food, lately.

Let's talk migraines.
Have you ever had one?
If you have, you know.  They're horrible.
If you haven't...they're horrible.
{understatement}

I get them pretty often.

So I decided to make a pretty drastic diet change
to see if I can put a dent in their frequency.

So for thirty days I'm off of sugar...and dairy...and all grains.

YIKES.

Today is day 7,
and I haven't died.
So, that's good.
But I won't lie...it does suck.
Rumor on the street is that it sucks less and less as time goes on.
We'll see.

But you know?
What I'm cooking and eating is good.
Lots of veggies...some good quality meat...fruit...nuts...and good fats.
I'm hopeful that my migraines will respond and hit the road.
Or at least take a lengthy vacay.

I thought I'd show you what I made tonight.
It was yummy.
You should make it.

It starts with pesto.
You can't go wrong with pesto, right?



I don't have good step-by-step pics for you.
But we all know how easy pesto is.
And the measurements here are a guesstimate.
You really can't mess it up.

Yummy Easy Pesto
-a handful of basil leaves.  maybe 1/4 cup?
-approx. 2 Tbsp. olive oil
-3 Tbsp. or so pine nuts
-1 clove garlic
-a couple of teaspoons of white balsamic vinegar
-if you want, add some grated parmesan.  i usually do.  {until 7 days ago, that is....}

Chop it all up in your awesome mini aqua food processor.

Grab your chicken breasts.
{i used two.}
Flatten them between saran wrap.
I let Colin whack away with the back of a ladle.

Once they're flat, sprinkle them with salt and pepper and
spread pesto on top of the flattened breasts.
{fyi: i cut the two breasts in half and they fed the five of us.}

After you spread the pesto,
roll up the breasts and wrap each in a piece of bacon.

Warning: raw chicken photo ahead!



I know...it looks so gross.
But TRUST ME.
Deliciousness awaits.

Bake those little pretties for 30 minutes at 400 degrees,
or until the chicken is cooked and the bacon is brown and crispy.

And chances are your bacon hound will remain within a
two foot radius of the bacon at all times.



Then...get out your best knife and your cutting board.
And grab a bunch of veggies.



How pretty is that?
Broccoli...red peppers...carrots...brussels sprouts...mushrooms...
red and white fingerling potatoes...and zucchini.
Drizzle with some olive oil and a whole mess of balsamic vinegar.
Roast at 425 for 25-30 minutes.

Now here's a really crappy photo of the end result.
It's yellow and bad,
but it was dinnertime and I was starving and ready to eat.



Ok, seriously.
This was really good.
Make it.

It's been hard to give up all of those foods.
And then last Friday Riley wanted to make cookies.
Wah.



We made cookies and homemade graham crackers.



I didn't have any.
Not even a crumb.
Oy.
It was pretty tortuous.
But I did it.  And I'm feeling good.
I only had one migraine in the last seven days, which is good.

Today the temperature was in the 70's
and it's going to be even warmer later in the week.
We ended the day by the firepit, all five of us.




The kids were telling silly stories
and I was telling them to keep their feet away from the fire.
I'm looking forward to more of those nights soon.

{and leftover bacon wrapped chicken for lunch tomorrow.  booyah!}

mid-week musings.

One of my least favorite times of the year is back.

Science fair time.

I'm really not a fan.
Does that make me a bad mom?
Bad former teacher?
I don't know...I just dislike it.

This year Riley's project is to find out which "yeast food" creates

the most carbon dioxide gas.

{sugar?  honey?  maple syrup?  gatorade?  any guesses}
It's definitely a cool project,
but I guess I just could do without the whole science fair hoopla.

I can't believe he's going to be in middle school next year.
I think he's so handsome.
I'm not ready for girls and school dances and all that jazz.

These guys can be great buddies...when they're not bickering.
Now I have such sympathy for my parents.
My brother and I fought A LOT.
{but he was an annoying little brother...what was i supposed to do?}





I made chicken noodle soup again yesterday.
It's their new favorite meal.
Riley had two huge bowls,
and the boys both wanted it in their lunch today.
That never happens!!
This time I made it in the crock pot.
Frozen chicken breasts...chopped carrots, onion, garlic...marjoram, parsley, pepper...chicken broth...
cook on high for 5 hours...add uncooked pasta for 20 minutes before serving.

On another topic...
am I the only person who hasn't seen Downton Abbey?
And I just realized last week that it wasn't Down-TOWN Abbey.
I keep hearing I need to be watching it.
But when??
There's no time!
By the time the kids are upstairs and in bed it's 9:00.
Then Gary and I have a chance to catch up with our days,
clean up the kitchen,
and then I'm falling asleep on the couch by 10:30.

