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We Are the Champions

Breakfast

kids:pumpkin bread + fruit

me: green smoothie

Lunch

boy: pb&j, blueberries, strawberries, cucumbers, mango and celery
girl: cheese+ tortillas, mangoes, berries, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, celery

In case you need proof that my kids eat their lunch, I present the School Day report:

My little guy is the ‘lunch champion’ for 9 days and counting.  We’re raising champions over here.  No wonder I’m so worn out at the end of the day.  Champions are demanding little things.

me: white bean+cashew spread from Eat Drink and Be Vegan, veggies

I too ate all my lunch, but there was no report card for me.  I hereby name myself Lunch Champion.  You can be one too.

Tired Mom’s Black Bean Taco Dinner

My 20 minute start to finish dinner:

• taco shells, baked at 350 for 7 minutes
• black beans (from a can), heated for 1 minute – sometimes I season them, sometimes that is too much effort
• shredded lettuce+chopped cilantro+avocado+diced tomato+shredded cheese
• jarred salsa
• chopped fruit
• that’s all

What is your dinner on tired nights?

linking up with Jenn at Peas and Crayons

 

Your Modern Couple Blog

Check it out….

 

 

http://www.yourmoderncouple.com/2011/03/08/10-things-michelle-muses-cant-live-without/

 

 

Vegetarian Shepard’s Pie

I was craving something hearty the other night and, after some googling and recipe combining, came up with this version of a Vegetarian Shepard’s Pie.  It could be made vegan by using oil instead of butter for sautéing the vegetables and using a vegan mashed potato topping.  I went the lazy route and used some Costco pre-made mashed potatoes that contained butter and milk.

Vegetarian Shepard’s Pie

• 1/2 c onions, chopped
• 1/2 c carrots, chopped
• 1/2 c celery, chopped
• 1/2 c mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 c butternut squash, chopped (optional)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 c dry lentils
• 1/4 c pearl barley
• 2.5 c vegetable broth, divided
• 1 Tbsp flour
• 3 c prepared mashed potatoes

Preheat oven to 350 F

1. Bring 1.5 cups vegetable broth to a boil in a small sauce pan.  Stir in lentils and barley.  Cover and simmer for about 40 minutes, or until liquid is absorbed.

2. In a large dutch oven, melt better.  Saute  onions, carrots, celery, butternut squash and garlic until soft and fragrant.  Stir in flour and stir quickly for about 30 seconds.  Slowly stir in 1 c vegetable broth, stirring carefully to incorporate all the flour.  Simmer until sauce thickens and looks creamy.

3.  Add lentil/barley mixture to the veggie/sauce mixture and stir until combined.

4. Pour into a greased 2 qt casserole dish.

5.  Top with about 3 cups of prepared mashed potatoes.

6.  Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes, or until potatoes are just starting to brown and filling is bubbly.

Dinner is served.

Want to know what my kids did while I was prepping this dinner?  They used the rest of the mushrooms to make fungus shot glasses.  They pulled out the stems, poured in water and took shots.  I had to put my foot down when they asked if I had some quarters.

Filling the Mushroom Shot Glass

This was after her fourth water shot.

I didn’t tell them, but they really did me a nice favor by pouring out half the Brita pitcher worth of water onto their table.  It was nice and clean afterwards.

A New Use For Green Onions

I’ve had a pretty uneventful week.

Uneventful if you don’t count me having to say “Stop brushing your brother’s hair with the {green} onions and put them back into the cart” to my daughter yesterday.  Never would I think that combination of words would have come out of my mouth.

Uneventful if you don’t count my kombucha literally dousing my entire dash board today in the store parking lot as I opened it.  I cleaned it up with {clean} thomas the train underwear from my purse.  Never did I think I would combine kombucha and thomas the train underwear in the same sentence.

Uneventful if you don’t count going to the doctor because the kale is still out to get me.  The smaller of the bad cuts is now nice and swollen and in danger of turning into an absess.  Lov-e-ly.  So, I’m now on Cipro (antiboitic) for a few days while I hope and pray that there is no further reason to suffer and pay for my kale-related injuries.

probiotics + antibiotics

Can someone tell me if it makes sense to take them during the same day?  Or does the antibiotic just defeat the purpose?  Maybe I should wait until I’m off the antibiotics.  Anyone?

Also, isn’t Cipro the drug that was prescribed during the Ant*hr*ax scare a few years ago?  So I guess I can open my mail with no fear for the next few days.  What a relief.

So I’m actually sitting down to the computer for more than a couple of minutes for the first time in a few days.  Eating salad out of the container.  Classy I am.  Go easy on me, I’m injured.

