Things that make the mommy laugh!

5. Come on it's funny - first patty pan squash.

4. Blues rendition of three little pigs...

Madhava's kindergarden graduation was so cute! I can't believe kindergarden is over and that he is 6.5 yrs old. He is reading so well! I was holding back the tears ... being so happy for him and proud of him and just smiling at the same time because his performance was so fun!

3. Sweat pea scented diapers... Roger was wondering why I am hanging the diapers out on the gate when he made a perfectly good laundry line for me. Well, because I love the smell of the sweet peas that only live by the gate.

2. Do I have to eat ALL the cake on my plate? Madhava and Danielle at Shraddha's birthday party. Thank you Beckie for all the awesome ideas and making the party run so smoothly... you are THE Party Mama! Thanks Mom for financing the castle. And thanks to everyone for making Shraddha feel like the Birthday Princess!....

1. My daughter's favorite white hen, Shirley...crowing just like a rooster.

Thai spicy eggplant and veggies - from garden to table

This is one of my favorite meals, inspired by Veggie Meals: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals It's quick, it's almost a one pot meal, its healthy AND yummy! I love the sweet and the spicy especially with the basil!

Gather all the ingredients.

Its still early for my Japanese eggplants, I only had one, but quickly substituted broccoli, yellow and green zucchini. I even tossed in some tofu just because it was in the fridge.

1 cup of brown jasmine rice cooked as directed.

2 tsp of vegetable oil

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes - its hot!

1 Japanese eggplant, 2 medium yellow zucchini and 1 medium green zucchini, 1 small crown of broccoli - or any other veggie combo that sound good like mushroom, napa cabbage, bell pepper, onion, carrot....

1/2 package of firm tofu (optional)

4 cloves of garlic

2 tbs of rice wine vinegar (or white vinegar)

3 tbs of soy sauce

2 tbs of brown sugar or honey

20 leaves of basil

Prepare Rice and start to chop and cook.

Chop all veggies and tofu into bite size pieces.

Heat 1 tsp of oil in a deep skillet or stir fry pan over high heat. Add pepper flakes, cook for 10 sec. Add eggplant and tofu and 2 minced/crushed cloves of garlic and cook 3 minutes. Place in a dish while you stir fry the broccoli, and zucchini the same way for another 3 minutes. Combine all the veggies in the pan together. Pour vinegar and soy sauce and sprinkle with sugar or honey and toss. After 1 or 2 minutes, remove from heat, add basil and serve over hot rice. Serves 2-3.

A glance at the vegetarian life: a guide for first timers

A friend of mine was thinking about taking the PETA 30 challenge and going veggie for 30 days. It can seem a bit time consuming when first thinking about meal planning with the goal of staying veggie (it did for me at first too), especially when you have a picky eater and kids. And it may take a little bit of time only because your mind is used to things being a certain way and you are accustomed and used to having the same meals your mom made for you. I happen to feel it is much easier to not have to worry about thawing out meat just the right way, cleaning up the juice and stuff to keep from getting sick, and making sure that it is cooked just right but not too overcooked. Once you have a few veggie ideas to work with, it really does become a no-brainer. To help get you started I made a menu of the foods that we eat.
I also try to include fresh whole grains, flax, and amaranth as well as a mixed green or spinach salad with lunch and/or dinner. I try to just avoid the meat substitutes for personal reasons as well as the fact that they just taste funny when you are used to the real thing.

	Breakfast	Snack	Lunch	Snack	Dinner
Monday	Oatmeal with sliced almonds, raisins honey and soy milk	banana	Burrito with beans, rice and cheese and all the veggies	Salsa and baked tortilla chips	Pesto Pasta with veggies, zuc, mushroom, broccoli
Tuesday	French toast Fruit and OJ	Apple and peanut butter	Balsamic Tomato, basil, fresh mozzarella cheese sandwich	popcorn	Baked potato with broccoli and cheddar cheese
Wednesday	Cold cereal Banana	Cottage cheese and fruit	Hummus & tomato wrap with celery and carrots	Cheese and crackers	Stir fry or steamed veggies, tofu and brown rice
Thursday	Scrambled eggs and toast	Fruit popsicle	Egg salad sandwich with carrots, fruit	Pretzels and raisins	Pasta with veggie marinara
Friday	Plain yogurt with jam or honey and toast	Carrot & flax muffin	Lentil soup or Sambar	Grilled tomato with cheese	Garden burger sandwich with grilled veggies and fries
Saturday	Bagels and cream cheese fruit	Cereal fruit bar	Mac and cheese with carrots and peas		Veggie Omlette Spinach tomato and mushroom
Sunday	Pancakes and eggs	Fruit smoothy	Veggie lasagna	Cucumber, tomato, sprouts and cream cheese pitas	Homemade pizza with fresh tomatos and pineapples

What to eat when you are out?
Fast food: Wendy’s has a baked potato, BK has veggie patty, Taco bell burritos (the 7layer is yummy). Most fast food places will make the item you like without meat (and charge full price of course).

Sit down meals: Pasta, Pizza, Omelets, veggie burger substitute (my fav is Red robin’s mushroom burger) or Portabella burgers. Stir fry with tofu and rice or noodles, Eggplant Parmesan, Veggie or cheese enchiladas, grilled veggie fajitas, and all kinds of Indian and Thai and Mediterranean food.

Enjoy your veggie adventure!

Favorite veggie books:

Favorite veggie site:

TryVeg.com

Blueberries are here!

