Sweet and Simple Birthday.

I had a lovely birthday. The girls, Earth Baby, Storyteller, Lolie, Squiggle Bug, and Smunchie conspired with The Piano Man to make my day special. I forgot to take pictures throughout the day but I did remember now and then. The day was simple and special, memorable in so many ways. The Piano Man made fruit topped pancakes with coffee for breakfast, the girls gave me homemade birthday cards (no pictures! I'll have to fix that) and hugs and kisses. After The Piano Man took off to teach, Lolie read me a story she wrote and read a book to me, Storyteller gave me a book of 8 chapters she wrote, Earth Baby gave me a beautiful piece of art (again, no picture) and Squiggle Bug gave me "cubbles" and a fist full of tiny white flowers Storyteller helped her gather. Together we sat down and picked out projects from the "Warm Fuzzies" felted projects book, found the sweaters we would be cutting up and spent some time outside in the beautiful weather the day granted us.

The Piano Man came home and cooked up a delicious lunch of polenta topped with mushrooms, asparagus, sundried tomatoes, pine-nuts, garlic, and basil in a wine sauce. The perfect finale was a Charlotte au Chocolat, an adult version and one for the girls. Quite time gave The Piano Man and I time to finish off our pieces of cake over coffee. Whenever we get to have a cup of coffee in the afternoon while naps and quite time are happening I feel like we got a mini-date, having it happen on my birthday was a gift.


In the evening the girls threw me a party at the zoo. Ok, that isn't exactly how it went down, there was Zoobilee that evening. The Piano Man had rehearsal and couldn't join us so us girls went on our own. Yes, it is true. I took 5 children to the zoo. By myself. On my birthday. My birthday celebration dinner was at the zoo and I'm not under the age of 12. Or even 21. On Facebook I asked if that meant I was super lame or a super cool mom. I got a mixed response. A zoo party is a great place to be for a birthday though, there were hoola-hoop competitions, dance-offs, fun costumed dancers, passports to get stamped, animals to see, temporary air-brush tattoos to get, big soft pretzels to devour and loads more. We had a great time and only once did I feel like I was, well, in a zoo.


I had planned to get a pedi but ripped off half of my big toenail on my right foot that day so the pedi will have to wait. I did get a haircut though, and went out with a friend to enjoy a Sugarbaby's cupcake and some Starbucks. Later I'll do some shopping, I'll probably go crazy and buy something like white paint for the new shelves in the kitchen. Yes, I realize I'm a real grown-up when I'm considering dishware, shelves and a new spatula as birthday gifts. Well, that and a writers conference. Gosh, I sound so old!

Brought to you by the color orange: Butternut Squash Lasagna

Dinner. I like food.


I'm not sure how this happens but every once in a while it seems like everything in a certain meal or the main course of all the meals for a day end up being the same color. Today our menu was brought to you by the color orange and by the color yellow, green made a guest appearance as usual though. Breakfast: egg sandwiches; Lunch: carrot and daikon radish salad; Dinner: butternut squash lasagna; Snack: clementine. The only way it could have been more perfect would have been to have a golden delicious apple for another snack. Oh, but I am having popcorn as I type this for a late night snack! That has some yellow/orange in it. Cool.

Anyway, I checked out several recipes for butternut squash and other similar recipes and created my own. I've made it before and the recipe I'm writing down now is a based more on the last one I made and not this one as I had to change it based on what I had available and time constraints.

Ingredients:

Enough lasagna noodles for a 9x13 pan, cooked (I like whole wheat)

White pasta sauce (my favorite is my own creamy pesto sauce), 24oz or so.

1 medium butternut squash, seeded and sliced and lightly roasted

1 16oz container of ricotta cheese

16oz of mozzarella cheese, shredded

1 cup walnuts, chopped

fistful of fresh basil leaves

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tablespoons brown sugar

salt and pepper to taste


Run squash through the food processor, mix squash and chopped nuts together with basil and oregano in large bowl. Set aside.

