Mothers and Daughters Gone Wild: The Sequel

This is one of those recaps that has been a looooong time coming. Some background:

My Granny had three daughters, and they each had a daughter, and the 7 of us get along remarkably well for family. :) We genuinely enjoy being around each other and planning reasons to get together, along with the rest of the family.

So way back in 2007(ish) we got the brilliant idea to go on a Mother/Daughter trip, complete with custom shirts. To Amish country. And we had a ball, as probably only our family could in Amish country.

We had talked about doing another trip off and on over the years and when Brian and I went to Snug Hollow for an awesome weekend away I realized it was the perfect place for our next Mother/Daughter trip. It is quaint and country and out in the middle of nowhere and we all tend to like those sorts of things.

So our weekend started out meeting at Granny's house. She was in a perfectly coordinating outfit, as always.

THEN someone produced this picture of the seven of us circa 1991. AMAZING. I really need a copy of this framed in my house.

Did we ever determine where we were/what this was for? At Mentor Baptist? For a Mother's Day Luncheon?

 Then the sisters took this pic:

Which always reminds me of this pic: 

Then once we really got going and picked who was riding in which cars on the way there, we stopped at the cemetery to put flowers on my grandpa's grave. 

I happen to really like cemeteries so I thought it would be a nice time to tell the family, and Papa too, I was pregnant. Only about 8 weeks at the time but I wanted everyone to know on the trip that I was going to be joining their mom club (I was the only one on the Mom/Daughter trip who wasn't yet a mom!).

Granny and I at Papa's grave.

As I was going through the huge album of photos from the trip, I went through a whole section of all the games we played. You are welcome, family, for not posting any of those pics. And especially not any of the getups we were wearing!!

I'll skip to the cabin we stayed in, which was a little further away from the main house, but was really perfect for all of us. It's beautiful and had plenty of space to sleep 7, sit around and talk and play games, cook, etc.

Looking from the back towards the front door.

One of the beds.

The kitchen!

The view out the back of the cabin.

The porch swing and other side of the cabin.

We always eat in for one dinner and cook a meal together on our trips. We love to cook! This time it was a crockpot roast with carrots, onion and celery, and mashed potatoes and gravy etc. It was delicious!!

We had slow cookers going all day while we were in Berea. 

The table set for dinner!

They gave me this cute little menu flower holder (that I still use!!) as a thank-you for planning the trip.

YUM.

The first night we ate Barbara's dinner at the main house. If you've gone back to read either of my other posts about Snug Hollow you know the food is amazing. I didn't get pictures of dinner the first night but you can bet it was delicious. Here was breakfast!

I'm suddenly starving.

After breakfast on our main day of exploring we took all our same combinations of mothers and daughters and grandma and granddaughters and sisters and cousins pictures that we did on the last trip. In our matching shirts of course!!

Mom and daughters

Grandma and Granddaughters

Sisters

Cousins! 

What a good lookin' family!!

This was a very relaxing weekend with some very wonderful women! Now, we just need to get the timing right for the next one so all the women who have married into our crazy family, and all the other women cousins, can FINALLY join us too.

And, I have an idea for a small excursion/activity we could do this spring/early summer. Not a trip, but just a fun afternoon or evening together. I'll keep you all posted. :)

P.S. Just thought I'd throw out there again that you are welcome to shower me with gifts for only picking flattering photos of all of us to post. :) 

Breakfast Smoothies aka Green Monsters

So now that I'm working out (more to come on that later) I've started making smoothie/protein shakes again. These are so much better than the ones I came up with a few years ago. And probably healthier too. I thought I'd share in case any of you were looking for a healthy breakfast alternative or snack. Though honestly, I have so many calories in this thing it's probably only suitable for breakfast now. 

Yep, it's green.

I do realize that this probably looks completely unappetizing.

You've gotta trust me on this one!

