Lately

So I'm basically freaking out about the fact that in one week I am back to work.  By freaking out I mean:

trying to do some Christmas advent prep
cleaning the house from top to bottom (hopefully?)
making a meal rotation plan
shopping, stocking up, organizing
studying (or actually, blogging even though I should be studying)

Ah.

It just dawned on me though, why am I freaking out? Going back to work means I'll be working into the night, be on my feet for 12 hours, get germs all over me, not know what I'm doing, constantly be multi-tasking, at peoples' beck and call...

Wait!  Stop!  That has been my stay-at-home-mom job description for the last year.  Phew.  No need to panic.

Except I'll be paid.  And have a coffee break.  And no one will be watching me when I pee. (Score!)

I'm actually dreading it more than I am letting on.   The very notion of carving out a new normal, weaning my baby boy, and being gone for much of December brings me almost to tears.  But then I breathe and remember that life will go on and that I AM excited about adding teaching to my 'back to work' jobs.  BCIT hear I come!

But besides crying, freaking-out and planning, I've been trying to distract myself from the inevitable return to work by...

[1] Attending our amazing women's Christmas brunch book swap.  Pinterest inspired decor, amazing speaker and song-writer Carolyn Arends, two new books to take home [Poisonwood Bible & the Guernsey...], incredible brunch food and a great entry into the Christmas season.  Way to go NLCC!

[2] Decorating for Christmas.  I love re-purposing old decor in new ways.  I have to say that I still adore the colour combo of gold and burgundy.  I'm not so much into the modern addition of purples, blues and silvers.  Not my style.

my mantle:

(p.s. the 'sign' is pinned to the back of our usual picture on the mantle. Maybe tacky, maybe brilliant)

Oh, and with the kitchen renovating yucks behind, I'm super happy with an open shelving concept now because I can jazz it up seasonally.  So fun.

[3] Taking-in extra kids.  But I mean, how cute are they?

(future daughters-in-law on board!)

[4] Baking

Dairy consumption is getting so close I can almost taste it on my lips (and feel it on my thighs).  I have been dairy-free for almost a year because of Toby's allergy.  I'm actually getting so used to it I was thinking of continuing to abstain...but then I saw this and this on pinterest.  What better season to re-introduce dairy into my diet? Good-bye self control.  

But this is still dairy free baking.  As you can see, Silas has a sweet tooth like mine:

[5] Re-doing my blog

Notice any changes?  Why has it never occurred to me that my husband works in I.T. and can do fancy things with a computer and websites (and therefore ask him to help me fix my blog?)  Or maybe it was my secret plan all along...woo him with baking and then sabotage all his free evenings with my own internet projects.  Mua ha ha ha.

(Notice any changes?)  Trying to think up a new way to make my banner and organize it all.

[6] Starting the advent madness!

Silas and I packed a compassion box the other day which was very fun.  I love that we prayed together and that he's learning about giving.  I need to be a better model of giving on a regular basis...

Yes, he is asking if he can have one of the suckers

[7] Chasing these crazy boys.

[8] Reading about random things.  Including (but not limited to):

orphans

home-schooling

globalization and the effect of buying things 'cheap'

and

women who have dealt with adversity

All this to say: my head is full, my days are busy, my prayers are many and it's all about to get a bit crazy.  If you don't hear from me on my blog, well, that's why!

Recipe Stories

I have recently started enjoying getting recipes online.  I also refer to some good, basic cookbooks.  However, I love love love stealing recipes from others.  By this I mean, eating something someone makes, asking 'can I have your recipe?' and copying the delightful gem down.  

Why?  

Because then my recipe book is a history of stories, of friendships, of places I've been and people I've met.  When I open my recipe book to pick something to make, it makes me smile and think of people and moments, together.  

I like that.

Take, for example, this crowd pleasing orange-chocolate-chip muffin recipe.  I added this one to my cookbook around 7 years ago.  The recipe owner?  She was a lovely, enthusiastic and passionate Quebecois gal.  I think she was going to be a doctor?  I dunno.  I don't even remember her name.  But I do remember her face, and her muffins of course.  I met her while living in Montreal and doing missions with Campus Crusade for Christ (now Power to Change).  I ate them.  I loved them.  Now I make them all the time.
Who ever thought to blend up WHOLE oranges to make delicious muffins?

Yum.

Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins

Put in blender:

1 whole orange (not mandarin, with skin on it and sticker removed)

½ cup margarine or soft butter

½ cup orange juice

½ cups sugar

Blend until Smooth

In separate bowl mix:

1 ½ cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ cup of chocolate chips (I always add more)

Mix wet ingredients with dry

Blend well

Divide evenly in muffin tins and bake at 400 F for 15 minutes

Makes exactly 12 muffins

Or take this lovely, delicious, spoon licking Butternut Squash Soup recipe.  Easy, delicious.  It was made for me by my darling (can older people be darling?) landlord.  She was our first landlord just after we got married.  She made us feel welcome and even left flowers in our suite to greet us after we arrived back from our honeymoon.  (Is that sweet or what?)  She had a lovely garden, and had us over for dinners.  This was one meal she made.  I always thought I could never make soup.  But, turns out, I can (with the right recipe).
Make it.  Please.  It's soooo good.

Butternut Squash soup:

Ingredients:

1 large or 2 medium butternut squash- peeled and chopped into cubes

1 onion, chopped

1 Gala apple, peeled cored and chopped

¼ cup of butter

900 ml of chicken broth

1 cup of whipping cream or sour cream

Dash of cinnamon, salt to taste

3 tbsp of maple syrup

 

Do all prep work (aka chopping)

Melt butter in a large pot - add apple and onion until softened

Add broth, cream, squash, dash of sage or other herb you want, cinnamon and salt

Bring to boil, cover, and then simmer for 20-25 minutes on low heat (until squash is soft)

Puree in blender (in small amounts) and blend until smooth 

Tip: wait until cooler so that the top doesn't blow off the blender

Add maple syrup

Enjoy!!! Oh so yummy, creamy, smooth, thick.

You can serve it with sour cream over top if you wish.

My whole recipe book is like this.  My homemade tortillas are from a honduran-born American missionary I met in Burkina Faso [you sound so exotic Flo!].  My favorite pasta recipe was scribbled on a 'Jus Booster' napkin - from my employer: a women who in mid-life became an entrepreneur.  My best curry recipe came from British expats in the desert country bordering Mali.  

I love people.  I love being in the kitchen.  And I love stories.  So, I like my recipe book being a meeting place of all these things I love.

What are some of your recipe stories?

Halloween and Pumpkin Baking

So, our neighbors across the street from us do a HUGE halloween 'thing.'  (aka haunted house).  They've been putting it up for about a month.  Styrofoam skulls, bbq'd hands, mechanized dudes who pull their heads off and rip their chests open.  Gruesome to say the least.  It even made front page of our local paper and you can see a video of it.

J and I were trying to figure out what to do.

As believers we don't like the focus on death and horror and fear.  Obviously.  However, these neighbors are also the nicest neighbors around.  They care about the community, they clean up the townhouse complex, and they do this halloween stuff to create opportunity to meet neighbors.

Hmmm.  What should our response be?

As Christians, this is a highly controversial subject.  Our response is often (from Tim Keller's talk below)

1. Hide from the culture.  It's bad. Stay away.  Ignore halloween, turn off the lights, have our own Christian harvest parties [We should back out of culture, we can't transform society so let's have our own little Christian culture]

2. Love and embrace the culture.  Send the kids out anyways.  [Let's be relevant as Christians, which can be dangerous]

3. Hate the culture- and respond by sending out tracts etc. [Being defensive against culture]

We weren't sure that we liked any of those options.  

We obviously don't like the reason for this holiday and most of the decorations around it, however, it's the first time people surface from their homes and get out in the neighborhood.  

Hmmm.

Enter: prayer.  And option 4:

4. Be in culture and serve within it.  

We're still not sure what our response should be but we wanted to: not burn bridges with our neighbors, enter into the conversation around this cultural event, offer an alternative to 'death and gruesomeness' by highlighting harvest, light, and family-friendly fun.

SO, we hosted our lifegroup who helped us carve a bunch of pumpkins.  We wanted to have an alternative option to look at for young kiddies and families.  We were out and about, talked to neighbors, created relationship opportunities (so didn't hide away) but tried to work on transforming the culture. 

yikes.  We need to plan a bit better next year and keep praying to figure out what to do, but we love what Tim Keller has to say about allowing Christ, through us, to transform culture instead of embracing it, rejecting it, or using it.  (If you want, start at 10 min into the talk, he talks about our responses to culture- really good).

This whole conversation had us think a lot though.  WE should be serving and loving our neighbors MORE than anyone.  Are we doing that?  Not just in response to halloween, but on a regular basis?

End of deep discussion.

Pictures from our carving party:

Pumpkin chocolate chip brownies

Chocolate Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

and

Chocolate/Peanut Butter fudge Rice Krispies from Joy the Baker

yum.

Jeana- teaching us how to carve.

Jason hard at work.

Jeana's a pro-star carver.

Other members of our bible study- Heidi, and the Macphails.  

Pumpkin remains.

Here are our happy pumpkins!  Blues clues, veggie tales, flowers, etc.

Mickey!

Enter into the discussion.  How should Christians respond or how DID you respond to halloween this year?

