sarah's blog

I have a dilemma and I need your ideas. Maybe between all of us we can figure out a solution that will look good and hold up against two very determine, crafty one year olds.

See the thing is, I want to put up our Christmas tree this year. It’s not a big tree but it’s most definitely going to draw the attention of certain little people whose mission would be to dismantle it piece by piece, or all in one big CRASH if that could be arranged.

As I said, it’s not a big tree, maybe 4 feet tall? It’s on a four legged stand that makes the total height somewhere around 5 feet. I want to set it up off the ground unless someone has a suggestion for protecting it that doesn’t just involve setting it up in the bathroom.

Here are some [very poor] shots of the corner where I would like it to be. As you can hopefully see there is a ledge that I thought might be a good place to put the tree but it probably not wide enough for the base and the tree would need to be secured somehow. Maybe with those temporary Command hooks and fishing line or something? Anyways it’s kind of an awkward corner but the only one in the living room where the twins hardly ever go because we don’t want them getting to comfortable messing around near the balcony door.

I still have the issue of how to keep Sticky Hands and her accomplice Sneaky Pete from being able to access the tree. So does anyone have any ideas that have worked for you, that you’ve seen or you just thought now? Options for tree placement/security and child-deterents are welcome.

And yes, invisible electric fences will be considered as viable options.

Can you spot the cloth diaper bum…

Well that plan didn’t last long. Can we just start out by scratching everything I said in that last post? That seems to be how most of my best-laid plans go since we had kids, as soon as they are made something happens to change everything and I have to start over with a new idea.

As it turns out, folks, this is just not the year for trying my all-online shopping plan. Normally, living far from family means online shopping saves time and money and makes it possible to make sure there are gifts under the tree in various cities in time for Christmas Day. But this year we’re having visitors from both families and that means the real time/money saver is to hit the stores in our neighbourhood early, wrap our purchases and send them home with family members. Saves shipping, forces us to get it done early and still gets those gifts under those trees.

So yet again this year due to circumstances, however happy, we are shopping both online and in person. So far we were able to send two gifts home with Jakki, purchase four online and plan to send gifts for my whole family home with my parents who arrive in less than a week!

As much as I wanted to try to shop online, it just makes sense to do it this way. Our neighbourhood is full of cute shops and unique gifts so to purchase them from far away when I know they exist one block over doesn’t seem to have enough of an upside, even if it means I wouldn’t have to leave my home.

Another point I’d like to bring up is that Christmas shopping is likely less stressful when done very early. I think I’ll find that going to stores is not nearly the beating that Metrotown was for me last year because I am there in early November, not mid-December. Oh, and it’s not a mall. Oh and my kids are one, not 2 months.

So goodbye online shopping plan, hello just get it done early.

I have been thinking about Christmas and starting early to pace myself for awhile now. I’ve tried it in the past with some success but I need to turn it up a notch this year, for two obvious reasons.

So when I read a post today on a blog I frequent I knew it was a sign to switch into high gear. I tend to agree with the author, it’s the gift buying, second guessing purchases and wrapping that slow me down and drag on until the last minute. I love the decorating so that is always done in a day, babies or no babies. Even last year with two month old twins still eating every three hours I didn’t neglect my holiday decor. It would take a lot more than that to keep those two green tubs on a storage room shelf through December.

So knowing what I know about gift giving stress, here’s my plan of attack. I’ve always wanted to try buying everything online and I think this may be the year to do it. Not that I can’t take the twins out for some shopping but a) they are too young to enjoy the holiday spirit and b) it is stressful to be bound by the clock, nap times, the hunger/impatience/ants-in-the-pants of two one year olds.

So I’m going to try it. I’ve made my list of people to shop for and some preliminary ideas. I’ve even purchased a gift for my nephews already. I predict I still run into the problem of indecision (is it just me or are there certain people in our lives who are SO easy to think of a gift for that they are actually the hardest ones for which to settle on just one thing??) and I’ll have to do my research to stay away from expensive shipping/stores that don’t ship to Canada, but I think it can be done.

First stop, Etsy. I’m a fan of small businesses and one-of-a-kind gifts and I think that’s the place I want to start.

As for me and my Christmas wish list… that’s another whole post which I am itching to write and will hopefully do so this afternoon. That makes me sound greedy but in truth it actually leads into a bit of bigger discussion I’ve wanted to have with you. Or this blog. Or myself if I’m the only one here.

If you don’t get that joke you have missed seeing a very important film.

Oh the highs and lows of a new computer.

High: I’m here posting this because I have a new MacBook Pro after the untimely demise of a lovely MacBook who gave me 4 good years. I LOVE this computer.

Low: All my files are locked in the mind of the previous computer (her name was Bianca and she will be missed) leaving me without most of my pictures, videos, other random files, all my passwords, bookmarks – the things a Mac handles for you so you don’t even know you don’t know them yourself – and the photo books I was making for So and Lo’s first birthday.

