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

Praying for caffinated rain.

"God, please make mama drink coffee. I don't know how much more of this withdrawal I can take!"

-Shraddha praying for mama not to decrease caffine intake any further.

-Mama wishing it would rain caffine. Day 5 of no morning coffee just a cup of green tea. Slowly decreasing morning intake of caffine.

Found 70% pure cocoa organic dark chocolate bar. Wonder how much caffine there?

- First day of no headache in the morning YEAH!

I'm not sarcastic but i play a sarcasitic person on TV

copied from...http://www.shof.msrcsites.co.uk/sarc.jpg. Thanks Beckie you always find the funnies!

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!

Spiritual Inspirations

http://theknowledgelab.net/%28k%29now/Spirit/BuddhaDrankTequila.mp3

I love this!

Don't expect "perfection" from your teachers and rock stars. Allow
yourselves to relax enough so that you too can write, draw, play a musical
instrument and sing. Even Buddha and Jesus did things disapproved of by their
friends . "Imperfections" were part of their wisdom.
-Americ Azevedo
Lecturer: University of California, Berkeley.

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!

Chillin with our Peeps 2

This is Betty (4/26/08 @ 2-3 wks old?) an Amerucana she and Rose will make blue/green eggs. They are our favorite most sweet and docile hens so far. (Wonder how I came up with Rose's name?)

This is Laverne, Shirley, and Ivanna. Figured out that Shirley is a White Leghorn - a good egglayer. They are about 5 weeks old and needed their own separte brooder because they pecked on the little ones. But with Shraddha, they think she is Mama and enjoy sitting with her and being held and kept warm.















To the left is baby a little golden seabright runt. Tiny (the one in the middle), as named by Danielle, has feathery feet. She might be a Mille Fleur, or another Amerucana. Either way she is very cute and friendly and it is funny to watch her walk (on eggshells LOL) with her feathery feet. Kinda like walking in scuba flippers!

Chillin with our Peeps

So 4/13/08 is about the time that we got our first set of 3 chicks. Here is Shraddha bright and early in the morning getting into the brooder with Laverne, Shirley and Ivanna.

Shraddha holding Laverne. Here she is only a 3 wks old Barred Rock. Quite possibly a bantam. Very cuddly!

Barred Rock

Shirley is the little puffy yellow one.... Shraddha's Favorite... at least this week.

Ivanna is the one with the yellow head and she is a White Crested Black Polish. You can see a tiny little top hat in this pic...

On the left.... I included a pic of a full grown polish bantam.

Shraddha spent hours at a time with these little chicks and they think she is mama. Sometimes she would even refuse to eat because she wanted to be with the chicks!!!!

One week later....I think LOL we picked up NINE more chicks. Shaking my head in disbelief...

A bunch of cute puffy little Amerucanas. They lay blue green and pink eggs...

yes, this one is kicking back in Shraddha's hand... SEEE?

Go Green

I am so excited about starting Spiral Scouts!

- and, no, I am not Pagan....yet. Well, not a practicing one...Of course that depends on the definition LOL! I don't think I could be pigeon holed into just one specific spiritual practice or belief. But wow I am shocked by the response to people when they saw the news coverage on our new scouting troup. Shock, anger, and blank quiet nonresponses - I'm guessing that one is fear? LOL! But that is why it is so important to me. I want my kids to have a scouting experience that doesn't involve one specific religion, and to expose more kids and adults to tolerance and respect of other spiritual practices.

So in my excitement to start scouting....I started trying harder to find ways to be more green...

How green is your routine? click the go green button to pick up some great tips!

I'm thinking maybe it would be very green of me to just stay home today and uhm save gas yeah! And think of ALL the gas I would save....all those patients would stay home too! I have to do my part!

Check us out on the news!

We have tons to blog about and lots of catching up to do ... which I can easily do now that I have a FAST verizon anywhere access usb port thingy! Yeah!!! No more snails pace landline access.

So here is a quick preview.... stay tuned for more pics and info!

• See what we have been doing with our friends at Spookiez Spot.
• Check out a preview of a few of our new zoo.... uh em ... FAMILY members, that we are sharing with our friends.
• Last but not least.... check us out on the NEWS!

Ok, off to clean the chickens and feed the kitchen....or something like that!

Ohm Shanti