Turkey Roll Ups!

Just a quick post because I said I would show pictures of the dish I made from the Clean Eating magazine. Sorry I'm posting much later than I expected to.

The recipe was actually called 'Pasta Roll-ups with Turkey and Spinach'!, and is very much like a lasagna/manicotti type dish. You make a tomato sauce with ground turkey in it, then instead of layering lasagna strips and adding a cheese mixture and the sauce, you spread out the ricotta cheese and spinach and roll up the pasta.

Spoon some of the sauce in to your glass dish, add the 8 roll ups and top with the remaining sauce.
Then add mozzarella cheese and bake in the oven. Pretty simple really, and very tasty.

We're entertaining again tomorrow so I've been busy buying food and drink and tidying up the house! My inlaws are coming over and Jason's biz partner/friend is coming with his family. It will be a kind of business/pleasure kind of meeting - giving us all a chance to socialize but also talk about work too.

It will be another very hot weekend! Hope you all stay cool, and enjoy time with your families and friends too :-)

Fresh and Clean. . . .

. . . . and I'm not talking about my laundry! I'm talking about my 'diet' - I'm eating more fresh food, and it's CLEAN food!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago a magazine that my friend Julie had found called 'Clean Eating' and how I couldn't find it here so she mailed me a copy that she bought for me (thank you again Jules - you've got me hooked) ;-)

This is the magazine, and I find it pretty fascinating. Since reading the magazine I splurged last week and bought both the Eat Clean Diet and the Eat Clean Diet Cookbook. What I love about this kind of eating is that I don't feel like I am on a diet at all. Very similar to The South Beach Diet whereby they mention "it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle". And that's what I'm trying to do - make this way of eating our way of life. I like to think I'm educating myself (and my family) about 'eating healthier - eating 'clean'. And so far it's working.

In the past (for many many years) I was one of those people who never ate breakfast (hubby is still one of those people!). I was never hungry in the morning so why waste the calories! Since trying to eat the 'South Beach' way, and now the 'Clean' way I'm having a breakfast just about every day. And this week I've gotten in to the habit of having oatmeal every morning after I get back from taking Kristen to school. And not just oatmeal - I do what the CE book says and I add a tblsp of wheat germ and a tblsp of flaxseed. For lunch I'm trying to stick to salads rather than a sandwich, and for dinner, as you know we have been eating pretty healthy here, just some lean protein and salad or veggies.

The other day I made this yummy fresh 'orange and grapefruit' salsa from the CE cookbook. It's really only for me, cos Jason doesn't care for such things! I thought it was really nice and instead of having my grilled turkey burger on a bread roll I gave the roll a miss and spooned some salsa on top of it. Remember those few extra pounds that crept on just over a week ago? Well, they're gone already :-) I love eating this way, and I would encourage all of you to take a look at what you eat and get some extra fruit and veggies in you ;-) Hopefully if I motivate some of you (my bloggy friends) to do it, then it keeps me motivated too.

Now, what I really need to do is get back in the gym too - I still found excuses not to go this week "bad bad Niecey!!!!

Tomorrow I'll share with you the turkey rolls ups I made for dinner last night :-) It's off to do that laundry now.

Feels like Monday!

Of course after a holiday yesterday (which always feels like an extra Sunday) today feels like it's Monday. I'm sure if feels like that for a lot of you. We had a lovely weekend albeit a 'working' one for the most part. I did some more planting in the flower bed out back and Jason worked on adding mulch to the veggie beds we currently aren't using. Grass is already growing back in them so we've put brown paper down on them and added a top layer of mulch. Eventually the paper will decompose and hopefully stop too many weeds and grass growing through.

Yesterday my inlaws came over. We had a joint celebration of Memorial Day AND Papa's birthday (which is actually today - so if you're reading this Papa, hope your day is wonderful, and we sure loved spending time with you yesterday) :-)

I watched Paula Deen some time last week on her afternoon tv show and she was bbq'ing ribs, so I thought I would give them a go yesterday. I also made the potato salad that she did (but forgot to take a picture).

