Sweet Popcorn Balls

Last Friday night I made these popcorn balls to try to add some variety to our movie night routine. Christopher thought they were OK, I thought they were awesome and I hear that my neighbors kids liked them too. They were easy to make and all ingredients that are normal to have on hand, so I thought it was worth writing up the recipe in case others may like to give it a try! Enjoy!

Sweet Popcorn Balls

10 cups of popped popcorn (this is about two microwave bags)
2 T Butter
1/2 C. brown sugar
1/4 C. honey
1/4 tsp. salt
optional - peanut butter, m&m's, raisins, cranberries, etc...

Pop the popcorn, set aside. Try to get out all of the unpopped kernels- it is MUCH easier now than later!

Melt the butter, sugar and honey over low heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture begins to bubble.

Place the 10 cups of popcorn in a large bowl. Pour the butter mixture over the popcorn and add the salt. Mix gently with a spoon.

Grease hands (I used cooking spray) and you and your preschooler can shape the popcorn into balls the size of golf balls. If you do golf-ball sized, then this recipe yields 30 balls. I did something more like softballs, and I think I got 10 out of a half batch, so it makes a lot. Place on a sheet of wax paper to harden up.

You can also add raisins or dried cranberries, or nuts, or even peanut butter I bet to the mix. I am thinking M&M's would be my favorite addition.

It says on the original recipe that you can shape them into bars or "thin logs" but I was unsuccessful at this. You kind of have to use a bit of pressure to make the things stay together. You will see what I mean if you make these.

The original recipe also has some creative ideas: Make a popcorn ghost with raisin eyes for Halloween, a popcorn wreath with dried cherries or cranberries, popcorn bat and baseball for birthday party....

Enjoy!

Start Cooking

The StartCooking.com website is a great website for beginner cooks like me. There are a ton of short (under three minute) videos where she shows you howto make different things. Tonight I am making pork chops, woo hoo! I like that it shows all of the important things, like what it is "supposed" to look like at several different stages. Check it out if you have a basic question, it is definitely easy to use!

Cruisin'

A couple of weeks ago we went on a cruise to Mexico! We did the 7-Day Mexican Riviera which departed from Long Beach and went to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan and Puerta Vallarta. We went with a group of 21, mostly neighbors and their kids and a few of their friends. It was A LOT of fun! Here is the run down:

The night before we left we went to Medieval Times in Buena Park. This is one of those theatrical dinner places, where they serve you a meal while you watch the sword fights and horses and falcons. This was one of the highlights for Christopher! We really enjoyed it too. The food was really good: tomato bisque soup, half of a roasted chicken, one spare rib, herbed potatoes, and then a pastry for dessert. Here’s the catch: NO UTENSILS!!! It was really fun and surprisingly not that messy. Christopher eats like that most of the time anyway but I think that this concept would be really fun for the older kids.

The sword fights were fun too, each section of the ring got its own “knight” and so we all cheered for our guy, who in my (and my sister Kat's) humble opinion happened to be the cutest one. We did end up buying a sword before we left- it was overpriced and made out of foam but it has still been funny seeing Jason get whacked with it when he’s not expecting it!

We kept the program and whenever Christopher and I are looking at it, he remembers who each knight “belonged” to within our family (Dad = Green, Mommy = Blue, he was the one that won, naturally) so it is fun. The only thing that is a little awkward is that when we were getting ready to leave, we went to see the horses at the stable and one of them was a little *excited.* So now, every time we see a picture of this one horse, Christopher reminds me that “that’s the horse who had his penis out!”

Moving on to the boat: we had a balcony room, which in my opinion is the best way to go. The only exception would be if you can afford two rooms and want to stick your kids in the second joining room. It was a lot bigger than I expected it to be, and definitely livable for a week. The shower was tiny but it had one of those handheld sprayers so it was manageable. Our neighbors Steve and Elaine had our room decorated for us, since it was our very first cruise. These decorations turned into victims for Christopher’s new sword as the week wore on, but it was very much appreciated nonetheless!

Cruising itself is a lot of fun. I didn’t really feel the boat move too much, and definitely never was sick from it. There were a few times when I was at one end or the other where I could feel it more, but for anyone who has been pregnant, I would compare it to that feeling- just a baby swishing around in your tummy, except kind of felt the opposite of that. Of course, that analogy might have been in my head because my own period was LATE and kind of freaking me out! I was looking for an excuse for why I was a little puffy and eating A TON of food, but it was a false alarm. By the way, they don’t sell pregnancy tests on the ship.

