Steak for dinner

Tonight we had steak for dinner!

And by steak, I mean Spicy Chocolate Tofu that looks peculiarly like steak (or so says Husband!  I think he tried to convince himself he was really eating steak with a sweet barbecue sauce on it, but I’m not sure how successful this trick of conscience worked out for him).

I have a folder in my email with all sorts of emails I’ve sent myself over the years with links to recipes I’ve wanted to try.  This one has been kicking around since August 9th, 2010, but only now am I making it!  Other recipes in this folder include “Homemade Almond Milk”, “Greek Watermelon Barley Salad”, and “Cinnamon Walnut Bread”.  Sounds good, no?

I highly recommend this tofu recipe.  It is quite sweet so I recommend pairing it with veggies.  I served it with garlic mashed potatoes and steamed carrots and broccoli.

********************************************************

Today was another sunny day, but too cold to go for a walk.  I was bummed because a walk (especially to Starbucks!) really brightens the day up.  By the time we are home, it’s time to make dinner and then get Henry ready for bed soon after.

He’s in bed as I type this.  It’s 7:09 pm and this is the earliest he’s ever gone to bed!  I was trying to watch The Business of Being Born on Netflix (we just signed up yesterday and I am on my third documentary already!), but he was just too fussy to stand it.  He wasn’t hungry, he wouldn’t sit in his bouncy chair, he wouldn’t nibble on his ringley, and he wouldn’t lay on his back and kick his legs.  When all else fails, I either strip him naked and let him hang out on the floor (my little nudist!) (let’s hope this is temporary!) or I do the bath/nursing/bed routine and hope he falls asleep.  So far, so good.  I should probably knock on wood, though.

Speaking of Henry, he has the same swing as Celine Dion’s twin boys!  I noticed this while participating in my favourite Stay-At-Home-Mom activity, that is, watching Oprah.

Source of picture

Fisher Price: The Great Democratizer

I figure if they are good enough for multi-million dollar, world-renowned Celine Dion then I suppose they are good enough for my little boy.  Now if only our identical swings also matched our identical houses…

A lot of people are critical of Celine Dion, but I think she is amazing.

How amazing?  Just check out this video to see.

Vegan Eating: Day Six

I continue to kick some vegan-eating arse, causing me to feel self-righteous in the most pretentious way possible!  I made oatmeal for hubby this morning using cow’s milk which, I must admit, created quite the creamy bowl of oats, but I’d still prefer almond milk in my own.  Pat on the ol’ back for my vegan-eating self!

For breakfast this morning, I had one of my Banana Date scones warmed in the toaster oven with some cherry jam and a sliced orange.

These scones taste “healthy”, which is a good thing I assure you!  Not like cardboard at all.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and bought more trail mix.  I think this might be cheaper than the stuff I get at Bulk Barn, and a bit fresher to boot.

I like to mingle with raisins and cranberries

With a clementine in some artsy fartsy lighting…

I call this piece, “Dawn of a New Snack”

For lunch, I finished off the last of the Curried Lentil and Apricot soup, thus completing my Journey of 1,000 Lentils (how this week has felt!).

I had the soup along with another scone toasted with, um, NON-vegan margarine.  I had to relent!  I know there is whey in regular Becel margarine, but I just really, really, really wanted some margarine on my scone.  Is that too much to ask?  Plus I had already broken the DO NOT EAT REGULAR MARGARINE FOR YOU ARE A VEGAN rule by using it in the Sweet Potato Casserole I prepared for dinner.  I was going to buy vegan margarine at the grocery store yesterday, but we have a huge tub of regular margarine to use up and, well, I am just too frugal to have two types of margarine in my fridge, ok?  (Am I sounding as defensive as I feel?)

Indeed, we shall feast on Sweet Potato Casserole for dinner tonight using, of course, Oh She Glow’s vegan recipe.  What would I do without Oh She Glows as a constant source of inspiration?

