Taco Overdose?

Last night at Kung Fu all of our kids got a new belt. Well, technically, only Tiernan got his yellow belt since Sensei didn't yet have the yellow tipped belts that Rhianna and Avery were supposed to get. They should be in next week, and then I'll make sure to take a picture of the other two proudly showing off their yellow tips. No more Kung Fu until September, so the kids will have to practice a lot over the Spring/Summer to keep up with what they've learned so far. Tiernan is super pumped to have his full on yellow belt now... as you can see in this picture... :)

Friday has been really good to me this week. We had a very easy dinner for Fun Food Friday - tacos in a bag! We recently discovered this treasure, and it quickly became an absolute favourite in our house. There really isn't a recipe per se, but I'll write out the steps I use for mine.



First I whip up a quick batch of veggie taco filling. I heat a tbsp of olive oil in a wok/skillet and add one onion (chopped) and whatever bell pepper I have in the house (today I had a yellow bell pepper, chopped). I cook it until it's soft and then add a can of lentils (drained and rinsed), a can of kidney beans (drained and rinsed), and a can of black beans (drained and rinsed). I stir it up until the legumes are heated through and then I add two packages of Old El Paso Taco seasoning and a splash of water (enough to make a bit of a sauce). Heat until thickened and warmed through and then it's ready!



Take a small bag of tortilla chips (Kyle and Avery use plain, but Tiernan, Rhianna and I like some flavouring to ours), cut the top of the bag off and crunch the chips up in the bottom of the bag. Add a few scoops of the taco filling, some lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, salsa (or Thousand Island!) and it's ready to be eaten.

Oh, yes... the perfect bite!

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Tiernan headed over to a friend's house after school today so he wasn't around for tacos in a bag.. he gets it for lunch tomorrow! Instead, he ate four helpings of their spaghetti dinner. Maybe I should have warned them that he's going through a growth spurt?? Eeep. While he was at his friend's place Avery suggested we play a game of Catan (Kyle won) while we waited for TBone. I hadn't played that game in soooooo long and I missed it so much (even if I sucked today). I feel whole again. ;)

Tonight was also Rhianna's Date Night with Kyle and I. We try to take some time with each of our kids on their own doing whatever they ask to do. Rhianna's choice was to watch Ramona and Beezus and eat her favourite snack - taco dip! The movie was really cute and it made me want to reread the books. Luckily, Rhianna has them so I just might do that! Maybe she and I can read them together. Yes, I think we will. The taco dip was delicious as usual. It's such an easy thing to make, too. Unfortunately, it's hard to stop eating it once you've made it, so I try not to make it more than once or twice a year. So yummy. Too yummy.

Taco Dip

1 brick light cream cheese, softened to room temperature

1 cup light sour cream

1 package Old El Paso Taco seasoning

lettuce, shredded

tomatoes, diced (I didn't use any tonight because Rhianna doesn't like tomatoes on their own)

cheddar cheese, shredded

Mix together the cream cheese, sour cream and taco seasoning with an electric mixer until smooth and no lumps of cream cheese are left. Chill for several hours. Top with lettuce, tomatoes and cheddar cheese. Serve with tortilla chips.

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Cheers to this wonderful weekend, friends! Enjoy. :)

Dinner and a confession.

Hi. My name is Shannon and I have an addiction... to cookbooks. Yes, cookbooks. I don't really want help for this addiction. I enjoy it thoroughly, and thus far it hasn't interfered (in a bad way) with my life. Anyone who really knows me knows how much I love variety, and how much I hate being around/eating/doing the same thing repeatedly. The cookbooks really help that! Over the years I've picked them up at varying book stores and some non-book stores, received them for birthday and Christmas gifts and thrifted them. I don't have any cookbooks that I don't love. Inside each and every one of them are treasures. Recipes that are tried and true, recipes that have yet to be discovered and recipes that were a really good starting point for inspiration. I was talking with my friend Christina about these recipe books of mine and told her I'd take a picture and blog about it. Today I decided to take a picture... but there was no way to fit them all in one shot. Instead, I got a whole entry full of cookbook pictures. ;) Just think about how many MORE pictures there would be if I still had all my meat-centric cookbooks. Luckily, I sold them all in a garage sale.

So, if you're looking for some new veggie-minded cookbooks, here are some ideas!