Mix ricotta cheese, cinnamon, brown sugar, salt and pepper in small bowl.

Starting with a thin layer of sauce, alternate layering the lasagna noodles, cheese mixture, squash mixture, and the shredded cheese topping it all with shredded cheese and extra nuts if desired.

Bake for 45 minutes, if possible, test the squash for tenderness.

Substitutes this time due to time and what I had on hand: Ritoni pasta (whole wheat) instead of lasagna. Jarred alfredo/three cheese pasta sauce (not as good, I think but time was short), dried basil instead of fresh, so sad. Please pardon the phone pics, I need new batteries for the better camera.

Pumpkin Soup

This blog isn't actually supposed to be all about France and eventually, well until we live there anyway, I will run out of things to write specifically about France. That and I promise there are other aspects of our lives. Like food. Last week I mentioned two different meals we had on Facebook and got asked for the recipes. I thought I'd go ahead and share them here.

In honor of the cooler weather gracing Houston and the holiday spirit, Jeremy and I made pumpkin soup. (By the way, I had amazing pumpkin soup in France when we went out to celebrate our friend Steve's birthday, it was ah-mazing with chunks of roasted chestnuts in it and other magical properties I couldn't imagine.) For well over a year now I've been in love with the recipes from this blog. We have made a wide variety of her recipes and have been inspired to create some of our own as well with mostly great success. Hint- it is really hard to screw up crock-pot cooking, not impossible but really hard. Anyway, we took inspiration from Stephanie's Jamiacan Pumpkin Soup for our festive meal. I didn't use fresh pumpkin, just plain pumpkin from a can and I tripled the amount of pumpkin called for (I wanted it to be really pumpkiny), added about 2 cups of water and two potatoes. I can't ever follow a recipe exactly, particularly if I've made it before. Oh yeah, I went ahead and added cinnamon too but I couldn't tell you how much, I just shook some in. Everything went into the crock-pot (I used my big 6 quart) and cooked on low all day, 7 hours give or take. I ran into a hitch when I couldn't find the bottom of my blender when it came time to puree it so I improvised and used the hand mixer. This was woefully inadequate and led to me wishing (loudly) that Santa would bring me a submersible hand blender. I said this a lot, hopefully he got the memo. So our smooth, creamy pumpkin soup was more like chunky pumpkin stew but that didn't stop us. For the girls I drizzled some honey and a touch of cream on top of their soup and then, because I knew the chunks would not be appreciated, I added a squirt of whipped cream on top of that garnished with chopped walnuts. They claimed they loved it. Personally, I skipped the cream and just had a touch of honey and nuts on top of mine. I loved it. The chunks weren't too bad though I think I would have liked it better smooth but it was warming, filling and very tasty. I like the combination of sweet and savory in this soup, it works very well and of course you can skip the sweet if you don't like the idea by just not adding honey on top. If I were serving this for a dinner party, I would have bought a large pumpkin, scooped out the inside and served the soup in that. I would have also run out and invested in a submersible hand blender.

Black Bean and spinach Humus- Serious Iron on a chip

I don't know what it takes for a dip to be called "humus," if it has to be made with chick-peas, if tahini is required or if any mashed bean of sorts will do.

Not that I care. I call this black bean humus anyway. We are always looking for a way to get more iron in all of us, particularly Helena and so I turned to two of my favorite sources of iron: spinach and black beans. I'll write out the basics of the recipe (if you can call it that) and then share some of the variations I've made as well.

