Lou-licious

I just. I just don't know what to say.

We get the privilege (and workout) of living with this little somethin'-or-other every day.

The kids take turns helping with breakfast prep. Sadie Lou was in charge of smoothies on this fine morning.

You can see she rocks the p.j.s and apron-wear.  (Apron by my friend Coleen of Sew Happy Together.)

Eager recipients awaiting said smoothie...

Someone already dumped her water...

Totally. Sadie. Happy Monday!

Picking Oranges

Earlier this week, Benjamin and Sadie decided to go pick oranges at Auntie Bek's house. It was kind of a gloomy, damp day, but we were in need of the vitamin C. 

See, we recently had a conversation that went something like this:

Mama: (peeling and cutting up oranges for breakfast) Mmmm...oranges. Oranges give us vitamin C. Mmmm...oranges are so sweet and delicious. We are so fortunate to have oranges. They help us avoid getting scurvy.

LP: What's scurvy, Mom?

Mama: It's a sickness.

LP: What kind of sickness?

Mama:  Well, people who spent a lot of time on boats crossing the ocean would get scurvy. They would go for long periods of time without fruit, and that made them sick.

LP: Like pirates?

Mama: Yes. And explorers.

LP: I don't want scurvy.

Mama: Well, if you eat lots of oranges, you won't get scurvy.

LP:  I am going to eat LOTS of oranges! I will NOT get scurvy!

Little does he know, almost no one gets scurvy anymore. Heh, heh.

The guy below was a lot more help than our little miss. But that's not surprising.

She preferred to explore every single step and dirt patch she could find.

Benjamin held the bags for a while and then scampered off calling out, "Take a picture of meeeeeee, Mama! Take a picture of meee!" and making absurd faces while stretching his hat into unnatural proportions. I don't think that hat will ever be the same.

Does this remind anyone else of a giraffe drinking from a pond?

 And, really, I think we need a good caption for the next photo. I mean, he is so over Sadie's step-climbing shenanigans.

And that's that, folks! After much rolling down the steep lawn, we took our bags of oranges and lemons and headed home (muddy and wet and with runny noses).

Sadie and Solids

Sadie likes spaghetti. The Papa does NOT like that Sadie likes spaghetti. Somewhere within the whines I discerned something about red stuff being hard to clean up. I am sure I did not hear him completely correctly. We may have to try this little experiment again to figure out with certainty what his complaint was.

Like most babies, Sadie prefers fruit and bread products, but she has shown herself favorable to foods with cumin, garlic, and curry in them, and all manner of herbs. In fact, she has been known to pick parsley straight out of the garden for a snack.

Nuts! No nuts allowed...

The preschool Benjamin is attending is super strict about nuts. If there are no nut-allergies present in their students I just don't see the need, but then again, perhaps I am being insensitive. I'm just having a hard time being creative about lunch substitutes for his beloved peanut butter sandwich. Nuts are a major part of Benjamin's protein intake - he even walks around the house clutching a Costco-sized bag of raw almonds in his fist. Our favorite bars are raw nut and fruit-based - Lara Bars. What is there, if not nuts?

Well...he also loves bread products. The problem is, a diet of bread and crackers is never going to pack the nutritional punch that a growing boy needs. (Nevermind the detrimental effects of white flour and refined sugar.)

So I checked in this nifty little cookbook for some healthier ideas and found "Spicy Pumpkin Muffins".  In case you are not familiar with agave nectar, it is kind of like honey - a natural sweet nectar produced by the agave plant. Like honey, it is raw and unprocessed - it is healthier for your body. Refined (white and brown) sugar actually acts as a poison in our bodies, exacerbating all kinds of afflictions:  MS, cerebral palsy, cancer and so on. Raw, naturally occurring sugars such as honey and agave (and what is naturally found in fruit, carrots, snap peas and the like) take longer to break down and do not tax our system. There's a lot more to it than that, but I'm trying to keep it simple. Just search on the effects of refined sugar and see what you find.

So, being that I have mass quantities of roasted pumpkin puree made from pumpkins in the garden, I thought I would try out the pumpkin muffins. Here's the recipe. But first...the book can be found easily online, by author Ania Catalano. 