Which is exactly what happened last night when I started writing this.

Now, I'm off to yoga.
I've been doing a one week free trial at a place here in our town.
And...I'm actually sore.
I do feel stronger and more flexible every time I leave.
I could do without the 'open your third eye' stuff
- not a fan of that -
but I just take that time to pray and thank God for His many blessings.
Like having healthy kids to do science fair projects with
and make chicken soup for.

Off to downward dog....

wednesday stuff.

So this has been one of...those...weeks.
I am flat worn out.

I still have one sick kid at home.
He's been sick since Friday,
and I'm pretty sure we are going stir crazy.

Desperate times call for desperate measures,
so I figured tonight called for pizza.
It was the right call.

And since it's looking like I'll have another day home with a sickie tomorrow,
I've decided I'm going to go to the store and buy ice cream
so I can make the poor kid a milkshake.
That's good for sore throats, right?
Plus milkshakes just make you happy, darnit.

Making me happy?
These beauties.



My in-laws' greenhouses have produced their first crop of the year.
I know that most of you probably don't think tomatoes in January can be any good.
These??
They'd rock your world.
{coming to the san rafael and ferry plaza farmers markets very soon, bay area peeps.}
They also brought us two gorgeous basil plants and two huge bags of mandarins.
Heaven.  Having in-laws that are also farmers is a very good thing.

And speaking of good things...
My parents were here all day staying with my sick kid
while I went on a field trip with Colin.
My dad played the wii with Riley
and my mom folded all my laundry...cleaned the kids' rooms...and cleaned their bathrooms.
I can't even tell you how much I appreciated that.
Best parents ever.

And as long as everyone is healthy,
Gary and I are going to a Superbowl party on Sunday.
I'm making this: Jalapeño Popper Dip.



{photo and recipe from here}

A friend made it last weekend and it was unbelievable.
If you're going to a Superbowl party I'd highly recommend it.
Or this buffalo chicken dip.
Also totally delish.
The perfect dishes to snack on while cheering on the niners. :)

Ok.
I'm off to bed.
Praying for a less-germy day tomorrow.

weekend breakfast. done.

So.
I hosted a little brunchy thing with a few friends on Tuesday.
I decided to get crazy and make new recipes I'd never tried before.

It was a good idea to get crazy.

First: Pioneer Woman's coffee cake.
My kids are obsessed with it.
Initially they wouldn't try it, because of the name.
ew!  gross!  coffee!
Once they were convinced there was no actual coffee in the cake,
they were sold.
PDub's recipe is here.
You'll like it.
{not a low-fat food.}

And then, there was the crock pot blueberry french toast.
Crock pot.  Blueberry.  French.  Toast.
It's life changing.

And this is the worst picture ever in this history of this blog,
but it's all I've got.
It went too quickly to photograph.
And that white stuff is cream cheese.
Mercy.



The original recipe is from this site.
{look at her picture...it's much better than mine.}

Really...you should make this this weekend.
Surprise your husband...your book club...your Sunday school class.
It's good stuff.
And you make it ahead of time and just cook it in the crock pot in the morning.
How awesome is that?
But...it's also not diet food.  You've been warned.

let the christmas-ing begin!

The kids are out of school,
it's rainy and cold here,
the She & Him holiday station is playing on Pandora,
and I've been wearing comfy pants and baking all the live long day.

It's dark enough during the day with the rain that
I can leave the lights on on the Christmas trees
{yeah...we have two...i'm one of those people this year}
during the day and it's perfect.



This was yesterday around my house.
The kids weren't home from school yet and it was clean.
It stayed that way for a glorious 2.76 hours.
My house is my favorite this time of year.  It feels the happiest to me.

And can we all just agree that Christmas cards are the best?
Taking them down in January always makes me a little sad.







Today I made some of my very favorite cookies.
These are some of my mom's specialties: Spiced Molasses Ginger Cookies.
Ditch the fruitcake and put these on your baking list for the weekend.

They make your house smell better than any candle.







And...they're a pretty cookie.
Which totally matters.
Give a plate to your mail carrier or UPS man tomorrow.

Spiced Molasses Ginger Cookies

2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 stick butter, room temp.
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup dark molasses
ice water 
sugar

Preheat oven to 350.
Lightly grease cookie sheets or use a Silpat.
Stir together the first six ingredients in a medium bowl.
In a mixing bowl beat the shortening, butter, and brown sugar
until fluffy.
Add egg and molasses to the butter mixture
and beat until blended.
Mix in dry ingredients.
Refrigerate dough 1 hour.
Roll dough into small balls and dip quickly in ice water.
Roll in sugar to coat.
Arrange on cookie sheet and bake until cookies
are pale golden and cracked on top but still soft to touch,
around 10 minutes.
Let stand 1 minute then transfer to cooling rack.


