Weekly meals + recipe review

Here is what we will be eating this week!

• Thai crunch chicken salad (had it last night, delish!)
• Chili (I can't seem to make this often enough...)
• Turkey Fajita burgers with salad and crash hot potatoes
• Veggie Fritatta 
• Pork chops with apple, cranberry, and pecan stuffed acorn squash

Last weeks meals were oh so good

• The Rogan Josh was super yummy. I ended up using beef because it was so much cheaper than lamb and it worked perfectly! I would recommend making your own seasoning for this one. Not only is it fun mixing all of the spices together, its super tasty too. 
• The Asian meatballs tasted kind of like the inside of a pot sticker. We loved them! The recipe makes a LOT of meatballs which was perfect for us, we ate them for breakfast/lunch throughout the week. The cauliflower rice paired perfectly with the meatballs. I wasn't very excited to make it at first ( I don't like cauliflower) but it was really good! I will definitely be making it again
• Hungry man sweet potato casserole - make this if you are having a lot of people over for dinner/have a big family/are really hungry/need leftovers for an entire week. This was a really yummy dinner for us and we had leftovers for like 3 days after. It tasted delicious with a little sriracha on the side!

Family tree

One of the fun parts of having a baby is getting to see their features develop. We are always getting comments from people about Lewis, saying that he looks totally like me, exactly like Jeff, or a perfect mixture of both. Sometimes its hard to tell who he looks like, to us he just looks like Lewis, so I dug up some of our old baby pictures so that we could all compare!

New blog!

Hi all, just wanted to let you know about a new blog that I started with Hannah and Tara a few months ago called Mothers Mouthful! Its a great resource for mommies old and new. We have product reviews, loving latelys, meal ideas and much more. Stop on by when you have a few extra minutes :)

Random happenings

We have a sick baby in the house. Poor lew lew has been stuffy all week and has a tiny baby cough too. We spent the day cuddling :)

Two fun things about today:
* Lewis learned to shake his head "no". Most adorable thing in the world now, maybe not so much in a few years haha
* Lewis finally started saying "dada"! He has been saying mama for months but just started saying dada today. It's the sweetest thing!


I read this on a friend's Facebook today And it made me laugh so much I just had to share it
http://fb-troublemakers.com/how-to-stop-mommy-from-sleeping-through-the-night-5168/

A day in the life of a 10 month old

Lewis turned 10 months yesterday! Its amazing how much he has changed in just 4 short weeks since his 9 month update. I feel like he is looking less like a baby and more like a little boy every day.

 These days he is loving food and eats three meals a day. Its amazing how much he can eat! He still enjoys purees so depending on the week I will either make my own or get some baby food from the store. This week I made some zucchini + carrots and sweet potato + butternut squash purees to have on hand. For breakfast lunch and dinner I try to pair his purees with some little pieces of food that he can eat on his own. He LOVES picking up his food and feeding himself. We do banana, egg yolks, meat, avocado, and pear mostly. His favorite foods right now:

• Egg yolks
• Pear

Clapping!

 After eating we play for a couple of hours. He loves to play Jeff's guitar. We keep the guitar in our guest bedroom and Lewis will speed crawl in there and start playing it on his own

He is doing a lot of standing. We really just have one table that is short enough for him to stand near so he is always standing up and walking between the couch and table, nocking the coasters off and being adorable in general.

He has also been practicing his walking! Still a little wobbly in the hip area but he's getting there

Before naps and bed time we read books. He has always loved reading but in the past few days he has started to love it even more. He tries to turn the pages by himself and loves pointing to different things on each page. His favorite book right now is Goodnight Moon

When Jeff gets home from work we like to take walks. Lewis loves riding on his shoulders and using his hair for "reigns"

We love our sweet baby boy! It still feels like just yesterday we were holding him in our arms for the first time. He is such a goofy, smart, funny baby. So excited to see what this month holds!