I was feeling uber-confident in my culinary skills because I didn’t even use a measuring cup to make this!  This confidence was ultimately misguided, as I think I used too much margarine.  Maybe it was karma biting me in the arse for using non-vegan margarine?  Something tells me that the vegan karma gods are too nice for that, though.

Pre-baked

Finally, I show you the requisite picture of me and/or Henry (this time you get both!)

I really don’t like my hair in this photo, but at least my face colour matches my neck colour.

Also, Henry is very cute.  He has nice hair AND matching face/neck colour.

************************************************************

Ok, this is a bit off topic, but I was wondering: do you drink tap water? We use a Brita water filter and it is grossly overdue for a change, so I’ve been drinking tap water in the meantime.  Even though the taste is a bit metallic, I don’t mind tap water at all and would just go back to using it full-time if it weren’t for my husband and his delicate taste buds.  I know most households use Brita or bottled water for their daily consumption and I was wondering if this was really necessary.  Canadian and U.S. tap water is thoroughly cleaned and tested constantly.  When we were kids, we all drank tap water!  None of this Jennifer Aniston Smart water or imported Fijian water for us!  And we turned out fine (kind of).  Do you think filtered water is even necessary? Do you honestly hate the taste of tap water or do you think that the need to filter water/buy bottled is a creation of clever marketing companies?

This is your thought-provoking question for this Friday afternoon!

A Day of Vegan Eating

I was feeling camera iPhone happy today and took a bunch of pictures of the food that I ate.  This vegan thing has got me doing crazy things!  Blame all the soy products!

Since Henry is asleep, I thought I’d take this opportunity to not do laundry and instead write another blog entry!  Clearly I have got this Stay-At-Home-Mom thing down pat.

The big event of the day was a new recipe I tried called Curried Lentil and Apricot Soup.  I come across plenty of vegan recipes that call for curry powder, but not too many that also require dried apricots.  I knew I had to make this, especially since it also calls for coconut milk.  Dried apricots + coconut milk =

Curried Lentil and Apricot Soup

2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil

2 onions, diced

8 cloves of garlic, chopped

1 Tablespoon of ginger powder

1 Tablespoons of mild curry powder

1 tomato, chopped

1 cup dried apricots, chopped

2 cups red lentils, rinsed

8 cups of water

3/4 cup coconut milk

Chopped cilantro for garnish

1.  In a large pot over medium heat, cook onions in vegetable oil for about 10 minutes (stir frequently!)

2.  Reduce heat to medium-low, and add garlic and ginger.  Cook and stir for two minutes.  Add curry powder and stir for one more minute.

3.  Add tomato, apricots, lentils and water.

4.  Raise heat to high until boiling and then reduce to simmer for 30 minutes.

5.  Using an immersion blender or a food processor, puree soup.  Since I like my soup to have texture, I pureed about half of the soup.

6.  Return soup to pot over low heat and stir in coconut milk.  Ladle soup into bowls and garnish with cilantro.

This soup is so good the sun came out to greet it

What I love about this soup:

- The tiny chunks of juicy dried apricots

-  COCONUT MILK!!!

-  Does not require vegetable broth, thus the sodium content is low

-  Lentils make this soup incredibly nutritious and filling.  I had it for both lunch and dinner!

Here are some other things I ate today.  I believe I photographed everything except for the two Maple Walnut cookies I had after lunch!  For breakfast, I had the Carrot Cake Oatmeal as previously noted earlier.

A handful of trail mix with a clementine

A free sample of Vanilla Rooibos tea which I promptly poured down the sink after two sips (not a fan of herbal teas yet I keep trying them, hoping my taste buds will change!)

Green Monster made with 1 cup almond milk, 1/2 banana, 4 frozen strawberries, 1 large handful of baby spinach

Two Frosty No-Bake Glo Cakes!