Breakfast Smoothie
1/2 cup (or so) of plain 0% fat greek yogurt
1/4 cup (or so) of 1% milk (soon to be replaced by kefir)
1 scoop vanilla whey protein powder (I get Whole Foods' generic 365 brand)
Couple TBS of flax seeds (will soon be replaced with GROUND flaxseed. So much easier to deal with)
Large handful of spinach (that's why it's green!)
1 banana
1 cup blueberries
6 ice cubes


I mix the first 5 ingredients together first to make sure all the spinach is really blended well. You definitely don't want to be eating a salad in the middle of your smoothie. And honestly--YOU CAN'T TASTE ANY SPINACH. But you're getting the health benefits of at least a whole serving (perhaps more...I use a lot) such as lots of iron! 

Plus, Finny loves that he gets his favorite treat almost every day now!
He's a weird one.....

Greek yogurt has a TON of protein in it. One cup has about 45% of your daily needs. I can't bring myself to eat it out of the container plain (it's sour and thick and I can't help thinking I'm eating bad cottage cheese...). But this is a great way to incorporate it. 


I also add the protein powder at this stage with the liquids because I've realized that when you don't make it wet, it is puffed up in a cloud all over the sides of your blender and you're standing there wondering what the point of putting it in at all was! 


The blueberries at Whole Foods right now are some of the best I've ever had. And you're getting a ton of antioxidants through them. You could also add some strawberries in there, but I consider them more "dessert fruits" and don't really want the extra sugar. I have some peaches ripening right now and I'm thinking a banana, blueberry, peach smoothie sounds pretty much amazing. 


The cool thing about this smoothie is you're getting 3-4 servings of different fruits and veggies in one meal!! It's easy to consume--you can drink it while you're getting ready in the morning/walking around/on the way to work, etc. And you'll absolutely stay full for several hours.


I mentioned Kefir in the ingredients list. It's something quite interesting that I've learned about recently thanks to the wisdom of Mother Earth News. This article is REALLY interesting. If nothing else read the first page and I guarantee you'll want to continue on. I've thought about getting the bacterial culture to make it myself (you just add the culture to regular milk and it "processes" it for you..) but I discovered you can buy it at Whole Foods (of course you can). So I think I might get some there soon to see if I can stomach it. It's supposed to have a somewhat sour taste and I'm afraid, and probably rightly so, that it's going to be like drinking greek yogurt. So into the smoothie it will go, to be disguised by the wonderful fruits and veggies!!


Any suggestions to make this even better/healthier?

On Tour with Blue Stars (aka where we were all summer)

This post has been long overdue. I explained awhile ago in some detail what drum corps is and about the Blue Stars in general. If you missed that one check this out to get some background info. 

Clear as mud now? Excellent. 

So I ended up spending about 20 days on tour!!!! There was one point where I had been away 16 out of 20 days in June-early July. And here's the thing--some people (like our lovely admin staff and head cook) didn't take ANY days off this summer. I cannot imagine. 

So here's a crash course on what it's like to be on tour. It's exhausting. Emotionally draining. Hard, hard work. Fun. Rewarding. Life-changing. The people you meet and friends you make and sense of satisfaction you have from knowing you helped the corps get down the road and these kids' summers become a success is irreplaceable. I'll be the first to admit it was hard to get back to the corps for finals week. I had been settled in at home for about a month and I was not as eager as before to get back to work. But it ended up being a great end to the season. 

First, the summer went SO FAST. I thought our anniversary was yesterday, and now it's the middle of August. (Side note, I'll share the hilarious story of how we spent our anniversary in a separate post.)

So, I spent my time working on the food truck. Here it is, in all its glory: 

It's in the back of a semi!!!

One side has doors that open. Screens on the top. Shelves on the bottom so we can slide food out to servers at a normal height and don't have to carry all the food around the truck. 