- 2 15 oz cans of black beans, rinsed
- 4 cups or so of fresh baby spinach (or more, I've used almost an entire 10oz container before)
- 2 garlic cloves or garlic powder, minced
- 1/2 tbsp chili powder
- 3 tbsp water
- salt and pepper to taste
- half a bunch of fresh parsley or 1 tbsp dried
- 1/2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp tahini

Whiz beans in food processor gradually adding water. When beans are pretty smooth begin to add spinach one cup at a time. Add garlic, chili powder, parsley and salt and pepper. Serve with toasted bread, toasted tortillias, tortillia chips, carrot and celery sticks or whatever else strikes your fancy. I should warn you though, this stuff looks like poop. I played that up to the girls and they giggled with their first bites. The gross factor does wear off, I promise and as I type this up I decorated in black bean dip handprint smears by Evangeline and the other girls are around me nibbling on toast pieces dipped in this very thing... well, a variation of it.

The more economical version would be to soak and cook dry beans, divid them into freezer containers by 15 oz (or whatever unit works for you) and just pull those out as you need them. Significant savings.

Variations:

omit the tahini add basil and oregano and double the olive oil.

omit the tahini, olive oil and parsley double the chili powder, add half an avecado (optional, I didn't have one today so I skipped this part) and through in half a bunch of cilantro. A pinch of cyanne is also really good in this one but the girls won't eat that.

In reality I'm not convinced the olive oil is neccessary, I rarely put it in any more.

This has turned out to be a hit with the family, we enjoy it at least once a week and it has been known to be considered a meal a time or two because I consider it a better option than PB&J. It's fast, easy, the kids help and it's extremely high in iron, fiber, protien and just all around goodness. If you give it a try, let me know how yours turns out and any variations you come up with.

Cabbage and Sausage Stew

I'm going to write about dinner again. It was a good dinner, deserves a blog post. I'm even going to attempt to write the recipe out.

Since our trip we've been rather scarce on groceries and I've been putting it off but push came to shove and I had to go yesterday. Picked up a few things with the crew and planned a couple of meals. This one was in my head and I decided to give it a try today.

Ingredients:

Half a head of cabbage (I used the other half for col-slaw)
3 medium/large potatoes
4 carrots
1 turkey kielbasa style sausage, sliced
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
4 bay leaves
2 tsp oregano
2 cups vegetable broth

I had decided we were having a vegetarian week to kind of cleanse ourselves from the trip, obviously fell off that wagon.

So I threw all the veggies in the crockpot first. Tip: put potatoes in first- cabbage doesn't need to be on the bottom but potatoes and carrots sure do. Throw those veggies in and then the sausage and remaining ingredients. Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 8 hours. I did high for 4 hours because I started late but it worked perfectly though I really had to resist the urge to open the lid and stir but it was worth it.

This was a hit, I mean a really, really big hit. The girls devoured it, Evangeline ate everything but the sausage but only because I didn't give her any, Jessi said it was really good and added her hot sauce (the girl likes her hot sauce) and the real sign was when Jeremy said we could have it once a week. I will be making this again though I doubt it will be next week. However, I do love my crockpot. Which reminds me, I need to make a breakfast casserole in it before heading to bed. I love my crock-pot. I want another one, or two, or 4.

So for dinner...

I warned you, I'll talk about dinner.

We had this. It was made by 11am this morning, using the left over coffee in our French press from breakfast and I ran the dish washer and that was it. Except for slicing some cream cheese into the pot about 20 minutes before eating. It was so good! Granted, it has coffee, cream cheese, red wine, and a roast, how could it not be good but when all three of the big girls, Jeremy and I both clean our plates you celebrate a hit meal. Stephanie, AKA the crockpot lady is my new best friend even though she doesn't know it. Thanks to her blog I'm pulling out my crockpot more and my family gets to eat decent hot meals far more frequently than normal not counting Mac and Cheese. So far we've made Jamaican Pumpkin Soup, CrockPot Hash Brown Breakfast Casserole, and of course the Java Roast tonight. I've also tried my hand at a few of my own recipies and they've not been shabby either. Tomorrow might be my mom's recipe for Italian chicken stew. Maybe... Potato Leek Soup, Harvest Stew Recipe, and the Bean Stew Recipe, are looking good. Noticing a trend with soup/stew cravings. It's fall! ish.