Green Hummus

My decision to eat better for me food, was one that was not too difficult for me. I already ate like a stinky hippie! : ) But I have been trying to really push out all the highly processed foods completely now, which means having healthy food ready at all times. When I don't have healthy food ready and waiting, it is much harder to eat well, because good food takes much longer than the convenience options. That being said, I am no where near done working on this goal, but having a lot of exciting food choices has made it much more fun than I feared it might (not) be.
Because of this I have been making up a lot of new recipes in the last few weeks.
Tonight I made up a new one because I had a lot of fresh spinach to use. It is a very easy and pretty fast recipe too! Although it does taste better if made a day ahead of time. I am very lucky and have a farmer's market on the corner every Monday night. The produce is so fresh and local, some of it is organic, but I'll take local non-organic over the grocery store any day. When you eat food that is grown in your area, I swear you can feel the difference. There is more energy or something about it, that makes me very happy!
So with that I give you:

Green Hummus

I use my food processor to make this. I can tell you from experience that, yes, you can use a blender... but I can also tell you it is WAY easier(and smoother) with the processor. If you do use a blender than make it in batches, two or three, and then add them together at the end and process again.

I have another little secret for you, too. When you drain off the garbanzo beans, you can save the liquid and use it if the hummus needs to be thinned out at the end, but I didn't use any because the spinach has so much water that I didn't need it. I also rinse the beans under running water to remove some sodium content. If you use the liquid from the can you are adding more back in, of course, just as a reminder. : )

ingredients:

2- 15 oz cans Garbanzo Beans (yes I know I was just talking about processed stuff... but I will be honest it is much easier to make hummus with canned beans. I like dried beans in soups and salads, but for hummus I will usually choose canned. You can use soaked and cooked beans if you want, I'd say about 3 cups.)

3 cups (packed) fresh spinach leaves

*** ok here is where I say that all the following will have wiggle room to your own palate.. feel free to improvise as necessary! : ) But just so you know I measured this time just to try and get it the same next time, since I sometimes have a problem with that! ; )***

2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 Cup onion, red or white
2 Tsp Cumin
1 Tsp Course Sea Salt
Freshly Cracked Pepper
3 Dashes Cayenne Pepper (I like heat so if you're nervous start off with 1, because you can always add, but not take away the heat!)
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 Cup Tahini
6 Tbsp Lemon Juice (this is usually the juice of one large lemon, but if you get a stingy one you can add bottled and it's ok)

1. Add one half of the garbanzo beans to your processor along with the garlic cloves, pulse until coarsely chopped.
2. Add the onion and the rest of the beans, pulse until coarsely chopped.
3. Add the fresh cilantro, salt, pepper, cumin, and dash(es) of cayenne pepper, pulse until worked through.
4. Add fresh spinach about 1 cup at a time, pulse until it has all been worked in.
5. Add the olive oil, tahini, and lemon juice.
6. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

You can eat this right away, but it is usually even better the next day(or two or three) because the flavors marry more. We eat this with carrots, celery, assorted crackers, pita, pita chips, on wraps as a condiment(like with turkey, lettuce, red onions, & tomatoes, or thinly sliced cucumber, red onions, tomatoes and arugula... yum!), on sandwiches, and even just with spoons! The sky is the limit and the more creative the better. I find that my kids will eat more different things if they seem exciting or new. Honestly my kids will eat just about anything I make for them if I do it with a smile.. oh yeah, and cut it into bite size pieces... all sandwiches are in quarters! :) I am pretty lucky that my kids love to eat my cooking... but they are used to it and have always been good eaters.
I hope that you try this, and if you do let me know how it went! : )

Today I am grateful to have my food processor. It is an amazing little machine!
I am thankful that my kids love my cooking! I wish my hubby would get on board!! : )

** I just realized that I don't have a single picture. I need to do a quick alteration for Emily's promotion dress, but I will try to take a picture tomorrow and post it. have a good night! : )***

Tea, for three!