I highly recommend trying the No-Bake Glo Cakes.  This isn’t the best time of year for consuming frozen edibles (since we are currently living in a frozen edible!), but this healthy alternative to ice cream is surprisingly delicious.  Since I don’t have rice crisp cereal, I substituted All-Bran.  Yes!  A dessert that contains All-Bran is a dessert worth mentioning.  Recommendation:  Go heavy on the peanut butter.

You would think that all of this nutritious, delicious food would fuel my determination to do laundry.  Think again…:)

Vegan Eating: Day Three

I believe that my Henry is in the midst of a growth spurt because he has been one major crankball lately!  It is exhausting, because the main activity that will appease him is singing and bouncing (I will not tell you how many times I have sung “twinkle twinkle little star”.  More than any person should!).  He is hungry, too, but is wailing too much to latch on!  It’s very frustrating for me.  I read that when a mother hears her baby cry, she releases hormones that make her feel very uncomfortable.  I am glad to know this because I was wondering why I was finding it so upsetting.  I mean, babies cry all the time, right?  I should just accept it and not get so worked up, y’know?

Another thing that helped him stop fussing is by showing him pictures of my Glamour magazine!  He LOVES to be read to, but I needed a change from the usual nursery rhymes and fairy tale books.  Henry now knows that bold stripes are a must for Spring 2011!

Henry says, “fleece sleepers are a definite DO”

Fussiness aside, I have not given up on my Week of Vegan Eating (WoVE).  The Triple Fudge Cake would be a comforting antidote to all this crying, but I am resisting it somehow!  Will power of steel I guess!  (Yeah, right).

For dinner last night, I used up some Vegan Walnut Lentil Pile leftovers by mushing them on a thin burger bun…

Topping it with sliced tomato…

And then adding half of a sliced avocado and a sprinkle of pepper.

This was a great, easy way to use up leftovers!

For breakfast this morning, I made the famous Carrot Cake Oatmeal (lacking coconut cream, and cutting down on the maple syrup and walnuts).

I’m not having any problem fixing meals for myself, but it’s the snacks that I’m lacking!  I guess when I was preparing for my WoVE, I seriously undervalued my love of snacking!  It is a physiological necessity for me to have something sweet, preferably chocolate, after dinner.  I’ve been relying on a small bowl of semi-sweet chocolate chips to tide me over, but I’d much prefer some better-quality chocolate.  Perhaps I’ll get the chance to run to the grocery store today to stock up on various snacking items.  It looks to be a beautiful, sunny day, but the radio tells me its frigid.  What matters more:  Vegan snacks or not freezing my keister off?  Hmmm…that’s a tough call…

Vegan Eating: Day Two

Ok, so it got a bit more difficult to eat vegan on Day Two!  Mostly, Henry was a fussybub and I wanted to find consolation in the Triple Fudge cake we have in the fridge, but that was not to be!  I tried to appease my sweet tooth with some dried apricots and semi-sweet chocolate chips but it didn’t quite do the trick.  I went to bed defeated!  However, I was so happy that Henry was asleep that it wasn’t too bad.  In the battle between sweets and sleep, sleep ALWAYS wins (when you have a baby, anyway!).

In “too frugal for one’s own good” news, yesterday I went out to get a haircut after almost a year of going without!  I went to First Choice which is one of those cheap places at which you don’t have to make an appointment.  Because Henry hasn’t accepted a bottle yet, I had only two hours to leave the house before needing to get back.  I made sure to leave once he had consumed lots of milk, so I made a mad dash out (first brushing off all the snow that had accumulated on the car!  Ah, February).  Luckily there wasn’t much of a wait and I liked my hair stylist enough, but not only did she cut my hair unevenly (she did end up fixing it), but she didn’t blow dry it all the way so it massively frizzed up.  I could have done a better job myself!  However, for $19 you can’t really ask for too much!  The cut is decent enough (chin length bob — my favourite!), but I have learned that when one has escaped the house for two precious hours, one is best off going to an actual salon!  This is the lesson for today, mugs and thugs.