Chocolate Cake Recipe (by popular demand)

Should have posted this with the pictures of the cake, but for all those who drooled over the chocolate cake pictures, here's the recipe:
(from "Eat, Shrink & Be Merry")
Funny thing, this cookbook is about low fat cooking but this recipe is tucked in at the back.  Under the nutritional label at the bottom it says: 


Trust     us       you     do     not     want      to       know.


Indeed!
FOR CAKES:
Preheat oven to 350
Lightly grease bottom and sides of 3 X 9" round cake pans
Cut circles of wax paper on parchment paper to fit bottom of pans
Combine in large bowl:
-3 cups of granulated sugar
-2 1/2 cups of white flour
-1 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
-2 tsp of baking soda
-1 tsp of baking powder
-1 tsp salt
[In another large bowl beat] 3 large eggs for 3 minutes until thickened and slightly lemon colored
Add:
-1 1/2 cup buttermilk
-1 cup of strong brewed coffee that is cooled
-3/4 cup of vegetable oil
-1 tsp vanilla
-4 oz of unsweetened chocolate squares- melted and cooled slightly
Mix above on low speed until well blended
Gradually add dry ingredients to wet and mix on medium speed until batter smooth
Divide evenly among 3 pans and bake for 25-30 min until toothpick inserted in centre of cakes comes out clean
Cool pans on wire racks for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and allow to cool completely before frosting


FOR FROSTING:
Whisk together in a medium saucepan:
-1 1/4 cups of granulated white sugar
-1/3 cups of cocoa powder
-1 cup of whipping cream
Cook slowly over medium heat, whisking constantly until mixture comes to gentle boil
Cook 1 min
Remove from heat and stir in chocolate until melted
Stir in vanilla
Let cool to room temperature
[In a large bowl beat]:
-1 pkg cream cheese, softened and
-1 cup butter, softened
Beat on high speed until smooth
Add cooled chocolate mixture and beat on medium speed until well blended
Refrigerate frosting until desired spreading consistency- about 1 hour
*Important not to let it get too firm or you won't be able to frost it!


FINALLY:
Frost between layers of cake and all around
Cover and refrigerate
Let cake stand at room temp for 30 minutes before serving
*Freezes really well


enjoy!

Chocolate, Chicken and Cupcakes

The following are more chronicles of a martha 'wanna-be.'

Recent hostessing foodie goodness, household makeover accomplishments, and other adventures.

Enjoy.

First stop: chocolate cake.  Ummm.  I had made this cake once before and was craving it something fierce.  We were expecting company (and by company, I mean 2 other adults) and I figured that was enough to warrant this cake.  However, it was HUGE. We had oodles of cake left.

Which we ate.

Within 3 days.

How many calories was that?

Not too bad right?  The icing only has chocolate and cream-cheese, the cake has buttermilk....

It's called "Died and gone to heaven chocolate layer cake"

aptly named

(Recipe from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry cookbook)

Next up:  finishing previous pillow project.  Yup, that's right.  DONE.  All the pillows are covered, zippered, and in their new locations.  I had numerous fights with Bern, my reluctant old sewing machine...but we still conquered the pillows!

I followed an awesome 'hidden zipper' sewing tutorial online. 

Onwards to more cupcakes and some 'favors' that I made for a weekly women's group.  I hostess a table at our Church and brought some fall pumpkin cream-cheese cupcakes as well as some chocolate sash gifties.

Fun.

I've kind of decided that making wedding favors for a living would be a blast.

Any takers?

The recipe was from martha online- simple, fluffy, soft, lip smacking.

Cream cheese frosting from joy the baker, her cinnamon frosting from her red velvet cupcakes.

Gifties:

Not the best picture...

Final hostessing endeavour: enter J.O.  Jamie Oliver- new favourite cook book author.  (Thanks to the Searles) I've ordered every cookbook from the library.

Chicken.  Amazingness. 

However- handling dead, pale chicken, not so amazing.

Recipe: Sweet and Sour Pot Roasted Chicken

Coarsely chop 2 red peppers, 2 orange peppers, 4 red onions, 1 ripe pineapple

Place in bottom of roasting pan with a couple 'glugs' (as he calls them) of olive oil

Mix in salt and pepper, crushed fennel seed

Stuff chicken with chopped parsley and grated ginger (3 thumbs or so)

Season chicken inside and out with pepper and salt

Put chicken on veggies.  Pat with olive oil

Shove in oven- 375 for 1.5 hours

(served with rice)

BEST PART: after cooked, take half of veggies and put in blender with 6 tbsp of balsamic vinegar and 2 tbsp of salt.  Blend.

Chop up chicken- serve veggies and chicken over rice with veggie sauce.

SO good.

Oops- didn't take a picture of the end result.  But it was epic.

Couldn't find the recipe picture on his site- but there's other great recipes on it.

