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