For dinner yesterday, I made Vegan Walnut Lentil Loaf except it turned out to be more like a Vegan Walnut Lentil Pile.  I need to try Oh She Glows recipe next time!

 

I had it along with steamed vegetables and a bagel with blackberry jam.  I wanted margarine (or butter!) on my bagel, but regular margarine isn’t vegan!  I need to get some Earth Balance.  The blackberry jam was still good and served as dessert as well!  (I will admit that blackberry jam, as good as it is, is no Triple Fudge cake!).

For breakfast this morning, I made some Apple Oatmeal!

1/2 cup soymilk

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup rolled oats

1 apple, diced

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 small handful of raisins

1 sprinkling of shredded coconut

This was wonderful!  It was very chunky because the apple was so large, but creamy too.  I didn’t add anything to sweeten it, but it would be great drizzled with some maple syrup.

Aside from Triple Fudge cake cravings (wow, the third time I’ve mentioned it — what does that tell you?!!?), I feel pretty good with my vegan diet heading into Day Three.  Without getting too TMI, from a digestive standpoint the results have been immediate ifyouknowwhatI’msaying.  Henry was extremely fussy yesterday evening, but slept well (up every 2.5 hours but fell back to sleep immediately and didn’t wake up crying this morning!).  So we shall see how it goes today…

Fresh Monday

Even though my Saturdays feel like Tuesdays and my Wednesdays feel like Sundays, I can still relish the “tabula rasa” feeling of the start of a new week.  I thought to commemorate this freshness, I should take a photo of everything I eat so as to motivate myself not to eat half a jar of MaraNatha Dark Chocolate Peanut spread.  Let’s see if my theory works.

For Breakfast, I had some vanilla yogurt with blueberries and walnuts…

Along with a slice of plain no-knead bread I baked yesterday with cherry jam.

I am trying to figure out how much it costs to bake a loaf of no-knead bread.  A 2.5 kg bag of all-purpose flour is about $3.50.  The Internet tells me that there are 20 cups of flour in a bag, and if the bread recipe calls for 3 cups of flour, there is $0.53 worth of flour in a loaf.  With 1/4 teaspoon of yeast and 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, along with the energy needed to heat the oven at 450F for 45 minutes, I am going to say it costs about 85 cents to bake a loaf of this amazing bread.  A lot cheaper than the $4 or so this would cost from a bakery, plus no added benefit of a house that smells like a bakery!  In conclusion, the frugal life is the good life.

For lunch, I had a green salad with some leftover bean salad on top!  This salad was made exponentially better by the fact it included avocado.  It was made exponentially more complicated in that I was wearing Henry who refused to let me sit down, thus I had to eat it while standing up and trying not to drop salad dressing on his head (Which I did anyway).

Along with a plain old smoothie!  Since I used my spinach in my salad, I just had a smoothie made with:

1 cup of almond milk

4 large frozen strawberries

1/2 banana

1/2 cup fresh pineapple

1 tablespoon of ground flax seed

It was nice to have a smoothie that didn’t look like sludge

I plan on having leftover lasagna, bean salad, steamed vegetables, and a whole wheat bun for dinner.  Possibly a spoonful of crack, i.e. chocolate peanut butter, for dessert.  I would try taking a picture but a certain someone keeps me pretty busy in the evening hours so I doubt I’ll be online.

He recently discovered the fact that he has hands!  Very exciting in the F ‘n’ F household!

There is also that Heavy show on A&E tonight.  Watching TV involving morbidly obese people always helps keep my snacking habits in check.

**********************************************

Since the New Year, I’ve been diligently keeping track of my budget and have been saving quite a bit.  I give myself $80 a week for miscellaneous purposes, and have proudly amassed $316.  We’ve been wanting to get extra insulation put into our attic to save on heating and cooling costs, plus we will get some money back from the government because of an energy audit we had done last year.  The cost to have the insulation put in?  $850.  Split between the two of us, that’s $425 (I am so good with math eh?).  So my awesome $316 is already spent, plus I am in the hole $109 (told you I was good with math).  Luckily I’ve got plenty of savings, but still.  Adulthood is the pits!  I want to blow my money on candy bars and skip-its instead!

