Recipe Friday: 3 Bean Chili

You may not know this, but Tuesday is a very special holiday.  Tuesday is October First and it is the OFFICIAL start of the Halloween season.  On October first you may begin putting up your Halloween decorations and wearing your Halloween clothes (if you have decorations up, you need to get them down ASAP and if you don't have a Halloween outfit you need to really get on that this weekend.)  This is the legacy my mother has left me.  We used to be the only Halloween crazies when I grew up, but now everyone is catching on to the fact that Halloween is The Best.  If there's one dish that says Halloween to me, it's chili.  This is because my mom always made chili when we went trick or treating.  My grandparents would come over.  My grandpa and my step-dad would sit in the driveway and pass out candy to the 100+ kids that came over.  My mom and my grandma would be inside doing "mom stuff" and we would go trick or treating.  When we came home we would always have a warm bowl of chili waiting for us.  So, in continuing with the tradition, every October first I make chili.  Now that I don't eat meat it's become a little more of a challenge, but I found this recipe from Dr. Sears and it's pretty good!  It's not mom's but some traditions can use a little tweaking.

Quick Post: Finger Foods

I'm having a hectic day today so just a quick thought for today.  I read at wholesomebabyfood.com that you could coat finger foods that are a "gross" texture (bananas, peaches, plums, etc) with wheat germ.  I did this for Olivia and it was AWESOME!  Not only is it much cleaner (easier for them to pick up and less dropping and smashing) but it's also a bonus serving of whole grains!  I LOVE this!  I tried it myself to see how it changed the taste of the food and

Get Into the Garden

Garden of weeden

As I continue on my path of fall celebration I'm tackling #10 Get Into Your Garden.  Sunday is typically my gardening day.  I weed, harvest and freeze any tomatoes or green beans that we're not going to be able to eat right away.  This past Sunday I ripped out a lot from the garden that's done producing leaving not a whole lot left except an eggplant plant, a few pepper plants, a fading tomato plant that still had a few green guys on it and of course, the kale.  My raised bed is a hot mess with weeds and dead plants.  I'm going to work on tilling it under and working in some compost.  I'm planning to pretty much just leave my other garden and have Evan put some mulched leaves on it when he starts mowing them.  I'm also going to make mental notes (actually I'll probably make another blog on that) about what I want to plant again next year and what I want to forget about.  Right now I can say I'm done with the watermelon and cantaloupe.  Two years of baseball sized
watermelons tells me

Celebrating Fall

Yesterday I found 11 ways to celebrate fall and decided to try to do as many as I can to fully enjoy and appreciate my favorite season.  So, today,  while doing #8 on the list (Seek to improve your health) on the elliptical at the Y while Vince is at swimming,  I decided to work on #7 Contemplate.  I'm supposed to think about the ways I've neglected my inner growth over the past year and how to fix it.  I feel like I really HAVE neglected my inner growth over the year, especially this summer.  I felt like this summer I was  constantly in survival mode with all the kids home and getting Jack.  Now that the kids are back in school and Vince has started preschool and is back at his Y activities,

OFFICIALLY Officially Fall

Welcome Fall!  The kids are back in school.  The weather is turning colder.  We went to Yankee Peddler.  Pumpkin Spice Late is back at Starbucks.  All of these things mean that it's fall, but it's not OFFICIALLY fall until the Autumnal Equinox.  For those of you that don't know, the Autumnal Equinox is the day in the earth's revolution when my mother and her "friends" dress in black hats and dance around a fire in the forest. Also when the sun is in line with the Earth's equator and the days and nights are equal in length.  

If you noticed, a few nights ago we had a beautiful full moon.  It was the Harvest Moon, so named because, "Before artificial lighting, farmers took advantage of the full moon's light to harvest their crops. In late summer and early autumn, many crops ripen all at once, making lots of work for farmers who had to stay in the fields after sundown to harvest all the goods. Such moonlight became essential to their harvest, and the Harvest Moon emerged, according to NASA."

I've said before, I love autumn.  I'm not sure what it is about the cooler weather and the changing leaves, but it's easily my favorite season.  Evan loves it too, but for different reasons.  (Football).  I love Halloween, of course, but just the whole fall season, hearty soups and stews, winter squash dishes, baked breads and warm cider (cold cider too for that matter!) makes me was to celebrate fall, simply just as a season.  

Recipe Friday: Baked Ziti

Evan's not a huge fan of meatless dishes.  Even spaghetti he thinks should have meatballs or meat sauce.  He's also not a huge fan of things that are home-made and "should" be store bought (bread, tomato sauce, NATURAL PEANUT BUTTER).  So when he sampled this dish right out of the oven and exclaimed, "It's GOOD!", tasted more, and said, "No, it's really good!"  I knew I had to share this recipe.

Bonus recipe: ricotta veggie dip

I had two great recipes that I tried this week and I wanted to share them both.  They're both from the Weelicious book-- can you guess what I used for menu planning this week?  Today I'll give you the snack and tomorrow the entree.  This dip was SUPER good.  We used pita chips but you could use veggies as well.  Vince was a huge fan!