Happy Easter

Weekly Menu
Monday: Risotto
Tuesday: Spinach, Feta, Egg White Frittata with Fruit and Hashbrowns
Wednesday: Chilled Noodle Salad with Mango
Thursday: Fish Tacos
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Hummus Pitas
Sunday: Easter Dinner, I'm bringing baked beans

Weekly Pantry List
Olive oil, fresh garlic, milk (5 Tbsp), 1 egg, mayonnaise (2 Tbsp), soya sauce, yeast, flour, sugar, brown sugar, white wine (2 cups), Montreal Steak Spice, bread crumbs, Special K cereal (or Rice Crispies), cumin, lemon juice

Weekly Grocery List
parmesan cheese, 1 cup
feta cheese
pizza cheese (or use some feta)
sour cream (need 3 Tbsp)
eggs (6 egg whites)
Firm white fish (enough for fish tacos for all)
5 tomatoes
cherry tomatoes (1 cup)
bean sprouts (1 cup)
spinach (about 4 stuffed cups)
coleslaw mix
cucumber
mushrooms (for pizza)
3 red onion
3 onions (1 for pizza)
4 red skinned potatoes (or more for hashbrowns)
1 bunch green onions
1 large carrot
1 ripe mango
4 limes
3 avocados
cilantro
fresh mint
fresh basil
fruit (for fruit salad)
3 baby peppers
12 mushrooms
1 red onion
2 tomatoes
1/2 zucchini
fresh basil
1/3 bulb of fennel
arugula (need 2 cups)
unsalted peanuts (1 cup)
1 19 oz can of chickpeas
1 19 oz can of red kidney beans
arbio rice (2 cups)
8oz rice-stick noodles, medium width
1 carton veggie stock
flour or corn tortillas (or MASA flour)
whole wheat pitas
These are for the leftover risotto and could be altered or substituted with whatever you have left over in your fridge.

Leftover Risotto
It's amazing the differences between Hannah and Harper. You'd think because they come from the same gene pool they would be a lot alike. But really they are very different. The morning is a perfect example.

When Harper wakes up it's like there is a switch that gets turned on. There's no slow return to consciousness, it's up and at 'em right away. This morning she was out of bed, "GeMornin Mommy, I go downstairs!" So I hear her go down the stairs, run at full force to the kitchen and drag the stool over to the cupboard, the whole time yelling, "My have bekfast!" She is a constant ball of energy in the morning, only sitting long enough to have her usual three breakfasts. Between these breakfasts she runs from room to room chattering constantly and moving from one activity to another until she finally finds what she wants to do. She's also the morning greeter who runs over to whomever has emerged from upstairs calling out, "GeMornin, Daddy (or Hannah or Momma)!"

Hannah will get up and make her way to our bed, if she hasn't already at some point during the night, looking for a warm parent to give her a cuddle and help her wake up. If she finds one of us in bed she snuggles up and wraps herself around you so that her long limbs mixed with your morning fuzziness make it difficult to tell how you'll ever get free. Although, I can't say I mind being trapped in a morning snuggle with her in a nice warm bed. She will lay quietly for a few minutes, depending how tired she is, and you think that she is dosing lightly like you, she's not. She's actually either coming up with the most difficult question of your parenting career (at least since yesterday morning), or she's recalling some little tiny event that happened at least two years ago and preparing to ask you about it without actually disclosing any of the details like, "Why did you say that it was green?" These questions will leave you completely stupefied but she'll  be patient with you and walk you out of your morning fog to bring you up to speed. Eventually you will detangle from each other and come downstairs where Hannah will play quietly for awhile before being ready to eat her breakfast.

Recipe
I think that I have already posted a risotto, it is just so easy and great for using up leftovers. The following veggies are what I had to use up, really whatever you have to use up will work as well.

olive oil

3 baby peppers, cut in inch size pieces
12 mushrooms, quartered
1 red onion, roughly chopped
2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 zucchini, roughly chopped
6 cloves of garlic, 3 chopped and 3 pressed
little handful of fresh basil, chopped (leaves and stalks)
1/3 bulb of fennel
1 19 oz can of red kidney beans

2 cups arugula

2 cups arbio rice

2 cups of white wine (roughly)
4 cups of veggie stock
1 cup parmesan cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 400F.
Dump all your veggies in a roasting pan, using the chopped garlic, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil, about 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup depending on your leftover veggies. Put the pan in the oven and roast for about 30 to 40 minutes.

