Big Blogiversary

I've been blogging for quite some time now, something like 5 years. I've had four different blogs - this one, my fitness blog (that's on hiatus pretty much), my food blog and the blog I write with my fellow writing group. So, I've celebrated a lot of blogiversaries (or however you want to spell it). While some have meant more than others, I do have to say the first anniversary of the food blog has resulted in the biggest celebration yet. Never in my life have I had a dinner with blog readers to celebrate a milestone. It was awesome!

Here's a recap post with pictures of the event. It was a five course dinner created specifically for the anniversary with over 40 people in attendance (readers and friends). It was a dinner that will be hard to forget!

Christmas traditions

Ever since starting our family, it has been exceedingly imperative to me that we create our own holiday traditions. Maybe this stems from my childhood and remembering my mom working almost every holiday, shortening the celebration to only a few moments. It's possible that I feel this way because the very few happy memories that I have from that time in my life are of special holiday moments, like the insane amounts of holiday baking she would do from scratch for presents - cookies, colored popcorn balls, fudge and bars - all of them excessively delicious. I'm almost certain that creating our own traditions is to help me feel that our family is normal in an extraordinarily abnormal reality.

We haven't started many traditions yet since the boys are still very young and each year we add more to our list. This year we will probably go look at Christmas lights, maybe a horse-drawn carriage ride downtown on Christmas Eve, depending on how cold it is. We have always donned them in Christmas pajamas to go to bed in on Christmas Eve and we bake cookies. There is one kind in particular that I can say is our family's traditional holiday cookie - White Chocolate Pistachio Butter Cookies. It's a recipe that I've created myself, but is not totally genius - it just makes sense.

After a particularly rough night, kids screaming and fighting, my patience thin and Bill on a business trip, I needed to make cookies for Logan's preschool program. I got Carter to bed and had Logan help me out with the project. His disagreeable disposition changed drastically as I was getting the kitchen ready for baking. He was so excited, pulling up his wooden step stool, helping me flour the counter and cutting out pine tree-shaped cookies, just like he does with his Play-Doh. He snuck bites of crushed pistachios and smiled as I painted each cookie to dip in the nuts, telling me to be careful every time I burnt my fingers with melted white chocolate. Covered in flour from chin, arms and chest, he grabbed me around my waist. "Mom, guess what?" he asked. "What?" I replied. "I love you" he said from the bottom of his almost 4 year old heart.


White Chocolate Pistachio Butter Cookies, also known as "Christmas Trees"

2 sticks of unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 tea spoon salt
1 large egg yolk
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 bag white chocolate chips
1 bag shelled pistachios

Have all ingredients at room temperature (68-70 degrees). In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar and salt on medium speed until very fluffy and well-blended. Add the egg yolk and beat until well blended. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well combined. Reduce the speed and slowly add the flour just until combined.

Dived the dough in half and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour.

Pre-heat oven to 375. Place the shelled pistachios in a sandwich bag and crush to desired consistency (I like mine moderately crushed, not too fine, but not too whole). Empty crushed nuts onto a plate.

Take one disc of dough and roll out on a floured counter top. Cut the dough into tree shapes and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes or until edges are barely golden brown. Using a thin-bladed spatula, transfer the cookies to a baking rack to cool.

On the stove top, melt the white chocolate (my preferred method is a double boiler). Stir chocolate until it is smooth and shiny. Remove from stove top.

With a silicone basting brush, paint one cookie with the melted white chocolate and then dip onto the plate of pistachios, covering the chocolate almost completely. Repeat with each cookie. Transfer to an air-tight container.

Yields 2 dozen cookies

Once every 3 years is too long

It always seems that when you have fun and exciting things planned for the weekend, the days go by so fast that you don't really have a chance to savor them. That's how this weekend was.

On Saturday Bill went up in the mountains for the day to train for his disc golf tournament that's coming up and the kids and I stayed at home. We had a birthday party to go to later in the afternoon and had fun playing out in their backyard.


Sunday afternoon Logan and Carter's Aunt J and Uncle C came out to visit for a short while. They are doing a month long road trip across the country and stopped on their way back. We hadn't seen them since Logan was just over a year old and they hadn't met Carter yet. Sunday afternoon was spent hanging out and playing with the kids (after Logan got over his poor attitude). Aunt J took a ton of pictures of the boys and some of them turned out really cute!