The Baby Back Ribs recipe can be found at Foodnetwork HERE. Further down on this page you'll see 'Other Recipes from this Episode". There you'll see a link for the potato salad recipe. Paula's recipe for the potato salad calls for Dijon mustard (something Jason hates!) so I halved the red potatoes once I'd boiled them and made half with Paula's recipe and half with just mayo, sour cream and green onions (my usual recipe). In all honesty I prefer my own recipe. Paula puts red wine vinegar in hers and while it was still pretty yummy I prefer the creaminess of just plain ole mayo, and the green onions for a yummy flavor.

And as for the ribs, they turned out pretty yummy but again her actual bbq sauce calls for apple cider vinegar and it was pretty 'tart' to say the least (must be how they like it in the South?) I baked the ribs in the sauce but when it came time to grill them (a difficult task cos they were literally falling off the bone!) I brushed them with Sweet Baby Rays.

For dessert I made a scrumptious apple pie and served it with good ole vanilla ice cream - you can't get more American than that ;-) HERE's the recipe, courtesy of Sandra Lee's Semi Homemade Cooking!

OK, back to laundry! Have a great day.

Happy Memorial Day!

This picture was actually taken on 4th July 2001 (Kristen's first Independence Day) but I thought I'd share it today as I wish you all a very happy and safe Memorial Day. And may God bless all those that serve and that have served this wonderful country.

Pictures From Sue :-)

Courtesy of Sue, here are some photos from our afternoon together!

Kiki wasted no time showing 'The Boy's her bedroom. Thankfully Snoopy, Simon and Sebastian were not afraid of the ferocious tiger on the floor!

Ready for a drive. Kristen kindly took 'The Boys' on a tour of the cul-de-sac. They were rather impressed with her driving skills - especially her reversing down the driveway!

BFF!

Sue set the timer on her camera for this picture. It was a little dark with the afternoon sun behind us, so I've tried to lighten it up a bit.

Have a great weekend, and a safe and happy Memorial Day - I'll be back Monday!

Heard it through the grapevine!

Yes! We have a grapevine :-) I bought this some time last week for Jason. He's mentioned a few times that we should buy one and when I saw these at the grocery store last week I decided to get one. Who knows if we'll be able to keep it alive - what with our track record for growing things! But it will be fun trying. I don't intend to be making wine from it either, I thought it would just be fun to see how big it got and how big the grapes actually got. When I told my 'mil' about it she asked if we could actually eat the grapes from it? I thought you could eat ALL grapes but apparently not.


This is a Sauvignon Blanc grape, and I'm not even sure if it will be good for eating? I'll certainly try one when they look ripe. We are thinking of buying a trellis/arbor of some sort to plant it next to. Need to get that pretty soon as I don't think 'Marvin' will want to stay in his pot for too much longer. Ha ha, I just came up with that name for it - just saying the word grapevine reminds me of the song by Marvin Gaye (hence the title of this post), so 'Marvin' it is. I'll keep you posted on his progress ;-)

Not much going on that I can blog about really. It's a windy but sunny and hot day (92). My housework is done, thanks to my guests that came this week ;-) Just doing a little laundry and finishing off some knitting for a baby shower I'm going to in a couple of weeks. Jason is working from home today so the house is not entirely my own, but it's still quiet! Hope you're all having a wonderful day.... and yay, it's Friday again tomorrow!

A Flying Visit!

Here's my SPECIAL visitors . . . . . My bestest blogging buddy Sue (and her hubby Doug)

I was so happy yesterday to get to see my blogging friend Sue, after 4 years, it was a long awaited reunion :-) And honestly I don't think of Sue as a 'blog' friend any more, not after the first time we got together when she and Doug came to visit us in MD on her way to NC to see her family. I think of her more as one of my best friends. Even like a sister to me. I know we've only met once but we've been friends on line for years, and just that one meeting let me know that I'd truly found a friend for life in Sue. It's hard to explain but I know some of you know what I mean.