1 c. oat flour
1 c. barley flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice (I chose to use ginger instead - 1/2 tsp...just because I like ginger better than the clove-allspice flavor)
1/2 c. milk or unsweetened soy milk
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 c. amber agave nectar (I actually mixed agave and honey and used slightly less than called for)
1/4 c. expeller-pressed canola oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 c. pumpkin puree
1/2 c. raisins
1/3 c. walnuts (I used sunflower seeds to avoid the nut issue)
1/4 c. raw pumpkin seeds (I used these, but I don't like them - too big for a muffin)

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. (Actually...I baked mine for about 45 minutes. not sure what the problem was.)

Tasty lunchtime treat! Packed with fiber and nutrition.

Guess Who's Eating Solids?

We started Sadie on rice cereal this week - she's four and three-quarters months. We didn't start Benjamin on solids until he was six months old. Why is it different this time? I don't know. I was a little clueless last time. I do think it is good to wait a bit - it seems to me that in less developed and more natural places, a child would be breastfeeding for some time. Breastmilk is the perfect food, so why mess with it?

But Sadie is on formula, so I am pretty sure it doesn't matter as much. Perhaps organic fruits and veggies would be just as healthy, if not more so. Who knows? I'm just a mama doing the best she can. And in this complex world today, that's a lot harder than it used to be. I shan't go into that any more here...that conundrum will be it's own rant post!

So far, Sadie's pushing half of what she eats out with her tongue, but it's a fun experiment nonetheless!

The Fruit Kebab Experiment

It's been hard, lately, finding healthy food that Benjamin will eat. If it were up to him, he would live on toast, chewable vitamins, and milk for every meal, and eat birthday cake and smoothie popsicles for every snack. Too bad for him that Mama does not run a toddler paradise in her home.


In an attempt to dress up plain old fruit, Mama decided to pull out some bamboo skewers. This was done with some hesitation, however, as a person could no doubt poke his eye out with these near weapons. Fruit kebabs were the intention, and Mama made a fine demo kebab.


Benjamin could not be fooled, oh no. His indisputable cognizance became evident when nary a piece of cantaloupe nor pineapple touched his lips. His focus was on the grape and the grape only. Thus he was not interested in skewering his own kebab, but rather...


...stabbing at the grapes, and biting them off the end.


Ah, well. A mama's gotta try.

Tomato Soup

Surprise, surprise. One never knows what to expect with this boy's palate. He eschews beef and chicken, but eats fish and DEVOURS lamb. He eats almonds by the fistful, but lately has been positively uninterested in apple sauce.

Tonight we served tomato basil soup and salad. He licked his bowl clean and asked for more. And when he was all finished, he said, "Mmmmm, Mom, that soup was delicious."

Tis the Season

...for SMOOTHIES!

Twas a beautiful warm day this week when The Mama decided to break out her trusty rusty smoothie-making skills. There was a time in the life of Mama and Papa when smoothies were a daily item on the breakfast menu. Sadly, the blender is a pain in the patootie to clean, and The Mama simply got lazy. Plus, if one is already cold (and The P-Pod is too big to adequately heat, so it's chilly in the winter), one does not need to increase the chill factor with a smoothie.


To the subject at hand: Little P loves The Smoothie. It helps that Mama has such fine culinary presentation skills. A colorful cup and a bendie straw snipped to the appropriate length can make any beverage more intriguing.

Here Little P is giving Mama his best "get on with it" look. He so badly wanted to dive into its berry deliciousness, but Mama got involved and wanted to take about 19 photos before he could get in his first slurp.

The trick to making the perfect smoothie is...well, there are actually a few tricks.

1. Don't use ice. Use frozen berries. The worst thing (in The Mama's opinion) is a smoothie that separates into something containing a layer of water on top. Gross.

2. Employ fresh pineapple. There is usually no need for any sweetener if you throw in a few chunks of fresh pineapple. (When additional sweetness is required, due to sour citrus, The Mama uses honey or agave.)

3. A dash of vanilla is so necessary.


4. Don't forget the fresh oranges. Navel or valencia work the best.

5. A bit of plain, lowfat yogurt and some sort of liquid (milk, soy milk, almond milk...) are required to attain the most desirable consistency.

Here, Little P is consuming a "mixed berry" smoothie - raspberries, blueberries, marionberries.

Mama's personal favorite is a strawberry smoothie. There is nothing like the combination of strawberry, orange, pineapple, vanilla, and dairy. But we all know that Little P STILL can't have strawberries. He's sad about that. He watches those in The P-Pod eating fresh strawberries from the farmer's market and sighs. "Benamin can't have strawberries," he says. "Strawberries give Benamin bumps." Yep. Hope you grow out of it, kid.