Food Fun with Pierogis, Cabbage and Smoothies

My kiddos have been perusing old entries of this blog. I guess it might be time to start again.  I have been publishing "newsletters" in our family for the kids' scrapbooks but maybe I can do a little combo so there is always an electronic version that is easy to access.  We'll see!  But for now, I will start blogging a bit again.

If any of you aren't familiar with the Veggie Tales Christmas song, it is a classic among our house.  In fact, we first were exposed to it via cassette tape version.  I know.  We loved it first.  Here is a youtube version to set the stage:

As the driver, Daddy got to listen to this song a lot.  The whole cassette was a darling addition to our Christmas fun!  So he was very familiar with the term "pierogi."  However, we had never experienced it for ourselves.

Fast forward to the other day when we were having some time alone at Aldi, my favorite grocery store ever.  (Sorry, Macey's. You betrayed me.)  Aldi is a German-origin store that I first fell in love with in Hungary.  When I found on in Medina, NY, it was like coming home.  Aldi has a great assortment of everything random and delicious...along with some very economically priced basics that comprise most of our diet.   Well, as Quinn and I were perusing the store on our way out, Quinn said, "Hey!  Pierogis!"  It took a minute for my mom-brain to make the jump between the freezer section at Aldi and driving in the car so many years ago with Veggie Tales blasting but after a moment or two, it connected. 

Well, we decided to take the plunge and try them out!  We followed the recipe on the back for heating them up, defaulting to the fried version over the traditional "steamed" or "boiled."  We got them ready and I was looking for a side dish, when Xai, the randomness-master of our family, came into the kitchen to join us in nosing around.  At 7 he is at that adorable "full of life and opinion" phase that begins at 2 and ends when they hit puberty--when the opinion stays but the cuteness is sucked into some other unmentionable form.  He pulled open the veggie drawer and said, as only he can, with abounding enthusiasm, "Cabbage?!?  Cabbage?!?  Isn't that what we have with butter and salt on??" After receiving a confirmation, he exclaimed, "I love cabbage!!!"  and proceeded to beg me to make some for dinner. 

Why not?

Quinn and I proceeded to chuckle as we thought of all the random, healthy things most of our kids like: brussel sprouts, asparagus (very much a favorite), sauteed mushrooms and especially, salads with sauteed chickpeas as a topping.  The key is to serve it up and say, "This is just for Mommy and Daddy, but we will give you a taste."

As you can see from his photo, he also loves to work with things on the cutting board. Daily I will find him and Eli with a cutting board, a peeler and an apple, shaving away at it until it is hard to shave and then they eat the core.  They eat the shavings as well, so it makes for a fun snack.  In the photo, I was supervising as he tried cutting potatoes for the first time. He always loves to help but sometimes it is challenging to find ways for them to help. For this experience, I would get them sliced into flat slices and then he would cube them.  He did really well until he did get a little slice that was quickly remedied with a bandaid...but he was done for a while :D.

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Speaking of food, Eli came down the stairs this morning as always, slowly, step by step and walked slowly up to me. I saw his smoothie shadow: the traces of the smoothie that he had yesterday for lunch.  He loves to take his homemade bread fresh out of the oven and dip it into our spinach-kefir-fruit smoothie.  Like I said above. My kids are kind of strange.

I confess. I am not very good at eating healthy food that doesn't taste amazing.  I have adapted our fruit smoothie recipe to closely resemble orange julius...well, as much as a smoothie can, I believe.

So my sauteed chickpeas have seasoning and butter.  My cabbage, lots of butter and salt.  My homemade bread, well...I guess that is pretty unadulterated until the kids lather it with butter, freezer jam or honey. But they get the nutrients, right :)?

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This reminds me of the appointment I had with Liesl at the doctor yesterday.  We do some immunizations, slow and individually determined how and when to do it and I finally found a doctor out here that doesn't give me a hard time about it.  So I took my little Zuli, with her back pack and princess dress to get her check-up and shots.  I was prepared. I had her sparkle princess shoes on, her hair done, a binki and a back-up one and two packages of fruit snacks, a rare treat in our house.  

