MmMmTasty - a foodie mom cooks with her kids

Hijacked

Nothing illustrates a hijacked life, like zero blog posts for a month and a half.  The short of it is, we are finally moving in a couple of weeks.  The house is wonderful and we are very excited, especially about the playset in the backyard and the tree house built into a big oak - that even has a zipline!

The house has a big front porch, a big sun porch on the back, a big kitchen, a big master suite and a big backyard - pretty much perfection for our expanding family.

Getting to this point has been a journey, to say the least.  All of my spring plans of bread baking, planting and other forms of goodness were largely hijacked by pregnancy-induced dizziness (literally) and the stress of keeping our house looking perfect for the past six months.  

Thankfully the finish line is in sight!

Writing this post, points out that I need to take some pool pictures!

Now that our neighborhood pool is open, Brian and the girls have been swimming every day, and twice-a-day on the weekends.  Sizzles is jumping off the diving board all alone (into 9 ft of water) and diving in the deep end for torpedos.  That 5 year old girl is brave, brave, brave.  Of course, Sticky-Butt is right in the thick of it with her innertube, zipping around and spinning herself in endless circles.  As always with that one, every action is peppered with the sound of giggles.

Since I can't have a post without a picture, here is one from the other event that happened this spring - Sizzles' first ballet recital.

To. Die. For.

She looks so grown-up in this image, that I can barely stand it.  

She marched right out onto the stage and was the only kid that remembered the whole routine.  She might not talk for the first two weeks of school, but you throw her on a stage, flip on the lights and drag in a crowd, and that kid whips out the pizzaz!  

She was so proud.  And so was her mamma.  :)

Baking 4-Seed Bread

Pat it.  

After the pumpkin seeds were plucked out of their sight with statements like, "EW, what are these?"

"Pumpkin seeds?!"  "I don't like pumpkin seeds in my bread!" 

 "Can we make pumpkin muffins next?"

Roll it. (With a rolling pin from my grandmother's stash.)

A constant reminder that this kid has her own way of doing things.  

"This is how I knead bread, Mommy."

After two slow risings and a 45 minute bake-off, our bread was done.  It wasn't as tasty as the bread we have made using the wet method, but it was much more interesting to create, especially for the girls.  I think I prefer the process of slow-rise bread, but I need to try the basic wheat recipes (read without seeds) for the next go around.  Maybe dinner rolls?  

Hmm.  Yes, dinner rolls!  

The birthday girl

Sizzles has begun to accept that her birthday is over, despite it being three weeks ago. This year, she fully grasped the concept of "birthday girl" privileges and she enjoyed them immensely.  A week past her birthday, we were still hearing, "Can the birthday girl kick the ball first?" or  "Can the birthday girl choose what we have for breakfast?" or "Can the birthday girl pick the movie we watch?"  :)

The poor earned those special treats in the week leading up to her birthday.  She was very sick and we weren't quite sure her all-girl princess party at a local art studio was going to happen at all.  It came down to the wire.  Because of this, I didn't order the cake until 23 hours before the party.  

In the past, I have made cupcakes that her and I decorate together. This year she wanted a princess cake - from the store.  I was willing to buy a cake, but I didn't really intend to buy an outrageous entire castle of a cake.  And I certainly didn't intend to blow $60 on the sucker.  Until I saw the cake and thought about how she was only going to turn 5 once, the likelihood of her princess phase being behind us by next year, and that she WAS sick her whole birthday week.  And so I took the plunge and bought this.

It serves 35.  There were 9 five-year olds at the party. 

But, the cake was a huge hit and her favorite part of the celebration.  All the kids kept abandoning their art project decorating hairbrushes and mirrors with paint and plastic jewels, just to walk over to the cake and chat its beauty.  Apparently, one need not arrange entertainment for small girls at a birthday party, one simply needs to display an edible castle.  :)

Get ready, get set, WAIT!

I'm afraid that this pregnancy is passing me by, with all my scurrying and worrying about selling the house, finding a new house, choosing new schools for the girls, getting a new car and finances in general.  I had a prenatal appointment last week and my midwife announced that it was time to start coming every two weeks.  

"What? What do you mean?  I'm not that far along - am I?"

She replied, "You do know when your due date is, right?"

Yes, I do - July 16th.  But that seems so far away.  It has to be far away, because we are not at all ready for this baby.  I'm ready to meet the baby.  I'm certainly ready to feel healthy again.  I'm ready to be swimming in the here and now of a newborn.  But beyond that, this baby is a far away figment of my imagination.  

Oh, and I am certainly NOT ready to go through childbirth again.  I have a CONSTANT dialog going on in my head about whether or not I am up for another natural childbirth.  Simply stated - I remember.  

Moms think they want labor to begin and end in three hours flat, but I found that furious labor to be terrifying.  I would choose the nearly 24 hours of labor I had with Sizzles every time over my three hour brain scramble that was Sticky-Butt's arrival.  My labor with Sizzles paused for a couple hours in the middle, and that gave me time to get my head around it all before proceeding into the hard stuff.  Labor with Sticky-Butt felt like hanging onto the back of a run-away train with one hand.  Then getting flung off and ramming into a wall.  It left me rattled and twitchy. 