My kids are eating a late lunch while watching Wow Wow Wubzy.  Yes, I occasionally let them eat lunch in front of the TV.  Go easy on me, I cleaned up kombucha with underwear today.

How many other food blogs have pictures with their kid’s feet next to their plates?  I have no idea what she was doing.  This is the girl who brushes her brother’s hair with green onions.  Also, please note that there are exactly the same number of blueberries, strawberries, pineapples, celery and cucumbers on both plates. Also note that today was they day they didn’t even count to compare, rendering my parceling out in the kitchen useless. I’d like those 4 minutes back.

Tonight’s dinner will be a new recipe from Eat Drink and Be Vegan, the third recipe from that book in a week.

What is the most random thing you’ve said this week?

Also – check out this giveaway for a Healthy Habits kid’s plate at Happy Healthy Mama.

Have a blog? Want to win a $100? Check out the Swanson Health Blog.

Good Reads

Organic.  It’s Worth It.

How McDonalds Screwed Up Oatmeal – I’ll admit to trying the oatmeal a couple of times.  You give me a coupon for a free product that is reasonably healthy and I’ll almost always use it.  The first time I asked for no brown sugar, assuming it meant plain.  It came out with the ‘cream’ sauce and was too sweet to eat.  Even the kids thought it was too sweet (and this was without the brown sugar).  I ended up eating out the apples and cranberries.  The next time I asked for only oatmeal, hot water and fruit and it came out as just instant oatmeal with fruit.  Much better.

Has anyone tried the McDonald’s oatmeal?

 

Alphabet Soup (or ABCs of Me)

Getting on the ABC meme that is sweeping the healthy living blog world.  Because you are all just waiting on baited breath to know me more, huh?  🙂

(A) Age: 34 – which makes me ancient in the food blog world

(B) Bed Size: King Sleep Number.  We bought it back in our Dual Income One Kid days.  Worth every penny (and it did cost a lot of them)

(C) Chore You Hate: I despise cleaning the master shower.  It has shown me who is boss and I have backed away.  If you come visit, you’ll get to use the much cleaner guest tub/shower.

(D) Dogs? Not now, but soon.  I had a rule that I’d only clean up bathroom messes from one species at a time and my little guy is just about 95% potty trained.  My little girl asks for one daily.

(E) Essential Start Your Day Item: Hot Tea (lately green jasmine or oolong) or hot lemon water

(F) Favorite Color: Blue

(G) Gold or Silver? Silver.

(H) Height: 5’4″

(I) Instruments You Play: None.  No musical talent whatsoever.

(J) Job Title: Stay At Home Mom.  The salary is awful.

(K) Kids: I would assume the answer to J indicates the answer to this question.  Two – one boy, one girl

(L) Live: San Antonio, TX

(M) Mom’s Name: Dilly.  Not really, but we like to call her that.

(N) Nicknames: Sea Shell, Shell, Bird Brain

(O) Overnight Hospital Stays? Both births.  Although, be warned, you may stay overnight, but they wake you up like every 7 minutes to check on something.

(P) Pet Peeve: Selfishness and insincerity.

(Q) Quote from a Movie: “I carried a watermelon” and ‘it’s like an orange on a toothpick.’

(R) Right or Left Handed? Righty

(S) Siblings: Younger brother and younger sister

brother, sister in law, sister, husband, me

(T) Time You Wake Up? If it’s not kid prompted, usually around 6:30.  For most of the last 5 years, though, it is whenever I hear ‘Mama?’

(U) Underwear: Yes.

(V) Vegetable You Dislike: Olives.  Just typing the word makes me a bit quesy.

What Makes You Run Late: Umm, these two:

(X) X-Rays You’ve Had Done: My neck once after a car accident.  Dental x-rays.

(Y) Yummy Food You Make: I’d like to think most all of it is yummy.  I’m particularly partial to Chocolate Coconut Raw Macaroons, Broccoli Orange Cilantro Salad and Curried Quinoa with Chickpeas and Apples.

(Z) Zoo, Favorite Animal: I’ve always had a thing for flamingos.  The San Antonio zoo, however, has an Alpaca and I am quite fond of him and his unique look.

 

What is your favorite movie quote?

I came, I posed, I sweated.

I successfully completed my first Bikram class.  All 90 hot and sweaty minutes.  The instructor told me my only goal as a Bikram first-timer was to stay in the room for the entire session.  That made me a bit apprehensive, but I went on in.

It was hot.  I was nervous, but stubbornly determined.  The instructor walked in and announced there was a first timer and announced my name and asked some students to volunteer to move in front of me so I could watch them.  Not quite the subtle ‘oh don’t notice me’ vibe I was going for.  Nice.

