Since my last writing, I've gotten out my Thrive magazines, pulled up the Forks Over Knives website, thumbed through my Salad Samurai cookbook and many of my other favorite plant-based resources in search of the absolute best (read: unique, delicious and in-season) salads for the new year.
Good morning! And happy New Year's Eve day. Wednesday is grocery shopping day here.
It always brings me joy to get out my great-grandma Emily Peters' fudge recipe. This year my kids joined me in the kitchen. Let's face it: there would be marshmallows.
There are people out there who need you.
If you have Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day, you already know that her recipes are as reliable as they come.
Have you seen the documentary "The Social Dilemma"?
I've never known someone who didn't love the fall season - even summer zealots mourning the end of the hot season seem to come around with their first glimpse of illuminating yellows, golds and reds.
I love when my serious grown-up day is jolted to a new reality with a simple and often profound statement from one of my kids.
You start to understand the magic of Chinese 5-spice when a houseful of kids who smell these almonds roasting ask for the cookies when they're out of the oven.
You might think the cover on this book would indicate how difficult it'd be to get through. I almost quit reading it twice.
It's now highly recommended to buy up as many fresh berries as you can carry with only thoughts of what you will pair with them.
Recently I was thinking back about life before kids and recalled a conversation with a friend who reminisced about what she did with her time before-family. "I spent an entire weekend framing a picture," she said.
Here in our town, we are finishing up our second week of remote learning. The kids are getting a sneaking suspicion that seeing their friends on Zoom-school is not that fun.
Here is my four-year-old son's cake request for his upcoming 5th birthday: chocolate cake with chocolate frosting on top with chocolate chip mint ice cream inside and then gummy bears on the outside and Mike and Ikes on the inside.
I just finished this book by Tom Golden. I can't say enough about it. In terms of understanding boys, Tom boils down the big points of relating to boys in about 100 pages.
"Could they design an automobile engine that runs on zucchini?" asks Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.
When I used to co-sleep with my babies, I adored waking up to the puff-puff sound of their breathing.
Ever since my kids got their teeth and they were past the choking stage for solid food, salads regularly appear on their plates. (Little babes only need one forkful on their plate. I always have bigger kids serve themselves to eliminate the excuses.)
One thing that Tim and I started doing a few months ago is movie night for just us, no kids.
I don't know anyone who isn't eating at home a lot these days but that doesn't necessarily mean there's more time to do the cooking. The dishes pile up daily and yet I'm not making the more involved dishes that excite my inner foodie.
It's been five years since we had a new baby in the house, and in the years since, we've dialed in a few things that make our lives as parents more satisfying and basically more sane.