High: Those same exact files are backed up on an external hard drive in our office.

Low: After hours of trying to get said hard drive to communicate with my new MacBook Pro’s Lion OS we gave up and tried to go the long way around through J’s computer and another hard drive only to realize it doesn’t matter because the login and password for that hard drive is saved in the keychain OF MY OLD COMPUTER.

Thanks for keeping that information safe, Bianca. Next time maybe write it down before you decide to split.

And I have tried every combination I can think of. I have no memory of creating one and nothing is working. It was my Time Machine backup so it just did its thing daily without my help.

Sigh.

The long and short of it is I may have to pay to have the old files retrieved off my dead laptop. Unless the mystery login and password for the hard drive can be retrieved from the computer in my head. Which is running kind of slow these days.

Here’s some randomness for ya. I’ve probably been asked 5 or 6 times over the past few months how to make something that I’ve had success with: a fruit fly trap. Gosh my life is glamourous.

But seriously I once had a fruit fly problem, the first time I had dealt with this, and I researched solutions online. I perfected one that worked for me so when we moved into our new place and found that they show up pretty easily (it’s true living downtown we’ve noticed more flies of all kinds because of the close living situation and the dirtier streets) I attacked the problem with my technique and am able to keep it under control.

So because you asked, and begged and pleaded, for my secret, I’ll go ahead and reveal it here. For only three payments of $99.99 I’ll send you two traps handmade by Sarah herself. Think about it.

First I get a small glass bowl (like very small or else you’ll have to use too much vinegar and that’s a waste), clear is best for attracting flies and viewing your catch. Pour in about two or three tablespoons of white wine vinegar. You’re welcome to try other kinds but I’ve tried balsamic and plain white and never saw near the results. Fruit flies are classy.

Add a couple drops of dish soap in the center. I’ve used lavender, orange and other scents, it doesn’t seem to matter.

Finally I pour tap water directly onto the soap so it creates a lot of bubbles. Turn the water up pretty strong to make this happen quickly so you only add enough water to approximately double the amount of liquid in the bowl.

Some people tell you to cover it with plastic wrap and poke holes in it. Don’t bother. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out of the holes are the right size or if the plastic wrap is keeping the bugs away. The soap bubbles are specifically to coat their wings and keep them in the bowl, you won’t have a problem with that.

Now set your trap near a problem area, usually near where you kept some fruit out or the sink where it’s moist and warm. Moist. Yuck. Make sure though, that it’s also not going to be disturbed so the flies stick around. I’d show you a picture of all the flies I caught but then you’d know how many flies were in my kitchen and I just realized that’s what this post implies and I’m kind of regretting it.

Plus Marlow just took a bite out of a business card.

I started another edition of Eating Down The Fridge last Friday so I’m wrapping it up today. Boy that went fast.

All in all, not a bad round of clearing out and trying some new “creative” ways to use up ingredients. I definitely still have a few things hanging around but without buying ingredients I just wasn’t able to find a way to make them work.

So what did I clear out in the last few days?

On Thursday we did the usual breakfast and leftovers for lunch.

For supper I made a slow-cooker meatloaf which used up the ground beef we had. The recipe is in the Company’s Coming cookbook of slow-cooker recipes so I won’t write it out here but you can ask me for it if you don’t have access to the book.

Then yesterday I had cream of wheat for breakfast which I had to buy because I finally used up those Hearty Medley things. Within the rules. For lunch J took the last of the soup from our friends and I ate a strange combination of the rest of the leftover Spicy Chicken Bake, the last of the yogurt, the last of a box of healthy-ish cookies I bought because I tried them on a plane once. (You can find the full selection here, I bought the blueberry brown sugar with flax. Yum.)

For supper we totally scored: a homemade lasagna from our dear friend, Lynsey, who dropped by to hang out with me in the morning. It was all pre-cooked and ready to go so all it needed was a bit of time in the oven to reach its full melty potential. It. Was. Delicious.

Today we only had coffee for breakfast (it’s Roll Up The Rim time so it was a Timmy’s run) because we were meeting up with friends for dim sum (yes, again). An old friend and former roommate, Laurie, was in town. Sidenote: Kirin at City Square Mall has a great mango pudding.

For supper we got to enjoy more of the lasagna from Lynsey -and there’s still more for tomorrow! Then I did a bit of searching online and found a recipe for a peanut butter pie that would use a couple ingredients I have been really trying to get rid of. I’m not going to put the recipe on here for a few reasons, namely:

a) all the ingredients come from a box and that is too 1980s for even me to be proud of
b) the instructions were basically non-existent and there were a few things that would have been good to know like the fact that the peanut butter and icing sugar would be very tough to mix well, and
c) because it’s pretty ugly and had better taste good or else it has nothing going for it.