Back to the food: that was one of my favorite parts of the whole experience! The Dining Room was fabulous. The food was delicious and you can order whatever you want, as much as you want, and no one looks at you funny. Towards the end of the trip they knew to bring Christopher a milk and buttered noodles as soon as we sat down, which was so helpful. Every night I had at least two appetizers and then a delicious gourmet meal and then of course, dessert. In fact on the last night, I ordered FOUR desserts. One of them was for Jason, but when I ordered them I told the waiter that two were for me and two were for him.

There was also a Johnny Rocket’s on the ship, which was a lot of fun. There is a cover charge to go in, but as soon as you are there, they bring you a plate of fries and onion rings and ranch and then you can order whatever you want. And every 30 minutes or so, all of the waiters do a choreographed line dance to "Stayin' Alive." It was really cute and added to the experience.


One night I went dancing with the ladies, which was fun too. We stayed out SO late, I think I crawled into bed after 3:00 in the morning. I haven’t been up at that hour since having a newborn!!! There were so many YOUNG people in this club!!! I am talking high school young. Maybe early college I suppose, but a lot of the people there didn’t look old enough to drink. I think the drinking age is 18 but I am not sure.

Jason went to the casino one night too, and another night him and the rest of the boys went to a karaoke bar on the ship. I heard that was a lot of fun, though I was home babysitting. Which is a good segue into the kids club!

The age for the kids club is 3+. But they also have to be out of diapers. So technically, Christopher wasn’t allowed in. We did try to sneak him in on the first formal dinner night, by putting his friends underwear on over his diaper, but they paged us within 20 minutes or so and asked us to come and get him. We didn’t try the kids club again after that. The older kids seemed to really like it though, and even the four-year old with our group loved it. I am still a first time mom (read: softie) when it comes to that stuff though, and it is hard for me to have a good time when I don’t think Christopher is, and then with the diaper thing added to it, I just didn’t feel right forcing him to cry it out there. I am sure that Baby #2 will not have the same luxury, but for this trip, that is how it worked out. And it is probably for the better, since just about every night towards the end of our delicious dinner, Christopher would climb under the table and start smelling pretty bad, if you know what I mean. That would’ve gotten us kicked out of the kids club officially, I am sure.

One of the other fun things we did was one night, everyone in our group dressed up like pirates! That was really fun, going around the ship and saying “Arghh!” and “Take me to your Captain!” People loved us for the most part, and some people even asked the guys to take pictures with them!

The stops were all amazing, but I don’t want to make this too long so I will talk about them later. There were a few other special things about our ship- we went ice skating one morning and miniature golfing another afternoon. The best thing I would say about the cruise was the service, it was really a nice pampering and relaxing vacation and I am so glad that we went. We will definitely go again.

We cruised with Royal Caribbean, on the Mariner of the Seas by the way.

More soon…

Gifts from Mother Nature

Tonight I got home from school around 8:30 or so. Jason had already put our boy to bed, but Christopher heard me come in the door so he ran down to greet me (precious!) and then excitedly tells me that he and Daddy got me a surprise, and let me show you where it is! So he walks me, while holding my hand, to the kitchen, where he retrieves a box from the counter that came in the mail. It is super lightweight and pastel pink and purple, and has NO return address. I am suspicious but Christopher is too excited for me to say no, so we go back to his bed and open "Mommy's surprise."

We finally get the box opened, and the first thing that falls out is a little red box with a gift tag on it. The tag says "Mother Nature's Monthly Gift." Uh oh. :-) So we open the box and three tampons fall out! Oh yeah, it is THAT kind of mailer.

There are also a few pads tucked in the "gift" for me, of all different sizes and absorbencies. So Christopher asks, "what is this?" and I just told him they are things that Mommy needs some times. Lucky for me, his repsonse was "OK." Every once in a blue moon, he is satisfied with an answer like that. Nine times out of ten he wants to know "why" to the 10th degree. Tonight I would have been screwed.

Zucchini Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today Christopher and I made these cookies. After I ate far too many, I packaged the leftovers up to pawn off on my neighbors and also set some aside to bring to my class tonight.

They were a big hit all around but the best part is that my secret plan worked: I left some of them on the counter in a tupperware container, as well as the extras for the neighbors whose houses we didn't make it to, and Jason FINALLY ate zucchini!!! He had no idea that it was in them but told me they were awesome cookies.
So without further ado, here is the recipe that I used:

Zucchini Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 C. butter
3/4 C. white sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups grated zucchini (About 1 1/2 zucchini's, oddly)
1 1/2 C. flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 C. quick cooking oats
1 -1.5 C. semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir in the egg and vanilla, mix well, then stir in the shredded zucchini. Sift together the flour, baking soda and cinnamon, stir into the zucchini mixture. Finally, stir in the oats and chocolate chips.

