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Cheese!

April Cooking Club

April Cooking Club - here!

Kids Stuff

Annmarie got some funky skin infection last week. It was ugly. I won’t go into the details. She’s doing fine and back to normal and the antibiotic cleared it up pretty fast. This was the first antibiotic that we have had to give her (sans birth). Anyway, these two websites helped us get through some time at home.

Mr. Rogers on the PBC website. You can watch old eposides and there is a bunch of other cool stuff.

The Crayola website. You can print out coloring pages. Pretty cool. Although, all AM wants to do is have me trace her hand. There is also a bunch of fun craft stuff. This site will come in handy as she gets older.

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Annmarie has been coming home with crafts. She goes to the Potrero Hill Rec center on Wednesdays for craft time. Most of the craft is done by our Nanny, but she say's Annmarie loves to help out. Here are some of her cute crafts.

This flower. The white part of the flower is a trace of her hand.

Easter Card. Annmarie helped glue some of the paper on and spotted the inside.

Paper plate face. This is AM's favorite. She helped glue the hair on. She talks about this one all the time.

Button. The butterfly wings are traces of her fingers.

She also made her Earth Day flower pot seen below.

It's fun being a kid.

Earth Day

Kansas Mike

Jamie's cousin Mike from Kansas was in town this weekend. We met up with him on Friday night and had him over for dinner on Sunday.

Within seconds on Sunday Annmarie located his mobile device.
They became fast buddies on Friday and was happy to see him again on Sunday. For the last two days she has told me - "Mike home now".
Let's take a picture so we can show all the family in Kansas.
Let me check it out first .
What else do you got on there.
Let me show you how this thing works cousin Mike.
We put the phones away and Annmarie enjoyed some homemade pizza with Uncle Jon
The bread machine makes great pizza dough. Yum!
We visited. We ate. We drank wine. The boys told funny stories of Grandpa Nash. Mike gave treatments (he's a chiropractor).

One the menu: Spinich salad, barbequed chicken, roasted baby carrots and potatoes.
Annmarie went to bed and then we ate and drank some more.

Jamie really shoudn't make that face.

Much better.
It was nice seeing you cousin Mike. Come back anytime and bring the rest of the family!

Nonny’s Birthday Lunch

On Saturday the ladies celebrated Nonny’s (Jamie’s Grandmother) Birthday.
Nonny is one of the most caring, generous, loving, tender and doting Grandmother’s out there.
She is very special.
Happy Day!
I can remember meeting Nonny for one of the first times and just rolling my eyes over how she would dote over Jamie. She would send Jamie home with extra sandwiches and ginger snap cookies, all carefully and lovingly wrapped up. I remember thinking, oh my, I hope Jamie doesn’t expect me to do this. But that’s just Nonny, always thoughtful and always kind. And while she doesn’t have the energy to wrap-up sandwiches like she use too, she is always gentle and concerned about others.

We love her to pieces.

Meet The Mystery Box

I signed us up for this Vegetable Mystery Box. It’s sort of like a CSA Box, but a little different. About once a month this local farm delivers fresh vegetables to a restaurant that just happens to be on our little corner. We’ve seen it for months and finally looked into it and signed up. It’s awesome.

But before I show off all the wonderful, fresh, organic veggie’s we received. Let me back up a bit.

As most of you know-eating healthy, knowing where your food is coming from, knowing what is in your food is all very popular right now. And guess what? We have been paying attention. It’s important stuff-food. None of this is new news to me, but this is the first time Jamie and I have talked about and have set some simple food goals for our family.
Yes, we watched Food, Inc. and I’m listening to In Defense of Food on CD right now. I’ve even watched Jamie’s Oliver’s new show. And I think it’s all fantastic. It’s putting it all out there. I know all my veggie and vegan friends have a little smirk on their face about all this because they figured this out a long time ago.

And NO, let’s not get crazy, we are not announcing that we are becoming vegetarians. But we have decided to make some small changes.

