the csa: or in other words, how not picking out my own produce helped me plan meals faster than usual

ok, so, joining a csa is one of those things i've been meaning to get around to for about a year now. and last tuesday i finally remembered to make my bountiful baskets order, and nate brought it home yesterday. what a thing of beauty. we chose to get an organic basket which was ten dollars more ($25) but still a great deal, and in our box we got:

a bunch of spinach

a bag of carrots

some broccolini

a bag of yams

a bag of pink lady apples

some blueberries

a bag of celery

2 red peppers

some haricot vert (green beans)

fennel

a really unripe spaghetti squash

grape tomatoes

at first i was like, "whoa. fennel." i've never cooked with fennel before. and i have to admit that i didn't recognize the spaghetti squash as a spaghetti squash until i saw the sticker on it. (i knew it was a squash, ok? i just didn't know what KIND of squash!) after looking at everything i started to feel kind of overwhelmed. but then i decided i paid 25 bucks for this stuff, hence, my goal for the next couple of weeks is to not let any of it go to waste. so i hit my recipe books and the internet and i came up with this menu for the week:

monday: fried rice (to use up leftover rice and ham) with chinese celery salad.

tuesday: tuesday is sometimes taco night around here (partially because it's fun to say, "TACO TUESDAY!" and partially because it was suggested in my new favorite cookbook, the family dinner, which i must post about later.)so we'll have tacos with our leftover meat from last taco tuesday with some black beans or pinto beans mixed in.

wednesday: baked rigatoni with italian sausage and fennel, but instead of using the jarred marinara sauce the recipe calls for, i'm going to make a sauce by roasting the csa grape tomatoes using this recipe. on the side: sauteed broccolini. (i'm so excited because in this one night we'll be using tons of our csa produce! all the fennel, one red pepper, all the grape tomatoes, and all the broccolini.)

thursday: breakfast for dinner, buttermilk pancakes, bacon, and green smoothies (using our csa spinach.)

friday: ginger-carrot soup with parmesan-herb pan biscuits

saturday: invite in-laws, make italian-style meatloaf muffins, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and green beans with bacon and crispy garlic butter, which is a menu completely from rookie-cookie's blog, which i highly recommend (every recipe i've made of her's has turned out great--so maybe i'll make one of her dessert recipes and make it a rookie-cookie night!

sunday: sunday is nate's cooking day, hooray for a night off!

wish me luck! although it's quite simple this is a pretty ambitious menu plan for me considering i haven't been feeling amazing lately. but family dinner and making good quality food for my family is one of my highest priorities lately...maybe i'll tell why in a future post.

what are you making for dinner this week?

brushing aside waves to look for water

home life. it doesn't offer many surprises. there are so many chores. it's easy to get discouraged (for me at least.) i get frustrated with my children a lot. i let them watch too much t.v. i feel like there are too many improvements that i need to make.

luckily i get reminders, almost daily sometimes, of how lucky and blessed i am. seeing nie-nie on oprah, conference, capturing a moment with one of my children in photo form, or reading a really good quote.

like this one that my friend kat put up as her facebook status a few days ago, "If you seek some special life outside of daily activities, that is like brushing aside waves to look for water."

bananas

whenever my kids are feeling grumpy and i want everyone to perk up a little, i put on this clip of the aggrolites on yo gabba gabba. works every time.
The Aggrolites - Banana (Yo Gabba Gabba!)

do you have a song that always makes you/your kids happy dance fools, no matter what?

flip flop, part 2

so you'll remember that last week the flip house (sometimes we call it the bungalow in fond remembrance of our first tiny basement apartment together) looked like this:

one week later and a lot of hard work on the hubs' part, it looks like this: (that's him up on the roof, don't worry, he's a pro.)

it may be the gorgeous people standing in front, but i think the place is starting to look TONS better! (also, it may be hard to tell in this picture but they are each holding a toy tool from little c.'s tool box. he brought it to help daddy work.)

just doing his part!

i know where the summer goes

today might have been the last swimsuit-wearing, playing in the water day of the season. 

sometimes don't you wish you had a camera on your kids twenty-four hours a day so none of the precious moments would be missed? that's how i felt today. so i apologize for the abundance of pictures.

p.s. i'm having trouble getting my images to look right in blogger, sorry.

i'll see you at home

this is one determined young man. and yes, that corn dog is roughly the size of his head. this was taken at the state fair on monday.

i was thinking about what to write about our experience at the fair, and what pictures to put along with the post. (the only pictures i got were of the kids eating their corn dogs.) i thought about all the fun little day trips we've taken with the kids this summer, sometimes impromptu and sometimes an outline of a plan in place.  each trip has had its own unexpected turn, its own small adventure, with some good music and snacks thrown in.

but other than that all of them have had something else in common. no matter how much fun we had i was always excited to get home.

when we reached the point in each trip where someone said, "let's go home," or "it's time to head home," i felt a little thrill of happiness.

i have a home.

and it's with these people.

how lucky can one girl be?

dorothy was so right. i'm going to print out that line and cross-stitch it or something. and then frame it. there really is no place like home.

hail the conquering graduate!

yesterday was sweet m.'s kinder graduation. both sets of grandparents and one aunt came to celebrate! it was so sweet, a real rite of passage.

somebody apparently told lil' c that he was the entertainment for the evening.

they had them walk in like they were in a wedding, you know "step-together, step-together" but they didn't walk in to "pomp and circumstance." i think it was "start spreading the news..." much more festive. try telling sweet m. that. she looks like she's in church. or prison. don't worry, it gets better...

finally, a smile! hooray, i knew she could do it!


ok, i am a silly mommy, i put up two pictures of the singing gestures, but let me explain. at the christmas concert a few months ago m. was not the most excited performer. she barely moved her lips, looked like she was in physical pain, and wouldn't do any of the hand gestures. so this is major steps forward, my friends!

she got her diploma! and i took a really bad picture of the back of this kid's head with m. in the background!

sweet m. with her teacher, mrs. d. she was such a great teacher.

i think my favorite part of the whole experience was a slideshow that they showed in between the songs and the diplomas. i was really trying to hold back the tears but man, did i bawl like a wee tiny baby! i just kept thinking, i put her on a bus, and she has this whole other life, this whole other world that she's a part of without me. and she's getting so big!

fun, fun, funny in the sun, sun, sunny

mini bowling

i got these vintage mini bowling pins mostly for decoration, but hey, they can be fun too!
*something you're probably figuring out from my pictures: my kids do not like pants. they come inside, off with the pants! the fact the sweet m. is wearing them in these pictures is beyond amazing.