And Another Thing...

The Breakfast Battle

A few months ago I decided that I'd had it up to here with the lousy breakfast habits of my children (nevermind mine, do what I say and all that...).  I really wanted to get them off cereal for many reasons; purchasing less milk, more nutrition, less processed food to name a few.  We only ever buy Cheerios, so it's not like they were eating sugar for breakfast, but still, there are better things they could be eating first thing in the day.  I tried nagging them, bribing them, beating them pleading with them, but none of those things work.  Habits are hard to break when we want to, let alone when we're perfectly happy. 

I finally decided that the only way to make this happen was to devise a menu and prepare breakfast for them each morning.  I am not a morning person, so this is a major sacrifice for me.  I finally settled on a weekly breakfast menu and put it into action.  It goes a little something like this:

• Monday - Breakfast cookies
• Tuesday - Smoothie
• Wednesday - scrambled egg
• Thursday - pancakes and sausage
• Friday - oatmeal
• Saturday and Sunday - leftovers

This has worked really well for us for several months now and it has successfully gotten the kids off cereal, for the most part.  I make a big batch of breakfast cookies on Monday because they can choose to eat them for breakfast any other morning until they are gone.  On Thursdays I make a triple batch of pancakes and then freeze the leftovers so that they can pop those in the toaster oven when they want to as well. 

I was very surprised when this method actually worked as well as it did.  We're enjoying eating breakfast together most mornings and the kids really like that I have taken the time to prepare something for them to start their day on.  If they really don't want to eat what I make (Olivia doesn't like smoothie and Benjamin hates oatmeal, for example) there will always be leftovers from another day that they can eat.

I love that I can control that much more of what goes into their bodies and that I don't have to fight them about it.  Now, that may be because they're too groggy, but hey, I'll take what I can get!  I know I could buy toaster waffles or or organic pop tarts, but by giving it that much more effort, I ensure that they get sinple, nutritious food with only ingredients that we can all pronounce.

So, the next big step for me is implementing a lunch menu.  I have been waiting until I really got the breakfast thing down before I attempted preparing an organized lunch.  When I get that going, I'll let ys know!

And just because I know you'll ask:

Breakfast Cookies

• 1 c. butter, melted (i often use 1/2 c. butter + 1/2 c. coconut oil)
• 3/4 c. honey
• 2 eggs
• 1 t. salt
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1/2 c. plain yogurt (or milk or buttermilk or kefir)
• 2 c. whole wheat flour
• 2 c. rolled oats (NOT steel-cut oats)
• 1/2 c. coconut
• 1 c. raisins
• 1 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips(or whatever your preference is)

Mix the first 11 ingredients together and then add in the raisin and chocolate chips.  Scoop large (really big, I use one of those ice cream scoops with the scooping arm thing, very easy!)) spoonfuls of batter on to baking tray, bake at 350F for 18 minutes. yields 12-15 cookies per batch (I've have actually found that I get more like 20 some cookies per batch, but that probably is just the way I scoop or the added coconut or something).  Lately, I have been leaving out the raisins (Olivia's request) and adding in about 1/2 of peanut butter.  The kids really dig this.  Enjoy!

Tasty Tuesday :: Farro with Roasted Root Veggies

Farro with Roasted Root Veggies

• 2 cups farro  ( apparently you should soak the farro in salted water for a few hours, I did not and it turned out fine.  If you do have the foresight to do that, omit the salt below.)
• 5 cups water
• a couple of pinches of sea salt
• 2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
• 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
• 2 large carrots, peeled and sliced
• 2medium apples, cored and diced
• a couple of handfuls of chopped walnuts

 

Heat your oven to about 450-500 degrees, depending on how much time you have.  Toss the veggies, apples and walnuts in to a greased 9x11 baking dish and put them in the oven for about an hour or so or until they seem done to you. 

Meanwhile, rinse the farro if you did not soak it and put it into a large pot with the water and salt (omit if you soaked them).  Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer for 30-40 minutes.  They will wait nicely in the pot (without heat) after they are done if the veggies are not done yet.

When the veggies are done, transfer everything to serving dishes if that's your style and serve!  Ours was great with freshly baked bread and homemade applesauce.  All the kids and parents loved this one!