These are my vegan cookbooks:

Vegan a Go-Go
Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar
Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World
The Mediterrranean Vegan Kitchen
Appetite for Reduction
La Dolce Vegan!
The Garden of Vegan
How It All Vegan!
Vegan With A Vengeance
Vegan Planet
Veganomicon

My Moosewood collection!

Cooks For A Crowd

New Recipes

Simple Suppers

Cooks At Home

Low-Fat Favourites

Cooking For Health

Celebrates

Sundays At Moosewood

Book Of Desserts

Daily Specials

Other Random Veggie Cookbooks:

Vegetarian 3 in 1

Company's Coming Meatless Cooking

Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes

The Vegetarian Family Cookbook

The Essential Vegetarian

The Great Vegetarian Collection

My well used Slow Cooker collection:

The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker

125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes

Fresh From The Vegetarian Slow Cooker

Other Random Vegetarian Cookbooks:

Vegetarian Main Dishes From Around The World

Low GI Vegetarian Cookbook

Light Vegetarian Cooking

330 Vegetarian Recipes For Health

Specific Ethnic Foods:

Asian Flavours

Step by Step Indian (couldn't find a link for this one on Chapters)

Complete Book Of Sushi

Grilling: (I miss grilling outdoors.. no BBQ for us yet!)

Complete Book of Vegetarian Grilling

Grill It Vegetarian

Other books:

Pinawa Auxillary Cookbook (no link)

More Health Smart Cooking (Kyle's book from before we got together) (no link)

Canada's Best Bread Machine Cookbook (oh, how we miss our bread machine)

The Healing Herbs Cookbook

The Food Substitutions Bible

Complete Book of Home Preserving

Desserts!:

Hello, Cupcake!

125 Best Chocolate Recipes

These are the kids' cookbooks:

Silly Snacks (no link)

Kids' Healthy Cooking

Wookie Cookies Cookbook

The Darth Malt Cookbook

And you can't forget the drinks! Adult drinks included. :) :

The Top 100 Juices (this is also Tiernan's book since the juicer is his!)

Martini: The Collection

Cocktail Genius

Phew! That was exhausting. Haha! I also realize I don't have pictures of three more cookbooks, but I will link them anyway.

Rebar

Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day

100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes

So there you have it. That is my entire cookbook (addiction) collection.

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Today is our very last Hella Busy Thursday for a very long time. I can't promise that this will be the last time ever, because... that's not very likely at all. From now until September, there will be no swimming (on Thrusdays) or Kung Fu and that makes this day soooo much easier. Dinner at home? Yes, please!

I made some Mediterranean pitas for dinner on the go tonight. It's a pretty easy recipe, and pretty yummy, too.

Mediterranean Pitas

1 cup carrots (I bought them already in matchsticks!)

1 cup cucumbers, sliced into matchsticks

1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsp olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

Add all the ingredients to a small bowl, stir to combine and add to some mini pitas.

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Let the madness begin....

One of those days.

Today was one of those days. You know the kind. The kind where you wake up after a long, long night of not sleeping because of cats smothering you and daughters lying beside you grinding their teeth and psoriatic arthritis flaring up in your knees and elbows (don't I feel like an old lady!). The kind where your day starts off normal, quiet and then becomes busy as can be. The kind where you'd really like to climb under the covers to try to catch up on sleep, but there's no time to do so. The kind where you get none of the things done from the always long to-do list. The kind where you go into the kitchen to make your dinner and you realize you don't have a key ingredient. The kind where you email your husband saying 'I QUIT!'.

Yes, today was just like that. So when I realized I'd forgotten to buy that key ingredient at the store this morning, I threw my hands in the air. Then, I emailed my husband again saying I was not going to cook dinner. Today, we ordered pizza and it was perfect. I was able to de-stress, eat, and take the kids to the dance studio (where my day flipped right around with many laughs - shocker!).

My friend, Natasha, asked me about easy/little prep meals. I definitely have many of those, and today's meal was *supposed* to be one of them (pad thai). Being a vegetarian means that I'm often finding myself doing a lot of chopping. I try to do that chopping earlier in the day (or the night before), so that when it comes time to actually cook the meal, it's ready to assemble. I went through my entries and tagged all the simple ones with 'quick and easy', and I'll continue to add to that as I update here. In the meantime, these are my meals that take little time to prepare. There is some chopping, but aside from that, it's pretty minimal.