These are our goals:

-Probably the biggest change we are making is we are only going eat meat for dinner three days a week. And by meat I mean; beef, chicken and pork. The remaining nights we will prepare veggie and even vegan friendly meals. Oh, and one those nights could be fish. What I’m trying do is prepare mostly veggie friendly meals most evenings and I may only cook a meat dish once a week, because we go out once or twice a week and we’ll probably have meat when we go out. I know it may not seem like a big change for a lot of people, but I have also told other people about this change and I get “well, my husband has to have some kind of meat with dinner”. The way I view this one is simple; since I’m preparing most of the meals in my household, he is going to get what I make. Jamie doesn’t really argue this point, he’s appreciative of my cooking and he would rather I cook and eat a veggie meal over the latter (him cooking). And I do need to give Jamie some props; ever since AM’s arrival Jamie’s cooking has improved phenomenally, it just takes him forever to prepare a meal. Sorry hun, but you know it’s true. His cooking is reserved for the weekends, and he does help out during the week. He also does most of the shopping. He's a keeper.

-We are going to buy hormone free, grass fed, etc, etc, meat. Basically we are going to buy expensive meat from Whole Foods. But because I’m only making meat once or twice a week, it works for us.

-Cage free eggs.

-Buy more seasonable organic local fruit and vegetables, for example the Mystery Box!

-Minimize processed foods. Or foods in a box. This is probably the hardest one. I rely heavily on canned beans, tomatoes, frozen peas, cereal, stuff like that and I really don’t count that stuff as being bad. It’s the high sugar processed foods, the stuff with the bad ingredients/labels we need to cut back on. You get? And things like making whole wheat pancakes versus making them from a box.

So those are our goals as of now. Simple ones for us. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m writing this so we can hopefully stick to them. It’s not that we eat all that unhealthy to begin with, but think the changes above are reasonable and good for us.

Also, I’m not going to stop making cupcakes or cookies. I think treats like that are important to have in one’s life. At least in my life.

It’s not perfect and there will probably be mess ups. We love eating out and I’m not giving that up. Or desserts. But I think this was the first time Jamie and I sat down and had a conversation about changing the way we eat and shop at home.

Anyway, back to the Mystery Box, here is some of the fantastic stuff we got:

These below are dandelion greens. This was the only thing I was not a fan of. Too bitter.
Fresh goat cheese from happy goats.

Great? Right!

Well, I applaud you if you made it through this post.

Namaste.

Silly Girl

Angela Reads

I Feel Bad About My Neck – by Nora Epron. You know Nora? Screenwriter of the fabulous funny When Harry Met Sally and other popular favorites. She wrote a fun book about four years ago. Nora’s witty and whiny (but not in an annoying way). Loved her food and cooking discussions. She epitomizes New York and talks freely about her three marriages and aging. I'm with her on her ode to Bill and the rapture she feels for books. Loved her mouse potato reference - all too guilty of that one.

Twenties Girl - Ridiculously cheesy to the nth to degree. It's a ghost story. But fun. Total Chick Lit, and could so see this made into even more ridiculous Chick Flick. This is my first Kinsella novel, I’ve passed on all the shopaholic books.

Easter

We had a nice Easter.

The morning started off with Easter baskets, disco bunny ears, a egg hunt, a creepy chicken, a bunny head, hugs, and other treats.

We have Bonnie to thank for the crazy chicken, bunny head and disco bunny ears.
The big hit of the day was the baby stroller. I picked it up at Target about a month ago and saved it for Easter. AM LOOOOVES it! And as you can see her crazy big headed pooh goes well with her bunny head.
Later that afternoon we got all dolled up. And we learned that we can pretty much bribe AM to do anything if we give her a M&M. I know-great parenting. This is AM's first time eating M&M's, we offered her one at Christmas time, but I think she thought they were just for decoration and not for eating. She now knows the joys of that perferct little candy.
Pretty sure she has a M&M in her mouth in this picture.
This big hug required no bribing. She was just in a really happy mood all day and gave lots of great hugs.
Nana and Uncle Jon came over and AM got another little sussy.
We had Easter dinner at a nieghorhood resturant - Apertro. AM enjoyed coloring with Uncle Jon and having her hand traced.
AM and I shared the Halibut and everyone enjoyed their meals.

It was a nice day. Hope you enjoyed your Easter.

Note: Annmarie’s darling skirt is handmade by a Mom and Grandmother who lost their sweet Cora at 10-months to cancer. Proceeds from their Etsy shop went to build a playground in Cora’s honor and proceeds from sales continue to maintain the playground. It’s an all too sad story, but one that reminds you that every day is a gift.