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Puttin’ Food on the Table

I’m trying to get by this week without having to go to the grocery store. We’ll see if I can make it.

Here’s what I’m planning. We have 2 lbs of ground beef leftover from the weekend (ended up not making dinner on Sat night after our hike), and a bunch of other random stuff in the freezer so:

  • last night we decided to go to the pool, so I made up a bunch of sandwiches and raided the pantry for chips/crackers and unloaded the fridge of a bunch of fruit
  • tonight (tuesday) will be: pasta primavera (mushrooms and summer squash) with meat
  • for wednesday: burritos (tortillas + ground beef + can of beans + cheese)
  • thursday: scrambled eggs + blueberry muffins (we have a few blueberries that are getting past their prime)
  • pizza night on Friday … I have all the ingredients for dough; hopefully we can scrounge up toppings!

We also will be harvesting some lettuce from our garden (pre-shredded thanks to the lovely hail we’ve been getting) and raspberries from our alley. They are going gang-busters again and the kids are so excited to pick them. Should make for some pretty good eats this week, I think.

 

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Weekend Hiking

Bear with me, because this is going to be a longish post. But there are pictures! So that makes it quicker, right?

Saturday we went on probably the most beautiful hike I’ve ever done. Hanging Lake is located near Glenwood Canyon about an hour west of Vail. The canyon itself is absolutely breathtaking. The fierce Colorado river runs through cliff walls of variegated red stone that go straight up. This year we have had tons of rain and quite a bit of run-off and the river was crazy high and had some amazing rapids.

To get to the trail head you have to get off the highway and then go back the opposite direction (East) and get off again. The trailhead has very nice facilities including water and bathrooms and vending machines and a big parking lot. The trail itself starts out flat, wide and paved. It’s pretty deceiving.

Continue reading “Weekend Hiking”

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Links and Stuff

Man it has been a LONG week. Way long. I started bootcamp this week. This is the third time I’ve done bootcamp and the second time for THIS bootcamp. The last bootcamp was a bit of a joke. It’s was more of a flip-flopcamp than a bootcamp, but this is the real deal. It is hard. Like the work we did on Monday is still making my quads hurt hard. It is expensive too, but very good and very worth it. I’m really happy to be doing it, but it’s taking me some time to get used to. Right now all I want to do is go home and pass out every night. But the family just won’t go for that (although Matt’s been awesome, putting the kids to bed so I can get some early zzzzs).

Anyhow, I am not big on chit chat today, so here are some fun summery links:

Now I need a nap.

You can find all my newest favorite links on my shared page … they’re updated almost daily instead of once in a blue moon.

 

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Honey Chicken, Sweet Potato and Peach Kabobs

As I posted last week, I was intrigued by the recipe mentioned in the peaches round-up on theKitchn,  Honey-Glazed Chicken, Sweet Potato, and Peach Skewers. I picked it as my “must try” recipe for the week (I actually picked another too, couldn’t help myself). We tried this last night and it was a wild success! I will say that this is a bit too much work for me for most week nights. Matt cut and marinated the chicken at lunch and I came straight home and started the rest of the prep and let him pick up the kids. There were also quite a few dishes to do after the meal was over. But the results were worth it – adults and kids agree – and we would definitely do this again, but probably on a weekend.

Ingredients (serves 6)

  • 1.5 lb boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 24 1 1/2 inch pieces
  • 3/4 C sherry vinegar
  • 1/3 C honey + 1 T
  • cumin
  • pumpkin pie seasoning
  • 4 T canola oil, divided
  • 2 med sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 24 1 1/2 inch pieces
  • 1 large sweet onion, peeled and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces, layers separated
  • 3 lg peaches, pitted and cut into eighths
  • salt & pepper
  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions

An hour or few before cooking, toss chicken with 2 T canola oil, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, 1 tsp cumin and some salt and pepper. Leave to marinate for a couple of hours.

When dinner time is approaching … Soak 12 twelve-inch skewers in water. Heat gas grill to medium. In a pot with a steamer basket, heat 1 inch of water to boiling. Steam sweet potatoes 10-12 minutes until soft, but not fully cooked.

