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Saturday, November 8, 2014
We've moved!
In lieu of the impending arrival (well, 5 months from now) of our SECOND DAUGHTER (!!!), I thought it was only appropriate that I spread the love a bit. While I will of course always love my Buggie, I've created a new blog called Elbows Everywhere, which I think perfectly describes my current pregnant/cosleeping/toddler-raising state of being. The new blog will also have a broader focus: mama and baby style, pregnancy, attachment parenting, craft and home projects, recipes, and life with my girls (and their handsome daddy, of course).
join me!
join me!
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Introducing...
Queen Elsa
of Boogerdale
I really love that these were only one photo apart on my Instagram.
My dad (a private school principal) made this and sent it over to me this morning, and totally made my day.
What a classy lady!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
An Ode to Oatmeal
I'm not an oatmeal fan. I will eat it from time to time, when it gets cold enough (which it rarely does), but even when I do it's really just a vessel for brown sugar. The ratio of toppings to oatmeal is generally somewhere around 12:1. Those aren't good odds.
Then Molly posted this recipe and since I'm a sucker for anything Molly makes (she lived in France for goodness sake - she's a credible culinary resource!), I tried it.
And it was good.
Really good. Toasty and warm and smooth and exactly what I wanted even when I didn't know I ever wanted oatmeal. Emilie wasn't sold. But then her bowl went cold and she gobbled it down. Then she ate another. And another still at dinner. I like mine with bananas and honey, but Emilie prefers her (cold, of course) with plain yogurt, honey and frozen blueberries.
The next day, after the giant batch had been finished off by this small girl and her slightly smaller child, I decided to make another pot, but with a few changes, and it was divine.
Steel-Cut Toasted Oatmeal
Adapted from "Whole Grain Mornings" by Megan Gordon.
1 tbsp butter
1 cup steel-cut oats
2 small apples, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup whole milk
3 cups water
Pinch of Salt
Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add oats, apples and cinnamon and stir for about 5 minutes until browning begins. I didn't have apples when I made the batch for photos so use your imagination, okay?
Pour in liquids and salt. Watch this mixture as it may boil, burn and ruin your day!
Once it comes to a simmer, lower the heat and cover partially.
Stir occasionally until all liquid is absorbed, about 30 minutes. Turn off heat and cover completely for 5 minutes.
Like I said, Emilie and I have our preferred topping combinations (and serving temperatures), but these would be amazing with almost any combination of sweeteners and fruit!
Make this. Eat this. Thank me later :)
Then Molly posted this recipe and since I'm a sucker for anything Molly makes (she lived in France for goodness sake - she's a credible culinary resource!), I tried it.
And it was good.
Really good. Toasty and warm and smooth and exactly what I wanted even when I didn't know I ever wanted oatmeal. Emilie wasn't sold. But then her bowl went cold and she gobbled it down. Then she ate another. And another still at dinner. I like mine with bananas and honey, but Emilie prefers her (cold, of course) with plain yogurt, honey and frozen blueberries.
The next day, after the giant batch had been finished off by this small girl and her slightly smaller child, I decided to make another pot, but with a few changes, and it was divine.
Steel-Cut Toasted Oatmeal
Adapted from "Whole Grain Mornings" by Megan Gordon.
1 tbsp butter
1 cup steel-cut oats
2 small apples, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup whole milk
3 cups water
Pinch of Salt
Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add oats, apples and cinnamon and stir for about 5 minutes until browning begins. I didn't have apples when I made the batch for photos so use your imagination, okay?
 |
| this is the secret to perfect oatmeal. like with risotto, you have to toast the oats first to give them some flavor. otherwise they just taste like paste, you know? |
Pour in liquids and salt. Watch this mixture as it may boil, burn and ruin your day!
Once it comes to a simmer, lower the heat and cover partially.
Stir occasionally until all liquid is absorbed, about 30 minutes. Turn off heat and cover completely for 5 minutes.
Like I said, Emilie and I have our preferred topping combinations (and serving temperatures), but these would be amazing with almost any combination of sweeteners and fruit!
Make this. Eat this. Thank me later :)
Thursday, November 14, 2013
424 Photos
Don't worry, I'm not going to actually post that many. In fact, very few of them are even in focus, and Bug is naked in most of those that are. I did, however, download that many today. Most of them were from New York. Then some from the week Buggie had hand, foot and mouth. A trip to the zoo. A play date. Lots of naked time. She is always naked. Seriously. And I think that this entire download experience (although most of it took place while I bathed and dressed the Bug after a particularly ketchupy meal) is sort of a reflection of where my life has been these past few months.