Sometimes people come in to your life and it's like you have known them forever. You can totally be yourself around them, and they love you for who you are, and not who you're sometimes trying to be! It was such a short visit, just 3 1/2 hours together. I'm still sad that it's over so quickly (last time they came, we got to spend 5 special days together) but as I told Sue, we made some special memories again, even in that short a time. I made dinner for us all (fajitas, and key lime pie) and we took some photos together, only guess what, I didn't get any of us on my camera so I'll have to wait for Sue to email me some pics. I did take one of them both, then I must have put my camera down and let Sue take the rest on hers! Oh well, I'll share more pics when I can, and I'm sure Sue will too.

To Sue and Doug - thank you for taking the time to 'pop in' while you were in the neighborhood. It was SO good to see you both, I just hope we don't have to wait another 4 years for the next visit ;-)

Getting back on track!

Can you believe it? Just when I thought I was eating pretty well a few pounds creep back on to me! Actually I knew I wasn't doing as well as I could with my new eating habits... I made the mistake last week of picking up some sweet potato chips and some veggie chips. I've been missing the 'crunchiness' of something after dinner so I thought healthier chips would be ok - WRONG! I ended up eating the sweet potato chips in two nights! And couldn't stop snacking on the veggie chips either, although there are still some of those left. So this week, I need to get back on track.

So today when my snack attack hits I will be munching on something like this :-) This is what I had yesterday. I love this little 4 compartment tray, it cost $1 at Walgreens when I was in there last week. It's perfect to put a few fresh veggies or fruit in for one. I have in this one some carrots, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and a spoonful of hummus. Perfect for snacking! So I'll be making a concerted effort this week to eat more veggies and less chips for sure.

We had another lovely weekend of just pottering around the house. On Friday Kristen had a sleepover at Emily's house. I can't remember if I even mentioned that last week Emily had a sleepover here. Emily is Kristen's other friend in the cul-de-sac (Connor being her best bud who she plays with more often, but is only 5) and is 7 yrs old like Kristen. So Jason and I sat out on our balcony for a while enjoying the quiet evening. Then we watched a movie staring George Clooney. It was called Michael Clayton - I've never heard of it and can't say I'd recommend it either. Rather boring to be honest!

On Saturday we took a trip to Costco and stocked up on some things then we went to Chuy's for lunch (Jason's fav mexican place). Yesterday I did a little work in the back yard. Last week we had some guys who work in the neighborhood come in and clear out our veggie beds for us and I also asked them to cut away some flower beds around the patio for me. I bought some plants to put in there this week but then we got hit with huge storms and the soil got way too wet to plant. I had to wait a couple of days to let it dry out a little.

Here's the flower bed looking all messy yesterday before I put in some plants.. . . .

. . . . and here it is with the plants sitting on top so I could get an idea of what it would like. I've planted a few of them but still need to buy more and get more mulch to put down. I'll share photos of the finished beds once I get them done, but it's slow going for me. I find yard work very tiring!

Today I will be tring to hit the gym after dropping Kiki off at school. I've missed the last couple of weeks and kept making excuses for not going (probably why the extra pounds crept on too) and after the gym, I'll head to the grocery store to get the veggies and other fresh stuff for this week.

Hope you all have a lovely Monday. Will try to get in some blog visits today, but I will be busy cleaning house too - I have some VERY SPECIAL visitors coming tomorrow ;-)

Summer fruits. . . . .

One of the best things I love about Summer is the wonderful fresh fruit that becomes available. I know we can buy most fruits all year round these days , but there's certain times of the year they just taste better because they are more in season and not 'force grown'. Strawberries are a good example. When I lived in England you never saw strawberries in the stores in winter, but come spring and summer the market stalls and grocery stores started overflowing with them, and ooooooh they were SO sweet and juicy (as I know Sadie can attest to). They used to be my all time favorite fruit, until I moved to the US! I hate to say it, but even in summertime the strawberries just don't seem to taste as sweet as I think they should. But all that aside, I still love to eat lots of fresh fruit at this time of year.

And so, in order to have everyone else (by which I mean J and K!) eat more of it I put out a bowl of fruit while we were eating dinner last night. And here it is. . . . .