Spring is on its way here to our house... but sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate as much as we'd like. The other day it was "supposed" to be a nice day out... it rained all day and I think we spiked at about 29 degrees that afternoon.
So it the midst of a rather dreary, and frustratingly housebound day... we decided what we needed was to have a tea party picnic!

I felt very clever about having this idea, because before I made the decision to have a fun activity, the kids and I both were kind of grumping around. The house was mess from playing all morning and I was looking at eating up a good 45 minutes of my (much needed) quiet time as clean-up time instead, after having a disappointing lunch of PB&J, and no going to the park.... : /

as I was making sandwiches.. it hit me...
Let's have a tea party picnic!

So, I changed my attitude around and got very excited as I told the kids what we were going to do. They picked up on the excitement right away, and got very into the idea.
Here's the tray of prepped food all ready to lay out for the munchkins.

Instead of me having to do all the clean-up (like I often do, just to make things easier and faster for myself) we decided that if we all put everything away really quickly, we could lay out a blanket in the middle of the floor for our party. Sophia and Roscoe both cleaned up faster than I have ever seen them do before!

While I made the lunchtime goodies, they tidied up their toys and started bringing me the plates, cups, bowls, serving dishes, and teapot. I washed them up really quickly, and Sophia was very excited about getting to dry them for the food. I love these play dishes we have because they are made in the USA, from old milk jugs... and they are fun colors that make food a little more interesting than the "adult" dishes.
Plus, to up the FUN factor I made everything into small bite sized pieces. We had good old PB&J, but they were cut into small squares, which made them MUCH more fun to pop in your mouth! We also had small squares of plum, cherry tomatoes, avocado cubes, grapes, and a grapefruit(ok not small but the pieces I pull out for them to eat are... in the end! : )...)






We had tea (water) in little teacups. Both of the kids drank a lot more water with lunch than usual... turns out if you want your kids to drink water.. you just have to play Tea Party.. who knew? : )



Although I feel I should mention that if your little people are under the age of two or maybe even three... this is most likely what will occur eventually during the meal... but of course it IS just water, so if you go into it knowing it will happen... it doesn't need to be a huge deal! The change of clothes before nap time was well worth it to me!


We all ended up having a great time of it. I hope to do it often now, as Sophia asks me if we can do it again everyday. I am thinking once a week will make it still fun and not turn it into something drone... but we'll see.

Just thought that I'd share a fun way to spend some time inside your own house..even if that's the last place you wanted to be! : )


the bear got some food too!

















Today I am grateful that we can have fun, even though our plans don't always end up going the way we thought they would! : )

Simple Family Fun with Food!

Tonight we made pizzas for dinner.
I know that this is nothing new.. but it always turns out so good, so I thought I'd share.
We only ever do this when the Boboli crust is on sale. I know it's not homemade, but yeast scares me, so we must all learn to deal. BUT Boboli crust WAS on sale, so we picked up a two pack of little crusts, one for each of the little ones, and Al, Emily, and I had a big one. Emily likes the original crust, Al gets the thin, and I get the whole wheat, which is really good.. if not a little sweet.

We all get to make our own pizza exactly the way that we want it... which in a family of five is nice, because of course we all have our favorites!

Al's is always lots of pepperoni, and maybe a few onions and hot peppers.

Emily went with a heavy cheese and pepperoni, today.

Sophia had onions, pepperoni, and sweet peppers. She made it all by herself... which made her very proud!

Roscoe had barely a smidge of cheese, lots of cherry tomatoes, and some caramelized onions. He ate more of the toppings before they got cooked than after! : )

Everyone's was different , but they all came out so pretty, and yummy! I somehow forgot to take pictures of mine and Al's, I think it was because we had to wait for the second round in the oven, and by the time we ate...we were hungry!!
but I took this one right before I ate mine.

Half white sauce(that Al put together...SOOO good!) with halved tomatoes, sweet peppers, and caramelized onions. and half cheese, a few pepperoni, and hot pickled peppers.