Have I mentioned we moved? Yes, I think I did. I don't know. I don't read my blog. Hell, I don't even write my blog. Well we did. We moved and we are still not completely unpacked. We need furniture. We have an excess of couch and a pathetic shortage of bed frame.
I was vegan for a while and then stopped and immediately felt horrible. My body hates dairy and I think it might actually just hate animal products in general. But it loves cherry danishes. I'm going to be responsible for a world-wide shortage of those pretty soon.
I've lost weight, even with the danishes. 12 pounds to be exact, which is kind of a lot on my frame. It's nice feeling really comfortable naked... but I don't feel comfortable dressed. Nothing fits. I can't afford new clothes. I'm wearing the same outfits over and over and hoping I don't see the same people twice in one week. I'm becoming a hermit for the sake of fashion.
I feel like my life has just been a blur for the past few months. There have been huge milestones in our marriage (Chad got a huge promotion! We can afford to eat AND live in a place with a roof!) and family life (Bug is getting huge and so smart - she has 40++ words now and can bend it like Beckham). But gosh we are tired. Chad and I were talking yesterday and we both agree that we need to get healthy. We are thin. We are tiiiiired. We are sore. And there is no excuse! I'm 25 and he is 28. We look pretty healthy on the outside and we are so happy with our little girl... but we need a change.
So... what do we do? Maybe we should address the bed frame shortage. And get some real food (what? cherries are a fruit... ). And go to church. And take a day off every once in a while. Maybe we could even go on a date! No, I'd rather a nap.
Wah wah this is a lame post. Sorry if you read it and thought I was a grumpy butt or humble bragging about my weight. Or if you wished that I had posted any of those pictures I was talking about. I'll give you one that will make you forget all about what a loser I was the past seven tiny paragraphs:
Have I mentioned we moved? Yes, I think I did. I don't know. I don't read my blog. Hell, I don't even write my blog. Well we did. We moved and we are still not completely unpacked. We need furniture. We have an excess of couch and a pathetic shortage of bed frame.
I was vegan for a while and then stopped and immediately felt horrible. My body hates dairy and I think it might actually just hate animal products in general. But it loves cherry danishes. I'm going to be responsible for a world-wide shortage of those pretty soon.
I've lost weight, even with the danishes. 12 pounds to be exact, which is kind of a lot on my frame. It's nice feeling really comfortable naked... but I don't feel comfortable dressed. Nothing fits. I can't afford new clothes. I'm wearing the same outfits over and over and hoping I don't see the same people twice in one week. I'm becoming a hermit for the sake of fashion.
I feel like my life has just been a blur for the past few months. There have been huge milestones in our marriage (Chad got a huge promotion! We can afford to eat AND live in a place with a roof!) and family life (Bug is getting huge and so smart - she has 40++ words now and can bend it like Beckham). But gosh we are tired. Chad and I were talking yesterday and we both agree that we need to get healthy. We are thin. We are tiiiiired. We are sore. And there is no excuse! I'm 25 and he is 28. We look pretty healthy on the outside and we are so happy with our little girl... but we need a change.
So... what do we do? Maybe we should address the bed frame shortage. And get some real food (what? cherries are a fruit... ). And go to church. And take a day off every once in a while. Maybe we could even go on a date! No, I'd rather a nap.
Wah wah this is a lame post. Sorry if you read it and thought I was a grumpy butt or humble bragging about my weight. Or if you wished that I had posted any of those pictures I was talking about. I'll give you one that will make you forget all about what a loser I was the past seven tiny paragraphs:
okay fine one more...
FINE. One more, but only because I want you to see the progression of her "cheese" face as she gets more and more excited about things.
I mean, who doesn't get that excited about a sleeping maned wolf?
Friday, August 30, 2013
Chocolate Chip Cookies (shh they're vegan!)
Stop. I saw that. You took one look at the word Vegan and decided to go to a different tab. Well don't because these are seriously the best cookies I've made in a long time, and I make a mean cookie.
Speaking of tabs, I have one, two... 16 tabs open right now that are all vegan recipes I've either tried this week or plan to try in the coming weeks. So far, so so so good. But first, cookies.