On the plus side, being an adult means I get to have cats and babies.  Even better, I get a cat who thinks he’s a baby!

One diaper I won’t be changing anytime soon

Moroccan Chickpea Stew

Last night was one of those nights when I thought, “Hmmm…Henry being an only child wouldn’t be so bad”.  I love my wee man, but I also love sleep!  Ah, motherhood <– My new favourite sentence said with just the right amount of exasperation and adoration.

Daddy was home to help with bath time and we had some fun with strategically placed cloths.  Ah, motherhood

A cup of coffee this morning helped, as it so often does, but I was most helped by half an hour of brisk walking outside as well as some healthy food!  For lunch I had a green salad and a couple of slices of leftover pizza.

A bunch of green vegetables, topped with chickpeas, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and freshly ground pepper.  Wonderful!

Primavera pizza with zucchini, spinach, red pepper, mushrooms, and parmesan

Since the wee man is currently asleep, I thought I’d get a head start on dinner.  I purchased a head of cauliflower last week for $1 and needed to use it up before it turned brown.  I don’t usually add cauliflower to my salads because I find them a pain to cut.  I don’t mind cutting up the entire head at once, though.  Ok, I just realized I could cut up the entire head and then keep the bits in tupperware and use as needed on salads.  Why didn’t I think of that before?

Anyway, I decided to make Moroccan Chickpea Stew.  This is adapted from a recipe I have called Moroccan Vegetable Pie with Chickpea Crust.  The pie is delicious, but a lot of extra work (and butter) to create the crust.  Serving the stew over rice, quinoa or barley (tonight’s choice!) is a bit healthier.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 each onion and carrot, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 tsp each of ground coriander, ground cumin, and pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 large green pepper, diced

1 head of cauliflower, chopped into small florets

1 cup rinsed, drained canned chickpeas

1 cup tomato sauce

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons of almond or peanut butter

1.  In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat; fry onion, carrot, garlic, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, pepper and cayenne, stirring often, until softened, about five minutes.

2.  Add pepper, cauliflower and chickpeas; fry, stirring often, until pepper is softened, about 8 minutes.

3.  Add pasta sauce and lemon juice; cover and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes.  Stir in peas and almond/peanut butter.  Serve over grain of your choice!

Delicious!  The nut butter really makes this one.

Well, I suppose I should remove myself from the Internet and go spend some time with my kid, eh?

Post-Doritos Productivity

Last night, after writing the post about having no time and Henry doesn’t sleep much and WAAAAAHHHHH…he fell asleep.

In fact, it was the first time since his birth that he was asleep for the night and I was still awake!  How else to celebrate?  By eating half a bag of Jalapeno Popper-flavoured Doritos, of course.  I don’t even like Jalapeno Poppers all that much!

Of course, trying to fall asleep soon after proved to be problematic.  For one, I was stuffed.  For two, I was stuffed full of chemically-laden corn chips.  I eventually fell asleep, but I vowed to myself that I would eat much healthier the next day.  Not only that, but I’d eat real food.

For breakfast, I had some cut up pineapple, grapes, and banana, with a bit of plain non-fat yogurt and a few squares of Shredded Wheat on top.  For lunch, I had a garden salad.  Then I decided to get creative.  Today’s creativity brought to you “Henry napping”

We have a bunch of bananas kicking around so I wanted to make some banana bread.  Most of the recipes I have aren’t very healthy.  I have one that calls for chocolate chips and mayonnaise for heaven’s sake! (It is really delicious, as you could probably deduce on your own).  But I opted to make HEALTHY banana bread.  This means chocolate chips and mayonnaise have nothing to do with it.