I know many of you will have tried this - scoop out a melon using a melon baller and use it as the basket then add the melon and other fruits back in to it. I must confess I don't know if I've actually ever done this, and if I have it's been years since. I showed this to Kristen and her eyes lit up :-) As you know she loves watermelon, it's her favorite fruit actually. But she's never had it as little balls. And the orange? well usually I will cut slices and then cut the slice in to quarters, but all she's done recently (all she's ever done, cos it's not a fruit she cares for) is squeeze the flesh between her teeth to get the juice out. Well last night I cut the orange like you see the chefs on tv do it. You know, where you cut away all the skin and white pith, then you insert your knife in between the membrane so you have no skin on the segment at all - new discovery, that's how to get Kristen to eat the orange flesh! She loved it..... and I have to say one more thing, Jason was actually diving in to the bowl too and said "just seeing it made him want to eat it". And he's not such a big fruit eater either! I know they say "you eat with your eyes" and it was certainly true in this case.

We had huge thunderstorms here last night and a tornado watch was in effect. There's no sunshine today (yet) but it's still forecast to be at least 85. I'd just like to say thank you to Sadie for sharing a sweet summer graphic (ooh and that's another fruit I love. . . fresh pineapple!)

Want More Food Posts?

Go on, admit it - you know you miss my food posts! It seems a while since I talked about food on here. Well at least a week! I think I mentioned in a previous post that my friend Jules had found a great magazine called Clean Eating. I couldn't find it anywhere around here (she lives in MD) and I couldn't wait until I received a free copy from their website, so she bought a copy and mailed it to me and it arrived last week. This mag only comes out 4 times I year I think and it is packed with some great stuff. Lots of healthy recipes, good articles to read etc. One of those mags you just want to read from cover to cover (which I have been doing during the past few days).

One of the recipes I wanted to try from the magazine this week was a yummy looking meatball sub! I know!!! Doesn't sound very healthy does it, but I assure you it is. You make your own meatballs with very lean ground turkey and you make the tomato sauce with canned tomatoes which I've read is just as good as fresh tomatoes for all the benefits like lycopene and vitamin C. Actually I cheated on the sauce part and used a small amount of spaghetti sauce for the sandwiches that I had in the freezer. The sub is of course a healthy whole wheat one (does anyone even eat white bread these days? I can't remember the last time I had it, I've eaten whole wheat bread for years!).

So there ya go, a nice crisp green salad and a healthy sub. A yummy way to start off the week.

After making the meatballs I tried a quick recipe for yogurt pops from a book I got out of the library this week. It's called Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. And YES, that is the wife of Seinfeld, I thought it was just a coincidence until I opened the book and she mentioned 'her husband Jerry'!! These pops are pretty easy and a great way to get Kristen to eat more fruit. I halved the recipe and got these 4 pops out of it and enough to make one more but I didn't have a mould for it! The recipe is simply 1 cup of low fat plain yogurt, 1 cup of frozen strawberries slightly defrosted, and 1/4 cup of confectioners (icing) sugar. This made the 5 pops, you'd get double if you did the original recipe. So Kristen gets nearly a 1/4 cup of fruit in one serving - not bad at all.

I know Sadie mentioned watermelon coolers and other pops she's made too from Annabel Karmel recipes. I bought a watermelon and need to try that next, but I need more moulds too or just some pop sticks, that way I can un-mould these and put them in a freezer bag and make more just using the wooden pop sticks instead of the plastic ones provided.

It's bed time for Kiki and American Idol time for me - have a great evening!

Fast Forward 7 Years!

Last night I posted a picture of my very first mother's day - as a mother! I was 37 at the time. Those first 6 months with Kristen sure did fly by quickly, but not half as quick as the next 7 years did!!!

Here we are yesterday when I finally remembered to ask Jason to snap a picture of us both. You can tell I don't scrapbook much these days, or I'd have had my camera out all day.

We all had a lovely day yesterday. We really just spent the day like we usually do each Sunday but it's a day I always enjoy. We met my inlaws at church, then went out to lunch. Mom's got to pick location so I chose a Fish Restaurant (even though Jason hates fish, thankfully there's other stuff on the menu he can have) cos I really fancied eating salmon. I was rather hungry when we got in there (took a while to get a seat as you can imagine they were busy for Mother's Day) so I ordered Calamari for an appetizer! Turns out it is one of Papa's favorite appetizers so we all enjoyed it (except Jason of course, who said he didn't even need to try it!) even Kristen.