After the kids went to bed, we had a massive steak dinner that Bill grilled up with grilled corn on the cob and potatoes. It was delicious! We hung out chatting and had a few drinks. It was nice to catch up and hang out. They spent the night and after a huge breakfast that Bill made on Monday morning, they hit the road to continue their trip with a visit to a friend in Denver.

It's a bummer that we don't live close to family where we have fun and enjoy the visit. These are the family moments I wish my boys had more of - the fun, easygoing, stress-free times playing with cars and showing off skills and being cute. As much as I really like living here, it was another reminder of how much it sucks to be far away from family.

I hope we'll be able to visit with them again next summer.

Perfect picnic

Over the last weekend, we went to the annual end of the year picnic for our Club. It's fun chatting, meeting the husbands of friends and eating the potluck goodies. This year I made s'mores brownies which were a big hit and I've been sending out the recipe all week.

Part of the fun for our event is that we rent out the train at one of the parks and the kids can ride over and over again to their hearts content. Logan was so excited this year and couldn't wait to ride the train. He had a blast with all of his little buddies and every time the train would circle the track, he would wave to us. A beauty queen wave, no less. I have no idea where he learned how to do it, but it was hilarious. He was so funny the entire night, being the cool kid with his sunglasses. Carter also rode the train - for the first time (!) and loved it too. He was a little sketched out when we went through the tunnel and the kids screamed, but not too bad. He still smiled afterward.


We were lucky we didn't get rained on, especially considering that every day last week we were hit with afternoon hail storms and we've been under constant tornado warnings. It was actually a nice evening for dinner and everything went off without a hitch. Good times!

The bake-a-thon of all bake-a-thons

Logan is quickly approaching his 3rd birthday. Three! Can you believe it? I can't. And just as we have done in previous years, we are planning a birthday party extravaganza. One thing about having so many friends that can be a pain is birthday parties and planning. September and January are the busiest months for parties and we end up going to one every weekend, not to mention buying a gift for four to five kids those months.

Logan has two good friends in his playgroup that have birthdays on the 13th and 26th. One of the moms suggested that we get together and plan a combined birthday party since we would be inviting the same people anyway. Brilliant! So, all three of us are working together - renting out a bounce house place, getting sandwiches and juice, making goodie bags and baking cupcakes. FOR 60 PEOPLE. Yes, that's right. 60 people including siblings and parents. Because of Logan's food allergy, I automatically volunteered to bake the cupcakes since they need to be egg-free. And that's what I'm doing for the next two days. Baking them all today, then frosting them tomorrow so they will be ready to go on Saturday morning.

Even though I'm turning my kitchen into a small bakery for the next two days, the party planning has been very easy and stress free. With all of us working together, it's been great and I can't wait for the party of all parties this weekend. What an awesome way to celebrate a birthday!

Variety is the spice of life

During my pregnancy with Carter and the months after his birth, I wasn't too concerned about the nutritional habits of our family. If we ate, great. As long as nobody went starving, that's all that I cared about. Not too long ago, I realized that Logan has been eating the same thing every single day for almost a year now: a cereal bar, milk and banana for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly or a cheese quesadilla with fruit for lunch and homemade mac n' cheese with vegetables for dinner. This consistent pattern happened because they were easy meals, relatively healthy and he asked for them every single day. I never put up a fight for him to eat something else because I really didn't have it in me.

Until now.

While Carter isn't sleeping through the night yet and I'm not getting anymore rest that before, I have somehow gained my cooking mojo back. It helps that Bill seems more open to having actual meals again rather than the "fend for yourself" dinners we've been accustomed to as of late. PB & J and Mac n' Cheese have been banned and we're going to sit down to eat dinner as a family again.

This afternoon Logan had a cheesy vegetable sandwich (cream cheese, cheddar cheese, tomato, cucumber, sprouts, red leaf lettuce on whole wheat bread) and grapes. Tonight for dinner we're having salmon with basil butter and lemon and some other vegetable (probably squash). We have a few meals planned for the week and I'm going to start bookmarking my favorite recipes again. It's time to add a little more spice to our meals here!

So much food and family time

After hours of cooking and baking, with full stomachs we called our Thanksgiving dinner a success. Every dish was so good and nothing was a disaster (except for the pie because I didn't buy enough pudding, but it still tasted great - just not as firm as it should have been). We were going to eat early, but Bill put the turkey in the oven not realizing that it had automatically shut off after I made the muffins. It sat in there for hours before we knew it wasn't cooking. So, dinner was delayed and thankfully, we don't have salmonella poisoning.

