Shower fun

One of my dearest friend's daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks so I helped give her a bridal shower. It ended up being a lot of fun, and my first attempt at a mini candy buffet. I ordered tiny little polka dotted organza bags for guests to take a treat home with them. Extra long handled espresso scoops were great for scooping candy out of assorted glass jars. I've seen photos of beautiful, monochromatic candy displays, but decided that because this was a more casual events, that a classic combination of different candies would be fun. I used glass jars that I had already, jars from friends and even from a thrift store. Candy was purchased online and using really good coupons in different stores. Having a variety of different types of jars of different height made the display more interesting. Notice there were no lids on the jars, just in case anyone else is as klutzy as me, I didn't use them. The tags on each jar were printed on my computer and hot glued to ribbon. Putting the table together was SO much fun and the big smile on the bride's face when she saw the finished result was the best part. Be on the look out for more candy tables in the future.

HouseParty People!

Our house will once again become crazy party central! I'm so excited to be hosting another HouseParty! This will be our seventh. If you don't know about the incredibly fun, brilliant marketing idea click here to check them out. Here's the rundown: you apply for parties that you would like to host. If you are lucky enough to be chosen, HouseParty sends you a box of fun stuff to throw a fun party. Your friends and family love to come because they love trying new products and get to go home with fun goodies. Here's a picture of the fun party pack for the Bull's Eye BBQ party we are having on Sunday! Should have a full house and lots of fun!



I've already applied for another HouseParty or two. Whether you would love to host a fun party or are looking for a brilliant way to market your product, HouseParty is the best!

Back yard shenanigans

We are blessed to live in a great house in a great neighborhood. I'm not "house proud". It's not perfect, it's never going to be but it is home and we love it here. There is one area of our home that has plagued us from the beginning. The back yard. In England, referring to someone's outside space as a "yard" is an insult. They like the word "garden" better. We have a yard out back. A dusty, neglected piece of land that we had pretty much given up on. We've laid new grass twice and mulched the whole thing at one point (don't EVER do that) but it's stayed a mess.

Our house is the last one to be constructed in the neighborhood. That explains why we have found seventeen buckets of hardened concrete along with every form of building debris in our backyard during our other attempts at improving. This is where the construction trailer sat, and this is where remnants of whatever were dumped. We can't grow grass. The neighbors behind us have assorted weeds that creep in and take over because I'm too lazy to pull weeds every day. Sorry, but it's the truth. We finally decided that something had to be done. We settled on building a raised flagstone deck. It was a HUGE undertaking and it's not finished yet.

We've had two truckloads of dirt dumped on our driveway, the husband rented some sort of heavy equipment to move it to the back. Three teenagers worked two days with him to level dirt and lay stone. The cable guy had to come fix the barely buried cable that we stirred up while moving dirt and stone to the back. I've made runs for huge bags of ice, cases of bottled water and something called a tamper. They did the back breaking work in the heat only to discover that we don't have enough stone. Our deck is larger than the 16x35 feet it started out as, so we've got more stone in our future to finish this bad boy. And sod. Our side yard is torn up from that whatever-it's-called that the husband rented. That's a picture of him in it, by the way. He's smiling, so that's probably before it got stuck. Anyway. That's it for now.

Neglected and sad no more.

So I started this blog to follow our adventure into all things vegan. The trouble is, we like our dairy (and sometimes meat) and couldn't hack it. Most of us were hacking it just fine but my daughter (with various health problems that forced us to try to be vegan in the first place) wasn't going to have it. She wasn't having soy milk in her Cheerios "ever, EVER again $%@*!!" so I gave up on this blog and forgot about it. I've decided after blogging about my daughter's illnesses that I'd giving happy blogging a shot. I love my life and sometimes need to remind myself of that fact!

This would have been the day....

