Lunch

Last Sunday I made the kids spinach quesadillas - one of the ways they WILL eat spinach

and a favorite after church lunch, because it only takes a few minutes to make, and they come home hungry!

Just melt some butter in a large iron skillet, put down a tortilla, top with cheese and spinach that has been sauteed to just wilted, then another quesadilla. Cook for a few minutes, flip, remove and cut. Sometimes I add chicken if I have some left over, or mushrooms.

Happy Weekend

What a busy weekend it's been! In a GREAT way! And, it appears, the theme was food.

It really started Thursday. Sophia had her Christmas Pageant, and it was wonderful. This is the same pageant her school has been doing for fifty years, and I love it. Davis and I took the little ones to the 10 a.m. performance, and then he kept them home while I went and enjoyed the 5:30 p.m. performance.



That's the only pageant picture I got, because my dear friend Paula took official pictures throughout, so I could put my camera away and just enjoy.

Sophia has been begging to go to IHOP for weeks and weeks, so after her pageant I took her there - just the two of us - for a pancakes dinner. It was pretty awesome. Sorry, no pictures. We were busy talking. And eating.

Then Thursday night I stayed up until 3 a.m. making over 300 cookies. It was crazy, and that's why I don't really remember Friday.

Saturday, the girls and I baked up a storm! First we finished off some chocolate chip cookie dough that needed to be baked.





Then we make real gingerbread and cut out cookies to decorate.























Then we made some salt dough ornaments. They are awesome, but they are a post for another day. Here's a preview, though.





For lunch I made a salad with some baby greens, strawberries, pears, craisins, and this dressing, which I could drink straight from the bottle. For real.



Then for dinner, I made spaghetti and realized that my salt dough ornaments were in the oven so I couldn't make garlic bread... that would never do, so I fried the garlic bread instead of baking it, and it was totally yummy!



Sunday Henry wasn't feeling well, and he'd had a fever Saturday so I didn't want to take him to the church nursery, so we stayed home from church. I made some baked french toast (with vanilla instead of booze).



Then we went on a little shopping spree, because I needed to get out of the house - it was a beautiful day. We stopped and picked up a venti nonfat peppermint mocha - oh yum!



I bought this scarf at Savers for 99 cents and I love it. I also love how all of our Christmas presents are piled on top of the TV cabinet so Henry doesn't tear them up before the big day.



Then we went home and I did a ton of laundry and cleaned the house and organized my closet and sorted through and organized all of my jewelry, because I'd had a venti coffee after basically being off caffeine for three months.

I'm so HAPPY about this week, and it's the first time I've been happy in a few weeks. We are going to do some fun Christmas things all week long!

Lunch

Leftover black bean and pumpkin soup (so yum!) and spinach and turkey roll ups.

And while we're at it, let's talk about pumpkins. Because it's fall and I'm talking about seasonal vegetables and pumpkin is the ultimate fall veggie. Pumpkins look like this

Okay, not really. One time my school teacher aunt asked her first graders to draw a fish and one of them drew a fish stick. No kidding.

Anyway, pumpkin is a vegetable (along with beans) that I will make an exception to my no-vegetables-in-a-can rule. And really, for no good reason, because like other hard winter squashes, you can easily cook it by cutting in half, roasting cut-side down, and then just scooping out the insides. But in a can is even faster and easier, and thankfully pumpkin's many nutrients are still mostly in tact when they come from Libby's instead of fresh from the patch.

Pumpkins are a super excellent source of beta carotene. In fact, one mashed cup of pumpkin offers you 245% of your daily recommended value of Vitamin A!

I am the only member of my family who will eat a pumpkin pie. This is traaaagic, because it means on Thanksgiving Day, I will have to eat a whole pie myself.

My non-recipes for pumpkin is that I basically just add it to everything this time of year. Pumpkin pancakes, muffins, cakes, breads, etc. I just make my normal recipes (for example, The Pancake, though just a plain ol' flour, sugar, milk, egg, butter, baking powder pancake will do) and then dump in some pumpkin puree. Little Henry ate three big pumpkin pancakes this morning!

Lunch

Featuring: Spinach tortilla, refried black beans, cheddar cheese, avocado.
Reviews: "mom, this is great."
Stats: 335 calories, 16 grams fat, 12 grams protein, 17% RDA calcium, 13% RDA iron, 10% RDA Vitamins B6 and B12

Lunch

Tee hee :)

Lunch

How to get toddlers and preschoolers to eat all their veggies:

Toothpicks? Check.
Color coded? Check.
Groups of three? Check.

Actually, my kids are great about eating just about anything... but it's more fun this way!