Baby Mia turns big and Stuffed onions.

Our Neighbor brought over daffodils yesterday. Whenever Kiki sees them in her yard she always asks me if she can go and have some. Each time I have to tell her no; those flowers are not ours but we are lucky enough to see them from our yard. She usually tells me they are beautiful. Kiki was napping when we got the flowers, so I left them on the table. Whenever Kiki wakes up from nap the first thing she does is tell me it's snack time. She has become accustomed to this. Yesterday it was banana chocolate bread, but the daffodils stole the show. She forgot about her cake and instead sat at the table with her nose just an inch from the flowers.

The flowers were not the only spring present we received. Another friend who came into around 50lbs of onions stopped by to give almost half of them to us! Now I am absolutely sure I will be unable to use them up before they spoil, but with a couple hours or chopping ( and thankfully not too many tears) I managed to get the amount I figured would spoil into the freezer and ready for quick use. At the same time though I am left with far more onions than I am used to having, and though most nights I use at least one it is time to find more onion recipes than I already have. I ended up making stuffed onions the first night, with a recipe that reminds me of cabbage rolls, or at least they are similar to the cabbage rolls I make. And if we keep up with this Indian food kick we have been on, my guess is that we will continue to use our onions at a steady pace.

 

At this point it is also safe to say we are more or less ( less being the thought of buying fresh fish from the coast) at-home vegetarians, which might just be a catch-all way of saying for the most part we have cut out meat, but only really when it comes to our groceries. We still eat meat at restaurants, or at other peoples' houses if we find ourselves invited for dinner, and then there is the odd case like Easter. A fair amount of my husband's family is Polish, enough to influence holidays that is, and a couple things have held over for Easter, such as the cold polish sausage with  hard boiled eggs and other things for Easter morning breakfast, as well as lamb cake (Which thankfully is only shaped like a lamb from a special mold that it is baked in - not made from lamb). Typing this I am realizing that Easter will be here far sooner than I was anticipating and really do need to start collecting the Polish Easter recipes I have scattered around.

The main difference I have found here is that the Polish like to make food that will keep a day or two, at the very least, allowing the person in charge of the cooking to get it all done by the night before Easter. I really have found this enjoyable for Easter morning, it's really nice to have the time to run around with the kids looking for eggs, and as with most holidays I try my best to focus more on the food and family aspect of it rather than the gifts. I am sure we will get a couple little surprises for Easter morning but if I can help it I would rather the littles grow up looking forward to doing special things as a family on days like this rather then what they are going to get ( I can hope, right?).

And now that I have ended up in a completely different place than where I had started, and honestly am finishing this up a few days after I intended it is in fact baby Mia's first birthday. Its only about 7 a.m. and both babies are still sleeping ( Kiki in her bed and Mia snuggled next to me). Mia took her first step two nights ago, she is nowhere near walking yet but stands up very proud of herself. She is eating three meals a day at the table ( though the doctor informed me that since her system does not handle dairy, and the fats in milk are important to brain development over the next year, I should really keep breast feeding till she is two. Until I heard that I was counting the days till she turned one (and had every intention of weaning her on March 12) and after quite a struggle she has figured out how to use her sippy cup. So today by all conventional standards Mia has turned big. I suppose though if you asked Kiki the true measure of Mia being big is the ability tot jump on the bed, something Mia will have to work up to.

And since I took much longer to complete this post then I intended baby Mia's birthday recipe (not that we are eating today, just sharing) is stuffed onions. Who knows, perhaps when she has grown into taking bites she will enjoy them ( I can hope right?) I am sure there will be more pictures of baby Mia on her birthday for Nonna soon, but today there are not too many baby pictures,  just some onions, and her standing on the table.

Stuffed Onions:

4 or 5 medium-ish sized red onions ( or any kind I would suppose)

3 cloves of garlic (minced)

3 or 4 small mushrooms (minced)

about a 1/4 cup of minced eggplant

1 Tbls minced fresh rosemary

a few springs of minced parsley

one egg

1 packed cup cooked rice

2 Tbls nutritional yeast

white wine

olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Start off by setting a rather large pot of salted water on the stove to boil. Continue by cutting of the ends of the onions and then cutting each in half. Next remove the outer rough skins of the onion, and carefully separate each layer and set aside till you get to the middle where it is difficult to separate. Take the smaller middle part of the onions ( not being used as the shell) and mince.