The important thing is it sounds like it will be decent and it used a box of vanilla pudding, most of my peanut butter, half my icing sugar (which I can never find uses for and hangs around for ages), the graham cracker crumbs and the milk. Not half bad.

So I’m recipe-less today but here’s the list of what I used up in the last few days of this Eat Down…

Ground beef
Box of blueberry brown sugar with flax cookies
Box of vanilla pudding
Bag of graham cracker crumbs
Litre of milk
Container of yogurt

This wasn’t my best Eat Down – I barely touched the list of example items I gave in my first post – but it was probably the one where I purchased the least new food during the week. Having said that, we ate out more than usual and our meals contained less fruits and vegetables than I’m comfortable with so next time I’ll stock up on those before we begin.

That’s it for this time, I’ll let you know how the pie turns out.

On Monday I just had yogurt and coffee because we were going for dim sum at 10:30 with J’s coworkers. So for what amounts to Chinese brunch we had an assortment of items like Chinese donuts in rice noodles, steamed buns, chicken feet (just J on that one) and other delicious treats. There was even some leftovers for us to bring home. Score.

For supper I got really creative and using frozen chicken breasts, a can of Rotel, panko Japanese-style bread crumbs and tex-mex shredded cheese I made a delicious chicken bake. The pictures don’t really do it justice because it’s not the most beautiful dish but it was warm, spicy and filling. I added the rest of our leftover potatoes as a side and dug in.

On Tuesday I had the Quaker Hearty Medley cereal and coffee, J had his bran and coffee. I was never a breakfast creature of habit before, in fact you’ll recall I barely liked eating breakfast at all. But getting up at 6am every day now requires that I fuel up and microwave oatmeal is quick and healthy. If I didn’t care about that second part it would be Poptarts believe me.

For lunch J took the rest of the dim sum and I had the soup we scored at our friends’ house on Sunday. Yum.

For supper I made the M&M Meats slow-cooked pot roast (which is amazing and easy and makes tons of gravy) with rice and a chickpea salad. This used up a roast, a lemon, a can of chickpeas, and an onion.

Yesterday we did the usual for breakfast, more leftovers for lunches and then out to #1 Beef Noodle for supper. Yes that is its name. I also broke some rules and bought some egg tarts, a pork bun for J and a butter cream bun for me at the Chinese bakery that puts things on sale before the mall closes. You might remember that place from our date night awhile back.

So that’s about it up to today. Below are a couple little homemade recipes and the list of items I was able to use up. I’m not claiming any of these recipes as gourmet, I just offer them as perhaps inspiration to make up your own dishes because all of them start from an idea I find online and then build depending on what I have in the kitchen. They won’t win any awards and would probably offend some chefs for their randomness but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I can make something out of nothing so boo to them. [sticking out tongue]

Quick & Random Chickpea Salad
Can of chickpeas, drained
Small onion, whatever kind you have
Lemon or lemon juice
Cilantro
Olive oil
White wine vinegar
Dried dill
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Pour drained can of chickpeas into medium mixing bowl. Chop onion into very small pieces and add as much as you would like (I didn’t use the whole onion because I wanted a higher chickpea to onion ratio. Could I BE more nerdy when I say that?). Drizzle with olive oil and add a splash of white wine vinegar. Shake on a good amount of dill, salt and pepper and finely chopped fresh cilantro. Toss and taste, then add more of whatever you think it needs. Keep covered in the fridge (the onions will smell) and enjoy as a side or as a lunch on its own because chickpeas are great for you!

Spicy Chicken Bake
2 Frozen boneless chicken breasts, thawed
Can of Rotel (if you can’t find this in Canada – we have ours brought up from Texas – grab a jar of salsa)
Panko Japanese-style bread crumbs (buy a box and use it to bread all kinds of things. They are crunchy and hold up well in the oven)
Olive oil
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper
Fresh cilantro
Kraft tex-mex shredded cheese (or just cheddar if that’s what you’ve got)

Heat oven to 350F. Place chicken in baking dish (cut them in half to make four pieces total if you don’t want to worry about them being cooked evenly). Pour Rotel or salsa over chicken. In small bowl mix bread crumbs with salt, pepper and cilantro. Drizzle with olive oil and mix well. Sprinkle heavily over chicken and salsa. Put in oven until chicken is done (cut one open and check that it’s white all the way through), about 20 minutes or so. Take out of the oven and sprinkle with as much cheese as you want and put back into the oven just until melted and bubbly. Remove and enjoy with rice or veggies.

Things I used up…

Chickpeas
Onion
Lemon
Can of Rotel
Box of Panko bread crumbs
Box of hearty medley breakfast cereal

As I mentioned last post we’re cleaning out the food that’s just hanging around our kitchen from my pre-babies stockpiling. Here’s how we’re doing so far.

