Super Food

Usually when you hear super food you may think something like avocado...full of healthy stuff.  Our super food was the meal we had before the Super Bowl.  And if I don't get to cooking another new recipe this is my new recipe of the week.
Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches and Sweet Potato Fries!
I cooked all day...

...OK well the crock pot did the work for me.  I spent all of 2 min throwing frozen chicken, pouring a bottle of wing sauce and dumping in a packet of ranch dressing mix into the crock pot as I ran out the door for church.
Don't you love the Crock Pot?
I did have to shred the chicken so that took maybe another 5 min.  I'll take it.
The sweet potato fries took about 45 min. including cook time.

football jammies in honor of the super bowl

"hmmm...I wonder if mommy will let me try one of these"

I toasted the bread for about 5 min.

Check out the recipes:
Sweet Potato Fries
Buffalo Chicken Sandwich

This meal was a total winner!

Zack ate the fries and had a bit of garlic bread with his mac and cheese and steamed carrots.

yeah, he is sticking his tongue out at me

Monkey See Monkey Do...

There are some things that Zack watches me do and imitates that I am not so proud of (yes...my 10 month old knows how to use my i-phone...and if I'm being honest he knows how to do things that I don't). 
Lately I have noticed something he does that melts my heart.

until recently he only played with a book if I had it...and even then it wasn' playing so much as eating.  I guess the books I read and taking him to the local library story time at least once a week is sinking in!

It's hard to catch him because he usually does it when he is alone (I am in the kitchen) and he stops as soon as I get the camera on.

forget the book I want to play with mommy's camera (something else he sees me with a lot and really wants to play with)

at least I got a shot of those teeth

I really wish I could share the cuteness but this is all I've got:

this is how a cool dude reads

The best part is he sits there turns the pages, makes sounds as if he is reading and every once and a while he will laugh as if the book he is reading is hilarious!

Meatballs????

My new recipe of the week is special for my little man.  I got this book for Christmas:

and now that Z is eating real people food (but would live off of bananas and graham crackers if it was up to him) I decided to make him some meals that I could freeze and serve him so I am not looking into the fridge everyday wondering what I can give him.
I LOVE meatballs (being Norwegian I have been trained to make the best meatballs EVER), and I can make them bite sized so I figured this would be a great start for my "cooking for children" days.  The recipe called for her "green puree" (sweet peas, broccoli and spinach).  The whole idea of this cook book is to sneak veggies and other healthy ingredients into your children's food.  I originally wanted Jessica Seinfeld's book but I saw a review of several mothers who cooked and compared recipes from both books.  They liked the food and their children liked the food of both but they said the "Sneaky" cookbook was easier (um.....I'll take the easy one). 

Zack's well balanced meal: steamed carrots, garlic bread and meatballs

It looked awful (I should say I used breadcrumbs instead of wheat germ...I couldn't find wheat germ in the store).  The meatballs ha a green tint to them.  Once I cooked them they looked much better, but they kind of fell apart (next time I might roll them in flour before I cook).  None of this matters because Zack loved it!

I should mention that he won't eat food that blends into his high chair tray...even if he likes it so meatballs were something I knew he would try

He liked it so much he didn't care I was taking pictures of him!

I tried a bite but I think knowing what the green puree looked like and seeing the green meat might have swayed my opinion.  I gave a bite to Adam without telling him what was in it and his comment was "what...it tastes like ground beef".  You are supposed to serve the meatballs with sauce on spaghetti...but I am not ready for that mess yet.

By the way don't judge me for letting my baby stay in pj's all day...or that I took him to the grocery store like this (what am I supposed to do when I need to get to the store and Z takes an extra long nap...and on a side note why can't he take the extra long nap when I need to get things done at home).

Playground Pictures

Zack is still a bit young for playgrounds, but that doesn't stop us from going.  We go almost every week with my friends Kristi and Leslie and their kids ranging from 4 1/2 to 18 months.  Zack loves watching the big kids play.  I can see in his eyes that he is jealous of what they can do.  Since our weekends are usually booked Adam hasn't gotten to join us at one of the many parks in our area.  This weekend snuck up on us and as it turned out we didn't have plans...weird because I made such a big deal about a no plans weekend last week.
Here are a few of the many pictures we took on Saturday:

riding a dinosaur

sliding with mommy (FYI: the slide isn't made for adult sized legs)

and by myself

crawling through the tunnel

saw the one thing that could stop Z from coming to mommy

yep...his new favorite parent

"I am talking to daddy through the hole!"

"and now I am grabbing daddy's nose through the bars"

right before he cried because Adam walked 10 feet to the car for a jacket.

my mouth is open...Zack's eyes are closed

So happy to hang out with daddy

I think we may use this park for Zack's first birthday party.

Project Organize!