So, now that I am being forced to think about the mere twelve weeks before I board that train again, I need to come up with some strategies for mental peace.  I have been thinking about what gives me bliss.  What elements of life have left me feeling content and calm.   Here they are:

• Making my own bread
• Going to the organic farmer's market on Saturday morning or  
• Participating in my local CSA 
• Blogging REGULARLY 
• Cooking with the girls 
• Painting, coloring or drawing with the girls 
• Taking the girls to Great Harvest for some pumpkin bread  

So, here is to more blogging in the coming days, and getting back to bliss; because apparently, I need to get ready for a baby.

Back to the beginning

Things have been wildly busy around here - too busy.  Brian and I have been traveling a bit for work, putting out professional fires right and left, and trying desperately to remain fully focused on what matters in our lives - slow time with the girls.

Being that our house is for sale, we are constantly shoved out of our home for numerous showings.  We know that we should be grateful, but as the weeks flicker past and these showings don't necessarily result in legitimate offers, we find ourselves feeling mostly disrupted.  The girls also continue to acquire every respiratory pathogen circulating within a 30 mile radius.  So, uninterrupted sleep continues to be a figment of our imagination.  This does not help us.

In an effort to reclaim our lives in the midst of all this chaos.  I gathered up the girls the other day (or was it the other week!) to make banana muffins.  It seems cooking together, something I used to do with them multiple times a week, has slipped to the sidelines during these spinning times.  It felt so good to bring it back to the front and center.  

When I first began blogging, over here in 2007, one of my first posts was about our weekly muffin-making adventures.  It seems appropriate to find my way back, by going back to the beginning.  I decided to let Sizzles wield the knife, and take on the task of chopping the walnuts.  As you can see, she took her job very seriously.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), all twelve muffins were consumed so quickly by the four of us that I didn't get a picture of the finished product.  

But, I will tell you that they were mmm tasty!  :)

A little post to get back in the blogging swing

What Part of Spring Are You?

You Are Blooming Flowers

You are an optimistic person by nature. In even the darkest times, you are hopeful about the future. You feel truly blessed in life and can sometimes be overwhelmed with emotions. You have an artist's eye. You are always looking for beauty in the mundane. You have a good sense of aesthetics, especially when it comes to shapes and color.

Greetings from the beach, before we leave

I can't believe it has been merely a week since we drove for two and half hours through blinding snow,watching nervously as SUV after SUV piled up along the edges of 85 and 185, on our way to Rosemary Beach, Florida.  

Ultimately, it took us nine hours to trek the 300 or so miles to reach our annual beach vacation spot. With the baby arriving in July, and Brian traveling for part of Spring Break, we decided a March trip to the beach was best.  We didn't figure on a Southern-mini-blizzard, or beach temperatures hovering in the high 50s and low 60s for half of our vacation.  Luckily, or unluckily, the girls oscillated between illnesses on the coldest days with nights filled with barfing, fevers and pages to our home pediatrician.  There was also the fall I took, while holding Sticky-Butt, across a poorly paved sidewalk (she, myself and the baby seem fine). 

Despite all of these challenges, we have had a swell time.  It is a testament to the stress of this winter (house, jobs, school hunts, etc) and a witness to the restorative powers that a week away, set to the soundtrack of wintry waves can have on our little family.  

Here are the highlights.

As I said, "we had a swell time."  :)

A few of her favorite things and (FINALLY) we return to recipes of the week

Activity:  Music Class 

Food:  Macaroni and Cheese

Music:  Taylor Swift's song, "Love Story" & "The Lonely Goat herder" from The Sound of Music

Color:  Purple

Toys:  Her doll Charlie, Linkin' Logs and a bag of several dozen vintage handkerchiefs, hand-embroidered that I found in grandparent's radio room, a small room my grandfather used to listen to police calls and other random things he would find on his ham-radio (I think that is what he called it).

So, the recipes of week on my sidebar?  

I believe I last updated that sidebar last Fall, um, like, 25 weeks ago or something?  So, in honor of Sticky-Butt I am going to share a homemade Macaroni and Cheese dish that I found on allrecipes.com that rocked our world.  

I have never tried "cooking" in the microwave.  I pretty much use the contraption to reheat leftovers and to make instant grits.  (Yes, I know instant grits repulse many of you out there, but I really prefer them to slow cooked grits with the exception of the grits my friend Jen used to make when Brian and I would visit their two bedroom cottage in Cahaba Heights, Alabama circa 1999 or so).

But back to the recipe. 

No one in the house really digs mac and cheese all that much, except Sticky Butt, who LOVES it. I have always felt if I found the right recipe the low status of macaroni and cheese in our home could be turned around.  This may be the recipe folks.

You cook the pasta on the stove, while making the cheese sauce in the microwave with real ingredients, and without the use of any kind of cream soup. 

 It was tasty and everyone ate additional helpings.  Which is pretty much the requirement for me to make something more than once.  Beware, the recipe doesn't make much, so I highly recommend doubling it for a normal family who chows on cheese with pasta.

How to play hockey

 The other day,  Brian was asked by the girls if he would play hockey with them.  He was surprised to hear that they knew what hockey was.  This is how the girls play 'hockey.'

RUN, RUN, RUN, 

JUMP!  JUMP!

Shake your booty, Shake your booty, Shake your booty.

Got it?

creating for valentine's day

creating cards for school friends :: making valentine's day candies for daddy :: giving daddy his cards

Happy Valentine's Day!!