Once your salted water has come to a boil plunge  all the separated pieces of onions into the water and let boil a minute or two until they become soft and easy to handle (sometimes doing this in a couple batches in the better option). Set this aside to cool.

To make the filling cook on medium-high heat the diced onions till translucent, add in the eggplant and mushrooms, cooking a few minutes more, turn off the heat and add parsley, rosemary, nutritional yeast, egg, rice, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir everything until well combined.

In a glass baking dish large enough to hold everything pour a couple Tbls of olive oil and spread across the bottom, next pour a few splashes of white wine in as well, again enough to at cover the bottom of the baking dish.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Now taking one of the onion shells place about 1/2 a Tbls to a whole Tbls at one side ( depending on the size of the shell) and roll into the shape of a cigar. Place seam side down in the prepared baking sheet and repeat until you either run our of something or your baking dish is full.

Place in the oven and allow to cook for 45 or so minutes.

Remove and serve hot or cold. This recipe keep relatively well. We had this with sweet potato and mustard green hash last night, and are eating the left overs cold with hummus and flat bread for lunch.

Really Henry?

Neil usually wakes up first. Showers, gets ready for work and heads to the kitchen to make himself eggs and potatoes before he leaves for work. Most mornings I am up but stay in bed a little longer with one or two little girls and Henry bean my sweet little grumpy old dog. If he knows I am awake Neil also brings me a cup of coffee (while I am still in bed, which is wonderful). Kiki wakes up next immediately hearing her father in the kitchen her eyes get wide and she tells me 'I need go see daddy in kitchen. I need get cereal'. I hear her scamper off and ask her father for the aforementioned, leaving Mia and myself to a quiet 20 minutes or so that I thoroughly enjoy.

Once Neil has left its usually time to feed Mia and watch Kiki run around being a monkey. This morning was no different. I cut up an apple cinnamon muffin into her Mia sized tiny, tiny pieces watched her and Kiki eat for a bit and then went to collect the laundry from the different rooms while they finished up. When I came back though, Henry had apparently decided Mia was done eating her muffin.

Kiki absolutely can not stand not being a part of me taking pictures.

Also I though I would try and keep track of some of the recipes and blogs I like reading here as well.
These samosas are perfect for our Friday car rides to pick up Gwen. I am always looking for some kind of new recipe that packs a whole meal into one hand held snack. I added some peas, broccoli and kale to this recipe.

Lately we having been easting a whole bunch of lentils. Indian Daal seems to be my favorite preparation right now and this Pumpkin carrot red lentil daal  is probably my favorite to make.

I cant's wait to make this for dinner tonight!

Every couple of weeks my husbands job has a safety meeting where they rotate who brings snacks, this week was his turn. We made raisin scones, apple cinnamon sunflower seed muffins and this my favorite biscotti in the whole world right now recipe

And lastly it is my Fathers 62 birthday! We were lucky enough to have both him and my mother as well as my wonderful brother and his beautiful girlfriend all here for Thanksgiving this past year. It was the first time we had all been together for a holiday in 10 years, and it is something we can hopefully do again much sooner this time. Happy birthday Dad, we all love you and miss you, Kiki keeps telling me that you and Nonna will come to visit soon. Or well a slightly less understandable two year olds version of that.

Tomato flatbread and a broken dryer.

My husband has built me a clothes line. 70 dollars and about 4 hours of work has set us up to do our laundry dryer free from now on. My parents tease, living in the pacific northwest (well known for all that rain) they think I am overly ambitious to completely forgo using a dryer. But the outside clothes line is set, and for all those rainy days we have set a couple lines across the kitchen where it tends to stay warm and dry, the extra high ceilings made it the best choice as well. Kiki thinks its hilarious, she points and giggles while I hang her footy pajamas or little baby pants.

