7 Ingredient Challenge!

I’m ready to plan February’s 7 ingredient challenge! 

For dinner sometime in the next week or so, I am going to make a meal using (but not limited to) the first 7 ingredients that show up as comments on the blog.  So if you’d like to participate, just leave an ingredient as a comment and if it’s one of the first 7, then it’ll be in the meal in some form!  I’m adding a rule that the ingredient has to be available at a regular grocery store just to make sure I’m not trekking to some small Croatian grocer in search for I don’t even know any Croatian specific ingredients unless I Google it bakalar. 

Thank you for playing! 

Bakalar is some sort of dried cod – eww, yeah, none of that please.  Let’s make it another rule to steer clear of dried meat.

February 2nd, 2011

Second snow day in a row.  I was scared it was going to be horrible, 2 days stuck in the house.  Trent’s car is awful in the snow, so we decided it was best for him to take the minivan, so we REALLY couldn’t go anywhere.  I decided we needed to be fairly civilized, so the girls got dressed, I did their hair, and they were off to play.

Most of the morning they played babies in the basement.  When I went to use the treadmill in the basement, they evacuated and went upstairs.

Lauren made train tracks and train cars to “play trains.”  The trains stopped at the lake, zoo, and garden. 

The rest of the day went pretty uneventful, but that’s a good thing. 

Dinner was something I kinda came up with in my head.  Roasted shrimp and cannellini bean salad with an herbed roasted garlic dressing.  I don’t know why, but fish and shellfish make me think of spring and summer.  Maybe because our trips to Destin and Minnesota are fish laden and in spring and summer?  Anyway, anything that distracts me from the cold, snow, and housebound status is a good thing.

February 1st, 2011

The news of a snow day came last night at 9 pm.  Love that they made the decision ahead of time!  So in the morning came the forecasted freezing rain.  About 3 inches of it.  Trent was at work and I decided to tackle the ice by shoveling whenever there was a good amount of accumulation.  I learned that ice is heavy and doing it without gloves causes blisters…and fast.  Then I made chocolate chip cookies for the girls.

I let them stay in the pajamas for the day and they played played played around the house happily.  I couldn’t believe how mellow the day was.  Trent’s firm closed at noon in anticipation for the forecasted 10 inches of snow and we waited…..and waited….and waited.  I think we got a total of 3 inches (on top of the 3 inches of ice).  No power outages, no blizzard conditions, and no being shut in the house.  I’ll take it! 

We let the girls pick a movie and watch it in the basement and I made popcorn. 

In every issue of Rachel Ray’s magazine she does a burger of the month.  She’s clever with her burger recipes.  This one is a turkey burger with white cheddar, sliced apple, and a cranberry mustard sauce.  It is simply delicious. 

I also made Cooking Light's Spicy Cilantro Slaw.  It’s supposed to be a topping for fish, but it’s good as a side dish too.

Day of being stuck inside turned out to be a nice family fun day and no crazy blizzards or snow.  My level of winter crankiness is surprisingly low.

January 31st, 2011

So FINALLY, we’ve hit the last day of January.  Adios my least favorite month of the year, I don’t have to see you again for 11 months.  My next battle is my second least favorite month of the year, February.  But there are good things about this month.  It houses my mom’s, Elizabeth’s, and Grandpa Coco’s birthday, Valentine’s Day, and we don’t have to take down Christmas decorations this month (well some people might, you know THOSE people, but not us).  Mother Nature decided to make January end with a bang and February to start with attitude.  The meteorologists are making proclamations of freezing rain, then massive snow with dangerous winds, causing power lines to go down, and a city of no power and abundant amounts of snow keeping us all either shut in our houses or plowing through snow in search for electricity.  The grocery store soared in popularity and the Bond family Monday night waited for it all to start and see how this chapter in our lives was going to end.  When life gives you a grim weather forecast, make chili.

The girls on the counter helping me make the salad.

January 30th, 2011

The kids like olives….check.  The kids like chicken….check.  The kids like tomato sauce….check.  The kids like cous cous….check.

Did they like chicken and green olives with a tomato sauce?  Not so much.  But they ate the cous cous.  As Julie would say, “it is what it is.”

January 26th, 2011

We had a spaghetti squash taking up space on our refrigerator for days weeks months.  I was certain it had gone bad, but cut it open and it was fine.  Who knew!  So I decided to roast it in the oven.

All done from oven spa treatment!

Scrap it out with a fork and it automatically comes out like spaghetti! 

tossed it with sautéed garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper.  It made a great side dish to the mini meatloaves that Lauren picked out from Cooking Light.

Meat loaf, meet squash.  Squash, meet meat loaf.

January 25th, 2011

My 2 favorite sections in the St. Louis Post Dispatch are the Wednesday Eat section and Friday Go section.  I look forward to the Go section more this time of year because I love to see what award nominated movies have finally made it to St Louis and the critics reviews.  I rarely cut out recipes from the Eat section, but have from time to time or it gives me ideas, especially when our garden was in full harvest mode and I was searching for recipes for Midwest crops.  I also like the recipe exchange for local restaurants.  It’s fun to see how a restaurant makes the dish and alarming at the amount of fat is in it, no wonder it tastes so darn good when you’re eating out!  A couple months ago there was a recipe for Spinach Pie from Adriana’s on the Hill.  I decided to give it a try.  I love the idea of pie of any form.