This recipe was adapted from one that I found on a new-to-me blog that I quickly fell completely in love with, Happy. Healthy. Life. I happened to have almost all of the ingredients (or something similar like almond butter instead of peanut butter and whole wheat flour instead of spelt) already lying around (except the chocolate chips because I can't keep them in the house without devouring the entire bag. I have a helper, of course, but she is very small and only eat one chip at a time so I can't really pass much blame onto her...) so after a quick walk to the store (I seriously love the location of our new apartment) I got to work. (Sorry about all the parenthetical statements)
Guys, these cookies are seriously so good. I will warn you that they are very coconutty, but I don't mind that at all and even Chad, who normally isn't a coconut fan, ate his fair share (2/12 is fair, right?) of the batch. In fact, the batch only lasted about a day - for shame! - so I had to make a second in order to include a picture with this post.
So without further ado (and so I can eat these final cookies), I give you...
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Happy. Healthy. Life.
Dry:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp unbleached all purpose flour
1/3 tsp sea or kosher salt
1 1/2 Tbsp freshly ground flax seeds**
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
Wet:
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp organic sugar (I use raw sugar)
2 tsp unsalted almond butter butter (optional)
1/2 cup + 2 tsp melted virgin coconut oil
2 Tbsp almond milk
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar (don't worry, you don't taste it)
1/2 tsp real vanilla extract
Glorious:
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
** A note on flax seeds: A great source of fiber, omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants, flax seeds are a teeny tiny nutritional powerhouse. I know that these are something that most omnivores probably have in their pantries and honestly I didn't either until about a week ago when I bought them to add to smoothies. Buy some, but don't add them to your smoothie. These little guys are great and super nutty tasting, but they do weird things to liquids (that's why they can be an egg replacer) and my smoothie was paste-thick in about 5 minutes. Go ahead and sprinkle them on top of your smoothie, or anything with peanut butter or any nut butter, or grind them up and use them in your cookies to make them gloriously nutty and delicious.
Directions:
Oh, the density of these cookies! They are not delicate so I won't use any term like that, but I will pull a Gordon Ramsay on you and say that they are STUNNING. Crispy, golden, gooey (coconut oil has a very low melting temperature, which means these cookies stayed fairly melty in my kitchen until the moment they were all gone... five minutes later) ... yum! You won't miss the eggs and butter at all, I promise, and I like to think that their vegan-ness makes these cookies guilt-free, although I wouldn't probably suggest you consider them healthy. There are those flax seeds, though...
This recipe was adapted from one that I found on a new-to-me blog that I quickly fell completely in love with, Happy. Healthy. Life. I happened to have almost all of the ingredients (or something similar like almond butter instead of peanut butter and whole wheat flour instead of spelt) already lying around (except the chocolate chips because I can't keep them in the house without devouring the entire bag. I have a helper, of course, but she is very small and only eat one chip at a time so I can't really pass much blame onto her...) so after a quick walk to the store (I seriously love the location of our new apartment) I got to work. (Sorry about all the parenthetical statements)
Guys, these cookies are seriously so good. I will warn you that they are very coconutty, but I don't mind that at all and even Chad, who normally isn't a coconut fan, ate his fair share (2/12 is fair, right?) of the batch. In fact, the batch only lasted about a day - for shame! - so I had to make a second in order to include a picture with this post.
So without further ado (and so I can eat these final cookies), I give you...
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Happy. Healthy. Life.
Dry:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp unbleached all purpose flour
1/3 tsp sea or kosher salt
1 1/2 Tbsp freshly ground flax seeds**
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
Wet:
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp organic sugar (I use raw sugar)
2 tsp unsalted almond butter butter (optional)
1/2 cup + 2 tsp melted virgin coconut oil
2 Tbsp almond milk
1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar (don't worry, you don't taste it)
1/2 tsp real vanilla extract
Glorious:
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
** A note on flax seeds: A great source of fiber, omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants, flax seeds are a teeny tiny nutritional powerhouse. I know that these are something that most omnivores probably have in their pantries and honestly I didn't either until about a week ago when I bought them to add to smoothies. Buy some, but don't add them to your smoothie. These little guys are great and super nutty tasting, but they do weird things to liquids (that's why they can be an egg replacer) and my smoothie was paste-thick in about 5 minutes. Go ahead and sprinkle them on top of your smoothie, or anything with peanut butter or any nut butter, or grind them up and use them in your cookies to make them gloriously nutty and delicious.