But really when it comes down to it, drying our clothing this way fits in nicely with our general feelings about how we want to live, and one less large appliance that makes noise/ breaks down/ needs replacing/ and drives up the electricity bill is an added bonus. It really is only doable at this point though because I do have the luck of being a stay at home mom. I honestly cannot imagine trying to line dry clothing for 5 people while working full time.

As a stay at home mom I cook everyday, usually at least two if not three full meals as well as an afternoon snack for my children. You would think with this amount of time spent cooking it would be easy to post recipes and share what and how we love to eat. But it's not. I am absolutely terrible at taking pictures of what I have made, rather I forget to take pictures would be more accurate. I have plenty of pictures of my kids or parts of our house that we have changed/painted or things my husband has made but very rarely do I remember to photograph what we eat.

So my goal is to at least once a week post something that Kiki eats for snack. We do snack in the afternoon when she wakes up from her nap. Mia usually has some as well but it still has to be cut into tiny, tiny, baby bites. No matter what the size Mia will always try and eat all of what you give her at once, which tends to stress me out and is what drives me into cutting everything into tiny, tiny baby pieces.

And since Mia is content at this moment (throwing all her books on the floor, and babbling) and Kiki is in fact still napping while her snack cools I have a moment to share. I ended up making individual tomato flat bread. Since we really don't do any dairy ( Even though Mia is the only one who is lactose intolerant) I ended up using a fair amount of nutritional yeast (How is it so good?)

Individual tomato Flat breads:

15 Ping-Pong ball sized pieces of Basic bread dough

1 roma tomato sliced into 15 thin pieces

parsley, salt, pepper, nutritional yeast to sprinkle over the top of each

olive oil.

Pre-heat the oven to 460 degrees F, flatten out each of the 15 balls and place on a baking sheet. Rub a drop of oil over the top of each.

sprinkle the nutritional yeast over each to coat the top well. Next place one slice of tomato on each tiny flat bread. sprinkle over the salt, pepper, and parsley and let rest till oven has pre-heated.

bake till a nice golden color, about 15-18 minutes. Let cool briefly before eating.



If you keep the bread dough on hand like I tend to, its a quick and wonderful snack. Kiki likes nothing more than fresh baked bread, she tends to choose it over cookies or cakes. Lately we have switched to using 3/4 whole wheat pastry flour and 1/4 white bread flour for most everything. This recipe still yields a nice crispy crust even with the substitution.

oh! We have continued with the painting, including the piano and our room.

The piano

Growing up my father always stressed sports for my brother and I, which we took to pretty quickly. Soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball in the spring, and swim team in the summer. We loved it. It kept us in shape, we learned all the life lessons sports are supposed to teach, and made a fair amount of friends as well.

My mother always enjoyed seeing us happy and I am sure agreed with a lot of what playing sports taught us, but at the same time wished we were more musically inclined and saw a  reasonable amount of benefit to my brother and I both learning an instrument, which again she was probably correct about. The problem was neither my brother or I really had any interest in learning one, but mom insisted and so after trying a few different instruments I finally settled on the clarinet ( I am pretty sure this is why my brother also ended up with the clarinet seeing as we already had one..)

I barely practiced showed a little but not much aptitude for it and really just kind of pushed through those three years of band, and as soon as I was able I dropped it.

Now after however many years later, and a rather exhausting 45 minutes last night there is an upright piano in our living room. Neil has a little experience and plays 'house piano' as he puts it. I have no idea what I am doing, but Kiki is in love with it. She is the real reason we ended up spending a couple months looking on craigslist till we found a free piano we could call our own. And now after the however many years followed by the exhausting 45 minutes Kiki now has a piano and Nonna has her little musician.

So here are a few more pictures of the littles at the piano for Nonna.

Tuscan Beans and a lemon

Well I have at least started! There is not to much going on yet but I have official started my Etsy page! The Laurel Road hopefully once I get through the process of posting everything I have to sell, and then filling out all the little areas I will get back to making things to sell.

The past week has mostly been taking pictures and figuring out how to really start this. That and some how everyone was sick again. I don't think we can win this winter. I feel like there has been such a small amount of time where everyone felt well and no one had a runny nose or a small fever, but at least living in Oregon means that winter comes to an end far sooner than I am used to. The ground hog has no pull on this part of the world. The warmer weather and all that mud are headed our way soon.

