The new resolve...

Things have been ( mostly ) well.

I am reactivating the blog to write about a new direction that I've decided to take my family. I am ( temporarily ) signing off of Facebook, and most of my online " forums". I am minimizing the amount of processed food we eat. I have re-dedicated myself to being the more gentle, natural based parent that I strive to be.

I am working on feminity, not falling into the jeans and sloppy tshirt that I've been prone to lately. I do not feel good about wearing crappy, ill fitting clothes. I do not feel good about wearing a 2xl tshirt that I yoinked from my husband's drawer. I've commited to wearing a skirt every day for 1 week ( today is day 5, but I'll update on that later ).

I baked cinnamon rolls from scratch, cornbread from scratch, and tonights dinner will be using a prepackaged sauce, but I might make the bread myself.

This is the new me... and I'm loving it.

Party Hardy, my friends. And eat lots.

We got over a foot of nastiness dumped on us over the last few days. Gross. I couldn't make it out of my parking stall for the damned wind drifted snow, and the roads were about as big of a mess as I've ever seen them. And its not like we had reason to stay home, with everyone semi healthy to mostly healthy.

( Semi to mostly is all I ask for these days, LOL )

I baked a loaf of onion dill bread. oh... onion dill bread, how I love thee. The base was ( again ) Arie's sour cream potato bread. MMMMMM. Actually, it was horrible and i refuse to admit that I ate nearly half the loaf slathered in butter, straight from the oven.

Then I baked these graham blondies. Delicious! Folks, you must make these! oooey... Gooey. YUMMY. And mine. No, I didn't share with the children. I did share with Shannon, my " wife ". She's got two kids - one Mila's age, and one Shayla's age. It makes for lovely playdates!

Shannon's daughter had a party for her birthday yesterday and I braved the snowstorm to go out. WTF was I thinking? First Alex had to 4x4 the car out of the parking spot. ( Gee, that was lovely. The smirk on my husband's face as he EASILY got the car out of the snowdrift from hell that used to be our parking spot.... I won't share blondies with him. Ever. ) Her hubby took some pictures of the kidlets.. .and so, I share them with you.

In the oven...

Out of the pan and into the fire. We're all sick. Again. Still.

I have some sort of viral walking pnuemonia complete with coughing fits. As the doctor put it : the more I cough, the more inflamed my airways become. The more inflamed my airways become, the more I will cough. He prescribed codeine.

( The side effect of which, I'm told, is that the baby will be sleepy. YAY sleepy baby PLEASE be kind to sick Mommy. )

I've been experimenting, and DAMN have there been good results :

Cheddar Salsa Bread ( from potato bread base ) 9 / 10 - if I had simply let it cook a big longer and cool QUITE a bit longer, I think it might have earned a 10. Alex ate it plain. So did most of my friends.

Beef piroshki ( Arie's recipe ) 9 / 10 - Again, i must let things bake longer.

Chicken Piroshki 10 / 10 They were horrible, and i refused to share them with anyone in case they were posioned. ( read : I ate every single last one )

"Best Recipe " Chocolate Chip Cookies 6/10 Too much brown sugar. Too sweet.

" Tollhouse " CC cookies 8/10 Needed more salt, and maybe a minute LESS in oven. Ooops.

Peanut Butter Cookies 5/10 Not peanutty enough. Not chewy, had an odd cakey flavour.

Challah 8/10 Texture was spot on. Flavour was spot on. Until i burnt it... Oops!

Potato Onion Loaves 9/10 Might mash the filling next time. Tasted fab, but fell out of the bun when I was eating it.

Carrot Cake Muffins with Whipped Cream Cheese Icing 9/10... the only downfall? I shoulda chopped the carrots smaller!

I also made Oatmeal muffins, not from scratch.... and they were damned good. But next time, I will make them from scratch!

Today...

I feel accomplished!

