November 20th, 2010

Twas the day before Sydney’s 3rd Birthday brunch and Michelle, Jon, and the kids were supposed to arrive in the afternoon.  Poor Caleb came down with a nasty stomach flu, so they decided to stay in Kansas City.  I was planning to cook for them and Michelle has a gluten allergy, therefore we had a gluten free meal that night in honor of Michelle.  I found the recipe in the August Cooking Light when the garden was in full swing and we had alot of yellow squash flowers.  Little did I know, just because you see a flower doesn’t mean you’ll get a squash.  Apparently there are boy and girl flowers and only the boy flowers mean you get produce and our plants had 90% girls, much like our household.  I never tried the recipe and broke it out with my store bought yellow squash grown from manly male squash flowers.  I’m so trying not to make some raunchy obvious jokes here.

Summer Squash and Corn Chowder

I wasn’t crazy excited about trying it, but when you have toppers for your soup like this, it’s good incentive.

The girls ate the sour cream and cheese on top, then made crazy Mr. Yuck inspired faces when they got to the actual nutritional part of the soup.  I wasn’t shocked and as an equalizer, I made them some ants on a log as a side.  There are too many times to count where their side dishes make up 95% of their meal, but I still try and remain hopeful.

November 16th, 2010

Trent and I both love sandwiches.  For some weird reason the only sandwich Lauren likes is a peanut butter and jelly, which is crazy to me she doesn’t like a good ol’ grilled cheese sandwich.  I mean really, it’s probably the best food ever!

I am now seriously hungry, but back to dinner.  Trent’s not a big grilled cheese guy either, but if I make it sound fancy, like say a spinach, goat cheese, and zucchini sandwich, well then he’s in, especially when there are french fries on his plate.

My little non-grilled cheese loving mommy boot wearer girl.

November 15th, 2010

I normally work out at the YMCA on weekday mornings and I time my workout to be from 10-11 am solely on TV shows.  A big factor in my motivation is that The View and the Rachel Ray Show are both on then and I flip back and forth to whichever segment is more interesting.  Normally I watch the hot topics portion on The View to get my hard core news and feel updated on Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery regrets.  Whenever The View and Rachel Ray are both on a commercial break, I switch to the Food Network Channel and watch what Mr. Tyler Florence has up his sleeve on Tyler’s Ultimate from 10-10:30.  He’s quickly becoming my new favorite and is pretty easy on the eyes too.  Well last week he was making some sort of roasted garlic herb vinaigrette and I thought it looked fantastic.  So for dinner we had some leftover chicken, raw veggies, lettuce from our garden, and my little interpretation of Tyler’s dressing.  It was good, definitely a good change up from my normal lemon juice and olive oil dressing.  I’m thinking of roasting a big batch of garlic and then make a good amount of the dressing to have on hand since we still have alot of herbs in the garden. 

Oh, and I made a batch of rolls too!

November 14th, 2010

I am excited, we are celebrating Thanksgiving with my family 2 weeks early, so I get 2 Thanksgivings!  Julie and Ben are hosting the meal at their house and I’m in charge of salad and veggie plate, so I got off way easy for this gig. 

All ready to go!

Biscuits, check. Stuffing (my favorite!), check. Salad and Cranberries, check.  Butternut squash, check. 

Oh here’s the turkey!  But the bird still needed some time in the oven.  No problem!

There are drums to play…

Books to read…

Pianos to play….

Okay, now it’s turkey time?  Nope says Grandpa Coco…..the bird goes back in the oven.  No problem!

There are cousins to play with….

More books and Aunt Cathy cuddles….

And Papa too…

(and there was wine, 5 bottles to be exact…)

Oh forget it, let’s eat the sides and have the turkey and pie for dessert.

And it was worth the wait.

November 11th, 2010

Even though I try, I really cannot make good Asian food.  It just doesn’t taste like other people’s Asian food or even close to an Asian restaurant.  I love the cuisine and keep tearing out recipes in hope to find a couple keepers.  Whenever I improvise it turns out so so.  I’m also a fan of finding a recipe that is the whole meal right there.  So when I found the Cooking Light's Sesame Soy Meatball, I wanted to give her a go.  Also the girls both love meatballs, so I had a fighting chance of a rare “everyone in the family will eat it” night.

Trent and I liked it, but Lauren said she liked the potstickers from our Local Chinese takeout better.  Gotta love kids and their brutal honesty.

November 9th, 2010

I love Facebook and am so happy to have it in my life.  I like how I can keep up with people I see often or people I haven’t seen in decades, but am still interested.  I like how if I run into someone I can ask relevant questions instead of just “so what are you doing now?”  I have Facebook friends who are funny, inspiring, and thought provoking.  Another reason I like Facebook is one of my sorority sisters posted this recipe that looked too good not to make.

