Recipe Friday: Baked Vegetable Rice

I blogged this recipe in July 2011, but after I made if for dinner last night and watched Vince eat all of his, then scavenge what was left off of everyone else's plate I thought it was worth a repost.  I've taken it quite a few times to pot lucks and it generally goes over really well.  It's a great way to get rice and lentils as well as veggies and even greens--a great all in one meal.  Vince agrees.

Suddenly My Mums Don't Seem So Cool

My mom sent me this link yesterday.  I'm always blogging about my gardening, but this is AMAZING!    The link I'm posting is to her blog, but if you scroll down you can check out the pictures.  They're from The Montreal Mosiaculture Exhibition.  They're sculptures made out of plants.  Some of them are 20 feet tall!  All of them are amazing!

Green Halloween

I've blogged about this before, but since it's seasonal, I thought I'd mention it again.  It's the Green Halloween movement.  As you might think from the name, it's a movement to green the Halloween holiday.  From their website, here are some of their ideas to green your Halloween:

25 Green Halloween tips

Halloween is meant to be enjoyed, but somewhere in between ―planning‖ and ―cleanup,‖ many parents find themselves feeling overwhelmed. It might seem that attempting to consider the Earth while planning a great ghoulish party is just too much work and way too expensive. Some fear it might even zap the fun right out of the day. But creating an eco-savvy Halloween doesn‘t have to be scary, nor does it have to cost an arm and a leg when you follow these pointers:

Kicking Up Leaves

As we were taking our nightly family walk--now complete with a lighted leash, 3 kids with headlamps and a glowing flashlight--I could hear the "crunch, crunch" of the leaves.  I turned to my left and little Ellie is scuffing along-kicking up leaves.  Then it was in my head.  So I'll share it with you, so that the next time you're outside and hear the "crunch, crunch" you can enjoy it too.

Home Is...

Home.  It's not a place.  It's a thing.  I'm finally beginning to realize that.  We've been looking at houses recently.  Our current house is a little too small.  It only has 3 bedrooms and we have 6 people.  We love to have family to our house, but we don't have a dining room to entertain.  Our play room is seeping into the family room.  You saw the basement pictures last week.  We're starting to outgrow this house. So we were looking at new houses.  Some had more bedrooms, some had more bathrooms, some had more living space, some had LESS living space.  I tried to picture our family living in each of these houses, but not a single one was HOME.  Home is something you can't really BUY.  I can buy another house.  A bigger house.  A better house.  But I can't buy another HOME.

Recipe Friday: HoneyCrisp Apples

I blogged about these guys before, but I just wanted to remind you about Honey Crisp apples.  They are THE BEST!  So sweet, great texture we love them!  I could give you ways to cook them, but they're so good just alone that I didn't want to do that.  So I'm going to do a variation of my favorite magazine, Vegetarian Times, monthly feature One Food Five Ways and give you five ways to enjoy this awesome fall treat.

My Inner Harvest--AKA LIST MAKING!!!!

OK, I'm almost done with the Celebrating Fall list.  Exciting and sad at the same time.  I DO love to cross things off of a list... So, 1-4 are done and 6-10 are done.  That leaves #5 Make A List Of Your Inner Harvest and #11 Honor Your Ancestors.  So today, I'm going to make a list of my inner harvest-a cheesy way to say list your achievements and experiences from the past year.  The goal is to help you appreciate and restore gratitude for what you have and what you've done.  This is hard for me.  I don't focus on the positive well.  If you asked for a list of how I needed to improve, I keep that in my back pocket.  But a list of things I've done well--I don't really think about that too much.  So I guess this is a good exercise for me.  I'd like to come up with 10, but I think 5 is a little more realistic.  SO, here's my list of 5 things I did well in the past year.