Healthier Food Options

After Christmas left my kitchen and body in shambles (mentioned in my last post), I'm trying some new food choices.  My inspiration for these changes comes from a blog I ran across 100daysofrealfood.com. On her blog she makes a pledge to eat real food for 100 days.  I'm not making that same pledge, there are some areas where I can't budge, but I am trying to be as close to her pledge as possible.

I have been super successful in implementing her pledge otherwise.  We have doubled our fruit and vegetable intake, cut our meat intake in half, and focused on eating mostly whole grains.  This isn't a timed pledge for me, for me it's a new lifestyle choice so my family can live a healthier and happier life.

Here are some reasons I'm not making the complete pledge:

• My husband doesn't believe in organic. I am indifferent.
• I have spent the last year collecting a surplus of food in case of an emergency.  I can't throw away or overlook my months worth of spaghetti noodles and justify buying whole wheat spaghetti noodles.  Although I have made the pledge to buy whole food items for my food storage in the future.
• I think white and brown sugar are a necessary evil when I have cravings and we already use honey for a majority of our food preparation, so I'm blurring the lines.
• Lastly, my husband uses Yoplait yogurt to treat his chronic canker sores, which breaks most of her pledge.

Check out her blog and see if there are any improvements you can make in your diet, but be cautious on her advice to watch Food, Inc.  That's one movie I wish I hadn't watched! and I still would have made the changes. 

Pregnancy Cravings

I've had an especially hard time being 7 months along during Christmas. I almost have my decorations cleaned up (it's almost a month later).  I also put on twice as much weight in four weeks as I had between my other Dr visits -- thank you Christmas fudge, candied popcorn, and other delicious sweets.  I've nearly finished purging my house, and my body, from Christmas junk foods. 
Last time I was this far along it was the middle of summer and I could have as many fresh fruits as I wanted.  So, Sunday night I started craving berries.  I made a berry cobbler to fill that craving.  But, on Monday, "BERRIES" my body screamed.  This time I decided to try something healthier -- smoothies.  I didn't find a recipe I liked, so I made up my own:

Berry Banana Smoothies

5 strawberries
3/4 cup mixed berries
3/4 cup milk
1 banana
6 to 8 ice cubes
1 strawberry yogurt
All of my fruits were frozen because it's December, but fresh ones would be better.

Directions:

1. Blend berries and banana with milk until smooth. Add yogurt and blend. Lastly blend in ice and serve.
2. Makes 2 or 3 servings and took about 5 minutes to throw together.

My daughter enjoyed her cup enough to get her first head-freeze. 

What's For Dinner?

When my husband and I first got married I knew how to make 3 or 4 dinners.  Spaghetti, taco salad, breakfast, and stew. The first three seem incredibly easy as I look back, but where did I learn to make stew? I have no idea. But, as daunting as it may seem, it's actually incredibly easy. It has three main ingredients: meat, potatoes, and carrots. Since we've been married for a while my recipe has changed and developed into a delicious recipe and here it is:

Stew

1/2 lb meat (I use turkey or beef to make this stew)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 white onion, chopped

1/4 cup red cooking wine

4 - 5 medium potatoes

5 whole carrots

canned or frozen corn and green beans

2-3 cups Chicken (for turkey meat) or Beef broth

Directions:

1. Brown meat in the bottom of pot.  Add garlic and onion and saute with meat.  When bottom of pan starts to brown add the cooking wine and reduce by half (boil half of it out, I understand this also removes the alcohol). 
2. Wash and chop the potatoes into 1 inch cubes (sometimes I leave the skin on and sometimes I  remove it, you can do it either way depending on your preference), throw potatoes into pot and add broth until the potatoes are covered (about 2 or 3 cups).  
3. Peel and chop the carrots and add them to the pot.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low.  Allow to stew for 1 to 3 hours, you know it's stewed long enough when the potatoes fall apart as you're mixing it and the stew is thick. 
4. About 20 minutes before serving add 1 1/2 cups each of corn and green beans (or one drained can each). Sometimes I add extra seasoning like savory, but that's optional.
5. Makes 4 to 5 servings

Using the wine when browning the meat makes regular stew meat fall apart when you eat it, it's the best change I've made to the recipe. This stew also goes great with a loaf of homemade bread.