Heat sherry vinegar in a small sauce pan over high heat. Boil, reducing volume by over half. Stir in honey, 1 T oil, and salt and pepper to your taste. Glaze should be thick enough to coat chicken, but thin enough to brush on easily. Thread skewers with chicken, onions, sweet potatoes and peaches. Reserve half of the glaze and brush kabobs with the remaining half.

Thoroughly oil the grates of the grill. Grill skewers 4-5 minutes covered until well- marked. Meanwhile toss pecans with remaining 1 T oil, 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, salt and pepper. Place in foil “dish” and grill along side the chicken skewers, being careful to not burn these. Cook chicken until done and nuts until toasted.

Serve kabobs brushed with remaining glaze and sprinkled with pecans. Swoon.

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Pop-Up Camping

My husband, in certain lights, greatly resembles a pit bull. No, not in looks, but in tenacity. I guess it’s the hunter in him – the single minded must get the mammoth sort of roots. It is a fine quality in many regards. I’m sure it serves him well at work and in hobbies. But there is one arena in which it is kind of irritating to deal with.

Large purchases. When Matt is desirous of something (and he always is, serially), he researches it within an inch of its life. He weighs pros and cons. He gets opinions from all who have opinions to offer and he discusses it with me ad nauseum.

Obviously this has its benefits. He makes good decisions. But the interim can be a bit hard to live with. I will frequently make moratoriums when I can’t stand it anymore and he won’t be allowed to talk to me about it for a day or face my wrath. I have also cut deals with the devil and acquiesced to a purchase with the understanding that I don’t have to hear about tools or cars or whatever for a certain period of time (and he is also not allowed to purchase them).

Right now he is latched on to pop-up trailers. It’s a subject we go back and forth on. I love the look and function of tear-drop trailers and would love in many ways to have one, but storage space and cost prevent me. We both like the idea of being able to more easily camp with the family; having a setup that would hold all our gear and bedding so we just have to add food and clothes for a weekend away is super appealing. But tear-drops are very expensive. You can build your own, but it’s a big process that might be fun if we had a bit more time, but we don’t. And it’s still expensive. They also generally only sleep two, though you can find some that sleep four. Once again, expensive.

Pop-up campers are a natural because they do this but at a more reasonable price and in addition they also sleep more people than a tear-drop or small travel trailer. Some will even fit in our garage. So we’ve looked at new ones. Matt has been scouring Craigslist. And we’ve been talking about it for a few weeks. Spending a big chunk of change always puts me on edge, but part of me is tempted because we would like to camp more and this is a good way to do it and it would also put this whole thing to rest. Only slightly kidding.

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What in Goat’s Name?

Friday we were lucky enough to witness a goat herd trucking along the side of a street about 4 blocks from our house. We don’t really live in the country but as we live on the edge of civilization, there’s some country mixed in pretty close by. It’s kind of fun. Presumably these bad boys escaped their confinement and were running back and forth along the road. They were definitely smart enough to stay away from cars. It was pretty funny to behold.

Beyond that it was a pretty average weekend. We actually got two “quiet” evenings at home. We rented The King’s Speech, though we didn’t actually get to watch it. We went shopping and to the pool and did all of that sort of stuff. Ben was pretty challenging. Tabby was her usual helpful self. She’s so easy it really makes me concerned for the teenage years. What is she storing up for later??

But nevermind that. We celebrated Kelly’s birthday. We started Bootcamp. We got back into routines. It was good. And goaty.

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What’s Cooking: Volume ???

One of the best things about coming home is being back in my own kitchen. While we’re at home, eating out is a nice treat, but while traveling it becomes monotonous and excessive and all any of us wants is to be back in our own kitchen eating “normal” food.

Here’s what we’re cooking up this week:

  • my parents had us over for 4th of July and made salmon using this recipe, a family favorite, and corn on the cob, green beans and a fruit salad … possibly the perfect summer meal
  • we made up buffalo chicken salads using Frank’s Buffalo sauce on breaded chicken tenders (though we’ve done just grilled chicken tenders) … we serve them up on mixed greens with carrot shreds, blue cheese and a dressing 2 parts buffalo sauce and 1 part ranch
  • we made one of my all-time favorite salmon recipes, salmon with lemon relish … it is super good for summer since you serve it over a bed of spinach
  • Ben’s new favorite fruit is cantaloupe and I’ve been recently making up fruit salads with cantaloupe and strawberries – it’s incredibly pretty in the bowl

Stuff I want to try SOON Continue reading “What’s Cooking: Volume ???”

