What a great idea!

Someday I am going to try this out!

http://leahbellesrecipes.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-joined-supper-coop.html

Recipes & Food Adventures

I have been looking for a place to store my recipes and such, and I had joined Xanga a while back- creating yet another unused blog! So today I set it up to be dedicated to that favorite subject of mine- FOOD, glorious food!

I posted 2 new recipes there that we tried out this morning- Pumpkin Tarts & Scrambled Egg Pockets. I'd love to have favorite recipes of friends and family to share on the site if you want to send them to me- I'll try them out, G & I will rate them, and then post them to my site.

Happy Cooking!

Monday Muffins

Monday we made muffins in the morning. We had just a few frozen blueberries and strawberries that we had been using for smoothies, and we still have LOTS of peaches- and with the weather finally turning colder we aren't using them... so we altered the basic muffin recipe from our Betty Crocker cookbook, added a package of Marie Callendars cornbread mix, threw in a mashed banana and the frozen fruits and voila! and they turned out delicious. We made 40 mini-muffins and 12 standard size. While measuring the ingredients we focused on "halves" and "thirds" by using only those 2 measuring cups.



We also updated both of our chore charts. Grace decided on 2 chores a day that she will do, and I created a chart for myself based on my Daily To Do List (14 things I want to get done every day). Grace earns happy face stickers and she picks the color; I earn foil stars- gold for doing all 7 things in both the AM & PM, silver for 6, blue for 5, red for 4 and green for 3 things done. We can both earn up to 2 stickers a day. We also help each other with our chores and we are going to see who gets the most stickers this month. The one who does gets to pick where we go on a special Mommy & Grace lunch date.

I've been thinking about my random, inconsistent, all over the place online "tracking" and I realized that what I really want to create is like a combination scrapbook, photo-album "life book". Something we can refer to as a family and share with others as we journey through our lifelong learning. Not to "show off" our work, more to have a central location to find recipes we enjoyed, remember events and learning experiences, and collect links and information. I get so sidetracked with the social aspect of blogging, especially with all these cool soc-net sites! I thought of deleting my entire online presence, and making this blog private- but I do enjoy reading the blogs a few friend... I just wish I could comment on their posts without having to join their chosen site for blogging!

I am in the process of pulling all the posts over from my oldest blog site Yahoo! 360- maybe I will do the same with all the others and truly consolidate this time!! Then to work on labels, photos and privacy...

Food & Nutrition

We started our last summer theme today- Foods and Nutrition. I love being able to expose her to my idea of the best food choices, since we have been leaning more and more towards a raw, vegan lifestyle.

We both played detectives investigating the sickness of so many stuffed lovies. We found clues along the way and jotted them in our notebook. We discovered that the "junk-food joke-ster" was behind it all, and we interviewed some witnesses. A kindly firewoman (it was the only hat I could find that fit me!) gave directions so she could draw a map to the 5 scrolls of food groups (Veggies, Water & other Superfoods, Fruit, Dairy & Grains, and Meats & Treats) We talked about how some people ate of the last group and began to worship pyramids of food. And how several people we knew had allergies to the dairy and grains so that maybe we should go easy on those if we choose to eat them.

We started a report for the police chief, compiling our notes and planned out how we could learn enough to capture and defeat the junk-food joke-ster. We learned about the 5 senses and how important they were both for being a detective and for preparing food. Healthy Sally helped us with a few tips and showed us how to make a "magic green elixir", it came out a lovely shade of green so we froze what was left into popsicles for tomorrow. Recipe below if you are interested. We both loved it!

We juiced the following (all organic)-
4 small leaves Lacinato Blue Kale
6 Romaine leaves
1/2 zucchini (just the skin actually)
2 large Red Leaf Lettuce leaves
a bit of cilantro from the garden just for fun!
1/8 honeydew melon
3/4 Pear

Then we blended the juice with
1/2 pear
1/2 zucchini (the flesh left after juicing the skin)
1/8 honeydew melon
1/4 cup frozen chunks young Thai coconut
4 oz Aloe vera gel

Tomorrow we will continue the investigation, or maybe the next day- since it is so hot and with Shawn already having to drive into OC for work we may just go to the beach all day.