Josephine's Butterfly Quilt

Sorry that I haven't updated my blog because I've been so busy getting everything ready for Christmas.  I thought I'd post a picture of one Christmas project.  I'm making Josephine a quilt for her toddler bed.

Here it is.  We've themed her room with butterflies.  I just need to quilt it and it'll be all ready for Christmas morning - but I'm not sure when I'll have time to do that. Hmm....

Merry Christmas to everyone!!

Sick Again?

Just when I thought we'd recovered from the cold, Josie caught the stomach flu. Thank heavens it was only a 24 hour bug.  My favorite thing when Josie gets sick is how much she loves to cuddle.  I could cuddle all day, and in fact, that's what we did all yesterday.  Nothing reminds me of how much I love my sweet little toddler than when she lets me rock her.  It's a lot like the book I'll Love You Forever.  As long as I can hold you in my arms, you'll be my little baby.

Seat Cushion Cover Tutorial

 Buy foam and cut into desired size.  I'll be using this for a window seat, so mine is 2 feet by 5 feet.

 Lay foam on the fabric and draw around the foam, you'll add extra size when you cut.

 Using my rotary cutter I measured half the width + seam allowance away from the foam line and cut.  My foam is two inches thick and I'm giving myself 1/2 inch seam allowance.  So I cut 1.5 inches from the yellow foam line.

 Then I mitered the corners.  I folded each corner into a 45 degree angle and sewed a line 90 degrees from the yellow foam line.

 I hate zippers, and every time I put one in I have to re-learn how to.  So this is how I do zippers, but if you have a better way -- use it.  I laid down my zipper and pinned the fabric where the zipper began and ended.

 Then I sewed along this line using a basting stitch.  I then picked every third stitch so it would come undone easily.

 I opened my zipper and laid it along the wrong side of the fabric from where I'd stitched.

 I pinned it in place and used my sewing machine's zipper foot to sew it in place.  I back-stitched at the beginning and end.

 Then I closed the zipper. Flipped the fabric right side up and started sewing the other zipper side in place.  I had to unzip the zipper to sew at the very top of the zipper tape.

 I then pulled the seam apart (because I'd undone some of the stitches) and zipped up the zipper so I could finish sewing along the zipper.  After I finished the length of the zipper and completely pulled the seam apart.  Now I have an invisible zipper.

Finally, I pinned the whole thing together, working from the corners while pinning, and sewed it together.  Remember to open the zipper a little before sewing, so you can easily turn it inside out.  And TA-DA a seat cover.

 

Here is Josie laying on her finished window seat cushion.

Then I used Steam-a-Seam and ironed on some cute butterflies.

Giving Some Joy at Christmas

This year for Christmas Russell and I decided to give some joy to people who might be a little lonely.  That joy took the form of sugar cookies. I love sugar cookies! They are one of my three favorite cookies. Our list had thirty two families on it and that translated into 124ish cookies. It helps that I have the World's Best Sugar Cookie recipe, which makes 80ish cookies with one batch. Here it is:

 World's Best Sugar Cookies

2 c butter or margarine, softened

2c granulated sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon extract

6c flour

1 tsp baking soda

Cream together butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and lemon extract.  Add flour and baking soda.  Mix until all the flour has been mixed into the dough. Refrigerate for 2 or 24 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease cookies sheet.  Roll dough to 1/4 inch thickness and cut out desired shapes.  Bake for 8 to 10 minutes (I baked mine for 12 minutes because my oven runs a little cold) or until edges start to brown.  Freezes well for up to 6 months.

 

Two batches later I had about 180ish cookies.  Then I like to make homemade butter cream frosting - it's also super easy. 

Butter Cream Frosting

4 c powdered sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 TBS milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

Blend with hand mixer on medium speed until well blended. One recipe of this will cover one batch of the cookies.

Then we had three awesome families come over and help decorate cookies, put together plates, and play with Josie's toys.  It was such a great evening.  After we'd decorated them all, we divided the 32 families and everyone went out sharing joy.  This might become a new Christmas tradition, it was that good.