Pumpkin Chocolate Cake from Whole Foods.  It was easy, slightly nutritional for cake, and tasty.  Another benefit is it makes the house smell of autumn goodness.

The girls were more than happy to help “clean” the beater.

I’m trying to gather more slow cooker recipes.  With having the girls in evening activities, coming home to dinner already done without extra prep is a treat.  But I feel like it’s hard to find good slow cooker recipes that aren’t bland or the food is a big mushy party on your plate.  This one is one I would make again.  Family Circle has a great section under their recipes just for the slow cooker and so far I’ve been impressed with their selection.

This was their sausage and lentil soup. 

November 8th, 2010

Trent is out for dinner with Ryan and Kevin at Buffalo Wild Wings (and probably spending the whole time talking about Ipads, Trent’s new obsession).  The girls have gymnastics and we got back from that around 6:30 pm.  So hodge podge meal it is! 

I thought these looked fun and cheeky (and they were on sale for $1.49/box).  The girls LOVE all things bugs and love macaroni and cheese, so I thought it was going to be a hit. 

Oddly enough, I hit jackpot.  They got a huge kick out of eating caterpillars and butterflies.  Hmmm….I wonder if this is a foreshadowing incident about their future success on some Survivor type reality show? 

I am not a bug nor boxed mac and cheese kinda lady.  But we did have some leftover cous cous, roasted chicken, and edamame.  Done, there’s dinner without even dirtying another pot!

November 4th, 2010

Shannon has started a new employment opportunity and is selling Lia Sophia Jewelry.  I told her I’d be happy to have the girls over so we could look and play with pretty things.   I wanted to have dinner for everyone, but Trent had been out of town for a couple of nights and I wanted to fully take advantage of a break from cooking.  But not a break from baking because I found this Chocolate Tart recipe from Cooking Light.

I think about 80% of the reason Lauren likes to bake with me is the bowl licking fringe benefit.  I don’t blame her.

Sydney likes to watch the KitchenAid hard at work…and lick the spoon and beater.

Great recipe to have on hand, little hands on prep time.

For dinner I slaved over

our local Chinese delivery menu.  Fun ladies, chinese food, pretty jewelry, wine, and chocolate tart night in.  The stars were all aligned and it was a great Thursday night!

November 1st, 2010

The girls made out like bandits on Halloween.  There aren’t a ton of kids in our neighborhood, so the people who give out candy give out handfuls to every kid.  There is no way we can have this in our house.  Trent and I are huge candy people and we don’t like the same stuff, which is even worse because we go through it thoroughly.  There was 8 pounds total of candy.  I let the girls pick 10 pieces and then I set aside some starburst and skittles (Trent’s favorites) to keep the hubby happy.

This is what we kept.  Much, much better.  My favorite candy bar of all time is Almond Joy (but it’s also hard for me to pass up a snickers, twix, butterfingers,  baby ruth’s, and Reese’s Peanut Buttercups).  The girls each got a piece of candy of their choice for dessert each night, which lasted about 2 weeks and now it’s all gone.  LOVE IT!

So what happened to our 8 pounds of candy?  Our dentist was collecting Halloween candy and would give kids $1 for every pound.  Then they shipped the candy to the troops.  Win, win, win.

Both Lauren and Sydney got $4 and I asked them what they wanted to do with it.  Toys R Us was their choice.  And now we are the proud owners of more Polly Pocket annoyingly small and frustratingly tiny, shoes always lost in the carpet, clothes are impossible for the girls to do themselves, so whenever they play with them I’m taking off and putting on teeny tiny rubber dresses on these random dolls and accessories.  I am convinced the creator of Polly Pockets is a man who has no children.  But I told the girls they got to pick out whatever they wanted (with their price point) and they gave up their Halloween candy.  No way, no how would I have agreed to that arrangement when I was a kid.  My Halloween candy bag was like a treasure chest that I guarded with much care.  Maybe the Halloween candy addiction gene skips a generation.

October 31st, 2010

Halloween!!  My Halloween started off VERY non-scary and un-spooky.  I went to a brunch baby shower for Marla at Jimmy's on the Park. 

Lots of fun, then home for lots of to do’s to get ready for the festivities.  My parents and Grandpa Coco were coming over for an early dinner and wanted to watch the girls head out into the neighborhood in search of candy goodness.

I made a big batch of Bolognese sauce for a lasagna.

My annual finger dip.

I picked lettuce from our garden for the salad (I feel very fancy doing this, not sure why).  Dinner turned out great, so great I forgot to take pictures of my lasagna and then I sent everyone else home with the leftovers.  This happens alot.  Many a family dinners I don’t get to capture because I get busy and then push all the leftovers on the guests.  Oh well, it looked like a lasagna.

There’s my cute little witches!  They were so excited and both knew the deal with the trick or treating this year and were ready to conquer.  Great Halloween!