It was really nice to have all of us sitting at the table eating Thanksgiving dinner together. Logan loved his cranberry sauce and talked about it all night. Carter was content to sit in his bouncer at the table with all of us (poor kid had to miss out on the deliciousness. Hopefully he got a second hand taste) and Bill and I inhaled our dinner like it was our last meal. I was really proud of our cooking skills and that everything was made from scratch (the stuffing was my favorite).

We had a nice time together as a family with leftovers to last us for a while. Yum!!

The menu

This is definitely not the time to start a diet. I wrote up our menu for tomorrow and it's only for us - no guests. We're going to have leftovers for eternity, which isn't all that bad the more that I think about it. I start cooking tonight and continue with the rest tomorrow. Crazy! Two days of cooking! It better be the best Thanksgiving dinner we've ever had.

Tonight I start making the Cranberry Harvest muffins for our brunch. I'm making them differently than this recipe: egg-free, with pecans or almonds, no figs and a lower fat milk. We'll see how they turn out.

Then tomorrow Bill is making the turkey and gravy (he does an excellent job) and per his request, Stove Top stuffing. I'm making the mashed potatoes, baked sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mushrooms and spinach and the pumpkin pie (thanks for the recipe Catherine!). So, yeah. That's a lot of food and we're going to try and do it for under $20. We'll see how that goes!

I hope every one's meals turn out to be delicious!

Italian night
One of the activities in The Club that I really enjoy being a part of is the Cooking Club. There are two MOMS Club chapters in our town & we've always had a combined chapter cooking club. The Other Side was responsible for organizing & hosting, but they could never get their act together. An event would be organized & either the day before (or in one case, a few hours before) they would cancel because everyone on their side flaked out. It was really irritating. After months of begging & nagging our co-presidents (one of them being photographer friend) to split & have our own Cooking Club, we finally did. Saturday night was the first "Our Side Only" Cooking Club & it went off without a hitch.

When the split was organized, we had 17 people sign up for the new Cooking Club. I was thrilled! Even if we had half of the attendance, it would still be successful. And that's exactly what happened - 8 people were able to attend this month. Our Cooking Club coordinator gave us the theme of Italian food for Saturday night & I got crackin' on my recipe search. At first I was going to make a tiramisu layer cake until I looked over the ingredients & saw that I would have to buy a whole lot of liquor. If I can't drink it, then I'm not buying it. So, I decided to go with a caprese salad. Sure, it was the easy way out, but it was light & refreshing & exactly what I was craving.

I got to the hosts house (which was beautiful!) & we lined up our dishes on her buffet table. There was prosciutto & cheese pinwheels in puff pastry, chicken florentine, pesto gnocchi, garden salad, meatballs, tortellini soup & brownies (I totally should have made desert). We a had a lot of fun eating, laughing & just enjoying the night out. Everyone was drinking wine (I had orange juice) & probably telling the group things they wouldn't have said otherwise - like how they weren't attracted to their husband, their plans for getting liposuction & bragging about discipline techniques (all of this actually came from one person). It was still a good night out, though.

The next event is scheduled in two weeks & I'm signed up to host in April. Hopefully we'll have the house by then (because that's a whole different post!)

Eye of the tiger
Oh, the holidays are upon us & you know what that means. Food. And lots of it, too. We've been looking forward to Thanksgiving for quite some time, planning one of the biggest feasts we've ever cooked. It's only going to be the three of us & we will have food to last us the rest of the winter. I'm sure we'll be sick of turkey after eating it everyday for weeks. Other than the regular Thanksgiving pig-out, the big event that we are excitedly anticipating is the Stuffing Throwdown.

Yes, we are having our very own cooking competition right here in our own home. It will just be the two of us competing, but it's still a serious competition. Bill brought up the idea a few weeks ago & of course, I was game. We are two very competitive people, neither one of us being gracious losers (thus why Monopoly is a banned board game in our house). The funny things about this competition is that we don't have any judges since it's just us eating it.