And the inside! It's pretty creative how these things are constructed. There would be 4-6 of us working on here at a time. You get to know your cook crew very well--mostly because you're standing within 2 feet of them for 12 hours. And when you're not standing next to them you're bumping into them and rubbing up against them to get to another part of the truck! 

One side is 3 huge stainless steel sinks and cabinets above that hold all the spices, vegetarian special food and gluten-free food. 

The other side is a long stainless steel counter that we chop on. Here we were making broccoli that was steamed and mixed with sauteed shallots, garlic, lemon juice and basil. Delicious!

There is also: 

An 8-burner gas stove (the oven under it is broken but technically there) and a huge convection oven (My best friend. That thing is killer!!)

We have a "regular" fridge, industrial fridge and industrial freezer (industrials seen on left and right below):

Dry storage is in the back. 

More dry storage and a washer and dryer on the other end of the truck.

Being the Blue Star Diner and all, we had lots of blue stars to decorate!

And there you have it! 4-6 of us cranked out 4 meals a day for 200 people and did a damn good job of it. It was just amazing cooking with so many hard workers and our fearless leader Bob. I'll have to do a separate post about how one actually LIVES while on tour. It's an experience! 


Go here for part 2.

Kitchen Gadgets I NEED

Sometimes when I'm cooking (which is often) I realize that if I had X, Y or Z my life would be a lot easier and preparing meals would go a lot more quickly. So here is a list of gadgets I'm on the lookout for, aka "a list of things I should have registered for when we got married."

Immersion Blender
My friend Katie has one of these things and loves it. And I never knew what it was till her blog post about losing it in the move and needing a new one, etc. Now it seems like something that would just be so useful! The nifty thing about these guys is that they allow you to blend (and chop, which hand mixers do not) right in the container food is being prepared in. You don't have to put things in a specific container to chop or mix. You can put it right in a pan on the stove! 

Here's a link to KitchenAid's version. It's of course fancy. 

Food Mill
So far, the only time I've wanted one of these is when making applesauce. And I'm not sure what else you really would use it for. It separates seeds, stems, skins, larger chunks etc. All the bits that you don't want from a food product that you're taking from whole to pureed or mashed. I suppose once I have a gas stove again and am able to start canning I'll be using this to make tomato sauce (not pasta sauce, the base for pasta sauce) and tomato paste, etc. 

A pretty version from Williams-Sonoma.

Juicer
Now that we're eating healthier this seems like something that would be handy to have around. I don't know if I would really start drinking glasses of pureed vegetables. But one of my favorite things about our honeymoon in Mexico was the watermelon water. It was SO GOOD. And I'm fairly confident I could make it with this! Or at least juice some limes to make tasty margaritas. I suppose that's reason enough in itself! 

Pretty!

So, what fancy things do you know of that I need to add to my list? 


P.S. Up tomorrow-- a recap of my amazing weekend in Indy!!! So relaxing. Wonderful time. 

Homemade Waffles

My brother's girlfriend, Steph, got me a breakfast/brunch cookbook a couple years ago, and I sat down to flip through it again earlier this week. We've been making pancakes and omelettes for dinner a lot lately and I was looking for some new recipes. I have always loved waffles (and prefer them to pancakes) but I don't think I've ever made them from scratch (Bisquick does not count as homemade. So sorry.). 

MMMmmmmmm........

Here's the sad part of this story: I think I may have reached my butter limit. I know, I just let you know how it's my favorite thing, and put an ungodly amount of it in the butter cookies I made last week. But tonight was a little extreme. And in my defense, I think it's partly the cookbook's fault. It practically MADE me use all that butter. Here is what the beginning of the recipe said: 

"We give you three choices to prepare this recipe: 

4 tablespoons butter for a reduced-fat waffle; 

8 tablespoons for a classic light and fluffy waffle; 

or 16 tablespoons for the crunchiest, most delicious

waffle imaginable." 