Drop dough from a teaspoon onto an unprepared cookie sheet. Bake for about 11 minutes in the preheated oven. The cookies will stay soft and moist because of the zucchini.

Hummus

Jason made hummus the other day! He had a potluck at the firehouse a couple of weeks ago and his Lebonese friend Dan made what he described as the "best hummus he had ever had." So he sweet-talked his friend out of the recipe and this is it. We scaled it back to 1/3, so that we used only one can of garbanzo beans, and it was the perfect amount to last us for a few days of snacking.

3 Can Chick peas (garbanzo beans)
1/4 C. Tahini Sauce
3-4 Cloves Garlic
2 Tbsp. Olive oil
Salt- to taste - if it seems bland, add salt
3-4 Tbsp. Lemon Juice - go off of taste
1/2 to 1 C. water- A little water goes a long was so add a little at a time.

Place peeled garlic cloves in food processor with about a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of olive oil. Run food processor until garlic is well diced, the finner the better.

Add garbanzo beans, lemon, tahini sauce, table spoon of olive oil and more salt. Run food processor for a good amount of time until everything is well chopped. At this point the hummus should be pretty thick, so start adding water at 1/8-1/4 cup increments until desired consistency.

Now it is all up to you. If you want more bite, add garlic. If you want more tart, add lemon. If you want more of that bland/buttery taste, add tahini. And if all together taste bland, add salt. Once you get it the way you like it, place in serving dish and drizzle olive oil on top. If you want to garnish, sprinkle paprika or chili powder over hummus before adding olive oil.

Hope this helps, and remember to try to find good tahini sauce (i.e. Trader Joe's) and just use store bought lemon juice...not the fake lemon looking things but the bigger juice container one.

PS This is pretty much copied from Dan's e-mail to Jason, so please consider this note me "citing my source." Had a lecture tonight in school on plagarism and that is not my intent! Enjoy!

Family Picture

It has been a while since I sent out a family picture, so here is a newer one. We took this a couple of weeks ago at the Oakland Zoo.

Easy Donating

I am constantly trying to pare down what we have- clothes that no longer fit, toys that Christopher (or me or Jason) no longer play with, occasionally random pieces of furniture, you get the idea.

This is my favorite way to donate stuff. Rather than waiting for the bright yellow cards that come in the mail and tell you that some obscure date three weeks in the future is "your day," I just go to this website and generally my stuff is gone by the next business day. They leave a reciept and after you have donated this way once, they save your address and special notes (i.e. leave reciept in mail box) based on your phone number and last name.

It is very easy and a good way to recycle stuff!

http://www.4satruck.org/DSS/Index.asp

Easy Exfoliator

My good friend and neighbor told me how to make this easy exfoliator and I am so thrilled with it I want to post it here:

Equal parts
Olive Oil and
Sugar

So easy! The only trick is making sure you don't slip and fall in the shower after you use it.

Enjoy!

Couch

This last week, the "game" in our house has been for Christopher to lose the Litte Lightning McQueen and then substitute in the Big Lighting McQueen, then lose the big one as soon as he finds the small one, and on and on and on in this never ending cycle. Whichever one he has, he wants and is looking for and thus WE are looking for the other one!

This last week I have had the pleasure of looking under ALL of the couch cushions, under ALL of the furniture, you know, all of the places that a little match box car will hide so well. Oh. My. God. There was so much junk- random pieces of food including scrambled eggs, candy, candy canes, cheerios, chocolate chips, peas, you name it. All of this stuff is in our couch cushions.

Seriously, there was enough to have held us over for a few days in the event of a major emergency. Under the furniture I found 23 golf balls, five or six of my dog's tennis balls and more food. Oh, also dust bunnies that could probably take on my smaller cat. I have hardwood floors mostly throughout the house and I love them but the dust bunnies are out of control. The sucky part is that earlier in the week, when I disccovered all of this stuff, I didn't have time to do anything about it! So I had to leave it, and just know it was there. I was almost grossed out to sit on my couch. hee hee

Well finally this weekend I had the time to clean it all up, at least the couch. Still need to do battle with the bunnies in my bedroom, but I'll get to that later.