Directions:
- In a large bowl combine your flours, flax seed, salt and baking soda.
- In a separate bowl whisk together sugar, almond butter (or not), coconut oil, almond milk, vinegar and vanilla. Whisk it good!
- Pour wet ingredients into dry and stir until combined (it will be much thinner than the dough you're probably used to, but trust me!), then fold in the chocolate chips.
- Dump dough onto a piece of parchment paper or plastic wrap and shape into a long log (let the diameter be the size you want your cookies to be), wrap it tight and toss it in the freezer.
- Preheat oven to 350* F.
- When oven is heated, remove dough from freezer and slice into cookies, about 1/2" thick.
- Place on cookie sheet and bake until just golden on top and crispy around the edges.
- Let cool and enjoy!
Oh, the density of these cookies! They are not delicate so I won't use any term like that, but I will pull a Gordon Ramsay on you and say that they are STUNNING. Crispy, golden, gooey (coconut oil has a very low melting temperature, which means these cookies stayed fairly melty in my kitchen until the moment they were all gone... five minutes later) ... yum! You won't miss the eggs and butter at all, I promise, and I like to think that their vegan-ness makes these cookies guilt-free, although I wouldn't probably suggest you consider them healthy. There are those flax seeds, though...
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
this week in reverse...
for the sake of saving a second that could otherwise be used to rearrange these photos
how beautiful is this view? I don't enjoy living in Phoenix, but I know I would love visiting here. It's so unique and gorgeous, I just got tired of it about a decade ago.
brown hair don't care. (do care. it's amazing. i never recognize myself when I catch my reflection, but I can tell my hair is so much healthier with the few inches gone and the blonde sealed. I'll lighten again in the spring, but for now I'm focusing on getting it healthy.)
cutest baby in all the land.
they LOVE each other. She can't handle going to bed when he's still at work and wakes up every few minutes to run to the door and yell "get dad!"
leftover pizza (cheese and pepperoni ripped off and saved for Chad to pile on his slices) topped with sauteed spinach. She loves sauteed spinach. This girl just generally loves food, but she really likes veggies. In fact, tonight we drove to pick Chad up from school and she munched on a bowl of organic corn the whole way. Good girl.
So that's our week. Food, love and sunsets. (in no particular order)
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Vegan?
Before we begin, I just want to make it clear that while I tend to be sort of preachy here, that's just my tone. I can be intense. But I'm not going to force my diet or beliefs on anyone. In fact, I'm writing this while waiting for our order of pizza and wings (pizza without the cheese for me and everything else for Chad), so I'm just sharing a part of my lifestyle (Emilie's along for the ride, but shares with daddy, too) that I've changed post m/c.
There are so many things that can define our lives and how we live them. Our families, our hometowns, whether we went to college and if so what college we attended, religion, dietary preference, political stance, marital status, etc etc. For all the huge things that have happened in my life in the past few years, somehow this miscarriage has kicked me in the butt and really forced me to define my life. There are way too many ways this event has changed me to really discuss in one post so I'm going to simply talk about this whole "vegan?" thing today.
So yeah... I'm vegan?
I don't know if I will be a strict vegan (in fact, I'm already not as I forced myself to eat some fish yesterday and had honey in my smoothie this morning), but for now I'm just not cool with eating meat. The vegan community is pretty diverse and people have all sorts of reasons for being vegan, but I'm doing it because I just can't handle the fact that animals are being abused for my comfort. I don't need meat to survive. I don't even need meat to feel satisfied! In fact, meat has always grossed me out (I hate the smell of it raw) and I always just ate it because it was a part of the recipes I knew, or something I thought the other people eating with me would like. But my miscarriage got me thinking...
I lost a baby. A baby I never knew. A baby with the man I love. I felt the whole "letdown" sensation so much during that short period of pregnancy and looked forward to nourishing the little one that I would soon meet. I never met that baby, but I do still have this sweet little Buggie who relies on me for nutrition, comfort and protection. What if something happened to her? I can't even bear to think of that.
Cows are forced into pregnancy, whether by rape or artificial insemination. Whether they would, in nature, feel some sort of emotional connection with their mate, I don't know, but hooking up with some bull in a field of wildflowers seems like it would be a lot nicer that having it happen in a dark and dirty stall. They carry this baby, deliver it and have it ripped away so that the cow can provide milk for humans (who generally can't tolerate it anyway) and the baby can either be slaughtered for veal or raised to live the same horrible life as its mother. SAD!