She also challenged me to find quick desserts, so I'm really going to have to think about that one. My desserts tend to be a bit time consuming and we don't have them terribly often. Thanks for the ideas, Nat! :)

Cookies and soups and buns, oh my!

This morning my daughter told me her stomach was hurting. She barely ate any of her breakfast (not typical for her... breakfast is the only meal she consistently devours!) and continued complaining of feeling ill. I wasn't going to take a chance by sending her to school since I've heard about a wicked stomach bug that's been making its rounds. In the end, I think she could have gone to school. After some cuddling and mummy time, she was just fine. Better than fine! I asked her about it this afternoon and she told me she just misses me (and Daddy) while she's at school sometimes. Rhianna is one of those kids who is a bit of an over-achiever. She wants to do everything and ends up doing it all so well. She's a straight 'A' kind of kid, a great little dancer, a determined competitor (hello, provincial bowling champ), a wonderful friend and an extremely gentle and giving soul. Right now she's on a mission to raise money for Japan (more on that another time). I think she over extends herself sometimes, and I've been trying to keep her 'roped in' a bit. It's not easy because she has such strong desires to participate in everything under the sun. My point is, I think she wanted today to regroup. She wanted some one on one time with me to bake cookies and cuddle and talk. We had some great bonding time, and I think it did her a world of good. Of course, she couldn't stay away from school related things, so she made projects, drew pictures about dance and made herself some math sheets to do. Haha! Now she's ready to head back into school tomorrow with a re-energized mind and soul.

This morning before school, I asked the boys what kind of cookies they wanted and they responded with 'CHOCOLATE'! Rhianna, on the other hand, wanted Skor bit cookies. When it came time to bake the cookies, Rhirhi suggested adding mini chocolate chips to the Skor bit cookies, so that's what we did. We tried one when they were warm, and they turned out wonderfully! The best of both worlds.

Skor Bit Cookies (with chocolate chips!)

2 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup margarine

3/4 cup cane sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

Skor bits and chocolate chips, to taste (I eyeball it)

Heat oven to 350.

Stir together the flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.

Cream margarine with sugars in a large bowl. Add the vanilla and eggs and mix well. Slowly add the dry ingredients and combine well. Add the Skor bits and chocolate chips and blend.

Bake by spoonfuls for 9-11 minutes.

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Dinner today was supposed to be yesterday's dinner. Originally I was going to follow Savvy's recipe for a slow cooker vegetable soup, but I ended up changing a few things and it morphed into a different recipe. It turned out pretty good... I certainly enjoyed my bowl full! I served it with a side of baby spinach & seeds and Red Lobster-esque buns. Yesterday I visited an old food blog I had back in 2002 and 2003. Looking through it made me laugh because honestly.. I wasn't much of a cook. I still ate meat back then, and apparently leaned towards a lot of processed foods. Browsing through this blog reminded me how delicious these cheese buns are, so I added them to dinner tonight. They were just as Red Lobster-y as I remember, and also, just as easy and processed. Oh well... my tongue didn't care tonight! ;)

Crockpot Cream of Vegetable Soup

2 tbsp butter

3 large cloves garlic, minced

2 small onions, chopped

1 inch chunk ginger root

3 yellow potatoes, skin left on, cubed

3 celery stalks, sliced thinly

1 cup frozen peaches and cream corn

4 cups vegetable stock

3 cups water

1 tsp sage

1 tsp thyme

salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 1/2 cups cream

In a skillet, melt the butter and cook the onion and garlic until soft. Add the sage and thyme, and stir to coat. Add to the slowcooker. Add the rest of the ingredients, minus the salt, pepper and cream.

Cook on low for 8 hours.

Add the cream and season with salt and pepper, and cook another 20 minutes (careful not to boil it). Serve and top with some grated cheddar cheese.

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Red Lobster-esque Cheese Buns

4 cups Bisquick

1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 1/3 cups milk

1/4 cup butter

2 tsp garlic powder

a couple of pinches of salt

Preheat oven to 350.

In a bowl, add the Bisquick and shredded cheddar cheese. Stir until well combined. Add the milk and beat for 30 seconds until a dough forms.

Wet hands, form into balls and place them on a baking tray. Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Melt the butter and mix in the garlic powder and salt. Brush over hot buns when they are removed from the oven. Serve immediately.

NOT a Soup Monday??