We still have to get our menu put together & decide on our final stuffing recipes, but I think I'm going with a classic savory sage dish while Bill will probably go with a sausage (or bacon) maybe even a cornbread stuffing. Who knows. All I know is that it will have meat in it. For the rest of the menu we'll have sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows!) possibly a green bean casserole (maybe not), mashed potatoes with gravy, maybe a homemade cranberry sauce & the best of all, pumpkin pie with real pumpkin made from scratch - crust & all. Yum.

It's going to take a couple of days to cook all of this up considering we only have one oven. I might make the stuffing & the cranberry sauce a day early & I'm definitely going to get the pumpkin pie together on Wednesday. It will be a miracle if it lasts until Thursday's dinner. It will also be a miracle if Bill wins. Ha, ha! It's on & he's going down.

A little slice of heaven
My, oh, my. The last couple of days have been chock full of pumpkin goodness. It's a good thing it's been low fat pumpkin goodness too.

Our friend stopped by for a visit for a couple of days. Months ago he did me a favor by adding the Virtual Fitness button to his blog for a period of time to help me advertise. In exchange, I told him that I would bake the best pumpkin bars that he's ever had. It was a true challenge as a family member of his apparently makes very delicious bars that are hard to beat.

I made low fat pumpkin bars with freshly baked pumpkin (not the canned stuff) & a cream cheese glaze. I was told that if there was a gun to his head making him choose between his families bars & mine, it would a very tough decision. Between the three of us, the entire pan of bars was inhaled in two days. Now, that is how you know something is really good. It doesn't last very long. My jeans are thankful for the low fat aspect, because I surly would have gained at least 10lbs by now.

I wish I had taken pictures, but we were too busy eating them. They were so moist with chunks of pumpkin (I didn't puree to make it a "rustic" dish, by mistake). These bars were so good that they would qualify as a desert for someone's last meal. Seriously. I really wish there was a pumpkin desert competition because I think I would win, hands down.

I had leftover baked pumpkin so I made muffins for playgroup this morning. They weren't as good as the bars. I added some cloves, which I should have left out. I also need to do a little research to figure out how to stop the tops from going flat (I think I need to adjust the baking soda). There is a muffin competition this month, so I have some time to perfect the recipe. Not that this is a bad thing (well, maybe for the waist line).

Food for thought
I was going to save this post for a rainy day. That just so happens to be today. Since we're stuck inside all day & without the car, it's perfect. Girl From Florida posted food pictures last week & asked if others wanted to join in. I'm all for food content, but I don't have any competitions this week. In fact, prior to yesterday, we didn't have any food in the house. Our cupboards were bare. We were down to rice & beans, both of which Logan wouldn't eat anyway.

We stocked up on all sorts of good food, so now I have ingredients to cook with:

The not-so-good-for-you stuff is all Bill's (Deli meat & mini bottles of Jack Daniel's)

Same thing here. The pizza is Bill's.

The potato chips are for Bill's lunch, even though I want to eat the whole bag...today.

I could live on chicken noddle soup. And we seem to have a TON of pasta.

We obviously aren't in to the low-carb diets.

This is all my food (& Logan's too). Bill won't touch anything here except for the bananas. It's to the point where I want to get another fruit bowl. I don't have enough room for everything!

So now that I have food to cook with, this is what I'm eating today. It's actually a very typical day & I eat this "routine" often. Clearly, it's nothing special or exciting:

Whole wheat mini-bagels with light strawberry cream cheese, strawberry slices & a huge cup of mocha-latte flavored coffee with sugar free hazelnut flavored creamer.

Not pictured, Logan had a pancake with strawberries & milk. He doesn't like cream cheese.

Left over pasta with ground turkey meat sauce & a little Parmesan, green beans with pepper & a nectarine.

Not pictured again, Logan had a cheese quesadilla, grapes & green beans (most of the green beans were thrown on the floor to Buddha & he didn't get pasta because I didn't feel like cleaning up tomato sauce).

Tuna & cherry tomatoes drizzled with olive oil & balsamic vinegar.

Logan had raisins & goldfish crackers.

Ground turkey taco with avocado & tomatoes ( I usually have lime juice & cilantro to add, but I forgot to buy some this week).

Logan had sweet potatoes with broccoli & plain yogurt, since he's pseudo vegetarian & very picky.

And there's my boring food journal in picture form. Hopefully I'll make something more exciting later this week. Hopefully I don't eat all of Bill's potato chips, either.

More to keep me busy
I'm definitely not one of those moms who hang out at the house watching TV all day long with the kids. There is always something to do, somewhere to go, someone to meet.