When they asked about what she does, I must confess that Lily has done a good job with her:

-she counts past 10

-says her ABC's pretty clearly

-is pretty articulate in a lot of things, although still babbles with delightful incoherence enough to be a toddler still

-sleeps well

-loves to sing.

While I guess that she would do some of these things naturally, Lily's patience with her is simply beautiful and inspiring.  Just watching Lily has changed how I parent.

But back to the visit, they asked about her eating and I told them she loves smoothies and eating the salad off my plate.  Again, it is fun that my kids will eat most anything...probably because of all that doctoring up I referred to ;).  She got her finger poked while eating a fruit snack, so didn't have much room to protest while they drew her blood. The shots were not fun, of course, but as usual, she settled down to an affronted cry within moment.  The darling kept saying, "Sorry, Mommy," as though she had done something wrong!  Oh, the sweetie! I kept saying, "No, I'm sorry, sweetie" as we snuggled and got back into our outside gear to face the great outdoors.  She is so tenderhearted!

(Story about the princess dress: this dress is one that she insists on wearing every day.  We try to get it in the wash at night when she is distracted--sometimes that doesn't work--so it can be clean by morning. I don't think I remember having a child so obsessed with just one article of clothing before.  It is cute when it is not generating a melt down about "princess!! princess!!!" Her articulateness helps to a degree but not when the dress is dirty.)

Dinner Time Funnies: Egyptians, Stinkin' Hot, and Plate Lickin' Clean

Pipalicious just complemented Papaya on her quick thinking.  Zuli had accidentally spilled her water and we did the usual dive to save it from the floor (our table is on a slant).  Papaya quickly grabbed Zuli's cup to catch the trickle of water before it dropped on the floor. 

Pipalicious said with amazement, "Papaya, you are as clever as an Egyptian!"

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We have been having a lot of spicy things lately.  Zsa-man picked up the Parmesan cheese tonight and exclaimed, "Is this stinkin' hot?!"

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Zsa-man likes spaghetti. Q-dawg makes his secret ingredient spaghetti sauce and we love it.  But none of us as much as Zsa-man.  He will lick his plate clean in between servings with sounds of appreciation.  So cute!

Bread recipe and glance at my literally poopy day :)

I walked up to the back patio, the sweat from my short work-out with Piper stuck to my hair. I noticed the garbage that I had failed to take out the day before, crowned with the poopy diaper that I had found stinking up my kitchen in the bottom of the inside garbage sack.  Yuck!  Then I had to laugh as I took them to final 10 feet stretch to the actual garbage can.  It was only 9 am and it already felt like I had been up for hours. Oh, wait. I had :D.

Starting with waking up before my alarm can be good or bad: either a sign of being well-rested or a sigh of stress.  This morning I think was a good one because my mind didn't start going for a minute or two and I could just lay there and enjoy the comfort of having a real bed again. Even after four months of having a bed, the novelty and comfort of having a bed is still a blessing.

Having a jump start on my day of 15 minutes, I used them to preview the upcoming days of seminary.  I am incorporating the Old Testament with the Book of Mormon and just kind of winging it, so I do a lot of improvisation.  I like to think some of it comes from inspiration but time will tell :D.

Getting ready as quietly as I can, I check the time. 5:15 am.  Time to get those crazy kids out of bed who want to go to dance at the Y.  Drew set up a daily time to go and dance and they love it!  At least love it enough to get out of bed in the wee small dark hours of the morning.  Lily drives them over (yay for teenage drivers!) and I get some quiet time to finish prepping for Seminary and for a little personal study.

Around 6 I throw in a batch of bread.  After failing again and again for about 20 years, I think I finally am getting the hang of it and I don't have anxiety about how it is going to turn out.  I have given up for huge stretches of time but think I finally have a recipe that works for us:

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For 2 loaves:
1/4 cup warm water sprinkled with a heaping T. yeast and 1/2 tsp sugar--set aside
Place the following in a mixer with a bread hook and turn on while you add ingredients:
2 1/2 cups hot water
a dollop of molasses
2-4 T flax
1/3-ish cup of wheat germ
1 T salt
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup honey
4 cups whole wheat flour

Here's the awesome part...because you use the flax and wheat germ, you can do this 100% whole wheat!
Once ingredients are all mixed together, add 2-3 more cups flour and the water/yeast mixture. Once it has mixed for a minute or two, add more flour if it still seems really runny.