OK...so I feel like a generally organized person.  My problem is I don't really know how to work with our temporarily small space...do I really work on organizing when we have less than a year to go or do I go organization crazy?  Until today I have taken option 1. 
It's not working for me. 
What do you do when you have 2 homes worth of furniture, a baby who has grown out of things and is getting ready for new things, and a ton of treasures collected from all around Asia...and all of this stuff in a two bedroom apartment?  We don't want to get rid of furniture until we are in a more long term home and we know what we need, we don't want to get rid of baby things since we plan on having another (or more), and we LOVE all the amazing things we picked up in our travels (we were very intentional and picked out useful things like platters and vases or decorative things like paintings.  On the surface our apartment is really cute...but don't open any doors.  Zack's closet is literally jammed packed with golf clubs, a baby swing, a jumparoo, baby toys and clothes, the next size up of clothes, and random pieces of furniture.  Our closet has all of our clothing (Adam has a lot since I had the tailor make a ton of pants and shirts for him before we left China...me, well I have maternity clothing, nicer clothing that I don't wear because by the end of the day I am covered in graham cracker mush and sticky versions of whatever Z-man ate that day) plus several boxes that I haven't opened and extra bedding sets (for a future guest room?).  The pantry has several wedding gifts still in boxes (not because I don't want to use them but because boxes are much easier to store), the platters and bowls I mentioned before and all our food.  The coat closet has boxes stacked up under our jackets and on the shelf.  The linen closet has well...who even knows (I try not to look in there).  Our laundry room is packed with shoes (Zack eats any shoe left out and I still have the streets of China in mind every time I see him put a shoe in his mouth), paper products (in bulk...bad idea for space...good idea because these tend to be the things I forget to put on my grocery list), and more food and cleaning supplies.  Our "office" is the catch all...it's behind the gate so I throw anything on the desk that I don't want Z to get into.  I clean it off once a week, I honestly don't know how it gets soooooo bad.
There it is...my deep dark secret is out (did I mention that we also have a large storage unit filled with boxes and I have my Christmas decorations and other unopened boxes stacked up in Zack's room).
THE PLAN:
Do one thing at a time (and be OK with a little mess until it all gets put in it's place).  I plan on simply re arranging first.  Then I will make a list of bins and what not I need (I have set up a budget) and make only one trip to pick up all my supplies.

These run on sentences are making me look totally scattered and thinking about all the unopened boxes is making me feel less proud of the fast unpacking job I did in September and October.  Right now it is 2 am, and I am so restless I was planning on starting on Monday but I may just get up now and work on the pantry.

10 Months!

A friend of mine asked me "When did Zachary become a kid?"  I don't know but he sure doesn't look like a little baby anymore.
I know I say this every month...but this was a big one!  Why does it seem like it's going by so fast?
He looks so much older now that he has a toothy grin...

he has had teeth for a while but all on a sudden they became a part of his smile.
We have had a very busy month here are some pictures:

This month Zack has a new favorite parent...and it isn't me.

yumm...mega blocks

Sitting in the carseat in the house

look at me I went through the tunnel

"helping" mommy install the new carseat...I used him as weight

whole grain pasta and steamed carrots...Ironically after I put him to bed I had boxed mac and cheese...yes, I make better meals for my kid than myself

a new version of stuck under the music table...he was trying to get the ball

Zack...why do you have Cheerios on your bum?

Oh right, because this is how we eat breakfast...which he crawls through...mother of the year, thank you very much!

Chinese New Year Dinner

It's ironic that while I lived in China for 18 months I did everything I could to not eat Chinese food, and now in my first month of new recipes 2 meals have been Chinese. 
I had to do something special to celebrate the year of the dragon.  So I pulled out my Chinese food cookbook and made egg rolls, crab rangoon, hot and sour soup and garlic beef and broccoli.

I love that every Chinese recipe requires green onion...it really makes things easier.  

I broke my own rule and bought special ingredients for the meal.  Thankfully these are ingredients I will use in other Chinese food recipes.  I am also really excited that I was able to find bamboo shoots without any issues (I figured it would be a hard to find item...but they had it in a special display and on sale...SCORE).

I did most of the prep (innards for rangoon and spring rolls and made the soup) during Zack's naps.  When he woke up he played with my Tupperware while I finished up.  I heated the soup, wrapped the rolls, baked the rangoon and sauteed the beef after Adam got home to distract little man.

 My rolls may not look like they do in the book (notice the first one I wrapped was exploding).  But they sure did taste good.

Yumm....I hardly ever make appetizers!

 I think I was most impressed with the hot and sour soup...doesn't it look like the soup you would get at PF Changs?  It was my first time cooking with tofu and it tasted AMAZING!  What makes homemade Chinese food better than going out...I left out the mushrooms and added extra chili oil to make it more our taste.

 All in all...a great meal.  However the book said to saute the beef for 12 min...I took it off the stove after 6 and it was still overcooked.  This is why you have to do what you know is right.  Next time I will listen to my gut and not even cook the meat that long...it's tricky though because you do want the broccoli to be soft.

I love this cookbook.  It's great because it uses ingredients even found in my own little grocery store.