I didn't tell her what it was but just asked her if she wanted some. She liked it and just kept munching on them till they were gone. Then I asked her if she knew what it was. I had mentioned it was just like onion rings at first, but I meant just the shape of them and the batter. She nearly didn't try it cos she doesn't like onions, but she did try and liked it, so her guess was that it was shrimp. I said no, then she said crab? No, guess again. "Octopus?" she asked with her eyes growing wider! Nope, but I said she was close! SQUID??????? Yes, she guessed it, and the look on her face was priceless (yes, I shoulda had my camera!) Ha ha, she didn't mind really, but isn't that amazing for one fussy little eater :-)

Kristen had made me some bath salts at school. They had mixed the salt with some lavender oil with the teacher and filled little baby food jars, then put some paper and ribbon around the top. Kristen said later that day, I hope you enjoy a bath with your bath salts, and I surprised her and said "let's go have a bath together now". She was thrilled with that idea so we went in my big bath tub and played with her bath toys and had a fun girly time together.

Along with the bath salts she gave me this cute little flower basket she had made. I had to pull the flowers out and she'd written things on them, things that she would do for me around the house. Kind of like vouchers. They said make my bed, take out the trash, set the table, and I forgot the last one! :-)
And finally she presented me with this beautiful big card. It actually had a big hole on the inside. She stood behind it with her face up close to it and told me to open it - when I did she peeped her face through the big hole and said "Happy Mother's Day" :-) What a sweet day!

Well, I just got back from grocery shopping and it's a 'stay home' day for me to catch up on a ton of housework and laundry. I seriously don't know how it all piles up - guess that's cos I seem to take weekends off ;-)

Have a great day!

Happy Mother's Day!

My first 'Mother's Day' as a Mommy!

2001

Hope you've all enjoyed your day. I'll be back tomorrow with a post. It's off to bed for me, ready for another 6am start to the week!!!

In case you wonder where I am. . . . .

. . . . I thought I better make a quick post, although I feel like I don't have much to post about. I did library duty at the church yesterday and as usual no one came by! Next week another girl will be on duty. Not sure if I mentioned but Jean (the library director) got another volunteer so we now alternate Thursdays. I will only do one more Thursday (the week after next) and then we break up for Summer. Jean will probably re-think the library opening hours because we haven't been getting many using it during the week. Sunday is obviously the most popular day for people to drop in and use it.

We had a bit of a scare on Wednesday night, but thankfully all is well. See the computer desks behind the sofa in the picture below? Well our sweet precious princess banged her head really hard on the corner of one of those desks and gave us all a pretty big shock!
She was sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed under her I think, playing with Jason on the Wii. Actually Jason was the only one using a controller at the time, Kristen was just watching, and from what I can gather she simply over-reacted to a bomb exploding on the game and jumped backwards, obviously throwing her head back at the same time. I was sitting at my computer at the time, and oh man the noise of her head hitting that desk!!!!!!!! of course she started screaming a split second later and I rushed round to get to her and see if she was ok.

I started to check her head to see if she had a huge bump, and that's when I saw the blood and it was all over my hand, and dripping on to the back of her t-shirt, and all the while she was screaming! I have never had such a shock in all her 7 years of life. I grabbed a handful of tissues and held them against her head, at the same time leading her to the bathroom. Jason wet a facecloth for me and I put that against her head and put pressure on. I needed to see where the blood was coming from and see how bad the gash was. If it didn't stop bleeding we would be in the car and on the way to the hospital. Kristen had stopped crying by this time. I finally saw where the cut was but it didn't look like a gash, more like a scrape and within a minute the bleeding stopped. Unbelievable!

Kristen was more shook up than anything and said it didn't hurt but she had a headache. I gave her two Motrin but of course would not let her lie down and told her she shouldn't go to sleep because Mommy wouldn't know if she was feeling sick or not! We came downstairs after that and I sat with her on the sofa. She asked for some icecream and we watched some tv. She stayed up for a couple of hours then I let her go to bed.