For whatever reason, I'm not as bothered by fish or poultry (although I don't eat a lot of either anyway), but eating mammals just doesn't appeal to me. I also saw this tragic picture of a bear hunt camp with the skinned creature lying outside the tent, looking eerily human. I don't believe we evolved from any creature other than humans, but we do share a lot of similarities and I think that emotion is one of them. Watch a dog whine for its master or a cat go without eating while its family is out of town, or a baby elephant cry for its mother when it loses the pack or a whale sing a mourning song when it is separated from its family and tell me that humans are set apart by our empathy.
Now, I don't know if this change will be permanent. I won't make that kind of proclamation today, but I will tell you that I don't only feel more ethically content following this diet but actually much healthier. I've been suffering from headaches for years and uncomfortable bloating all over and both have disappeared in just the few days that I've been off animal products. For so long i've been blaming gluten for my discomforts, but now I'm thinking it might have been dairy all along!
So yeah. This is a pretty major change that has happened this week and one I wanted to share with you because it will probably lead to some tasty new recipes (I made awesome vegan cookies today and have literally made myself sick eating so many of them! I'll share them once I've baked more and can get a picture... I ate my model.).
Now, someone help me get off this soap box.
There are so many things that can define our lives and how we live them. Our families, our hometowns, whether we went to college and if so what college we attended, religion, dietary preference, political stance, marital status, etc etc. For all the huge things that have happened in my life in the past few years, somehow this miscarriage has kicked me in the butt and really forced me to define my life. There are way too many ways this event has changed me to really discuss in one post so I'm going to simply talk about this whole "vegan?" thing today.
So yeah... I'm vegan?
 |
| Vegan "ice cream" ... aka extra thick smoothie. |
I don't know if I will be a strict vegan (in fact, I'm already not as I forced myself to eat some fish yesterday and had honey in my smoothie this morning), but for now I'm just not cool with eating meat. The vegan community is pretty diverse and people have all sorts of reasons for being vegan, but I'm doing it because I just can't handle the fact that animals are being abused for my comfort. I don't need meat to survive. I don't even need meat to feel satisfied! In fact, meat has always grossed me out (I hate the smell of it raw) and I always just ate it because it was a part of the recipes I knew, or something I thought the other people eating with me would like. But my miscarriage got me thinking...
I lost a baby. A baby I never knew. A baby with the man I love. I felt the whole "letdown" sensation so much during that short period of pregnancy and looked forward to nourishing the little one that I would soon meet. I never met that baby, but I do still have this sweet little Buggie who relies on me for nutrition, comfort and protection. What if something happened to her? I can't even bear to think of that.
Cows are forced into pregnancy, whether by rape or artificial insemination. Whether they would, in nature, feel some sort of emotional connection with their mate, I don't know, but hooking up with some bull in a field of wildflowers seems like it would be a lot nicer that having it happen in a dark and dirty stall. They carry this baby, deliver it and have it ripped away so that the cow can provide milk for humans (who generally can't tolerate it anyway) and the baby can either be slaughtered for veal or raised to live the same horrible life as its mother. SAD!
For whatever reason, I'm not as bothered by fish or poultry (although I don't eat a lot of either anyway), but eating mammals just doesn't appeal to me. I also saw this tragic picture of a bear hunt camp with the skinned creature lying outside the tent, looking eerily human. I don't believe we evolved from any creature other than humans, but we do share a lot of similarities and I think that emotion is one of them. Watch a dog whine for its master or a cat go without eating while its family is out of town, or a baby elephant cry for its mother when it loses the pack or a whale sing a mourning song when it is separated from its family and tell me that humans are set apart by our empathy.
Now, I don't know if this change will be permanent. I won't make that kind of proclamation today, but I will tell you that I don't only feel more ethically content following this diet but actually much healthier. I've been suffering from headaches for years and uncomfortable bloating all over and both have disappeared in just the few days that I've been off animal products. For so long i've been blaming gluten for my discomforts, but now I'm thinking it might have been dairy all along!
 |
| Sauteed spinach and a bellyyyy |
So yeah. This is a pretty major change that has happened this week and one I wanted to share with you because it will probably lead to some tasty new recipes (I made awesome vegan cookies today and have literally made myself sick eating so many of them! I'll share them once I've baked more and can get a picture... I ate my model.).
Now, someone help me get off this soap box.
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