Next project:  It's a surprise.  However, some hints:

-crochet

-bright colours

-stuffing

-button eyes

-nieces and nephews...

Christmas projects have officially started!

p.s. Silas has a tooth that's just about up!

p.p.s for the interest of my readers: I'll be taking a photography course starting next week.  Hopefully that will make the blog pics better.

Household Projects etc.

Not sure what motivated all this, but here are some of my latest projects around the house.  


1. mmmmmore cupcakes.  
This time around it was cookies and cream cupcakes.  I overbaked them a touch, but they were otherwise yummy.  The bottom had half a cookie in it, the dough had chopped up oreos in it, and the top was a cream-cheese frosting.  
calories?  ha ha.  don't ask.

Recipe from Annie's Eats blog.

2. Gardening

Went and saw Brian Minter speak at our Church/community gardening event.  He is a gardening guru and got me inspired about winter gardening.  

Oops.  Went to the gardening store and spent 100 bucks.  But now we have a beautiful front plot (although, there is more to do) and I made this lovely winter bucket ALL BY MYSELF.  All the plants should survive the winter.  

Finger's crossed.  (psssst don't tell them that I killed the three flowers I planted in the summer...)

3. Sewing

My grandmother gave me HER mother's sewing machine.

Introducing:  my very own Bernina.  (Bern for short)

She's old.  She's solid.  She's a bit sassy...She's swiss. She's a hard worker and was a movie star sewing machine back in her day.

Mom came over and helped me figure her out.  She is a bit complicated and needs a bit of tender love, but we're figuring each other out.

Here's what we've accomplished together so far:

Amazing isn't it?  I mean, I am a terrible sewer.  Terrible.  The first two minutes alone with Bern, and we were already fighting.  She was groaning and whining.  I was grumpy and a bit rough with her...

But then.  There was a moment of understanding and, look what we accomplished!

Hello beautiful little pillow cover!  I carried this little gem from room to room trying to find a perfect location for it.  

I know.  Weird.

But here's the catch.  

I have a LOT more to re-cover.

It's okay.  Bern and I will do it.  (Right Bern?)

Oh....and did I tell you, Bern, we're going to sew a quilt together too?

I bought all these fabrics in Ghana well over a year ago.  The plan was to make a quilt to remember our trip  by.

We'll see how long this takes me to accomplish...

4.  re-decorating?

We have a family room attached to our kitchen.  It was getting over-crowded with furniture.  Not kid friendly.  New plan:  playroom!

So we painted a fun chalkboard on the wall (thanks Jackie for the idea and the paint)

And, I removed some furniture and put a nice reading chair (whose cushion will be re-covered soon), some fun flooring, and I will be putting up a toy organizer, possibly a bulletin board and some educational letters on the walls/maps etc.  

Any other fun ideas for a play room- pass them along!

So.  Yes.  Lots to do...

(And that's not even mentioning my continued scrapbook project of our Europe trip, the knitting project I'm starting, and card making....oh, and trying to cook like Jamie Oliver).

Random Happenings

What's new?

This is what we've been up to:

1. Helping out with a missions event at our Church.  Jason's making a promo video, I'm doing some graphic design type of stuff.

2. Re-organizing our home.  I want to turn our family room into more of a 'play' room.  We're planning on some chalkboard paint, some kiddie style floor mats, some toy bins...etc.

3. Hanging out with friends who have more kids than us.  Moral: ENJOY having ONE right now.

4. Going for walks and adventures with Silas.  He loves being out, socializing, 

and going for hikes in his new baby backpack.

5. New favorite photo of Silas (pre-cry):

6. trying new cupcake recipes such as this mocha cupcake with espresso/cream cheese buttercream frosting.

7. Getting ready for the busyness of fall.  I'm trying to be out and about a bit each day for Silas' and my own sake. Ex: tot romp at the community centre, swimming lessons, stroller fit classes, and co-hostessing a table at a weekly Church women's get-together.

8. Silas is very chatty these days saying 'ma-ma-ma-da-da-do' and giggling, randomly.  He's trying to get more mobile too, looks like he's crawling backwards?

9. I'm running more these days.  YES.  I love running in the fall.

10. I need to stop having cream in my coffee and having full-cream-amazing-yogurts because, well, it's going to catch up with me.  (I've enjoyed not having to watch what I eat due to being pregnant and then bfeeding Silas...sigh...back to being careful)

11. Went through the  US border crossing as the driver for the first time.  Phew.  Was nerve-wracking.  

12. We'll be hosting some people from India in our home for a week!

13. Not sure why I'm numbering these items.

14. Need to clean the house, but I'm blogging instead.

15. New favourite quote (thanks Jackie for this one).  Parenthood: the days are long but the years are short.  SO true.