It was Muffins with Mom yesterday morning at her school! It's a rather rushed affair and they still start school at the usual time of 7.45 so we had to be there for 7.15 for muffins. It gave me a chance to tell her teacher about the bang to her head, and I explained that if Kristen complained of a headache or anything, that was the reason why, and she should probably go to the nurse. I'm happy to say Kristen was fine all day and later that afternoon I checked her head, I am amazed at the little scrape I now see, it's barely a graze! I'm sure it's still tender and I didn't wash her hair in the bath last night just to make sure we didn't knock it and hurt it again.

So that was our excitement for the week, and I'd rather not have any more like it! This morning I'm meeting my friend Cindy for coffee, and looking forward to the start of a very hot weekend. It's forecast to be 99 degrees!!!

Remember . . . .

. . . when you used to do this?

Who hasn't made 'soapy mohawks' when you were a kid having fun in the tub :-) Kristen was messing around (as usual) during her bathtime and shouted that she wanted me to take her picture.! I have nothing going on today, so I thought I'd share them with you.

On a not so lighter note, I'm actually pretty bummed today - about the book club I'm in. Over the past few months our club has grown to 17 members. Even though some months more than half the members can't make it last month we had an all time record of 10 ladies attend. It was great - book club meetings are always great, lots of fun, great food and always a lively discussion.

Afterwards one of the ladies emailed to say thanks to the hostess and wondered now that we are getting quite a large group if we should think about putting a 'cap' on the number of members we should have. Seemed a reasonable request to me, after all, as she pointed out, should everyone be able to make it one month - well I'm sure you'll agree 17 people is rather a lot. There's of course times when people all talk at once and it can get rather noisy. A few of us emailed back and said we could all discuss it at the next meeting.

Imagine my (our) surprise to receive an email last night from one of the ladies, saying 'WE' have decided to leave the book club and begin our own here in The ----- (their own neighborhood) and signed it with 8 members names underneath. It came as such a shock, I can't even tell you how devastated I feel. Book club is really the only social outlet I have these days (by my own choice I must admit) but the shock is in the fact that there was no discussion with other members except all the ones that live in her 'gated community'! And I might add, all these members are THE newest to the group (except for the lady that sent the email in the first place, who's been with us for over a year at least, and who I thought was a dear friend) Talk about 'clicky'! Sad the misconceptions we can have.

Those of us who are left are just so saddened by this news. Although we agree that it may have been inevitable that we split in to two groups at some point if we were to get so big, the fact that it was discussed with only half the group and announced in such an impersonal way really hurts. And if the choice had been allow more members and don't have a 'cap' or split in two, I would have voted for more members, because most months we only have about 7-8 attend.

I know there are far more important things going on in the world right now, but this is my 'personal' blog and I just wanted to share how I was 'personally' feeling today. So as I said, pretty bummed, but I'm sure I'll get over it :-(

Thanks for listening.

Proud Of My Little Pufferfish!

Well here she is, Lil Ms. Pufferfish! I took these pictures in the bathroom where Kristen put on her costume ready for her presentation. Pretty appropriate with the blue tile behind!

All Puffed up and nowhere to go!

Side view showing the 'back fin'.

And a 'smiley pufferfish', just for good measure.

Kristen did really well on her presentation. Here you can see her with her 'tri-fold' that shows lots of information about the pufferfish. The colored fish I cut out freehand (on the fold). Kristen was going to write questions on the front and have the kids lift the flaps to see the answers. I liked how she did it in her presentation best. I couldn't see any questions on the fish, so I assume she never had time to complete that part, so what she did instead (and I'm sure her teacher told her to do this) is she told the kids she was going to ask them some questions to see if they'd been paying attention to her :-) She would slightly lift the flap to see the answer then ask a relevant question. It was fun seeing the kids excited throwing there hands in the air shouting 'me, me'. Kristen would then pick one to answer. Even funnier when they weren't correct and she loudly announced "wrong!" and then would lift the flap to give the correct answer. LOL - there were a couple of questions answered right, to which she joyfully announced "correct" in a nice loud voice.

I taped the whole performance which lasted a good 10 minutes or so. I was so proud of how she spoke clearly and not quietly and got her audience involved. When she was done speaking the kids got to ask her some questions too. One of them was 'why did you pick the pufferfish?' to which she replied, because I think they look cute when they are babies!