If we hadn't already made the decision to start making this dietary change, this would be the day that would've done it. Our youngest daughter's most recently diagnosed autoimmune disease (she has another one too) has taken to attacking another part of her body. An early morning doctor's appointment confirmed how much is going on. It was not good news but we are dealing with it the best we can. We are resting in our faith. There aren't many tools to fight this disease right now but knowing this dietary change might help at some point is one step in the right direction.

It seems a little boring to write about what we eat at every meal. When recipes or meals really stand out to my family as a clear hit or miss, I will post them here. I'll also be posting reviews of sorts, like last night. This evening's dinner was a clear hit. I had been contemplating something we could have as a hearty meal. Kindof like roast and potatoes without the roast. I am also trying very hard to get some extra calcium into our diet, especially because Prednisone is known to cause Osteoporosis, and Hay has been taking that for going on a year. Dinner tonight was Spinach with white beans, roasted smashed red potatoes and corn. Really simple and unbelievably delicious. My husband said he'd eat it anytime. Good thing, because he'll be seeing it on his plate again. It was super easy too. Here goes.

Spinach with White Beans

10 oz. baby spinach (washed well and dry)

2 Tbsp. olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

4 c. white beans (I used navy) if canned, rinse and drain

2 Tbsp. chopped fresh basil

Freshly ground pepper, salt and crushed red pepper flakes to taste

In a large frying pan with sides, coat pan with oil and let the garlic sit in it for a little while before you turn on the pan. Garlic can burn fast and it tastes dreadfully bitter when that happens, so be careful. Get all your ingredients ready to go before you turn on your pan because this goes really fast. Heat the pan with the oil and garlic to med/high. Add the spinach as soon as you hear the garlic sizzle a little. Stir the spinach in the pan (I use a metal spatula) and toss it around in the pan a little. As soon as it starts to wilt, add the beans. Keep stirring until the beans are heated through. Stir in basil, then season to taste. That's it. This recipe is on the stove top for less than 5 minutes from start to finish. Think really fast, you don't want your spinach to get soggy. Trust me, this recipe is worth trying. Soon.


Roasted Smashed Red Potatoes

This is one of those recipes that you will have to adjust your quantities yourself. Here are the basics:

red potatoes, scrubbed

olive oil

kosher or sea salt and cracked black pepper

I nuke my potatoes until they are baked, and let the oven preheat to 425 degrees while they are in the microwave. You could boil them too, but that's just another pot to wash, it's up to you.
Prepare a jelly roll type baking sheet by drizzling it with olive oil. Here's the complicated part: Put the baked red potatoes on the pan in the olive oil and smash them a little. With a potato masher or fork, just flatten them a little. Drizzle with a little more olive oil if you like, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake until they are crispy on the bottom and around the edges, about 25 minutes. Be prepared, these babies disappear in a quickness, so make a few more than you think you need. Especially if there are boys in your house.

Here's a picture of my plate. Might not be the prettiest picture, but you should try it anyway.

Totally day 1

Some people really need to talk their way through issues. I'm one of those people. Our dietary change has been discussed enough around these parts, so with the exception of the occasional question of whether we can eat a certain food or not, the talking is over. It's action time.

Breakfast is a pretty easy meal to have with no animal products My husband and I are fond of plain oatmeal nuked in the microwave (2 to 1 ratio, 1/2 c. water to 1/4 c. oatmeal) for a minute then with some Splenda, sliced almonds and either banana or dried cherries stirred in. Lucky for me, that's been my breakfast of choice for a few years. Even better, it's perfect for the world we live in now. Hay had a little berry smoothie and a Betty Lou's Almond Butter Ball that my very good friend brought for her to try. She liked it a lot, and once it cools off a bit, we'll be having these babies shipped in bulk.

Lunch was super easy. I made a double batch of the filling for this wrap yesterday, so we'll have plenty for the week and some to freeze for later. This is a recipe based on one that we have used at the really cool kid's cooking school that I teach at. My family has liked it in the past, and even with the modifications to make it work now, they still liked it a lot.

