Meals and recipes!

This blog is for MamaKate, but I felt like sharing it with the rest of you. I thought it was kind of long for a comment on her blog so I just linked her over here to read this! So here you go!


Right now my favorite cookbook is the one from Forks over Knives. It's mostly gluten free.

Meals we eat? We usually eat just breakfast and lunch/dinner spaced appropriately so it's only 2 meals a day so that's what I plan for.

Let's see, yesterday the kids ate granola and fruit for breakfast with rice milk. I had a leftover boiled potato mashed up with avocado and salsa. (I love savory foods and eat them often for breakfast.) My hubby has a cold right now so for breakfast he's been doing green smoothies (apple, banana, orange juice, leafy greens, maybe some nuts).

Lunch yesterday was lentil soup. I love lentils with tomato sauce or diced tomatoes. I also added some taco seasoning to it. We had sliced tomatoes and I cooked up some swiss chard as well.

Today breakfast was the last of the granola and potato pancakes that I made topped with ketchup and salsa.

Lunch was leek/fennel soup with cashew cream mixed in. I didn't add a whole lot, except some cayenne powder and some garlic and onion.

Usually we try to eat something raw and something cooked. Things like rice and stir fry with tofu and a salad. Or baked potatoes with salsa and tomatoes. I love soups so we do bean soups or vegetable soups. I make nut gravies and creams if I want the extra body or just puree the soup a little.

A favorite meal at our house is what we call haystacks. Basically it's taco salad. We do chips on the bottom. Add beans, maybe rice, then any salad toppings you want. I like lettuce, tomatoes, guacamole or just chopped avocacdo, olives and onions, salsa and maybe garbanzo beans or hummus.

Breakfast menu this week will be smoothies and granola and fruit. One of the kids wants oat patties so I'll have to make some and probably gravy to go on top. One day will be muesli. Basically, that's banana, pineapple juice and coconut milk blended and poured over raw oats then left in the fridge overnight. I do that one for Sabbath morning so I don't have to do much when we are in a rush.

Anyway, the dinner menu for this coming week that the kids and I put together this morning is as follows:

Today was leek/fennel soup, my own recipe taken partly from some cookbook and partly from my own head. Not sure which.

The next 5 days will be:
1. Taco salad aka haystacks
2. Stir fry
3. PBJ sandwiches (which means I'll have to make gf bread)
4. Spanish rice and beans w/ avocado
5. Pizza.

Some of these recipes were ideas from the Forks over Knives cookbook and of course number 3 was the little one's idea. The pizza is an idea from The Earth Diet. It's a raw version, which I may adapt and just cook it. I usually don't follow a recipe exactly unless I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I use recipes just to get ideas and then kind of do my own thing!

Have a great day!

Some Pictures

Sarah exploring 

John hard at work writing

View over my writing at the boys doing theirs.

Under the piano bench

Joshua writing his verses

Even Jeffrey is writing his verse



Here is a video of Sarah in the kitchen. I just get a kick out of how she gets around!  Sarah scooting

Journal entry, I guess.

I've been really bad at getting pictures uploaded recently though I have taken a few of them. But as the weather has warmed up we have been getting out more and doing more.

This week, we started planning our garden and actually got out there and raked and today planted and watered a few seeds. Each of the boys has a section of their own and are very excited about it. Sarah sat in the dirt and seemed fascinated by the expanse of compost and all the sticks and grass around her. She didn't try to go anywhere, just sat still and watched.

In the house, I printed a checklist for spring cleaning, thinking it might help me get the boys involved in the organization and cleanup as well as the de-cluttering of our lives.  I figure if I go through it one item at a time, we'll have spring cleaning done and gone through the entire house by the end of summer, at which time it will probably be time to start over again. :-)

I weighed myself this morning and my scale read 140, which means it's more likely to be about 145 lbs. I only have about 10 more pounds to go to be at my ideal weight so yay!

Well, I think that is all for now.

Let's begin Again!

Well, I managed to get rid of the papers that needed to be filed and some others as well. It's a start. Since my last post, I even managed to go through my dresser drawers and closet and weed out the ones that were too small, or that I never wore anymore, or just didn't like. I even found some cute outfits for Sarah in the mess of clothes that I sorted through from various people that had been piled in the walkway between the bed and the dresser, and stuffed under the crib. So her drawer is now neat and organized again and has only clothes that fit her.

I took the kids picnic table out of the kitchen onto the front porch and varnished it finally. So now I need to figure out where to put it. The twins are almost too big to use it for eating at now, and we are enjoying the extra space in the kitchen. I may relegate it to the boys room for play.

Sabbath we were blessed by the Daystar academy choir, half of it anyway, during church service. Then in the afternoon, Victor and I watched Doug Batchelor give the lesson on the Sac Central website, while the boys took a hike halfway up the hill by themselves, much to their delight. They brought back a horny toad for us to see and had a great deal of fun.

Sarah has figured out how to scoot along the floor quite quickly, pushing with her feet and pulling with her hands. We had fun today enticing her with a toy and watching her move. It won't be long  until she discovers how to crawl properly.

I am hoping to get started on the garden this week. I'm hoping the kids will help me. Also, the plan is to involve them more in mealtime planning and preparation as well as getting the school schedule planned.

Well, I'm off to jump on the trampoline with the kids.  Got to get back into the swing of things, since Victor started work again today. Vacation is over!

Living with less.

I ran across a blog by a lady who is all about being organized. I guess lately she has gotten into minimizing the clutter to make it easier to be organized. Anyway, since I have a tendency to have a lot of stuff that is disorganized as well as stuff that is just clutter, I decided I would find the book she is following. Well, I didn't want to spend the money to get it but managed to find the author's blog and newsletter along with a short free version of her book.

For those who are interested, the book is called "Simple living, 30 days to less stuff and more life" by Lorilee Lippincott. She has a website www.lovingsimpleliving.com .

So, in the next few blogs, I hope to follow in along with these two ladies blogs and do the challenge of getting rid of a few things, maybe getting a little bit organized along the way and also perhaps get back on track with exercise and a few other necessary more important things in life than just being lazy. We'll see how it goes.

Sarah has a tooth that popped through over the last week and another just about to come up. It's visible anyway. Thus, she has been extra fussy, drooly, and on top of that appears to have gotten a bit of a cold which she seems to have passed on to the rest of us. Either that, or spring has arrived and the pollen counts have gone up. Everyone is a bit congested with runny noses and sneezing.

Well, I guess I can't do to much more damage here so I'm going to sign off for now.

Tomorrow's challenge will be to go through the house and take care of all pieces of paper. Throw them out or file them. We'll see how it goes.

Over and out.