I workout 4 days a week with my massage friend & my photographer friend (Sunday's being two-a-days working out with both of them at separate times-for four hours total). Twice a week I walk for an hour with the walking group where we pack the kids in the strollers & walk on the inner-city trails here in town. We have playgroup once a week & various activities all of the other days. There is something scheduled every single day of the week. I get massages one to two times a week. I have monthly board meetings, club meetings, babysitting co-op meetings, birthday parties & MOMS Night Out. I have my monthly tasting parties for the cooking competitions & now I'm going to Cooking Club.

Whew. That's a lot of stuff. And that's not counting the "spur of the moment" stuff like play time at the park before dinner or shopping trips or business stuff like writing articles, designing workout programs & calling attorneys. It's no wonder I get to bed at 1-2 am every night.

This weekend was the first Cooking Club get together. Each month there is a theme & to kick the first one off, it was 30 Minutes or Less. The members of the Cooking Club made their quick & easy dish, brought enough for everyone to sample & a copy of the recipe for everyone as well. The first meeting was very small with my massage friend, another Club member, the host (who's from The East Side Chapter) & me. But there was certainly enough food to eat!

I made a mini-meatloaf dish & I was very happy that the theme was 30 minutes or less. We got home from grocery shopping at 1pm & my massage friend was picking me up at 1:40 to get there by 2. I got it all together, put it in the oven, jumped in the shower & I was getting the dish in a container just as I heard her knock on the door. Perfect timing.

This picture is for you Girl From Floria!

We had a great time eating delicious food & chatting. There was pizza, a chicken bruschetta casserole, three-pepper quesadilla & my mini-meatloaves. YUM! I'd never made the dish before (as I often do, using everyone as recipe guinea pigs) & I was pleasantly surprised at how good they turned out. It's something that I would make again, if only Bill ate things other than plain meat & cheese.

Dangerous but delicious
Last night I submitted my smoothie recipe. I was going to submit two, but ended up with the one. I started out creating a vanilla mint smoothie that turned into something completely different & to be honest, pretty creative. I called it the Jump starter, but really should have named it something spa related. It's crisp, clean, smooth & refreshing (& very green & very healthy). It reminds me of spring, a fresh summer morning, or the feeling you have at the spa after a massage in your white fluffy robe with cucumber slices on your eyes. If I don't win the competition, at least I had a whole lot of fun creating this recipe & I have a concoction completely original & mine.

This morning I checked the competition site to see what contests were up for June. Kid-friendly recipes & cheesecake. I grabbed my phone & sent Bill a text message. You know what the June contest is for? Cheesecake! A few minutes later he replied, That sounds dangerous but delicious! Isn't that the truth.

I'm really excited about this month because not only are the recipes for foods that are mouth watering (& the kid friendly foods? I'm a stay at home mom to a toddler. I'm a shoe in), but I have a whole month to work on these recipes, rather than a whole day. I'm not sure how I feel about cheesecake being in the house all month long, though.

Yesterday, I spilled the beans & told two of my friends that I'm entering the world of food competitions. They both readily volunteered to be taste testers. My photographer/workout friend & I started brainstorming on some ideas while busting out butts on the treadmill (with the incline at the max). It's a lot of fun having friends who are just as excited about this as I am. I'm probably going to set up a taste testing party for the end of the month, right before I have to submit my recipes (& I'm sure the entire club will be over to eat cheesecake. Who wouldn't!) This is going to be a really fun adventure.

***There is a great update on cyber-client results on The Other Blog that everyone should check out. And yes, I do see the irony in a personal trainer entering food competitions & making cheesecake.***

Working my stay at home skills
This afternoon was a playgroup & baby shower combo. The shower was for one of the Moms in the group. I've only met her twice, so I decided to make cookies instead of bringing a gift.

A few weeks ago we saw a recipe for a cookie on one of the national morning news shows. It sounded so good, we just had to make them. Bill & I looked high & low for this recipe. It turned out to be slightly different from what we understood. We thought it was a pumpkin chocolate hazelnut cookie. It turned out to be just chocolate hazelnut & we couldn't find a chocolate pumpkin hazelnut recipe at all. I ended up making one up.

These cookies are awesome. The other Moms really liked them too. I told Bill that I want to send the recipe to a cookie competition & see what happens. He happily agreed to be the cookie quality tester.