Man, that was SO good! it is a fun interactive way for us to make dinner and we all get it just the way we like it, plus the kids and I have a pre-made lunch for Al's first day back to work. Nice!!

Try it sometime... it's fun , and if you choose the right toppings..well it could be worse for you, anyway!

Pizza makes the kids happy, and between us all we ate a pint or more of cherry tomatoes, and about 6 mini sweet peppers(red, orange, and yellow). They were so fresh and made me feel like, yes, one day the winter will end and springtime is getting near.. HOORAY! we can't wait here that's for sure!


and yes it's dinner with Sophia in her jammies.. it was in the single digits most of the day here and they keep her warm... so she wears them all day some days! : )

Today I am thankful for fun family times, even if it is as simple as homemade(sort of) pizza nights! : )

WooHoo!! I won!!

I got a package from the adorable and sweet Lissaloo


I won her give-away of huckleberry products. I had never had them before, so it was really exciting! : )


What a pleasant surprise it was, on such a dark, gray, and snowy day here in the 'Burgh. I couldn't wait to open it... but I was super busy doing the whole mothering thing, and my eldest and I had plans to go see a performance at her new school after dinner.... so I had to wait until after dinner and bedtime, and then didn't have time before we left for the performance. I opened it up much later at night and had my husband take pictures... but as much as I love him I had to re-take pictures today... because well... I just had to... I am anal-retentive about certain things...
some might say many things... but I choose just certain... ahem.. where was I?
Oh yeah, showing you my pictures! : )

all the numminess together...

there is Huckleberry Jam.

Hucklebery Gummies (my favorite candy!)

and Huckleberry Taffy (my hubby's favorite!)

My husband LOVES taffy! So he is very excited, and now thinks maybe this isn't such a waste of time! ha ha....

And I put this picture up even though I look CRAZY because I want to thank my husband for taking pictures, and he needs a good laugh! Please pay no attention to the laundry pile that is so high it threatens to engulf me soon.. this is normal behavior around here... opening packages is WAY more fun! : )
And this picture is me showing the pure joy I have in eating the gummies! yay!

Thank YOU Lissaloo!!

Today I am grateful for my bloggy friends. What an interesting phenomenom this blogging thing is! I'm so glad I found it..and all of you! : )

An attempt at something new

So it is becoming obviously apparent to me that posting everyday will just NOT be able to happen... and that's ok. The point of this blog for me is to be thoughtful of my moments of joy and happiness throughout the day. And although I just started it a few days ago and have only posted twice yet... it is already working. Throughout the day while I am playing and cooking and cleaning and so forth, I have been much more aware of my joy in the last few days... thinking things like oh...that would be a good post or that could something I share with folks... or other such thoughts.

So I feel content, even if only a smattering of my thoughts actually become content up here.

My husband is working two jobs right now. On wednesday, thursday, and friday he leaves at 7:30 am and comes home anytime from 12:30 am-1:30 am depending on how busy of a night it was. He goes to his regular job from 8:00-3:30/4:00 (he is a line cook) and then heads over to a second restaurant(as a line cook) and puts in a 7/8 hour shift. This is new. within the first month of it. and it is hard. it is hard on him. hard on the kids. and not completely unimportantly, hard on me. But we have discussed it over and over and for right now I need to be home with the kids, so it is something that needs to be done.

Although there are not positive things about this... that is not my focus here, so one of the positives of this situation is I get to cook more healthful foods because he isn't here to NOT eat them, and make me feel bad about it.

So I tried (again!) to make a tofu burger that was tasty AND wouldn't fall apart. I only partially succeeded, but I think I'm close to something good here!

I'll tell you what I did and if you have any suggestions or want to try them for yourself and let me know how it went... I'm all for it!