In a saucepan heat stock and leave on simmer. Heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil in a large skillet and add the pressed garlic and saute for a few seconds, then add the rice, stir until the rice become opaque and coated with oil. Add the wine to the rice and stir until no liquid remains. Add the stock to the pan a cup at a time and stir, waiting until the liquid is absorbed before adding the next cup. While the risotto is cooking stir often but you can walk away for a little while to retrieve children if need be. Once all the stock is absorbed add the cheese and stir until melted and then add the beans to heat. Serve mixed with the veggies or with veggies on top or on the side as you like. I have made risotto without the cheese before and it works too if you're out or are trying to avoid it, it does add a little extra saltiness so you may want to adjust the seasoning.

Spinach, Feta Egg White Frittata with Fruit and Hashbrowns
When I was about ten years old I headed out on my bike. I don't remember where I was heading but as I rode down the street I watched one of our neighbor's playing catch with his son on the front lawn and BASH, I ran into a parked car. I knocked out most of my two front teeth and can remember crying myself to sleep in my mom's arms on the coach in the family room. Shortly after, I was awoken and we spent the rest of Saturday at the dentist office while they fixed my teeth. Let this be a lesson to children everywhere, watch where you're riding! Because the dental story does not end there, I'll spare you all the details along my life, but it is how I found myself in the dental chair for four hours today while they took molds and such to make me some new teeth. It is also how I found myself listening to an audio book, Water for Elephants.

The first chapter of the book is told in the voice of an old man. He talks about age and I just loved the trueness of his statements. He talks about how when you're five you know how old you are to the month, you're five or five and a half. Somewhere along the way you drop the half but you still answer the age question with an immediate and confident 23 or 27, as you get into your thirties it changes. Suddenly someone asks your age and you start to answer and then need to pause, 33? no 34...yes, I'm 34. The older you get the less certain or concerned you become (according to him). He states, "what's the difference between three weeks and three years? So, I'm 90...or 93."

I think I liked this so much because when I turned 32 I thought I was 33 and once I turned 33 I started saying I was 32. When you're younger you never think that this could happen, how could you ever loose track of your age? It's one of the things that defines you; Hannah's five, has brown hair, brown eyes etc... Her age is very important in explaining or describing who she is and, in her eyes, one of her greatest accomplishments. If you were to describe me as being 32 with brown eyes and brown hair or 33 it makes no difference, as I'm writing this, I'm thinking was it this year or last year I was confused, am I 33 or 34?

Recipe
Simple, easy and good for you. This recipe was from The Novice Chef.

Olive oil

1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
2 very full cups of spinach
1 cup egg whites, about 6 eggs
2 Tbsp milk
2 green onions, chopped
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/3 cup crumbled feta

Preheat oven to 375F and spray a 9 inch dish.
In a saucepan over medium heat saute the onions and garlic in a little olive oil until soft. Add the spinach and saute until slightly wilted.

Beat together eggs and milk in a mixing bowl; add onion, garlic, spinach, green onion, tomatoes and pour into greased 9 inch dish, sprinkle feta over top and season with a little salt (although the feta is probably salty enough) and pepper. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the middle is no longer jiggly.

Hashbrowns

Dice up 4 red skinned potatoes (or however many you like), toss with a little olive oil and Montreal Steak Spice and bake on a parchment lined baking sheet for 30 - 35 minutes, until crispy.

Serve with your favorite fruit or fruit salad.

Chilled Noodle Salad with Mango

"Momma, do you think Santa and the Easter Bunny are friends?" "I don't know what do you think Hannah?" "I think they must be friends because they both sneak around in the night."

We're gearing up for Easter weekend here, or well at least Dave is, thank goodness. Easter is Hannah's favorite holiday, we read Easter books all year round and she talks about it constantly. She likes it more than Christmas and Halloween which blows me away a little bit. So there's a little pressure to make it good, although she's fairly easy to please. I have a problem having tons of candy in the house, I eat it, but also I have trouble letting the kids eat tons of candy. I use to ration it with Hannah and she would end up having a few candies everyday for weeks, is that any better than a bunch over a couple of days? At least over a couple of days they're gone quickly and we can move on, right? To avoid the mountain of Easter candy, the Easter Bunny brings a gift for the girls and hides a few things like playdough and bubbles and a little candy, genius or boring depending how you look at it. Easter seems to sneak up on me every year, luckily Dave's on the ball and has been collecting the gardening toys and candy for the girls all week (as well as hiding the candy from me, it's a little pathetic, I know - I feel like I need to clarify that I ask him to hide it). I think that we are ready and have the whole long weekend stretched in front of us!