Mmmmm.  Chewy, Christmas goodness.

another cookie post: thanks pinterest.

Sorry.
I'm talking about cookies again.
And...not some healthy, whole wheat, quinoa- and bean-filled cookies.
These are white flour, white sugar, butter, the whole unhealthy deal.
{so...of course...they're delicious.}

For Jess' Pintertest Kitchen this month I knew what I had to do.
I had been eyeing these pumpkin snickerdoodles for awhile.
Pumpkin + snickerdoodles...my two loves.



Don't they look delish?

I started making them this afternoon.
The kindergarten contingency was in full effect.



They're very easy.
Cream the butter and sugar...
add the pumpkin...
add the eggs and vanilla...
add the flour/salt/baking powder/cinnamon/nutmeg combo...
chill.
The kindergarten contingency was very unhappy
about the whole "dough has to chill for an hour before baking" thing.
Good thing I still had other cookies to offer them.

After the cookies had chilled
and the big kids were home from school,
we rolled the cookies in cinnamon and sugar.
The recipe calls for ginger and allspice too, but I didn't think my kids would like that as much.



There's never any shortage of people volunteering
to roll the cookies in the sugar in this house.

So...the cookie verdict.



The kids and I LOVED them.
Gary doesn't like snickerdoodles so he didn't have any.
{he clearly needs counseling of some sort.}



If you're a fan of snickerdoodles and pumpkin at all,
make these.
White flour and sugar, for the win.

This was definitely a Pinterest success story.
The original recipe is here.



Linking up with Jess.
The Pintertest Kitchen is turning one!
Go check her out.
You'll like her.

dinner. A-GAIN.

I've been so bad about taking pictures with my big camera lately.
When I'm by myself during the day I just don't find that many reasons
to get it out .
Lately all of my photos seem to have been of food,
which means you get to see my kids' new favorite dinner.

Messy kitchen alert:
I'm telling you...my kitchen is a mess all of the time these days.
That's definitely my biggest complaint about cooking.

Is dinner a struggle for anyone else besides me?
Riley asked me recently if it was hard to make dinner everyday.
I said, "Actually, yes.  It is hard."
It is!
When I win the lottery that I don't play I'm totally hiring a personal chef.

Anyway, yesterday we made pizza pockets.
It was a new meal for us.

{recipe here}




Homemade pizza dough is actually REALLY easy to make.
I've been making ours for about nine months now.
A store-bought crust has 20+ ingredients (including preservatives)
but this one is just whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, olive oil, and water.
And if you have a food processor it's super simple.
Promise.



Plus if you have a helper you don't even have to roll out the dough yourself.
Pizza sauce is also so easy and so much better than something you'd buy at the store.
{sauce recipe is here}
Inside the kids' pizza pockets I just put sauce and cheese,
because they have an aversion to all things chunky.
And not to get all food nazi up in he-yah,
but it's better if you can grate your own cheese.
Pre-shredded cheese contains cellulose to keep it from clumping up.
{yuck.}
Plus it's more expensive.
Okay.  Little mini food rant over.

For Gary and me {that sounds like really crappy grammar, doesn't it?}
I sauteed some mushrooms with garlic and onion
and then threw in some roasted red peppers, spinach, and basil.



Aren't they cute?



Everyone liked these.
Make them on a night where you have a little bit of time.
Not on a night where two of your kids have soccer practice
and one has drum lessons.
On those nights you may want to have a package of Trader Joe's Orange Chicken
in your freezer.
Just a suggestion.
:)

food and fall.

It's overcast today and a perfect 74 degrees.
I have a cinnamon apple candle burning
and have had a sickie home bundled in a blanket on the couch all day.
All signs are pointing to fall.
So.  Happy.
{except for the sickie part.}

I made a pear crisp with the pears from our tree today.
It was okay.  I should have peeled the pears, though.



Yesterday I made granola.
If you've never made it...make it your September mission to change that.
It's so easy, and much better {and better for you} than anything you can buy at the store.
And the kids love it.
I use this recipe...minus the coconut.
One of my kids is a coconut hater.

I've been trying to cook dinner during the day
so by the time soccer rolls around in the evening
I'm not busting out the box of macaroni and cheese.
{not that there's anything wrong with that.}
In summer I never want to cook,
but it seems as soon as the calendar turns to September the oven goes on again.



Last night...baked ziti.
Tonight...baked ziti, round two.