Here goes, this is what I ended up putting together:

Tofu Burgers

1 package of extra-firm tofu

1/2 cup of steel cut oats

1 can of white beans

1/4 cup of sunflower seeds & 1/4 cup almonds

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

Spices: sea salt, oregano, basil,

21 seasoning salute(an awesome salt-free spice from Trader Joe's),

powdered kelp & dulse (I put these in everything!)

celery seed, a little cumin, fresh ground pepper, olive oil

all of these to taste and anything else that might be good or if you don't like it.... leave it out! : )

{this is probably where I should state that I rarely use a recipe...I cook from taste, look, and feel...I try to tell people about what I use.. but often I have no idea...just guesstimation really ...so sorry about that!}

1. The first thing I did was cook the 1/2 cup of oats in 1 1/2 cups of boiling water with a pinch of sea salt. I cooked them a little less than I would for porridge, maybe 15 minutes.



2. While that was cooking I mashed the tofu with a fork. I used extra firm so I didn't feel like I needed to smash and drain...{ but that might not be a bad idea actually... b/c I did have some textural difficulties! : ) }


3. I also put both kinds of seeds into the mini-processor and chopped them to a crumbly consistancy.


4. I chopped the onions, garlic, and mushrooms. Sauteed the onions for about 5 minutes then added the shrooms and garlic and cooked for 7-10 minutes more until they had a nice color and smell. : )


5. At this point I mixed everything together. I was thinking that I didn't want to use an egg(just to see if I could do without it), so for added stickiness I guess, I processed the can of beans and threw them in too (drained and rinsed, before throwing in the mini-chopper).


6. I made 7 patties originally, they were HUGE. I put them on wax paper and put them in the fridge to set up.
   

This is what they looked like when I took them out to cook. By the time that I got to cooking them that night... things were a little hectic, cranky, and hungry..and they fell apart... and I WAS NOT in the mood for pictures! But I put the rest in the fridge and carried on with bathing, putting kids to sleep, cleaning, washing dishes....etc... and figured I'd try again tomorrow.





Well today(yesterday's tomorrow..hee hee...), I pulled them out of the fridge, and they were MUCH firmer. So I decided to make each patty into two patties ( to help with the size and sticking together thing) and throw them in a non-stick pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil.






...and it worked! I cooked each side for close to 10 minutes(which is a long time)... but they came out pretty good! I think that when I make them again I would use the egg. I think that would hold them together even more... I'm not even vegetarian, much less vegan, but I was just trying to see if I could do it vegan, because it makes me feels better for when I eat with my husband (you know beast of some sort on the table every night)!

Anyway, this is the final product, on some toasted whole grain bread with a little dijon mustard and some massaged Kale(an awesome raw foodie trick that I learned from a friend, and use ALL the time.) There was some breakage..I couldn't have pick it up and swung it around... but it was easy to flip and made it to the bread just fine... so like I said.. maybe an egg next time.. but I will defenitely be trying it again! Also any suggestions, or opinions about them is welcome...especially if you make them differently... I like to fiddle with my food! : )

Oh, and the kale trick is super easy!

Massaged Kale

just take a bunch of kale, remove the stems by folding it in half and pulling the leaves from the big rib going up the middle... wash in a sinkful of cold water... spin dry... then put the juice of a lemon, a pinch of sea salt, and a little olive oil in a bowl wisk it together and pour it over the kale. Reach in and massage (yes I know it sounds silly!) the leaves with the "dressing" ... let it sit for an hour or so. I rinse the leaves after that, but if you like the flavor you can leave it on... you could just spin off the excess maybe...it is a little too strong for me... so I rinse some of it off. It "cooks" the kale making it WAY less bitter without actually cooking it ...so you get all the good stuff with a lot less bitterness... total score right? : )

Today I have lots of things on my thankful list pertaining to this post:

Today I am thankful for a husband who takes care of me and our family.

I am thankful that my children eat my cooking and generally like it!

I am thankful that I succeeded (mostly) in a new food adventure, even if it took an extra day!

I'm thankful for this blog to throw stuff out there for other people to see.