 

 

 

 

Baking Bread for a Crowd

There are 7 of us living in this house, not including pets.  Two of which are teenage boys who eat like there might not be food left tomorrow (they may be right, but only because they've eaten it all!)  So when I bake or cook, it's always for a crowd.  A few years ago, I found a fabulous bread recipe in the LLL cookbook.  3 loaves of bread with 8 cups of flour.  Amazing.  Oh, and start to finish warm, delicious bread; 1 hour.  No joke.

One Hour Dinner Bread

(slightly modified)

4 TBS. yeast                                        1/2 C butter (melted)

4 TBS vinegar                                     3/4 C potato flakes

3 C warm water                                  1 3/4 tsp. salt

1/4 C honey                                        1 C. dry whole milk powder

2 eggs                                                    8 C whole wheat flour

Dissolve yeast in water with honey in large bowl.  Add eggs, butter, salt, milk powder and flour stirring to moisten.  Let stand for 5 minutes.  Knead for 5 minutes, adding additional flour if needed.  Divide into 3 loaves, place in greased 4x8 loaf pans.  Let rise in warm oven for 20 minutes.  WIthout removing bread, heat oven to 35o degrees.  Bake for 30 minutes.  You now have 3 loaves of delicious nutritious bread.  This is a good basic recipe for a beginner and can be varied in many ways to make hot rolls, cinnamon rolls, raisin bread, etc. just use your imagination.  It is also very economical - you get 3 loaves of bread from 8 cups of flour.  THis recipe has your bread mixed, kneaded and baked in 1 hour.  My family loves it.  Happy baking!  Yeild: 36 servings.

(from Whole Foods for the Whole Family)

 

 

 

Wall Ensemble Tutorial

I put together this really quick, no-sew, super cute wall emsemble today after I found the main fabric at JoAnn.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it belonged in my kitchen.

 

It was so easy that I thought I would write up a little tutorial so you all can try it if you want.  You'll need:

• fabric scraps big enough for embroidery hoops
• 1 embroidery hoop for each fabric (I used all different sizes, but you could do any combo)
• hot glue gun and glue sticks
• scissors 

Lay out your fabric with the embroidery hoops and make sure you have enough fabric.

Place the fabric on top of the inner hoop and then place the outer hoop over the fabric.  Tighten the screw at the top to secure the fabric.  Gently pull on the fabric to make it taught and tighten the screw again.

Turn the hoop back over and apply hot glue all the way around the edge of the inner hoop, pressing the fabric onto it as you go.

Cut the fabric close to the hoop all the way around.
 
Hang  you beautiful new wall hangings on the wall and enjoy!

See, that was so easy!  Hopefully these instructions make sense, let me know if you have any trouble.

August??? What August???

And for that matter, I missed half of September as well!  Things have been so crazy here lately, I won't even go into all the things that have happened to keep me away from this space.  Mostly, our family life and the goings on here have been quite overwhelming for me to even process, let alone write about.  I do have several things to share from the last few weeks, but it will take a few days. 

The most exciting and stressful thing has been our kitchen rennovation.  Things look so different in that room, it's amazing.  At thid point, the wall color has been updated, the new floor is in and the new cabinets are installed.  I have pre-counter tops and Oliver is working on the bookshelf so that he can fully install the counters.  Yes, yes, pictures will be up soon!

We started our new "school" year last week and things are chugging along just fine.  I would love to say that learning happens all the time here, and it does, but we really take the summers off from anything even remotely formal because the kids have "school" friends that are off then and all my best laid plans fall apart.

Our "Steady Routine" is falling into place and is making life here much calmer and happier.  I envy those family who can fully live an unschooling life, but we really need a bit more structure to make things work here.  As much as I love to sleep in, I have found that I am a better mama if I have an hour to myself in the morning without anyone pulling on me or asking me questions.  So I get up at 7 and let the kids sleep until about 8 and then we're off with a bang!  I'm posting a scan of our routine here so you can see how it works.  I highly encourage you to head over to Steady Days and check it out for yourself.

So, there it is, you now know what we are (or should be) doing at any given point during the day.  The great part about this routine is that we can change or abandon it whenever the mood strikes us.   We're not stuck with it, but we do use it to fall back on when things are getting crazy and it makes our family groove. 