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A Long Strange Trip

So a funny thing happened on the way to the airport. Well I guess technically it was the days leading up to our flight. Matt’s stepmom mentioned something about our flight being at 10AM. I knew it was a morning flight and this seemed about right to me, though I thought it was a smidge earlier. But when we checked in online and printed our boarding passes the night before both Matt and I looked at our flight times and sure enough … right there it said 10:49am.

Upon arriving at the airport, we tried to log in and check our bags and got errors. The clerk informed us after some back-and-forth that our flight was actually at 9 AM and we had just missed (by minutes, I swear!!) our cutoff for putting our luggage on the flight, and ourselves as well it seems. No amount of cajoling, crying, etc. mattered. We could NOT get on that flight. Since we’d already checked in and it was just a matter of our bags, it was pretty irritating, especially since, as I noted later, they’re happy for your bags to be on a different flight if it suits them, but if you make the mistake, you are screwed.

Quadrupling our mistake was the fact that we were 1) a family of four 2) flying on a holiday weekend. Standby was not much of an option since they predicted they could get us on basically one at a time, maybe two. And the idea of hanging out in the airport all weekend to see who stupidly missed their flight (like us) with two little kids already at the end of their vacation rope was not much appealing. We could also pay fare-difference and fly as a family on Monday for around $600, but as we were already packed up and ready to go, heading back to Matt’s parents’ house, unpacking, etc. etc. was pretty depressing, especially since we’d miss the whole weekend and all the time we needed to get ready to go back to work.

We checked out other airlines which were either entirely unavailable or ridiculous (thousands for us to fly on such short notice, one-way). So we hit on a slightly crazy idea … rent a car and drive back. For around $400 (though I think once all fees, etc. were paid, it was closer to $500) we could rent a car, drive back and be home the next day. It wasn’t a cheaper option, but it was in many ways a more palatable option. We’ve done the trip many times before and it’s all easy-interstate. Everything was packed and we could just go from the airport and head out.

So … we did. We did a long stop-over in Paducah, KY for lunch at a Chick-fil-A with a play center and a stop at Walmart for various other provisions. $90 netted us a portable DVD player with two screens and that plus the $10 copy of Scooby Doo, Where are You?? we picked up, plus some various other bribes, kept the kids happy for MANY hours. We grabbed some road-trip food and an insulated bag so we had snacks. We made stops here and there for traffic and gas and … POTTY/diaper breaks.

We made our best time after rush hour and when the kids were sleeping, so we pushed through to Hays, KS and stayed at the dubious Days Inn, home of the worst shower I’ve ever had. The next day after our continental breakfast and another 5 hours in the car, we finally made it to the Denver International Airport and returned our car.

Matt and I are both still FLOORED at how amazing the kids were. Of course possibly watching mommy lose her sh*t in the Nashville Airport impressed upon them the gravity of the situation. Or maybe they were so engrossed in Scooby Doo they just didn’t care. But they were amazingly good. The road trip overall was kind of fun in a weird way. It felt sort of like we were back in college again and someone had dropped two unsuspecting children into our back seat.

Of course it’s much easier to be Zen about all this now, but we definitely made some lemonade and dealt with the situation pretty well. As we kept saying, it could have been much worse. We decided there were four people on standby who needed to get to Denver for whatever reason much more urgently than us. And we’ve got 4 flight credits on Frontier for our next trip. That said, not something I’m keen to do again in a big hurry.

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Nashville, Baby!

So we were gone last week. My good girl side wanted to pre-write a bunch of stuff and let it post automatically while I was gone, but my get real side revolted when she realized how much packing she still had to do. Packing up 3 people to head off on vacation (Matt packs himself, of course) is no joke. Neither is getting to the airport and wrangling all of the crap (giant carseats). But usually after I get all of it squared away, I can kick back and more-or-less enjoy vacation.

Such was the case with our Nashville trip. We left Denver on Thursday and got in very late. Friday we spent the day with Matt’s mom and caught up with a friend from Matt’s childhood and his family.

Saturday we left for Gatlinburg, TN, gateway to the Smokies, with Matt’s step mom, Sherrie, and his siblings and his sister’s husband. We checked out Cherokee, NC (tourist trap), rode go-karts, went to Dollywood, went hiking, checked out Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge (tourist traps again) and generally had a nice time, however hot and sticky it was.