Turn on the mixer for 5 minutes and let the mixer do the kneading while you:
-turn the oven on to 200 F
-clean off the counter top from the accumulation of yesterday's spills
-put 2-3 T of oil on it for kneading when it is done
-grease the 2 pans.

If that goes quickly you might actually get around to putting away the ingredients you have used so far.  5 minutes can be magic!

Once the 5 minutes is done you touch the dough. If it is only slightly sticky, you are good!  One thing I look for is if the dough is staying on the hook and pulling all the dough to it.  Many times it doesn't.  If it doesn't and still looks like a big lump of dough and feels a little sticky.  Regardless, unless it is super gooey, smear the oil around with your hand and then use that deliciously slippery hand to get the dough out and plop it onto the oiled counter top. At this point, it has probably already been kneaded enough. If not, add more flour, etc and you won't kill it.

Divide the dough into two masses and then place in greased pans. Put the in the preheated oven and turn the oven off. This is a speed-raise method my friend taught me.  10-15 minutes and your bread should be rising nicely.  After the 10-15 minutes, turn the oven on to 350 F and cook for 50-60 minutes. (Tap on top, should sound hollow.)

Yummm!

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While bread is not the easiest thing to do for breakfast, it is nice on the pocket book and we are trying to live within our means. It is crazy how fast money can be spent!

I finished some seminary prep and we're off!  Seminary happened with a great group of people.  We ended and got everything together for breakfast, devotional, discussion and CNN10.  Harassing Eli to brush his teeth is the next challenge.  Piper is technically in charge of helping him, but he is not much of a listener and it is a battle every morning.  Someday the ferocious 4 stage will be past and these battles is not something I will miss.  Everything else, though....sigh.

Piper and I headed to the gym a little late.  I always get caught up in things at home. I love it here.

My workout this morning focused on not pushing myself too much so that maybe I can start actually enjoying my exercise. Time will tell.  

I found Lily and Hyrum working on the sign language for a song we are performing next week.  Hava was playing the piano and Maia had the three littlest upstairs playing a horsie game.  With carrots.  Hmmmm...there is a no food rule but carrots.  Sigh.  (Don't tell Daddy.)  They were being car....eful. :D

I had a great morning. I love that Lily likes to sit at the table and do math with me in the morning.  After she was done, the other kids were still in horsie-mode with Hyrum doing his daily "tickle" rampage.  I had a few moments to work on tomorrow's seminary. Lily did some driving for Quinn, taking Ticklemonster with her.  Xai yelled out, "I want to dance to some songs!" Cue Mom, whose heart is full of gratitude to her mother for making her take piano lessons.  We sang songs about the wind, butterflies, monkeys, the seal and the walrus and even a new sad one about being eaten by lions.  (The kids loved it.)  I love the Brady's songs for Nature and for People.

Xai then helped me cut potatoes for dinner, which was so fun for him until he sliced his finger a little halfway through.  Then he moved to the safer occupation of opening chicken bullion cubes from their wrapping while Eli took over at the cutting board...cutting butter into slices :D.

Maia did a blissful stint in the mud outside with Liesl and Eli while Havala made hootenannies for lunch.  

Lunchtime now and I have my "study" time.  I pay Hava $1/lesson to teach Xai grade 2 math from The Good and the Beautiful (great curriculum!).  They are doing it right now in the other room. Hyrum and Lily are back enjoying lunch. Maia is upstairs reading to Liesl.  Eli is lying next to me for his quiet time.  Constant supervision is the only way he can do a decent rest time.  It works.  he is super cute as he plays with his dinosaur.

I could list all the things I didn't do, the subjects I didn't cover, the people I didn't reach out to and the laundry that I didn't do. I could focus on the poop, the stink of my day :D.  But I am kind of past focusing on that. I like what God has to tell me about my day at the end of each day and have come to realize that what I do do is just fine. I have a sincere heart and good intentions.  I like to look at the beautiful.  It makes for a good day.