The blueberries are getting blue! And there is just something about homegrown blueberry goodness. They have a kaleidoscope of fabulous flavor that you just can't get from the ones in the store and not even from the farmers market. These are Misty Blue. I am not sure exactly how big they can get because Shraddha loves them too much to wait... or share for that matter LOL!

We also found many beautiful red Pomegranate blossoms and almost ripe cherries! We know they are almost ripe because the birds haven't stolen all of them yet.

And is it just me or does it seem that animals follow Shraddha around like she is Snow White? If she could just get them to help out around here that would be FABULOUS!

This is Buffy and Puffy, they are Buff Orphington chicks. The other two New Hampshire Reds, are yet to be named and one of them is growing a comb. Highly suspicious of maybe not having the egg laying capability....

Those flowers lasted forever mom, thanks!

Top 5 strangest things in our garden this week.

5. Now this is also one of my favorites! Black Hollyhocks! Yeah they finally bloomed and I love them. They are striking and weird and gigantic at 8-10 ft tall! Only took almost 2 yrs to see so enjoy! I am already planning where and how many more for the next couple of years.





4. Check out this brown fuzzy hairy caterpillar! I figured out from http://www.whatsthiscaterpillar.co.uk/ that it is the larva to a ....



Giant Leopard or Tiger Moth as seen on BugGuide.net



I remember we had quite a few of these giant leopard moths....in November... here is the pic of one laying eggs on the side of my house on 11/04/07











3. Alligator Lizards! I thought this was a skink! but on closer look... it seems it is not. We do have skinks and blue belly lizards but I have never seen a lizard that big up on our house! This guy was huge at about 16 inches long. But all skinks and lizards are very welcome here!


more on Alligator lizards.










2. What the heck! Is it a spider? Is it like a potato bug? ugh! Whatever it was... it was crawling toward me while I was folding laundry....EWWWWW! But you can be relieved to know it wasn't squished. It was gently placed back into the garden.... for us to find again later I am sure.


Here is what we learned from WhatsThatBug.com:


"The Solpugid is not an insect, it is an arachnid. It is related to spiders and scorpions, hence its common names Sun Spider or Wind Scorpion. In some places they are called Sand Puppies, but they are not related to dogs. Unlike Spiders and Scorpions, Solpugids do not have venom. They are harmless unless you are small enough to be considered food, in which case gram per gram, they might be the fiercest predators on the planet. We are lucky they don't weigh 150 pounds. They will eat anything they can catch, which is a benefit in the desert. "



1. Top strangest thing found in our garden this week!!!! AHHHHH!


Opossum with a huge long nose and huge long tail...eating out of Sadie's dog dish in the middle of the night. That thing was almost as big as our 16 lb cat Chamois! Now we know who made a huge den at the edge of our play yard. This seems to be an unusually fat Opossum, with a HUGE head! Must have been munching in Sadie's bowl for the past couple of years! Would that make it our pet? EWWWW!









This is one I found in the front yard on 5/26/07 wonder if it is the same one? Here it is in my hat... i was just too chicken to hold it in my hands. It was so cute when it was tiny!

Family Time!

We are all still recovering from some sort of virus, so we had a lazy day. Except for me! See below for my TaDa list. No wonder I am so tired right now.

The kiddos had a movie marathon this morning sprinkled with building castles with the megablocks, playdough time, and Latin dancing with Daddy (Shraddha was enjoying a dance contest on TV).

After lunch we all took a break and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Not too hot, not too cold. Sadie even perfected her jumping thru the tire trick with Madhava swinging on top! Bubba shared the tire swing with Baby! And we even got Daddy to help prep a little place for us to plant some Daffodil bulbs. Madhava helped mix the dirt and mulch and Shraddha helped Bubba stick the bulbs in the dirt and cover them.















My Tada list for today!

1. I did some overdue spring cleaning in our bedroom, including steam cleaning the carpet and vaccumming the floor boards.
   
2. Also washed and folded laundry.


3. Washed 1/2 of the cat - the smelly half!


4. Changed the linens.


5. Picked the tomatos, zucchini, and eggplant. Watch out! I am armed with tons of zucchini!


6. Made Sunday dinner: Tortalini with homemade Creamy Basil Sauce and veggies.


7. Kept the bottom of the sink visable all day! - After Roger finished cleaning the last of the dishes from yesterday - THANK YOU HONEY!


8. Packed our lunches for tomorrow.

Remembering summertime

October 2007

Reminiscing about the lovely summer we had while we were off on our summer sabbatical. (Ok so I just didn’t get to blogging almost all summer!)

Lots of lazy summer days playing in the sprinklers and mud.
Tons of tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant and watermelon were eaten.
Much more to come from the looks of the garden!

We even made some nice getaway day trips to the coast, and to Avocado Lake.
Enjoyed some festivities during 4th of July and played and played and played outside!
So many good times with our friends!

We stayed cool inside eating Basil tomato sandwiches and fresh fruit smoothies and drinking chocolate mint tea all from our garden. We tried to keep the watermelon eating to picnics in the shade but that is what got us in the whole watermelon gardening mess in the first place! Stray seeds landing in my flowerbeds, grew faster then the flowers and weeds!
They would probably grow right on the cement if we didn’t wash them off our walkways!

And Zucchini! Let’s just say…. Don’t leave your car unlocked or I will stuff a bag of monster sized zucs in your backseat!

One of my favorite memories was resting back on the driveway with Shraddha, watching the clouds passing by and enjoying the summer breezes. We didn’t even need to say a word other than, “wow!”,while we soaked in all the summer sensations. We could smell the flowers, feel the wind, hear the leaves in the trees blowing, and just watch all the beauty all around us up on the top of the hill….. pure bliss.