I baked a batch of cheese & pepper bread ( oh so delicious! ), and carrot cake muffins yesterday. Hubster actually called to tell me they ROCKED. Thank god, since I was a bit worried. I do not enjoy carrot cake, and I despise cream cheese icing. Everyone loved them... I shared a few among two good friends ;-) one called to tell me she might have had a foodgasm. YAY foodgasm!

Today, I baked a batch of bbq chicken buns, and mini loaves stuffed with potato and onion. I'm very excited to see how they turn out! I forgot to brush them with butter ( oops! ) and so must wait until they are well and golden brown before removing them from the oven.

The kids are happy. Mila and Robby are upstairs playing in the playroom, and Shayla is attempting to eat puffed rice from the tray of her highchair. The dog is sleeping, and my house smells divine and I am WEARING AN APRON.

Life is good.

( I will feed you in return for doing dishes. )

Food Evolution

My kitchen is a mess, but my heart is organized. I've started eating more at home, and less out on the road. I'm cooking from scratch, not just boxes and cans. The freezer holds more leftovers than it does heat n eat meals.

Today, I baked bread. From Scratch. No bread machine, no stand mixer, heck, I don't even own a single wooden spoon. I measured. I mixed. I kneaded and punched and folded and voila! I had bread dough! I felt accomplished, satisfied, and oddly at peace with the fact that yes... I'm becoming a domestic goddess. So domestic I could moo.

Menu planning is a big step in cooking at home. If I don't know what I need to make a meal, I don't have any ideas. Nothing gets defrosted, nothing gets cooked. The kids eat chicken nuggets and the adults eat... soup. Or mac n cheese. Or plain ol' cold cereal.

That isn't how I want this family fed. I want whole grains. I want real ingredients, I want home cooked food, I want the apartment to smell like love is in the air ( for you know that the way to a heart is through ones stomach - from child to adult, food speaks ).

Today was a big step with baking piroshki - it was an all day affair, with mixing and cooking and simmering, oh my! I photo'd the whole process but I'm not sure what to do with them... No one really needs to see my cooking adventures ( despite the uber tastiness that occurred - even MILA ate two piroshki! ). Both the bread recipe and the filling are my dear friend Arie's recipe. She simply decided she was making piroshki and she did, even though she'd only had them once in her whole life. I strive for that! The fact that ( omg ) I BAKED BREAD from SCRATCH ( moooo ) was a major breakthrough. I made three babies. I made cloth diapers. I baked bread from flour, water, salt, etc.

My friends are such an inspiration here - many of them have food intolerances and allergies so severe that eating out is *not* an option. Ever. It is home cooked or hungry. And I assume that their houses still get clean, their children are clothed and bathed, and their husbands go to work with a smile on their face. They don't complain about food ruts, children who won't touch vegetables, and the never ending battle against dishes. They wear aprons. They bake foreign foods and ancient grains and all sorts of delicious concoctions. It amazes me that anyone has the energy, and most of these ladies have more than three children!

So it is my goal to cook more for my family. Wholesome, real food - not food from a can.

Salami and Peanut Butter

At 2 oclock on Monday, I was battling the every day, super busy, why won't the kids just give me a break cause I have a stomach ache and headache blues when an epiphany hit me :

All I'd had to eat all day was a slice of salami and a handful of peanut butter M&M's.


Take what works for you, and leave the rest is something I've often heard at my parenting group. But doing that is hard. Do I strive to be the best *I* can be? Or do I simply strive to be better than everyone else for the sake of being better?

I adore cloth diapering. I find babywearing a necessity. Breastfeeding and cosleeping are biological imperatives - my babies deserve nothing less. H1N1 scares me, but less than the idea of injecting my child with an untested vaccine. I don't buy organic and I love to drive. I yell - and ocassionaly spank - my children, but I also respect them and try to understand them.

I'm an advocate for women's rights, but I clean the house to please my hubby. I sew. I crochet ( poorly ). And I take my SUV through the timmies drive through on a much too regular basis.

And I blog. Sporadically.

A Return From the Dark sidE!

It has been so long. I apologize!
I'm watching my sewing stuff take off on a local level. Here are just a few pictures of the " stuff " I've been making!