Well, now I have to go sort through pictures to (hopefully) get some more posts up here.  I'll try not to abandon you again for so long, but I can't make any promises.

What I'm loving today...

:: this picture that I found of Olivia almost 7 years ago

:: that I apparently have the power to bring on the rain just by watering my veggies

:: Saragh scolding her guinea pig for being rude and not saying thank you when she feeds him.

:: my kids getting so excited when I come home with really good deals from the thrift stores.

:: my parents living 4 minutes away and willing to babysit so I can make an Ikea run

:: a tidy house after 20 minutes of cooperative cleaning

:: the realization of a functional kitchen; 4 years in the making.

:: my husband, because he's not going anywhere and I am absolutely sure of that.

In the works...

Soon, very soon...

Science Friday :: Milk Swirls

What you need:

• A saucer
• milk (not skim)
• food coloring
• dish soap

What to do:

Pour a bit of milk into the saucer, add several drops of food coloring in different colors. 

 

Carefully pour one drop of dish soap into the milk and see what happens!

You can add more drops of dish soap and/or more food coloring to get different effects.

 

What happens:  The food coloring sits on the fat molecules in the milk.  When you pour the dish soap in, it breaks up the fat and the food coloring along with it.  We tried this several times doing something a bit different each time and we got really cool effects!

Warning!!! A post in which I totally make myself vulnerable...

So, I don't usually like to talk about my body with total strangers, but I am about to embark on a body-altering adventure and I need the support.  It has recently come to my attention that I have packed on another 10 pounds on top of the extra 40 or so that I already had.  Now, I am not at all a vain person and there are weeks when I don't even think of looking in a mirror (5 kids will do that to you!).  However, when I saw this picture of myself, I nearly died.

I am the one in brown (for those of you who don't know me).  Not the cute preggo girl in pink (isn't she adorable!?!?!)  So the thing is, I dressed in that outfit thinking it was really cute and kind of bohemian.  Little did I know that it shows every divot and roll.  

Well, it really got me thinking that I am not taking good care of myself and I am not treating myself with the respect I deserve.  I am normally the person who is spouting things about the media skewing our vision of our bodies and that as long as a person is happy with themselves that should be the end of the discussion.  Well, I am not happy with myself right now. 

If I knew for a fact that I was eating as healthily as I could and getting proper exercise I think that I could be okay with the size I am.  After all, I am what I am because of the beautiful children that I have.  Or at least that's what I told myself as I was packing on the pounds.  If I was bright eyed and bushy tailed every morning and bouncing right out of bed to greet the day, I could be okay with myself.  If I could run up and down the 2 flights of stairs in my house and not even notice, I could be okay.  If I had the motivation to get stuff done and play with my kids, I could be okay.

But none of those "ifs" actually exist right now and that is what I am out to change.  So this week I went back on the Raw Food Detox diet and I started doing pilates again.  I found a Zumba class that I can walk to and I will be going to yoga classes as well.  I know that sounds like a lot, but I have a lot of work to do. 

(I also have decided that the blond highlights wash me out and I will ask for lowlights the next time I get my hair done :o))

Finding my motivation

Recently, I rediscovered Motivated Moms.  I have used these housework planners before, but never with much success.  I could not wrap my brain around cleaning only one shelf of the refrigerator or one part of the bathroom at a time.  That just seemed like such a waste. 

However, things have really gotten out of hand around here, at least as far as I'm concerned.  The house has gotten to the point that I felt like it was completely pointless to even start cleaning, the thought of it was really overwhelming. I decided that something had to be done. 

So I did something that I don't normally do.  I sat on the thought for a while before I initiated a new cleaning program.  I investigated several different methods and rejected most of them, but I kept coming back to the Motivated Moms website to check out the housework planners. 

Where once I thought the whole system to be overwhelming and illogical, I could now see the beauty and sense of it all.  So, I bought the half-size weekly planner, printed it out and immediately set to work.  This is my second week using it now and I am loving it.  I'm finding it very easy to get the chores done and things are beginning to run much more smoothly around here.

My hope is that I can keep this up for the long run and keep my household in tip top shape with minimal stress and fuss.