influence everything you do, what choices you make, and what paths you take. Some will lead you places you never thought you'd go, others will bring you back to the start and see things through different eyes. When cards and pens were passed around asking for advice for the New Mom, it was hard to think of what to put. I'm sure there were a lot of  "Sleep when the baby sleeps" or "Remember to take care of yourself too". I'm sure I put something similar as well, yet somehow I don't feel I'm imparting the advice I wish I could have given myself. So this is my attempt to do so. If anyone invents time travel, please make sure I get this too.

It's Not What You Thought

Whatever mental and physical preparation you did, the reality is you're never really prepared to bring a new baby home. Yes you'll be excited, but maybe a little terrified too. You'll be tired, yet have no idea you could be that tired and still function. You'll be unsure of yourself, but never realize you know more than you think you do. You'll find your way out of the haze one day, look back, and realize you did the best you could. That's exactly what you should do, the best you can. No one is born with a prefect mothering instinct. This is your first time becoming a mom, and it's that little baby's first time in the world too. You're both finding your new roles in it. It will take time, there will be bumps along the way. When you know better you'll do better. Don't beat yourself up if you don't know what to do right away. After two daughters, I'm still trying to figure things out!

Do What Works For You and Your Baby

One of the common denominators all new mothers face the bombardment of "helpful" advice. It will come from everywhere! Be prepared for total strangers to become experts on your child. "Oh she's tired!" "You need to hold her this way." "You use that? We never did that with ours." The list goes on and on. Some of it can become very personal and is truly none of their business in the first place.  My advice? Take the high road. Dont' take it personally, a "I'll keep that in mind" or "I'm glad you found something that worked for you; this works for us" is much more empowering than going on the defensive. Other advice can come from friends and family that truly have your best interest at heart and want to help. Learning from another's experience can be helpful. Ultimately, there are as many different ways to raise a child as there are mothers out there. As long as you are doing what is in the best interest of you, your baby and your family as a whole, that's what's best for your baby.

Have a Sense of Humour

This is often a life preserver. I remember when I brought my second daughter home the utter chaos that ensued the first few weeks. A newborn crying in my arms because she was hungry. A toddler crying at my feet because she was hungry. And me, trying to spread peanut butter on a piece of bread that was slowly inching it's way to the edge of the counter. It was nuts! I imagined seeing this through a television screen in some sitcom. I couldn't help but laugh at how ridiculous a spectacle this was. If I didn't find some humour in what goes on day to day, I would totally lose my mind. Or perhaps I already have. My sister-in-law agreed with me, losing your mind can sometimes be an act of self defence.

Get Out of the House!

Once you feel up to it, I strongly recommend getting out of the house. Walling yourself up with the child, as darling as she is, is no good for either of you. I did that for the first six months and I did myself no favors. It is very isolating and lets face it, boring! Go to the park, take walks, join a mommy-and-me group, visit family and friends. Heck visit me. I was lucky the first time around. I was able to visit with my sister-in-law for the first year and it was always something we looked forward to. Later my daughter and I joined a number of classes run by the city. We both came out of our shell and are better for it. Plus my daughter and I were able to go out and have fun together.

Make Time for YOU

Yes it's kind of cliche at this point, but it's important. You need to have a life outside your child too. You are a mother, but many other things also. A friend, a daughter, a wife. You need to tend those gardens as well. Make going out with your friends, even just once a month, a regular thing. Take time to treat yourself to a date night every now and again. Find something that is just you and make time for it. A loved and cared for mommy makes for a good mother.

Forgive Yourself

Some days you'll shine, and others you won't. You'll never be perfect or have this-parenting-thing down. You'll make mistakes. You won't ask for help when you know you should. You'll listen to that little doubting voice at the back of your mind when you know you shouldn't. It's OK. Stand up straighter, brush yourself off, and continue on. We all falter; picking yourself back up again is what matters.