Recipe
I use to have a subscription to Vegetarian Time and found this recipe in it. You can find it on the web site here, I do alter it ever so slightly. This is one of my favorites for the summer, you know how I said I could drink that dressing last week? Well, this one is the same, perhaps because it has 1/2 cup of brown sugar in it!

Dressing

1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup fresh lime juice (2 - 3 limes)
1/4 cup soya sauce
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 red jalapeno, finely chopped (I leave this out because Hannah doesn't seem to like any spice)

Heat all ingredients in a sauce pot over low heat until the sugar is dissolved.


Salad

8 oz of dried rice-stick noodles, medium width

1 large carrot scraped in ribbons with the peeler

1 cup bean sprouts

1/2 cucumber, cut in half and sliced thinly crosswise

1 1/2 cups spinach, chopped

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

1/2 cup mint, chopped

1/2 cup basil, chopped

1 green onion, chopped

1 ripe mango, sliced in strips

1 cup peanuts unsalted, ground and then lightly toasted

Soak rice noodles in cold water for 15 minutes and then put them into a pot of boiling water and cook for 5 minutes. Once noodles are ready, drain and rinse with cold water. Mix all ingredients in a large salad bowl, except spinach and toss with dressing. Place a little spinach in the bottom of each serving bowl and add the salad and toss together, this way if there are leftovers the spinach doesn't get all soggy.

Fish Tacos
Hannah and I read these books together, it's a series called Junie B Jones. These books seriously crack me up, the other day we were reading one where the boy she liked told her he thought they should chase other people (they're in kindergarten). Today it was dreary and rainy outside and we had a new one from the library. When Harper went for a nap, we curled up together on the couch under two cozy blankets and read the whole book together. We both giggled and laughed at Junie B, it was definitely the perfect rainy afternoon!

Recipe
I know that I have already put up fish tacos but this one is a little different than the last.

Tortillas (I still can't find MASA flour these days so I bought mine) flour or corn.
Olive oil
firm white fish (we used cod)
1 egg, beaten
3 Tbsp of milk
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
1 cup Special K cereal, crushed

Cut fish into 2 inch strips. Mix the egg and milk together in a bowl and the bread crumbs and crushed cereal together in another bowl. Heat 1 to 2 Tbsp of oil in a pan over medium heat and dredge the fish through the egg and then the crumbs and fry in pan in batches until all is cooked, drain on paper towel lined plate.

2 cups coleslaw mix
juice of 1 lime
3 Tbsp sour cream
2 Tbsp mayonnaise

Mix all ingredients together and set aside.

2 ripe avocados
1 small tomato, deseeded and chopped
1 tsp cumin
1 large clove garlic, pressed
juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp fried onions

Mash avocados and mix in all other ingredients and set aside.

2 tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped red onion
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Mix together and set aside

I also fried some onions up to add because I've decided that everything tastes better with fried onions.

Put a little of everything in your tortilla and enjoy!

Pizza
It's Good Friday and so Dave's home and we decided to start on the yard work. We have these tall cedars that block all our sun in the front and this beautiful but very sick tree in the back that needs to come down. So we all meandered down to my parents to borrow the chainsaw and Dave cut them all down. The girls were playing back and forth between the front and backyard all day as we were cleaning up the trees and trimming others. Hannah came out to me and said there are these birds in the backyard that are going all crazy! We go back and there's two birds that are flying all around very distraught, landing on the fence and then taking off again over the area where we took down the tree. There wasn't a nest in the tree but it was clearly impratant to them. So now I'm distraught and so is Hannah, we're all in the backyard and I'm apologizing to the birds and trying to explain how we had to take it down because it was sick (so now my neighbors probably think I'm a little crazy). I hope that they find a new tree to love and also stop circling the backyard because now, I think I'm more creeped out than distraught...did you ever see the movie The Birds? If so, you know what I mean.

We had pizza for dinner, if you need a recipe there's one here.

Hummus Pitas
We spent the whole entire day in the yard today, Dave and I are beat. It took a total of four loads to the dump, all the trimmings are gone and two roots are removed (only eight to go). The girls were out all day as well, except for Harper's nap. They were very helpful, Hannah hauled branches to the trailer, dug in the dirt and helped Dave tie the tarp down on the dump loads. It's so funny how things we find to be hard work are so much fun for little ones. Although I have to tell you, I do love a day of yard work, lunch outside, a cold beer at break time, and the sleepy lull feeling after it's all done and I'm showered and it's close to bedtime. Although we do have a little hiding to do this evening.