Weekly meals + recipe reviews

Hello there! Here in Washington it is a chilly and gray 34 degrees outside with intermittent snow showers. Its the kind of day that makes you want to sit in front of a warm fire with a big mug filled with hot chocolate...which is what I will probably be doing later this evening!

Earlier today I noticed that Lewis was staring out of the window in our living room so I went to see what he was looking at. Snow! The first snow that we have seen here this year and the first snow Lew Lew has seen since he was born! We immediately rushed outside to enjoy the soft, wet, flakes.

Here are our meals for this week. Almost all of them are new to me recipes and I'm excited to try them out. For the past couple of months we have been eating a more paleo based diet which is why you haven't been seeing many meals with grains.

This week:

• Cilantro lime chicken with acorn squash and salad
• Hungry man sweet potato casserole
• asian meatballs with cauliflower rice
• Rogan Josh (with beef because it was cheaper!) Make your own Rogan Josh seasoning!
• Chicken and marinara over spaghetti squash

We ate some really yummy food last week too. Here is a quick overview of how they turned out!

• Chili - hands down my favorite chili.Ever. I modified it a little bit, omitted the beans, added 2-15 oz cans of diced tomatoes with green chilies instead of 1, 2lbs of ground beef instead of 1.5lbs, and upped the Chili powder to 2Tbs instead of 1. Perfection.
• Sweet potato soup with bacon - so yummy! I wasn't expecting it to be as delicious as it was. Jeff and I both loved it and added some ground turkey to it for dinner. Try it today!
• Crock pot pork and apples - meh. Not amazing, not terrible. I was expecting it to have more flavor than it did. If I were to make it again I would brown the pork before throwing it into the crock pot. Also, I used a pork roast and it cooked nicely and was perfectly tender after being on low for 6 hours
• Roasted Veggie soup - warm and satisfying, perfect for a chilly winter night. I loved that I could taste each of the root vegetables in the soup: sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, and the butternut squash. I'll definitely be making this one again!

Weekly Meals

Here are some of the meals we will be eating this week. I generally plan and shop for 6 meals and leave one day for leftovers, eating out, or ordering in.

Here is what's on the menu:

• Chili, salad, and cornbread
• Crock pot pork and apples with veggies
• Roasted root veggie soup with sausages and salad
• Fish, roasted beets, and broccoli/cauliflower
• Teriyaki chicken over green beans with salad
• Paleo sweet potato soup with bacon

Weekly meals

After a long hiatus for Christmas and the new year Im getting back in to preparing regular meals (or just telling you about them).

This week:

• Pork curry with green beans and zucchini
• Turkey soup
• Salmon with butternut squash, apple, and cranberry bake plus veggies/salad
• Steak with sweet potato chips and veggies
• burgers with kabocha squash and zucchini

Im also planning on juicing this week! Here are some of the combinations Im planning on using 

Hope you all are having a happy new year!

Loving Lately

What better way to ring in the new year than with a loving lately post!

Here are some of my favorite things this first day of 2013

I love my cuisinart! Not only is it my most adorable appliance, it is powerful at well. The small size is a plus too: its super easy to store and clean! Perfect for making baby food, nut butters, or chopping veggies. 

 If you don't have the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook buy it now. Right now. And then make every recipe. This is my favorite cookbook, partly because of the mouthwatering pictures on every page, partly because every one of Deb's recipes is phenomenal.

 Toasted hazelnuts. Their deep, nutty, toasted flavor will keep you coming back for more, again and again. Eat them on their own or throw them on a salad

 For those of you unfortunate enough to not live near a Trader Joe's... you can buy this on here on ebay. You're welcome. Their candy cane green tea makes the gloomy days of winter seem a little bit brighter. The peppermint flavor isn't overwhelming, allowing the subtle vanilla flavor to shine through a little as well. It's a seasonal item so make sure to stock up next Christmas!

My newest water bottle obsession.  This Swell water bottle is everything you could want in a hydration vessel. Nice to look at, sleek, light weight, and double walled, this bottle will keep your hots hot and your colds cold for a really long time. Another bonus - non toxic.