Adriana's Spinach Pie

It was decent, but don’t think I’ll make it again, because when I defrosted the spinach in the microwave this happened.

The microwave caught on fire, melted the glass plate, and has been unusable ever since.  The good news is after a week of phone calls and paperwork requests, LG is sending out a technician on Wednesday to assess the situation.  The bad news is I can’t reheat the leftover spinach pie in a quick like manner.

January 22nd, 2011

So we were supposed to be leaving this morning for Kansas City to celebrate Christmas and Elizabeth’s 10th birthday celebration, but an intimidating forecast caused us to stay put.  We were really disappointed since the girls and I haven’t seen Trent’s family since Thanksgiving.  We spent the morning at the YMCA and headed home for lunch.  I wasn’t really planning on cooking today, so I opened the refrigerator and assessed the situation.  There was asparagus.  “What about asparagus frittata?”  I asked Trent.  “I’m not in the mood for eggs, I already had breakfast.”  Hmmm, back to the drawing board.  Re-assessing I came up with a rice dish risotto style, but with regular rice.

It is so fun putting Sydney down for naps in her big girl bed, it makes her look so little!

I finally whined enough convinced Trent it was a good idea to order new bedding for Sydney last night.  The quilt she has right now was from my Great Aunt Anna.  I like it, but wanted Sydney to have new bedding since Lauren did when she got her big girl bed.  I like to keep things even.  Sydney’s favorite color is purple, so it’s purple-ish bedding with flowers and Lauren has the exact same bedding, only pink.  I’m excited to get it and set it all up.

That night Markham invited us over for dinner.  She made Beef and Fennel Ragu from a recipe in the St Louis Post Dispatch that was awesome with a great salad.  I had mine over crusty bread and it was perfect comfort for yucky January. 

January 21st, 2011

So they say if your kids cook with you, they won’t be as picky.  If you have the kids help with a garden and growing food, they will be more willing to try things.  If you have them try foods 10-15 times they will eventually get used to the taste of that food.  If you sneak in pureed veggies, they won’t notice and will eat the food.  If the kids go grocery shopping with you, they will more likely eat their dinner.  If you just put out what’s for dinner without alternating anything, the kids will eventually eat what’s in front of them without dirty sock faces and extensive inspection of said food.  I’ve tried it all.  Many times.  I do have to say growing the garden probably worked the most.  Lauren discovered her love for raw tomatoes, she pops grape tomatoes like they’re grapes.  Sydney discovered her love for sage.  The pureed veggies in things does work too, zucchini and carrots in pasta sauces or chili is my main trick. But I’ve also sabotaged what would have been a well liked meal by going overboard with the puree thing.  The whole thing seems like an exhausting and winless battle.

So one of my goals is to spend more quality time with Lauren in the afternoons when Sydney naps.  I’ve gotten into a bad habit of doing projects, computer stuff (like I’m doing right now), or house stuff once the weather got cold and shunned us indoors.  When the weather is nice, Lauren and I spend much of our afternoons outside doing various things and it’s great.  So I had a couple of cooking magazines I wanted to page through and was under a blanket on the couch and Lauren asked if she could lay with me under the blanket.  We paged through a Everyday Rachel Ray and a Cooking Light.  Lauren loved looking at all the food and picked out all kinds of recipes she thought looked good and asked if I would make them.  Done and Done.  First on Lauren’s list:

 

Walnut and Breadcrumb Pasta with a Soft Egg.  I would never have picked out this recipe, but it was absolutely fantastic!  I’m not a soft egg person, but the yolk make a delicious sauce for the pasta.  It felt like a simple, yet elegant dish for some reason.  For the girls, I made hard boiled eggs and put them separate from their pasta.  They both ate dinner happily and Lauren was even mad at me for eating the leftovers for lunch the next day….oops. 

January 19th, 2011

This week in school Lauren is “Star of the Week.”  It’s a fun project (albeit one that requires many mom to do’s) that Lauren and I have been working on.  She had to do a poster and get up in front of the class and talk about it.  The poster also had a sheet of paper where she filled out all her favorite things.  She brought a bag home from school and picked 5 toys to put into it and show them to the kids in her class.  The tricky part is the toys had to stay at school all week.   Logically, Lauren wanted to take her absolute favorites, *those* toys that I knew would be a cause of tears that first night when she realized her comfort toys are snug in her classroom and not in her bed.  So we picked kinda sorta favorite toys (translation – ones she wouldn’t miss at home).  She also brought in a snack for her class, peanut butter and cracker sandwiches.  No peanut allergies in her class thankfully.  It was already a short week with MLK day on Monday and we ended up having a snow day on Thursday.  So Star of the Week was really star of 3 days, but she never noticed.

Lauren dresses herself in the mornings and does a good job.  She had her big presentation of her poster and toys…..with her shirt on backwards.  Never noticed when she left the house, but noticed immediately when she came home…after the fact.  Her teacher took these pictures and sent them to me.  I love getting a sneak peak of Lauren in action at school.

Dinner was a holiday tortellini soup from Taste of Home.  I guess the holiday was star of the week and MLK Day??  I think I must have picked up the magazine at the Y one day or something, it’s been in my recipe binder forever and this is the first time I tried it.  It was easy and I thought the kids would like it, which kinda happened.  They picked out the tortellini, but I think a couple pieces of spinach sneaked into their bellies.