Yummy Sandwich Wraps

1 pkg. Spanish style Rice-a-Roni

1/2 c. chopped onion

1/2 c. chopped bell pepper ( we use Cubanelle)

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1/2 c. honey mustard

Chipotle Tabasco sauce to taste

Chopped tomato and (optional) black olives

Chopped lettuce

6 large flour tortillas

Brown rice according to package directions. Add onions and peppers, saute just a little. Add water as package directs, but do NOT add tomato/sauce as the box directs. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes, then stir in black beans. In a small bowl, mix together honey mustard and Chipotle Tabasco, adjusting the "heat" to your level of comfort. Place roughly 3/4 to 1 c. of rice filling in the center of your tortilla. Top with lettuce, tomatoes and olives, then drizzle with sauce. Fold the top and bottom of tortilla over filling, then wrap the sides. Serve with a little extra sauce for dipping. Can be served warm or cold, and the filling also freezes well.

Guess that brings us to dinner. I love Mexican food just a little too much and cooked just a little too much of it in our almost 20 years of marriage. Effectively, my husband is pretty much over taco night at home. He and our son had football practice this evening so the girls and I took advantage of their absence to have burritos/tacos for dinner. We tried a new product called Fantastic Foods Taco Filling. It came in a box from Publix, inside was the filling in a plastic bag.

Boil some water with a little olive oil, add the filling mix and simmer. 5 minutes later, like magic, this really tasty taco filling appears.

This was not our first meat free taco/burrito night, but it was our first one ever without cheese or sour cream. We love cheese. We love Hay more, so it's gone. Believe it or not, we didn't feel like anything was missing at all. There was homemade salsa (made with lovely local yellow tomatoes), chopped onion, cilantro, olives and avocado along withour favorite sauces and some pinto beans that I pulled out of the freezer. That isn't shredded lettuce, it's baby spinach. Pull the stems off and shred/slice it finely and the pickiest won't know you snuck in a very healthy leafy green. Being sneaky can be fun.

I'll confess now that there were so many tasty trimmings loaded onto my burrito that I really couldn't taste the filling. After tasting a forkful of just the filling I am very happy to report that it was incredibly tasty. The texture was nice too. A big time beef eater would notice the difference if it was eaten alone, but loaded down with other stuff, chances are they would never guess it was something different. The secret is NOT telling them. That's another story though. Back to the taco filling in a box. It was good stuff and we'll be eating it again.

Bet you can sneak a healthier option somewher in your family's diet. It's fun to see if they figure it out.

Vegan??? Not me. Never!

Food has always been something I've enjoyed. Probably too much. I've gained and lost weight too many times to count. I'm an emotional eater. If you know me, the heavy emotional weight of the last year is quite obvious. One day I'll lose it again. That's not what this is about. This is about a radical change in the way my family eats for one reason only. For the love of our youngest daughter. Our middle child of three amazing gifts from God. She is sick and a Vegan diet might help her get better. We are desperate and will try anything. That includes a diet of mostly animal free food. Mostly animal free, because there may be times that the husband or our other two kids might eat out without Hay. What happens at the Cracker Barrel stays at the Cracker Barrel. Our youngest is a very growing boy so there are modifications for him.

There are lots of really good reasons for people to be vegan or vegetarians. I understand and respect those reasons, but am not so inclined to eat that way out of conviction. If any of you that are truely of that persuasion happen upon this blog, please understand that we will not agree on lots of things. I know that white sugar is sometimes filtered with charred bone, and so it's not vegan. I get that, but for the purposes of the changes we are making for health purposes only, at this point, white sugar is still going to be in our diet in moderation. We are going to be transitioning as quickly as possible into a totally animal free diet at home, but it is going to take a little time. We are jumping in, but there are going to be food items that we still use until we find a good substitute. Ranch dressing and honey mustard are two examples. Rome was not built in a day, and this transition will not be happening entirely overnight. We are such a work in progress and I am such a rookie at this. It's going to be an adventure.