Gotta run.... I have some alone time- the boy is asleep, Jason just left for a couple hours and I need to catch up on Lipstick Jungle. :-)

Crissy Field

Last week for our beach visit we ended up going to Chrissy Field in San Francisco and it was perfect. Lots of dogs running around and not scary at all, big-wave wise. Christopher and all of us had a blast but Daisy more than anyone else. Of course it is three days later now and she is still limping around but she has a smile on her face and her tail is low but wagging, so I think she still thinks it was worth it. :-)

http://www.yelp.com/biz/crissy-field-san-francisco

If anyone hasn't been, I highly recommend it as a good spot to bring the kids (if they are not afraid of seeing dogs, that is- the dogs we met were well behaved and didnt tackle the boy) and spend a couple hours. You can bring your kids bikes too, there is a trail that goes around too. Oh there are some tide pools too. The person who recommended it to me said her kids were able to look at a jellyfish in the tidepool! I didnt see anything but it was still fun.

Enjoy!

Cardio Clean

I have been taking practice tests for teacher stuff and it hasn't been the most exciting, but Jason just left for class from 4-10 tonight and I am getting ready to go get my boy from school. So I had a few minutes of home alone time and decided to try something I haven't done in a LONG time! I like to call it the 15 Minute Cardio Clean. Here is how it goes:

Turn on your itunes (or back in the day it was the old fashioned CD/tape player, and I know it gets worse than that) and crank it up pretty loud. Have at least three or four songs that you like at the moment and TURN IT UP! Run around your house form room to room and pick up and put away whatever you see! Cats need more food? Fill up the bowl! Random toys in the dining room? Throw them in the toy bin in the playroom. Need to unload and load the dishwasher? Shut up and just do it!

Anyway, I only had two songs, both of which were influenced by the last Real World Brooklyn we watched (and both featuring some knuckle-head named "T-Pain," so much for me being mature) but I was able to make our little house look decent in just a few minutes, I felt my heart rate get up a little bit and I actually had a strange sort of fun doing it! I guess it reminded me of the old days, maybe that is the fun.

Just thought I would share in case any of you are looking for that motivation and trying to trick yourself into doing something you dont want to do. For me, knowing that when those songs are over, I am DONE and whatever doesnt get done in that time I will just walk away from motivates me to bust my booty and just do it!!!

OK Off to go get my boy. More later.

xoxo
Barbara

Nutella Quesadillas

Last week I had this MAJOR dessert jones and I satisfied it in a super yummy/easy way that I wanted to share, and also hopefully get some other ideas.

Nutella Quesadillas

Flour Tortillas
Nutella
Butter spray

Get a flour tortilla. Spread it with nutella on one half of it, and fold it over like a quesadilla. Brush the top with melted butter, or if you are lazy like me you can spray it with "I Cant Believe Its Not Butter" spray. (What is that stuff anyway?) OK Then sprinkle with cinnomon and sugar and bake at 350 for maybe 5-6 minutes. You may have to broil low for a minute or two if you want it kinda crispy, which I did, but every time I turn on the broiler my ADD kicks in and I *always* forget.

These were so good that even burnt, they were more than edible.If anyone doesn't know what nutella is, here is a little thing about it:http://startcooking.com/video/531/Nutella-Crepes

Early Morning Page

Today has been a bit unpredictable. I FINALLY went to bed early enough that I *could* get up and run with my neighbor, and at 6:30 as I was lacing up my running shoes, I heard Jason's pager go off! I was supposed to run at 6:45 and Christopher was still asleep. So I woke him up and with the help of Anna and her dog, Sophia, I was able to convince Christopher to get in his stroller while we went for a run. Got home and remembered that I had class this morning, and no childcare. Tried to text my other neighbor but it was early and her kids let her sleep in on the weekends, so I didn't want to call. So then I had this great idea that I would BRING Christopher to class with me, get him set up with a snack and a movie on his portable DVD player and no one would even realize he was there! I guess I momentarily forgot that he is three years old and that he definitely needs regular assistance, even if he is entertained, and also that while we did make arrangements to "be quiet" during Mommy's class, he still announced early on that he was "ready to go back home" several times before I did just that. Turns out that three-year olds are not quite ready for college yet. So my wonderful neighbors came to my rescue and let me drop him off for a few hours (thank you!!!) and he had a great time playing with his buddy, and I was able to make it back to class without missing too much. It is 3:40 and Jason is on his way home from the fire. Aah, the door just opened. Hooray- family time!

Family Blog

Hello! I am going to take a stab at a family blog site for us. I hope that it will help me keep everyone more updated with pictures and videos and the day to day happenings in our household. I am also trying to keep it a *little* anonymous, at least from a last name perspective. Hope you like it and please comment or feel free to e-mail, as always.
xoxo
Barbara, Jason & Christopher

That's Not My Name

So Jason was able to bribe Christopher in to singing the "That's Not My Name" song with some Cinnamon Altoids. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do!!!