I can't wait to get the girls outside playing more often. The problem with moving to a new town at the start of winter is we missed the whole summer of meeting kids at the playground who would want to come over to play inside through all these rainy days. Luckily though we have a wonderful library program and Kiki has made at least one little baby friend and Mia is really still a bit to young to notice. I honestly think the most awkward part of meeting kids Kiki's age to play with is trying to figure out if I am going to get along with the other mom.

I had never really considered the adult dynamic in a playdate situation. Some one suggested its sort of like dating but with completely different criteria. It less important if both parties have a common interested and much more important to have children the same (-ish) age, which is then followed by if and how well those kids get along (can they occupy themselves for an extended period of time?). Once theses items have been checked off you pretty much signed up to at least have a cup of coffee with this almost stranger and stumble through a conversation, that if your lucky can cover more topics then just your child's sleeping, eating, playing, tantrum throwing (or not?) habits.

I suppose there is the other side to this same coin though. As you bring your kids to different parks or library programs there my be a mom or two there who you always smile at or make a quick joke or two with and always seem to almost get along with. Yet theses moms seem un-reachable. Why? because their kids are not the same age as your kids, or your kids don't run over and try and play with their kids and in fact seem to have less in common with the child that has the interesting mom than they do with cheese ( both of which can be smelly).  At this point though my children are thankfully to young to really have that much say in who they play with, and I think this might be  my only chance to have a say in selecting a mom friend and not just be issued one based on my young child's whims.

In the mean time though, with all the little projects, cooking and baking, runny noses, scraped knees and baby melt downs I don't really have all that much time for a mommy friend as it is. And honestly As I watch the pile of clean laundry grow (going unfolded) turning into more of a mountain and less of a mole hill I am more than happy with two little girls running around under foot a good friend in Scotland, the same in Wyoming  and  wonderful husband who comes home each evening right about dinner time.

And since dinner is a topic always on my mind I should probably share one of our favorite dinners as well. Its a recipe for Tuscan Beans. I am not really sure where I came across it at this point but its one of those recipes that once you have made it, it tends to stick with you. We eat it probably about once a week theses days and always end up with leftovers that either get eaten with a fried egg on top the next morning or turned into something new.

I am not sure how authentic theses beans are now that I have made them a few times but here is the recipe I use.

Tuscan(-ish) beans

2 carrots
2 celery stalks
1 onion medium?
2 cups of great northern white beans
2bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste


dice all the vegetables  and cook at medium low with a little olive oil for about 15 minutes, do not allow the onions to brown.

splash in a little more olive oil, add 2ish cups of white beans, 2 bay leaves and some pepper and stir, let cook a minute or two. (do not add salt at this time, adding salt to beans while they are cooking does not allow them to fully soften.)

Pour enough water into the pot to cover the beans by 3 or so inches. leave on medium low and let simmer for 3-4 hours. Add a little more water here and there to make sure the beans do not get dry, about 5 minutes before serving add salt to taste.

The Beans end up soft and buttery, Perfect with a crusty loaf of bread. Splash a bit more olive oil over the top right before serving the beans and it turns out so nicely. The kids really seem to enjoy this as well.

Potato pizza and lots of blue.

It has happened. Its been 5 months since Kiki spilled my husbands coffee all over our old laptop and since then each time we would use it something else was no longer working. We got to the point were we could no longer type what so ever and had to buy an external keyboard. Eventually while we were online different websites would constantly reload or sometimes the pages would scroll indefinitely. Needless to say it is more than pleasant to be typing this with out any of the previous issues on a very pink new laptop.

It feels like we have settled into our new home. I am starting to get antsy about adding color. I no longer like the white walls in the living room, or the light gray and blue in our own room, but these are big projects that involve buying paint and moving furniture which with the two little ones as energetic as they are lately does no seem possible.  Instead though there were two cabinets in the kitchen that were painted all white, that have turned into a new project.