We got back into town mid-day on Wednesday and the kids were DONE with being in the car (it’s about 5 hours from Nashville to Gatlinburg). They had fun running around Matt’s parents’ house and got good naps before we went to dinner with some good friends and their darling new baby.

Thursday we met up with Matt’s mom again for breakfast at the Pfunky Griddle. There are griddles in the middle of the table and you get unlimited pancake batter and cook them up yourself adding whatever selection of toppings you’d like. They also had delicious mashed potatoes that you could grill into potato pancakes. Super good. We also explored that area which has many new and interesting shops. The kids got home in time for naps and got to spend the evening with their grandparents while we went to dinner with friends and enjoyed a quiet kid-free evening.

Friday we headed off to the airport early … and that is where it gets interesting. I’ll save the rest for tomorrow. More photos here.

 

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Ben at 26 Months

I love this kid. He is so … fun! Crazy! Loud! Granted it’s not all sunshine and roses. He can throw hellacious fits. He is stubborn beyond all reason and those lungs … they are impressive. But just a couple months into his third year, he is still very happy to snuggle while he drinks some milk or gets around to waking up. He will make a little nest in the middle of the floor with his “wees” (blankets, in Benjeese – short, we’ve discovered, for “lovie”) and cuddle up in it.

But in between, he is on the go. He currently sports scabs from head to toe. He has several bug bites all around his face that have been scratched. He has a cut on his lip from a fall and twin scrapes on his arms from the same fall as well as one on his knee from this fall plus several more from other falls. There are a host of other scratches I have no idea from what. Most of the time he doesn’t cry about his little mishaps or indicate in any way that he is hurt and so I have no idea.

He is talking a blue streak and we are understanding more and more of it. He is not super articulate yet, but he definitely gets his point across. To get our attention at dinner the other night, he would scream, at the top of his lungs, “GUYS!” until everyone turned to look at him. When bouncing on the bed and doing his tricks, he would say, “Mommy, this! Nana, this! Gaga, this!” which meant he wanted us to “watch this!” He and Tabby have been playing a sing-along game in the car. She sings a bit from a song and then allows him to fill in a word here or there. He does remarkably well and seems to know just about every song his beloved “Sissy!” sings. The two of them doing this is just about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. He has also figured out that all of his people have other names they respond to, so he will repeatedly say, “Mommy, Jess! Daddy, Matt!” and when prompted, “Sissy, Tabby” except that his “Tabby” doesn’t really sound much like Tabby but more like “Cappie!”

He loves to play with cars and anything he can pound together, including his Buzz and Woody action figures. “Buzz fly!!” is one of his favorite things to say. Buzz does indeed fly. And crashes a lot. He loves to get out blocks or legos, but doesn’t always build much with them. He seems to prefer spilling them out and sending them to the far reaching corners of the room. He will pick them up when asked, however. Story time is a huge thing for him and if he’s having trouble going to sleep, we can often get him to settle down by leaning into his crib and reading him a short book. He loves Daddy Hugs, Hippos Go Berzerk and anything Curious George.

He is still in his crib. Despite the fact that I’m sure he could climb out, he’s shown no interest in doing so. I am really glad since I’m sure he’ll be harder to contain when he’s not in the crib. He genuinely seems to like his crib, like it’s his little den. He’s got all manner of blankets and critters in there and when we remove some, he puts them back in. So peeking down on him sleeping is a bit like a nursery school version of Where’s Waldo … you have to find Ben amidst the blankies and animals. Whereas Tabby kicks off all of her covers, Ben cuddles up under his blankies, sometimes covering his head with just his little nose and mouth peeking out.

He is so much fun and I am really enjoying this stage of him. He’s an amazing joy and blessing.

 

Weight: 31 lbs
Height: would have to measure the mark on the kitchen wall, but he’s grown about 5 inches in the past 7 months and gained no weight … he’s currently about 4 inches shorter than big sis
Clothes: wears size 2T mostly and whereas last summer I thought he was about to outgrow them, I now have to cinch them in or they fall down! Diapers are a 4-5
Favorite book: Daddy Hugs wins out
Favorite movie: Buzz!! (Toy Story 1, 2 or 3)
Favorite food: cantelope
Favorite toy: Buzz and Woody