food report, and our weekly adventures

**WARNING** 

If you want to avoid a very long and potentially boring essay on food, scroll down to pictures below.

Blogdom has taken a back seat to our adventures of the past week (or two...)  We've been busy with ordinary happenings of everyday life...feeding, grooming, dressing the kids....laundering, feeding, putting to naps, feeding, running, bathing, feeding, putting to bed...but mostly feeding.  It seems most of my motherly effort these days is put towards food prep, packing lunches, grocery shopping, meal planning, cooking, baking, getting snacks, etc....and since food is the most urgent need around here, I've gotten to enjoy meal planning, experimenting with new recipes, and forcing any kind of torturously healthy food on my kids.  And even though the hungry bellies are relentless between 3 meals + 3 or more snacks a day, I still really love to cook and bake and experiment in the kitchen.  Some of my recent favorite recipes:

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins--the kids think they're eating dessert for breakfast, but instead are being filled with natural whole grain goodness.  Muah-hah-haha! 

Chili Cheese Beef N Mac...like ham.burger helper, except yummy.  And much healthier without all the mysterious food colorings/additives...I added about 2 oz of cream cheese to this recipe for some extra creamy flavor...and the best part?  It only dirties one pot.  I've also made the enchilada sauce from this food blog with good success.

 I've also been doing a little crockpotting...some bombs, like Lemon Chicken that was barely edible but some surprisingly good like this Chicken & Lentil Stew . . . a few other recipes in random order: Gingerbread Bars, Homemade Marshmallows, Poppyseed Chicken, Peanut Butter Banana Smoothies, Pumpkin Pie Smoothies, Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls, Pumpkin Crescent Rolls, and Homemade Yogurt, who no one really likes except Jada, but she makes up for the others' lack of consumption and doesn't mind the overly tangy flavor. 

Since I like to cook healthy, I usually convert white flour recipes to whole grain using the organic wheat berries I buy from my food co-op: soft white wheat for whole wheat pastry flour (muffins/cookies/biscuits)--you can't tell it's whole wheat with the mild-flavored white variety. And I also get hard white wheat for yeast breads.  It's a great way to eat budget-friendly whole, minimally-processed foods, which is my definition of "healthy."   Another cheap find of mine?  Organic dried beans, again purchased from my food co-op, where I grocery shop online and get a monthly shipment delivered to town for really cheap shipping.  There's no membership fee, and I'm able to get organic versions of things like dried beans, canned tomatoes, produce...all for a crazy cheap prices, often less expensive than the pesticide/GMO versions at the grocery store.

 

Okay.  So now to turn this into the longest blog posting ever...I'm going to transition awkwardly into our recent adventures.  This morning was our group visit to the dentist.  The three big kids had no cavities (hooray!)  They also got these really cool light-up toothbrushes...which is rather timely, since we have an abundance of toothbrushes that might have been used by multiple kids.

Jada (above) on another banana binge.  As of 10am this morning she had consumed about 2.5.  Below is a snap of her glorious and radiant bed head, for which she patiently endures me combing, spraying and tying back every morning.

 We had the joy of spending a morning with my treasured friend Janna and her posse of 5, for a lovely nature walk.  Aside from being humorously mistaken for a field trip group (together we have 9 kiddos), we stumbled across this adorable newly-hatched baby snapping turtle, half dried up from being so far away from the water:

After rehydrating himself in Jada's stroller cup holder with a little water, he was a new turtle, climbing and crawling, attempting his escape.  He really was a cute little thing.

Cami's model of the snapper made from an empty pod:

And here is evidence of my recent brain lapse...a painting session, which was a reward to the kids for working so hard cleaning up the whole house.  Next time I will not walk away for 3 minutes...there IS a paper underneath that, not that it would have lessened the scrubbing.  And you all know who did this, right?

I'm not going to name names, but . . . hmmm.

And here's my vivacious boy with his cousin-buddy (see their sweet blog here).    We *LOVE* having them close by:

May you have a well-rested and lovely week!