I like to look back at pictures from just a few months ago to see how much we have already changed. All the little projects we have already started and completed and the bigger ones that will happen over the years are all seem so exciting. But color is the one thing that I like to change first. I love bright rooms with lots of different colors and textures. And so I got started in the kitchen, I have a few pictures but it was a quick project. I starting with a light blue and brushing on a thin first coat of paint. Then before it was able to dry adding a darker watered down blue paint brushed over the top.  Some mixed and some did not, but the brush lines look great! I started with just one cabinet yesterday but Neil liked it enough that I did a second this morning.

But beyond computers, babies and painting the other big thing I cant seem to get away from is Potato pizza, I have no idea where I came across the recipe for it, but since the first time I made it the entire family loves it.  Most weeks I make it more than once. Its a great side for soup at dinner, or most of a lunch for the kiddos, and sometimes just the perfect afternoon snack.

I don't use a specific pizza dough for the base, but instead a no knead bread recipe that I always have on hand.

Basic bread dough recipe:

3 1/2 - 4 cups of warm water

6 or so cups of flour

2 Tbls of salt

2 Tbls of yeast

first add water to a large re-useable container. Sift the 6 cups of flour over that, then add the yeast and salt.

Mix everything just until well combined, it should be a shapeless but not too wet dough.

Cover and let sit out 2 hours.

After that the dough is ready to use or to refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

I use this dough almost everyday for pizzas, cinnamon rolls, or just different kinds of bread. Its great to have on hand, and when it comes time to actually do the baking you set the oven to 450/F and shape the dough correctly for what you are making. Then let it rest while the oven heats up, pop in your bread and bake till done. A large loaf of bread takes about 45 minutes where as a pizza only about 15-20.

Getting back to the actual Potato pizza recipe though you will need

a quarter of the dough from the recipe above

splash of olive oil

2 potatos

half an onion

salt and pepper

Roll out and shape the dough, and either put in the pan you are using or on a peel with cornmeal to transfer to a pizza stone. Pour a few Tbls of olive oil onto the dough and spread out evenly.

Next slice the potatoes and onion as thinly as possible. Arrange the potatoes over the top of the dough and sprinkle the onions on top of the potato. finally add salt and pepper to your liking over everything else and let rest till the oven is ready.

Bake till the crust is a golden brown and the potatoes are looking crispy at their edges.

Sometimes we add salami or capers, but tend to use a lot less salt if adding these.

I think this is good for now though.  I have two babies with a few too many boogers who are more than ready to get our selves together to head to the library for story hour.

And one last thing! We fell so in love with the blue cabinets, that we ended up painting the ceramic tile in the kitchen as well, so one last picture mainly so Nonna can see how blue our yellow kitchen has become.

Messy babies and more Dolls.

I can't get the idea of starting an Etsy shop out of my mind. I have been making more dolls in the past week than ever before and I am liking each one more than the last. I have also finally settled into my sewing room, organized, cozy, and right off the kitchen it is my favorite part of the house. a trip to scrap in Portland over the weekend and  morning of folding and separating fabric has me ready to stock pile some dolls before I spend time setting up the online shop.

In other news Mia is ready to eat with the rest of us. Lunch and dinner at the table with her food chopped up into tiny pieces has her so excited! Though she still needs to work on getting more food into her mouth than on the floor, she has figured out how to feed the dogs with ease. Kiki on the other hand is great at getting the food in her mouth, on the floor, in the dog's mouth and just about anywhere else a two-year-old can reach. Beyond just where to put your food, Kiki has figured out the basic rules for meal time, which is nice. Sit at the table with everyone, try at least a bite of everything on your plate (this one is still bit tough), and I am really really really not giving you something else just because you cry. But all of that plus a ten-year-old who cannot seem to get the words out of her mouth fast enough or the food into it any slower, makes for a wonderfully lively and usually comical dinner.

But with a few more dolls to make and perhaps some other little critters, I will share some pictures of my beloved sewing room and more recent projects, as well as some messy babies, because really who does not enjoy messy babies.

My wonderful husband found this old (but working and in great shape) Kenmore sewing machine at  goodwill for me more than three years ago. Speaking of which today is our three year anniversary, three years that have flown by!  Two babies a dog and a  house have all come into our lives, as well as new friends and so many new plans for the future. I am the luckiest lady I know.

Kiki's smile always makes me laugh.