Fifth grade homework is a monster.
It's not hard...but there sure is a lot of it.
Two hours a night?  Crazy, in my opinion.
I've never been a huge fan of homework,
and when I was teaching I didn't assign much.
My students appreciated it,
but now I know that parents appreciate it more.
The days the boys come home with very little homework are happy days.



I always have a hard time taking down the birthday banners after a birthday.
There's something about them that just makes a house a little happier.



Come to think of it...I made a fall banner last year.
Time to dig out the fall bin.

cookie love.

This weekend was kind of a mixed bag.
Saturday I felt horrible: I woke up with a migraine and I spent that day
feeling like crapola.
{specifically, crapola that feels nauseous all day and can't take off her sunglasses
for fear of the light.}

Sunday I felt so much better.
I never take for granted a migraine-free day.
They are a gift.

On Sunday Riley wanted to make cookies.
All by himself, no help.
And for the most part, he did.
All I did was point him in the right direction when he couldn't find
the baking powder or the vanilla,
and help with putting the cookie sheet into the oven.





He was so happy to do everything.
I may have officially passed on the cookie torch to him.



Oh, and I just bought that cookie dough scoop last week.
Why I waited so long to get one I will never know.
It's awesome!



Riley is my methodical, analytical kid.
He made sure every scoop was perfect.



{future scientist.  that's my prediction.}

Then, while the cookies were baking,
I went outside and started doing yard work.
I planted some flowers and cut back some plants
and got a teensy little bit of color on my shoulders.

When the cookies finished everyone else went inside
and pretty much polished them off.
But my sweet guy didn't want me to miss out,
so he put this on the patio table:



Love him.
Sunday was a good day.

saturday mornings...and evenings.

Slow Saturday mornings are my favorite.
Especially slow Saturday mornings where the weather is perfect,
every window in the house is open,
and we have a few hours of nothing to do ahead of us.

Yesterday was that morning.

I made pancakes with our new favorite recipe.



All whole wheat (except I ran out and had to use a few tablespoons of white),
and sweetened with honey.  No sugar.
Yum.
And...the kids are no longer complaining about real maple syrup.
Their mourning period over Aunt Jemima has officially ended.
Happy face.

While I was making pancakes the kids were hunting snails in the backyard.
I told them I'd pay them a quarter per snail they found.

I had no idea I'd end up having to shell out ten bucks per kid.
Per kid!
{do the math...that's a lot of snails.}
Our snail population was decimated in less than an hour.



And...let's just agree that it's best we don't discuss what became of these guys.



Oh, and I'm going to add "the kids getting along" to my
list of favorite Saturday morning things.
I love it when they are laughing and having fun together.

Late Saturday morning I got to head to Target and Trader Joe's.
BY MYSELF.
Again...happy face.

And I didn't buy these,
but oh was I tempted.



Trader Joe's is a happy place, isn't it??

And Saturday evening we let the ole 8:30 bedtime slide a little,
and we stayed up and hung by the firepit until
the kids were just too cranky to hang any longer.


{i spy someone on their scooter a safe distance away from the fire.}

There are officially six weeks of school left.
I am so ready for more lazy mornings and late evenings.

Bring on the summer.

my best pin yet.

I am so happy to report I've come across a Pinterest winner.
You can never be sure, you know, with Pinterest.
Sometimes you get a Pinterest success story
and other times...notsomuch.

When Jess mentioned it was Pintertest Kitchen time again,
I knew what had to be done.
Nutella. brownies.
Let's do this.



{original recipe here.}

First gather your...ready for this?...three ingredients.
Nutella, two eggs, and flour.
And you know what?
I used whole wheat flour.
Yep.  These are WHOLE WHEAT Nutella brownies.
{i'll stop short of using the term 'healthy', but they're pretty darn close.}



Heat your oven to 350*.
Take 1 cup Nutella
and two eggs and mix until blended.
{you can microwave your nutella for a little bit to make it easier to mix.}

Then add 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp. whole wheat flour
and mix until smooth.

Once it's all mixed fill your cupcake liners about half full.
And I can't confirm or deny, but these brownies might taste better if you have
the super cute Katie Daisy cupcake liners
from Target last year.



Bake at 350* for 12 minutes,
remove from oven,
and marvel at their beauty.



Trust me when I say that these are deeeee-lish.
Seriously.
Not too Nutella-ey (if there is such a thing), but just perfect.



Oh my gosh.
I'm going to make another batch tomorrow.
Because there haven't been enough sweets in our house lately.
{i can't even type that with a straight face.}

Make them.
You're welcome.

Linking up with Jess.