Are you kidding me? Of course I wanted to eat the crunchiest, most delicious waffle imaginable. So I put 16 tablespoons, which translates into TWO WHOLE STICKS, into the batter. And there was so much butter it was MELTING OUT OF THE BATTER once it hit the waffle iron, if that's even possible. So for 20 minutes while I cooked these things, I watched butter crackle and pop and seep out the sides of the waffle iron. No actual BATTER ran out--just pure BUTTER. I've never seen anything like it. And, of course I put more butter on top of my heavenly waffles to eat them. And after enjoying two, and looking at all the coagulating butter on the stove and seepage through paper towels I hurried to lay down after I realized what was happening...it was a unanimous decision at the Fischer Coalition HQ that from now on we'll go for a "classic light and fluffy waffle" instead. Or maybe something in between, like 10 TBS.

Waffles apparently freeze well, so I wrapped them up and put them in the freezer like the recipe suggested. This morning, we put them in the toaster oven for a few minutes, and they were quite possibly even more delicious than the first time around!! Brian is calling them Meggos. :)  

Homemade Applesauce

I've noticed that all the blogs I follow take the weekends off (probably because it's their "real" job, and this is clearly [unfortunately] not mine...) and I tend to ramp up the writing on the weekends. Anyways, I had 8 old apples sitting on the counter and considered throwing them out yesterday. Instead, I put them in the "ingredients" section on allrecipes.com to see what might come up (I was feeling in the mood for some kind of apple tart...) and APPLESAUCE came up. Brilliant! Make semi-mushy apples mushier and nobody will know how old they are! 


My lovely friend Katie who has a very funny cooking blog did this applesauce recipe last year, and I wish I would have remembered it in time! (Or at least the part about putting the peels in the oven sprinkled with brown sugar for crispy apple-chip type snacks before I pitched all my peels.) 


I'm thrilled to add applesauce to the list of things I'm never buying from the store again. That list is slowly getting longer! (In that blog post she talks about making her own ketchup...which I'm definitely now researching too). So, this applesauce is pretty spectacular. It ended up tasting a lot like apple pie filling! 

I kept wishing those were chunks of butter. 

So I looked up a bunch of recipes for this and then just kind of winged it. Here's measurements I used for sure. With the other ingredients you're on your own! Taste as you go--it's the way the real cooks do it. ;-) 


Homemade Applesauce
8 apples (I had golden delicious, fuji and some other reds on hand and used them all)
1 cup water
1/2 cup white sugar (will probably use less next time, and will probably try to substitute some maple   syrup and/or honey for some of that processed stuff too! see Katie's recipe)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp lemon juice (it just seemed like the right thing to do)
2 TBS butter (we got fancy butter from Jungle Jim's. Ingredients? Cream. Salt. Amazing)


I added in cinnamon (maybe 1-2 tsps? Little seems to go kind of a long way depending on how much of that flavor you like) and sprinkled some apple pie spice in there too. I also added light brown sugar (maybe 2-3 TBS, not too much). When all that stuff was added I turned the stove on med-med high and covered the 3-quart pot. 


After a little bit it started boiling so I reduced it to medium heat. About 20-25 minutes later the apples were soft enough to mush with my spatula spoon. 

Looks watery but it thickens when you stir it and let it sit.

I took a big fork and mashed it all up. Some big chunks of apple are still in there and I'm okay with that. 

Yes, please.

A quick note on the butter I added--It made this a very rich, more dessert-like applesauce. If you're looking for something a bit more like the store stuff, leaving out the butter is probably a good idea. But since I never miss an opportunity to use butter, it's staying in in the future! 


My first task for this tasty treat was to put it on some vanilla ice cream for dessert! 

All is right with the universe.

My future plans for the applesauce include mixing it with oatmeal for breakfast, and using it as a side with pork chops and sauerkraut for dinner tomorrow night (there will also be mashed potatoes and possibly a veggie, in case you were wondering). Happy eating!