So I had already written the bit before I put Hannah to bed but I have to add this. Hannah gets to stay up five minutes longer (I know it's not very long, she doesn't seem to care and loves the extra time) than Harper, we use this time to do whatever she wants to do, usually we play a game or do a puzzle together. Tonight she told me she wanted to make an Easter surprise and asked for the markers and told me I couldn't watch. I sat on the couch and watched the hockey game and she set to work. She then asked me for the extra Easter basket and set to work hiding whatever it was she was making. When we went up to her room she let it slip seven times that she had decorated eggs from the fridge and hid them. I'm pretty sure she didn't realize that she let it slip and I didn't say anything, I just silently counted to see how many times it would happen. She then continued to talk and speculate about the hidden surprises and where the Easter Bunny would hide the eggs, letting it slip where hers were hidden. She then talked about what would happen if one of her surprises were to break and leak oil everywhere, her pride for being sneaking and using the word oil instead of yoke beamed through her little face. She was so adorable I just wanted to devour her. Dave just checked on her and she's lying in bed with a huge smile on her face, fully awake, and very proud that she did not tell me about the surprise. She also told him she hid four...she thinks (we may be slightly concerned about the unknown amount of real eggs hidden in our house), and left one in the fridge so I wouldn't be suspicious when I went to have my breakfast (I eat one poached egg every morning).

Recipe
I was really tired at dinner and forgot to take a photo.

Hummus

1 19 oz chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 clove garlic

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp salt (if needed)

¼ cup water (more to achieve desired consistency)

1/4 cup cilantro (optional)

Put all ingredients in a food processor and whirl until smooth, or desired consistency

Pitas
Hummus
2 tomatoes. sliced
half a cucumber, sliced
1 avocado, sliced
feta, sliced
red onion thinly sliced
any leftover basil or mint you may have

Load everything up on a pita, fold over and enjoy!

Happy Easter
Hannah was up at 4:20 this morning waiting to hunt for eggs. We're pretty sure she did not go back to sleep. Harper got up at 7:00 and that's when we all came down to hunt for eggs, me included. Hannah's excitement for the eggs she hid quickly dissipated when she saw the gardening toys on the table and spotted her first chocolate egg. I found five beautifully decorated eggs (we hope that's all of them), one sitting on a living room chair, luckily no one sat on it. Hannah and Harper hunted for eggs, although it was tough to get Harper to look instead of eat. Hannah lead Harper around the house and pointed out eggs to her so she could find some. At one point during the hunt Hannah walked around the dinning room table and an egg just fell, as if out of no where (or from the top of the chair). Once all the eggs were found, we found her in the dinning room walking around and around the table waiting to see if another would fall.

We had Easter dinner at my cousin's and it was so fun. The kids all ran and played together and ate dinner around little tables. They laughed and paraded around the house chanting some chant. Hannah said the best part of the night was playing with her cousins and eating chocolate. Our Easter dinner is Ham (well not mine, but for some), schwarties, roasted veggies, baked beans, killer coleslaw, green salad (with strawberries, nuts and I think goat cheese), cabbage rolls and different yummy bread from Stella's Bakery. It was delicious and there was also chocolate cake, cookies, apple pie and cheese cake.

I made the baked beans and found another recipe as I was not happy with my old one. This one turned out really good. It's from Honoring Health.

Boston Baked Beans
1.5 lbs dry navy beans
water
1 large onions, chopped
1 tsp salt
1 cup ketchup
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
1/2 tbsp dry mustard
2/3 cup blackstrap molasses
1/4 cup dark amber agave nectar (or 1/3 cup brown sugar)

Rinse and pick over the dry beans for debris. Soak beans in enough water to cover by a couple of inches overnight. Once soaked, rinse the beans very well and place in a large soup pot and cover with 4 inches of water. Bring to a boil and boil for about 45 minutes until the beans are tender. Drain the cooked beans and place in the crock pot with the remaining ingredients. Simmer in the crock pot on high for 2 to 4 hours until all of the flavors are well combined.

I hope you all had a really great weekend and a great Easter (if you celebrate). Have a wonderful week, I hope the sun shines down on you!