So, you're probably looking at that picture and wondering what the heck happened to my Soup Monday. I know.. that doesn't look like soup, does it? Well, you're right. It's not even close to soup. One of the downfalls to being as obsessive as I am and making my menu a month or more in advance (*coughcrazycough*) is that you forget when a menu item was supposed to be done in a slow cooker. Today's soup? It was a slow cooker recipe. I didn't realize that until this afternoon when I went to start chopping vegetables to make said soup. Seeing as I didn't have 8 hours for it to slow cook, I had to change the menu up. So this week, it will be Soup Tuesday. First it was Slow Cooker Sunday and now Soup Tuesday?? What is the world coming to?!

Now that we've cleared the air about that, let me talk to you about my truly decadent dinner. The pasta is a recipe I got from Jamie Oliver a long time ago. It's purely sinful. All creams and fats and so not good for you... but also insanely delicious. I mean... so. so. so. good! And easy, too (which really worked out for me today)! We also had lots left over for Kyle's lunches. He likes leftovers - he's strange like that. I served the pasta with a simple salad (romaine, carrots, red pepper.. it looks florescent in the photographs... drab day) with a classic french dressing I got from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen and a store bought baguette.

Linguine with Spinach, Mascarpone and Parmesan

1 lb linguine

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp butter

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 nutmeg, freshly grated

2 cups baby spinach

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup creme fraiche

1 3/4 cups mascarpone cheese

2 handfuls grated parmesan

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook pasta according to directions. Meanwhile, in a pan or wok, melt butter with oil, nutmeg, and garlic. Add the spinach and cook for 5 minutes until the spinach is a nice dark green colour. Season with salt and pepper, add the cream, mascarpone and a little ladle of the cooking liquid from the pasta. Let it simmer and season again.

Drain pasta, reserving some cooking water. Stir the pasta into the spinach sauce. Add some cooking water if it is too thick. Add parmesan and toss together.

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Classic French Dressing

4 tsp olive oil

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/2 tsp Dijon mustard

1 small garlic clove, minced

salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl, mix and serve.

So much blue.

Another weekend has come and passed all too quickly. Our Saturday was busier than usual, but the timing was perfect so it left us enough time between activities that we weren't too rushed. At the kids' bowling league they had a competition for the Family Two Step. Each of the kids gets to bring a parent/grandparent/uncle/aunt etc to bowl with them as a team. One pairing goes on to a zone tournament for each level. Kyle and Tiernan bowled together and did a wonderful job, even bowling a 198 game! Avery bowled with my Dad, his Pa, and they also had great games. Neither of them won their age groups, but Rhianna and her Nana (my Mum) won at their level by 1 pin! There are only two Peewees at our bowling alley so it was either them or Rhianna & Nana. They both seem pretty excited to be going on to the zone levels next weekend. Way to go, Rhianna and Mum! What a cool tournament to have won.

The rest of Saturday was a whirlwind of lunch, soccer drills, dance practice for the hospice Rhianna is in, a soccer game, home for dinner (nothing special - we went with easy since I didn't have time to start the slow cooker after bowling as planned), and then... DATE NIGHT IN! Kyle and I watched half of The Tourist before I told him I was falling asleep. How pathetic am I? Haha. We didn't even make and eat the dip I was going to make for date night since we were so full from our filling dinner. It's okay, though.. I made it today instead. Yum!

This morning we woke to the brightest sun shining, so we took the kids and Tibbs down to the waterfront trails for a walk. We love these trails, and go as often as we can. With our busy schedule these days it hasn't been nearly enough. I love looking out onto Quinte Bay (part of Lake Ontario), watching the birds swim around and looking for fish near the shores. There were lots of people there today. There were people on roller blades, running, riding bicycles, walking their dogs, or just casually strolling. The water was so blue, as was the sky... and the best part... I wore my birk sandals for the first time this year! How liberating! I hope this weather is here to stay. I know everyone is dreading our rainy upcoming week, but I'm totally and completely okay with that. Rain makes this mama very happy. Bring it on! Rain or shine, I don't care as long as it isn't snow.

There's a little area of rocks that you can climb across to get further out into the water, and we absolutely cannot ever walk past this spot without heading out there. The kids love to push the boundries (Mummy, can we go a little further? Mummy... that rock has a feather, can I go there? Just a few more rocks out, Mummy?), and the dog always stops for a drink. Typically there are lots of birds sitting on the end of the rocks, but today there was one lone gull.