Oh, and I didn't get to it.. but I'm thankful that, so far today, Sophia hasn't had an accident in her big girl undies...although it is naptime so stayed tuned for the results of sleeping in said undies (for the very first time today!!)!

oatmeal cookies

This morning came far too early, in fact the night just turned into morning with none of that whole sleeping business occuring at all! Well, that is not completely true I did get a nap from 3:00am- when I burst into our bedroom and handed the boy child over to his father and made them both leave the room...until 5:30 when his father returned him to me in about the same fashion!

apparently Roscoe is growing right now.

truth be told he is an amazing sleeper most of the time. he doesn't sleep through the night but only nurses a few times and promptly falls back to sleep. ( and seeing that his sister NEVER slept much I do acknowledge and appreciate this in him) BUT when his brain is exploding he struggles a bit more. He is like me in so many ways...which I happen to think is a good thing! : ) but it seems he got my manic head at 2 in the morning thing... which is a bit of a drag.

He woke up at 11:00 last night before I had even gone to bed and wanted to party like the rock star that he is... ALL. NIGHT. LONG!! when I did give in and call for reinforcements Dad was not as cheerful as I was hoping...I know not too surprising.. it was 3 am.

SO- to keep things together and happy until blessed, blessed naptime(which is in the process right now...HOORAY!) my strategy is FOOD.

yeah, big shock there!

but honestly it is the only thing that will get us all through a rough morning...a constant undipping blood sugar level..until after lunch when it is officially time to rest.

so this morning breakfast was the same as every other morning, for Roscoe.

cereal(O's today), banana, & rice milk to drink the second we get up.

then some grapes and vegetable booty (puffed rice and corn with kale and kelp, a not too unhealthy snack that feels very naughty!) half an hour later while I am making the morning time snack which was the yummy part!

my new obsession, steel cut oats.

I had never had them until recently. I had always gotten rolled oats. I had seen them mentioned several times in the AR(allrecipes, my other obsession of late) exchange...so when I saw them at the local co-op I got some to try.

I LOVE THEM!!!

I make a new treat(awesomely healthful snack in actuality) that I like to call the oatmeal cookie... because well it tastes just like a really good oatmeal cookie, and let's face it, if you tell a toddler they are getting an oatmeal cookie odds are they are going to eat it with a SMILE!!

The Oatmeal Cookie

1. Bring 3 cups of water and a dash of sea salt to boil in a heavy pan.
2. Add 1 cup steel cut oats.
3. Add a half cup of unsweetened applesauce (you could use a chopped apple if you wanted, I bet that would be tasty!), a tablespoon or two of TVP (texturized vegetable protien)(this tastes like the dehydrated apples chunks in instant oatmeal, and adds a good boost of extra protien, always a plus, especially during this whole brain explosion thing!), a good few shakes of nutritional yeast, a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice(or straight cinnamon), and a tablespoon of brown sugar(it's not a lot, just enough to make it slightly sweet).
4. Cook for 15-30 minutes depending on texture preference. We are good at about 23 minutes, I think... something like that.
5. Add rice(almond, soy, whatever you have) milk to thin if neccesary.
6. When the texture is right serve up in a bowl, top with some raisins, a sprinkle of pie spice, pour over a little milk, and put a squeeze of honey over the top.
7. Commence eating and making of yummy noises!!

You should try it. It is super good stuff and pretty darn good for you too!! And most importantly it helped me make it through the morning without losing my marbles!

Happy toddler # 1!



although this is a picture of her eating her breakfast today which was plain yogurt with half a chopped plum stirred into it with a little cinnamon, raisins, and a squeeze of honey over the top.

Stinker ...oops I mean, Happy Toddler # 2

He was about to be eating some oatmeal cookie numminess in this picture... I should taken pictures of the mess he made.. but did I mention I was a little tired this morning and I wasn't feeling overjoyed at the moment of clean up time!

And what's up with both of my goofy scrunchy nosed kids!

Anyway, I should actually try and accomplish something while they are still out... thank goodness for the Pumpkin, Leek, Sweet Potato Soup in the fridge for dinner... I think the mound of unfolded laundry is more than enough for me to handle today!!

Today I am thankful for Oatmeal Cookie Oats!!