The opening breathing exercises were very odd and didn’t seem natural to me at all.  I did them, but got even more worried about what the next 80ish minutes would entail.  Thankfully the rest of the poses were somewhat familiar.  I could do most of the poses in their basic form, which was encouraging.  There were some folks in the class who were clearly advanced and doing very impressive expressions of the poses.  Not me.  I was just praying not to fall too much.

Overall, it was a good workout, but I didn’t find it life changing.  Some of the Bikram fans seem almost cult-like in their devotion, so I was curiously wondering if I would leave the class on some sort of high.  I really just left hot.  It felt like a nice work out and I am mildly sore in my obliques and hamstrings today, but I’ve felt more excited and pumped up after an Insanity workout.

I have 9 more classes on my 10 card class (shout out to Groupon for making this possible), and I intend on going several more times.  There is still more time to convert me…..and to give me this physique….

Just how hot is Hot Yoga?

Greeting you with my bare face on this Friday morning.  That’ll wake you up!

I just wanted to preserve my image this morning, in case I don’t make it.  You see, I’m off to my very first Bikram Yoga class today.  Bikram Yoga – where you practice yoga in a 100 degree room.  For 90 long minutes.  I’m really nervous and wondering if I’ll make it through the first 10 minutes, much less the whole 90 minute.  Yes, I do live in Texas and am no stranger to heat, but I don’t typically spend an hour and a half in the heat unless there is a swimming pool involved.

Any Bikram fans out there?

What I Ate Wednesday

This weekly installment of our daily eats isn’t quite as exciting as the Valentine’s Day or Snow Day versions.  Today was a pretty normal Wednesday, no holidays or frozen precipitation to celebrate.

I started my day at 4 am for no particular reason, just unable to sleep.  I snuck downstairs and watched last week’s Glee.  If I can’t be sleeping, watching Glee isn’t a bad 2nd alternative.  🙂

Once the munchkins awoke we started our morning.  I had a slice of Rustic Banana Oat Cake from Oh She Glows (I left out the chocolate chips and didn’t do the glaze).

The boy had Banana Cake, apples, frozen blueberries and frozen peaches.  The girl didn’t like the cake, so she had toast with jelly, apples, frozen blueberries and frozen peaches.

Wednesday is a preschool day, so I packed their lunches.  This is a recycled photo, but my kids eat pretty much the same lunch each preschool day.  The girl likes cheese + tortillas, while the boy likes pb&j.

We got in the car and I had a driving snack of hot lemon water and some cut up veggies (in my super fancy kid’s plastic cup).

I dropped off the kids and skipped happily to the car and headed to Starbucks for my third round of breakfast.  China Green Tips tea and an orange, enjoyed while catching up on Facebook and then doing some Bible Study.  Facebook and the Good Book.  That’s how I roll.

After a fantastic and much needed yoga class, I dropped by the store for bananas and came out $30 later with more than bananas.  Including a little treat for myself, Kombucha.

I started to make my salad and when it came time for the lime juice, I had to head to the study to pick a lime of the ‘fruit cart’ that my daughter assembled last night.  See the black scarf?  She uses it to pull the fruit cart around the house, dropping oranges in her trail.  If you come over in a few weeks and find a moldy orange behind a bookshelf, you’ll know why.

See that blue paper contraption?

Want a closer look?  It is an ocean for Ariel (aka The Little Mermaid).

Gratuitous Construction Paper Cleavage Shot…..

Back to the salad.  Get your mind out of the gutter.  Or the blue construction paper sea.  🙂

I had one of my favorite salad combinations and caught up on laundry folding while catching up on a November episode of The Good Wife (I’m really behind).  My kind of multitasking – laundry and tv.

field greens + avocado + cilantro + lime juice+ macadamia oil+ hemp seeds

I was still a little hungry, so I had my second lunch of the day while gazing at the folded laundry and enjoying the quiet.

1/2 a frozen pizza – sometimes I eat like a rabbit, other times like a teenage boy

As with most Wednesdays, my 5 hours of kid-free time goes by in what feels like 20 minutes.  I picked up my munchkins and came home to start the afternoon routine.

The kids had snacks, complete with oranges picked off the fruit cart.

banana cake + cara cara oranges + tortilla + avocado triscuits

For dinner we had some crockpot lentil soup, Coscto sourdough bread and fruit.  Because it was a long afternoon with some cranky kids, I enjoyed my lentils with a nice Malbec.  No offense to the soup, but I enjoyed the wine the most.

How was your Wednesday?

Linking up with Peas and Crayons What I Ate Wednesday.