Jason was thrilled to watch the video when he got home from work. I just wish I could figure out how to put a small part on my blog? I'd love for you to see how well she did :-)

A trip to the dentist is in store for me this morning, just a check up and cleaning. After that I'll head home to catch up with some housework.

A Fun Snack. . . . A Busy Day!

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

First off here's a fun snack for your kids - taken from an Annabel Karmel cookbook I bought on Ebay last week! I know Sadie has mentioned Annabel before and I've actually had a book of hers from the library, but I never really looked in to her website or her other books until now.

Kristen isn't really in to apples at the minute but she wanted to make these funny teeth which as you can see is just two thin slices of apple smeared with a little peanut butter and some mini marshmallows for the teeth.

Here's the picture from the back of the book, which is called Favorite Family Meals. They do look better with red apples but the only ones I had were Fuji apples. Any kid that likes apples and peanut butter will love these. Kristen? well she scoffed the marshmallows first (of course!) and licked off the peanut butter, then took a couple of nibbles from the apple and left it! And after what Sadie said about her hubby and his aversion to bananas, I didn't force Kristen to eat the apple!

This morning will be busy for me. Kristen is doing her presentation at school at 10.40am and I also signed up to take in some sandwiches for the teachers lunch (teacher appreciation week). The lunch starts at 10.30 so it's timed very nice. When I drop off the sandwiches I'll then head to Kristen's class with her 'pufferfish' costume and watch her do her presentation. Then assuming we break for lunch around 11, I will have lunch with Kiki too. I should be able to head back home after that and do a little housework before going back out to pick her up at 2pm. Then it's piano later today at 4.30!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend - are you ready to face another week? Here we go!

Molten Lava Soup!

At the risk of boring you yet again with another food related post (do I ever talk about anything other than food?) Here's what I made in the kitchen yesterday. It's 'Dragon's Molten Lava Soup! I made this while Kristen was at school because it had to cool a lot before I could put it in the blender.

Another simple recipe. The recipe called for vegetable stock, but I had mistakenly picked up veggie broth instead! It was Central Market's Organic Vegatarian Vegetable Broth. I'm not sure if that altered the taste much, but I shouldn't think so. Along with that goes tin tomatoes, tomato paste, 1 carrot, a small onion and garlic.

Here it is simmering for 25 minutes on the stove top.

Once it's cool you put it in a blender to get rid of all the lumps. What I didn't really like about this part was the blending it seemed to make the soup rather 'frothy' and it stayed that way even once I re-heated it.

I served this for dinner along with a turkey burger and spinach salad. Kristen gave it one thumb up, but not surprisingly two minutes later said she didn't really like it and didn't finish off her small bowl full. Jason (not being a 'soupy' guy) didn't even try it :-/ I really liked it, and again the added bonus is I know exactly what is in it. So I shall be eating this alone for lunch and will probably freeze a few other portions to have next week (hopefully it freezes well, otherwise it will be going down the sink!)

So the salad I did yesterday was my first recipe from the Clean Eating website. I modified it slightly. It's strawberry and spinach salad with a poppy seed dressing. I didn't have fresh strawberries so I used some tin peaches and an avocado to put on top. The dressing I made like it said, concentrated orange juice, plain yougurt, honey and poppy seeds. I REALLY liked the dressing, so fresh and tasty. And overall I LOVED the salad too. Jason ate it reluctantly (he'd rather have iceberg lettuce with thousand island dressing!) Kristen wouldn't even try it.

I've got to pop out to the craft store in a little while. Kristen is doing a presentation at school on Monday about Pufferfish and she wants to dress up as a fish! Her teacher suggested we get a t-shirt and glue pipe cleaners on it to make spikes so she looks like a puffer fish and then we can stuff it with paper, or I might try to tie a pillow around her middle to make her look puffed up! This is a project they've been doing in her QUEST class as part of their 'independent' study. I'm hoping to take the video camera along so Jason can see how she does (he'll be at work at the time).

It's overcast and grey today, so I'm going to shoot off and get to the craft store before it starts to rain. Thunder is forecast too and a high of 89!!!!

Happy Friday!