♥

We had a full house this afternoon since all three kids invited a friend over. They mostly played outside - basketball, hockey, Beyblades, skipping, swinging and climbing trees. They polished off an entire watermelon, and spent some time fleeting from one toy to another in the house. During this time Kyle worked on taking the wallpaper off Tiernan's ceiling (UGGHHHHH) and I played around in the kitchen. I threw what I had planned for yesterday's dinner into the slow cooker for tonight, and then made the dip I was supposed to make for Date Night.

After dinner we headed out to Dairy Queen for some ice cream! My favourite ice cream store isn't open for the season, yet, so DQ just had to cut it. Big disappointment since they didn't even have any waffle cones OR bowls! Both Rhianna and I were pretty sad. I love Tiernan's BRAIN FREEZE look in this picture. He cracks me up, the ham.

One other picture I just have to share before getting into the whole dinner/recipe part of this entry...



Two more reasons I love my husband: 1) he will jump in to play a random game of Twister with our kids while I update my blog and 2) just after this photo was taken he said "Uh oh" and farted. Hahaha. I am such a child because I find this hilarious. :)

And now for dinner today...

I made a slow cooked enchilada casserole and served it simply with some spinach and pumpkin seeds. I had been searching for some recipes like this one online a while back and found a few (meat) recipes so I took my favourite parts of those to make the following recipe. The kids enjoy this recipe a lot - it's a "Mexican Lasagna" according to my kids. :) So, today was a Slow Cooker Sunday... and as Tiernan put it, that's not as strange as Soup Sundays! Ha... love that boy.

I'll also include the recipe for our Afternoon Date Dip. ;) I found this artichoke dip (and only altered it slightly) in a cookbook called Rose Reisman's Light Vegetarian Cooking. My sister got this cookbook for me for our Thrifty Crafty Christmas last year, and everything I've tried in it has been delicious! We had made this dip before, and decided it was a definite keeper.

Enchilada Casserole

12-14 flour tortillas, cut into thirds

1 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, chopped

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp cumin

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed

1 tall jar salsa

1/2 of a 28oz can enchilada sauce

1 bag Tex Mex cheese (Kraft.. I use the bigger bag)

First put some olive oil in a skillet and fry the chopped onion until soft. Add the seasonings and stir to coat. Remove from heat.

Spray your crock pot down with some cooking spray and line the bottom with flour tortillas.

Next, spread 1/3 of the black beans, 1/3 of the kidney beans, 1/3 of the cooked onion, 1/3 of the salsa and enough enchilada sauce to cover the top. Then sprinkle the layer with 1/4 of the Tex Mex cheese. Repeat with two more layers done the same way. End with another layer of tortillas. Spread some enchilada sauce (cover the tortillas) and the remaining cheese.

Cook on low for about 4-6 hours.

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Three Cheese Artichoke Dill Dip

14 oz can artichoke hearts, drained and halved

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/3 cup shredded swiss cheese

1 tsp dried dill

1/4 cup light sour cream

3 tbsp light mayonnaise

1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 cloves garlic, minced

pinch cayenne pepper

grated parmesan, to cover the top

Preheat oven to 350.

In a food processor, combine all the ingredients except for the parmesan cheese. Process on and off until just combined, but still chunky. Place in a small casserole dish and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Bake uncovered for 10 minutes. Broil for 3-5 minutes until top is browned.

We are a panini loving household!

Fun Food Fridays = easy cooking day for me. I love Fridays. I really love Fridays. I consider them my day "off" from errands/cleaning/appointments/chauffeuring etc. This Friday evening will be even better since I actually have my husband around (usually he's editing a podcast) and I have a couple of Sasparillas chilling in the fridge. That's a false statement... one is open on the table in front of me. ;)

For Family Movie/Games Night we've decided to just watch this week's episode of Survivor because my brain is in a complete fog today. I really don't like feeling this way and hope it's gone by the morning since our day promises to be a busy one. Gotta love Slow Cooker Saturdays.

Today was Panini night. You really can't go wrong with paninis, aside from adding too much sauce. I have no real recipe for tonight, just the picture to share. Each of us puts our own favourites on our paninis, so it keeps everyone happy. Tonight mine had a whole lot of fried cremini mushrooms (did I mention my deep love of mushrooms?), some mozza cheese, spinach, green & red pepper, red onion and then my favourite combination of sauces - honey mustard and barbeque. Delicious! On the side we had some of the leftover coleslaw from last night.

Happy weekend, everyone!