I adapted this recipe by making a few changes:

- 1/2 cup of sugar instead of Splenda (I am anti-artificial sweetener)

- 3 bananas instead of 5

- 1/4 cup non-fat plain yogurt instead of sour cream

- 1 egg instead of 2 teaspoons of egg white

Ok, I can explain this picture.  I painted my finger nails for the first time in months and wanted to showcase the goods!  I have been feeling dowdy for, oh, 2 months and 8 days or thereabouts, and nail polish really gave me a pick-me-up!  Behind my ever-so-vain hand, is the banana bread batter patiently waiting for me to stop taking pictures of my hand and to start stirring.

A slice of the finished product:

It is not nearly as good as my chocolate banana bread, but this bread won’t take you one step closer to cardiac arrest, y’know?

***************************************************************

Henry continued to nap once I was finished with the banana bread, so I set my sights towards dinner.  I wanted to make something using a lot of vegetables.  I contemplated veggie pot pie, but I made that fairly recently.  A quick look through my Moosewood Cookbook brought me to this recipe for Curried Spinach Pea Soup.  I wasn’t going to write down the recipe for you folks because of copyright issues and such, but I see that someone else did it for me!

I followed this recipe pretty much to a T.  I was impressed by all of the spices it calls for!  It’s not too often I wield my little jar of cardamom, I will tell you that!  This recipe calls for a lot of chopping — 4 cups of potato, 4 cups of onion, and 8 cloves of garlic — but other than that, and the large ingredient list, it is really easy.  I ended up taking a boat load of pictures because, as stated before, Henry was asleep!  I was feeling adventurous!

I used full-fat coconut milk instead of the reduced-fat it calls for.  (Can I renege my statement about being one step further away from cardiac arrest?)

Spinach:  Not Just For Green Monsters

Peas!  I was surprised to find out how much protein there is in peas.

When cutting up the onion, I kept a piece of bread in my mouth to prevent crying.  It semi-worked.  Do you have a tip for preventing crying while cutting onions?

I love the part of a recipe when it basically says “Mix everything up!”.

Blended and ready to go!

So I’ve not only made dinner for tonight, but I’ve also completed my daily blog entry and it’s only 1:57 pm.  Hurrah!

Extreme Couponing

Ok, so my earnest plan to eat THREE SQUARE MEALS A DAY was a gigantic failure.  As it turns out, I love to eat.  Alas, I love to eat more than three measly times a day.  Who wudda thunk it?  I am not really that surprised, but I thought for sure I could accomplish such a simple goal.  It was not to be!  Oh well.  You learn something new every day.

Part of the problem was that my friend came over for dinner and a movie.  What good is a movie with one’s friend if one cannot consume ice cream, popcorn, wine, and chocolate in one sitting?  We were watching Bridget Jones’ Diary, so junk food was a must.  (If you thought this was a healthy living blog, I am sorry, you are grossly mistaken!  lol)

We started out the evening healthy enough.  Ang made Cauliflower Cheddar soup and brought along a loaf of French bread.  Perfection on a cold winter’s night!

Dinner for two.  And, oh yes, we ate all that bread!

Soup with cheese.  It’s a good thing.

***********************************************************

Even though Henry had a different itinerary in mind this morning, I was dead set on making Carrot Cake Oatmeal for breakfast.  After a bit of nursing, a diaper change, 1 or 2 or 7 attempts at getting him to nap, I was finally able to make it approximately 3 hours after waking.  I could have just grabbed one of my Morning Glory muffins for breakfast, but I really wanted this oatmeal!

Heaven in a bowl

I tried to lighten it up a bit by not using any coconut milk or cream and using just 1 tablespoon of maple syrup and no raisins.  I probably used more walnuts than it called for, because I have a giant bag from Costco.  That, and I am keen to get all my omega-3s.  Yes.  That’s it.

Once you have Carrot Cake Oatmeal, it’s tough having non-Carrot Cake Oatmeal, y’know?