Yesterday I had a Quaker Hearty Medley hot cereal. I do not recommend them over my usual oatmeal. Also had a bowl of yogurt and a cup of coffee, of course.

J had bran cereal and coffee. So nothing random used up for breakfast yet.

For lunch we ate leftover pasta from Anton’s.

For supper I cooked up our last two M&M frozen salmon filets, all the brussel sprouts and a bag of assorted new potatoes. If you’ve never tried them they even have blue potatoes, though I actually don’t like the blue ones that much. I find them drier like a russet/baking potato and prefer the flesh of the red or yellow ones.

For breakfast today it was yogurt and coffee for me and cereal and coffee for J. Lunch was at a friend’s place (where sidenote: So & Lo were super cranky and challenged our ability to enjoy ourselves and not feel bad for our hosts) and we ended up coming home with a container of homemade soup. Score.

Supper was a bit outside the rules… we got McDonalds. I’ll confess, we have a weakness for it, me especially, so on nights when we don’t want to cook we look through our coupon box for our Mickey D’s coupons and that’s how we justify it. Heck, we don’t need to justify it, it was delicious and that’s all you need to know.

So I haven’t gotten very far in using up stuff, though we did kill the salmon fillets, brussel sprouts and potatoes. However tomorrow I’m going to make up a package of vanilla pudding and I’ve got a simple chickpea salad I’m going to try, probably with a good amount of substitutions for all the things I don’t have.

We’re off to a slow start. I’m accepting recipe ideas for the list of items in my previous post if you’ve got anything that helps me use them without breaking the e.d.t.f. rules.

In case you’re curious, here’s how I cooked the sprouts. If you think you don’t like them but have only had them boiled, give this a try. They went from something I never cooked to arguably our favorite veggie side.

Roasted Brussels
Fresh brussel sprouts, washed with ends cut off and sliced in halves
Olive oil
Sea salt
Fresh ground pepper

Set oven to 350 F. Put brussel sprout halves in medium bowl, drizzle on a good amount of olive oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Toss to coat sprouts completely.

Dump out on baking sheet (I use a large stoneware one) and spread out. You don’t have to but I turn each sprout half so the outsides are facing up and they lay flat on the cut side. Because I am OCD. If there are loose leaves get them on the pan too, they are the best part!

Put pan in oven and cook until the sprouts are easily pierced with a fork (I’d say about 10 to 15 minutes) and the outside leaves are getting a bit black and crispy on the edges. Leave them a bit longer to crisp more or turn the oven to broil for a couple minutes. BUT watch carefully, this will crisp the leaves quickly.

Scoop off pan into serving dish. So simple but so addictive.

It’s time to bring back some old topics I’ve blogged about. I’ve looked through my blog and have some ideas for a few things but I’d like to start with an Eat Down The Fridge because it’s so needed in our house right now. Not that we have a lot in the fridge – I recently went out of town so John not only let it get empty but also cleaned it which. was. awesome.

So our fridge is actually pretty bare but our pantry and freezer are another story. Starting about a month before the babies were born I began stocking up on food for when we would be SO hungry but only have the energy for something that hops up onto the counter and makes itself. We also filled our freezer with M&M Meats products to which we became total converts once we were willing to admit we’re not really foodies, sometimes we just want to eat.

But as always happens, a full and bountiful pantry eventually becomes a hodgepodge of half-used items and ingredients that seemed like a good purchase at the time. So now that we’re not in Survival Mode anymore (a.k.a. never let the kitchen get empty or we may go without a meal) and our gracious and amazing friends and family have been able to stop cooking for us (which was seriously the only reason we ate balanced meals for the first two months) I’m ready for a good old fashioned e.d.t.f. cleanup.

What’s hanging around my kitchen…

• Half bag frozen tropical fruit
• Half ziplock bag frozen strawberries
• 3 Boxes vanilla pudding mix (which I was ashamed to notice were on my list in my original e.d.t.f. post. yikes.)
• Jar shredded coconut
• Jar ground almonds
• Half bag whole wheat spaghetti noodles
• Half bag frozen green and yellow beans
• Jar carob chips

You remember the rules, right? Let’s see what I can come up with over the next week and how many good recipes I can make using the randomness of my kitchen. Let the eat down begin.

Just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to those of you who gave to my birthday charity:water campaign. We raised $131 which will provide clean drinking water for 6 people.

Because the money was collected during September there is a good chance our contributions will go to the Bayaka people of the Central African Republic, with a goal of eventually providing clean drinking water for every member of that displaced people group.

I love doing campaigns for charity:water and I don’t plan to stop. In fact, maybe when the twins are born they can help me and we’ll do a family campaign. I would love for them to grow up with an awareness of the needs of others and that they would hold their money in open hands as a resource to care for people in need.

I think that’s a good thing to model to kids. So thanks for modeling generosity to me, again.