************************************************************

Today, Henry, Hubby, and I made a family trip to Walmart.  You may think, “Oh, Walmart, big whoop”, but for a housebound lady like me, this is a big event.  Husband decided to take us to a Walmart a bit further away and asked me if I had a problem with  it.  I absolutely do not have a problem with being out of the house for longer than one hour at a time!  I think I’ve mentioned it on this blog before about how I feel like an excited dog on a car ride.  If I could, I’d stick my head out the window, too!

Along with such exciting items as baby gear, bananas, and cat food, I also bought this coupon sorter!!!

$4.95 at a Walmart near you

Ever since watching the show Extreme Couponing on TLC, in which regular citizens of the world like you and me are able to buy hundreds of dollars of groceries for, like, 5% of the actual cost, I have become a bit obsessed with clipping coupons.  None of our weekly flyers really offer many coupons, so I’ve resorted to websites like save.ca and websaver.ca in order to accumulate some.

I haven’t been doing much shopping lately (see:  never leaving my house!), but I hope, one day soon, to resume the role of primary grocery shopper in the Frugal ‘n’ Fit household.  God love him, but my husband is not as obsessed with frugal living as I am.  I know, shocker!  He will often go to the “expensive” grocery store to buy all of our groceries, instead of going to three different grocery stores in order to get the best deals like a certain other member of our household would (Hint:  Not Henry).

So I am clipping my coupons and getting ready to score some deals!

Coupon sorting.  It’s a good thing.

*************************************************************

And to conclude this entry, I just want to say I’ve written the entire thing while simultaneously using my foot to bounce Henry in his bouncy chair!

Shots

I am not talking about the kind of shots that are alcohol-based and so commonly mixed with jello.  Oh no.  I am talking about the kind of shots that poor, little two-month old boys must endure so that they do not contract Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis, Polio, or Pneumonia.  Today was Henry’s first doctor appointment and I am not sure if it was worse for him or his parents!  But we got through it and can live in shot-free oblivion for another two months.

Tuckered out!

It was a bit more work getting to the doctor’s office than usual because we woke up to a blanket of the white stuff.  No, not cocaine.  Much worse!

I love the snow.  Caveat:  When I can stay inside all day.

Husband’s reaction upon first seeing the snow:

I love that he lets me post these online

Husband’s feelings about conquering the snow today:

He is a valiant man, that one.

By the time we got home from the doctor’s office, it was time for lunch.  I’ve been eating a steady supply of salads for the last few days.  Like so many others, I am detoxing from the chocolate-covered merriment of the past two weeks.

Spinach, cucumber, carrot, broccoli, green pepper, mushroom, chick peas, walnuts, cranberry-encrusted goat cheese, with balsamic vinaigrette

For dinner, I am trying a new recipe!

******NEW RECIPE ALERT******

It is called Fakes, which, if nothing else, is just fun to say.  It’s a lentil-based soup which is all we need to know.  Lentils are a miracle food.  I still can’t get over their nutritional profile.  1 cup cooked has 230 calories, 1 gram of fat, 16 grams of fiber, and 18 grams of protein.  It’s enough to warm even the coldest Dietician’s heart.  Plus they are cheap cheap cheap.  I will let you know how it goes!

My goal to eat three square meals (plus dessert!) yesterday was a success!  I must confess that three Hershey’s kisses were consumed post-dessert, but I was watching The Bachelor and needed ample sustenance in order to endure the desperate, beautiful, and catty women.  Really, I am committing to watching The Bachelor this year because:

1.  It is January.  What else am I going to do with my Monday nights?  Read a book?  Pshaw.

2.  I can text with my friend Sarah, who also watches.  At one point, I was watching, texting, and nursing, simultaneously!

Will Bachelor Brad find true love this year?  We can only hope that we care enough to watch the rest of the season.

Source of picture

Never trust a man holding this many roses meant for multiple women other than you!