Sunshine Plushie

I was looking around the house yesterday and noticing how it is being overrun with Echo's toys already. It's so hard not to spoil them! I want to buy her everything in the world! What to do when you just want to keep buying cute stuff for your baby? Make it instead!

I found this wonderful tutorial from Chez Beeper Bebe (via pinterest) and decided it would be my next sewing project. I highly recommend this for beginning sewers. So easy to make and so cute! Plus my baby loves it!

I used an old tshirt for the body fabric and was able to use scraps of ribben for the sun burst so I didn't even have to buy any material.

I'm terrible at embroidery but Echo doesn't care ;-)

Echo loves to put the ribbons in her mouth

Holding it up and looking at it judiciously 

So far it seems to be a hit! I may be making these for baby shower presents in the near future :-)

Try Something New Tuesday- Borscht

When I started my maternity leave in the last month of my pregnancy I tried to do a lot of fun things  that I might not have the chance to do after the baby was born. I hung out with my parents a lot and went shopping and to my favorite restaurants. We were having such fun that we started nick-naming the days. Fun Friday, Magical Monday, Thrilling Thursday and so and so on. Well it's something I got in the habit of and now I always try to come up with descriptive names for each of the days of the week.

Today I felt like trying something new so I dubbed this Tuesday "Try something new Tuesday"! You see I had these beets to use up and was trying to figure out what to do with them and my brother suggested I make Borscht, a traditional Russian stew he had enjoyed back when he studied Russian in his undergrad. Why did I have beets you ask? Well I had been toying with the idea of joining a CSA as a way to support local farms and eat more fresh vegetables  However after looking in to the programs that were available I decided to just hit the farmers market every week and spend my $20 (which is slightly less than I would have spent on a CSA) there. This way I can still support local farms but I get to pick and choose what I want. I still want to challenge myself to try new things though so i picked up some beets this weekend.

Yummy fresh beets

I found a great looking recipe on Natasha's Cooking, a blog specializing in Russian and Ukrainian cooking and away I went.

Such a beautiful color!

 Poor beets, they are up there among the worlds most hated vegetables along with brussel sprouts and lima beans (I like both of those too for the record). I found that the borscht had a wonderful sweet and earthy flavor. Of course I had to throw in a touch of cayenne pepper because I feel that no meal is complete without a little heat. Eric seemed skeptical when I told him I was making borscht so we'll have to see what he thinks but I declare it a success! Maybe I will have to try new things on Tuesdays more often.

The Best Job In The World

Echo is going through what's known as a 4 month sleep regression or wakeful period lately. That means that my formerly perfect sleeper is waking up every 2 hours all night long and I am getting no rest. We went to the pediatrician last week and Echo is growing and maturing beautifully. The doctor was very impressed by how well she could stand (with our support) and that she could pass a toy from one hand to the other. Basically this no sleeping thing just has to be ridden out, ugh! Coffee is my best friend these days and an absolute necessity. I'm a zombie a lot of the time and I'm grumpy and snapping at everyone around me, very fun for Eric I'm sure ;-)

The good news?  Just look at that face! I keep telling people that she is sleeping like she did as a newborn but it is infinitely better because she interacts with me. When I lug myself in to her room for the 5th time in the middle of the night, totally exhausted, I can't help but giggle in delight as her perfect little face lights up when she sees me. Getting that all important smile is worth all the sleepless nights in the world.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, being a mom is tough! Am I exhausted? Yes. Is it frustrating? Yes. Does it demand every second of my time? Pretty much. I still have nap time to work my own projects, clean the house and cook dinner but much of my day is devoted to my little one's amusement. Is it worth it? Absolutely, without question yes. I love her like I've never loved anything in my life.

New and expectant moms take heart. Raising a baby is the best experience of your life and the most important thing you'll ever do.

Here's to my darling girl at 4 months. Being your mom is the best job in the whole world and I wouldn't trade a second of it!

Making The Most Of Your Apple Peels

Part of the frugal lifestyle we are trying for envolves not wasting things and making the most of our food items. To me this is the fun part, it lets me get creative with my cooking. We were making quite a few apple crisps this Fall and found ourselves wondering what we could do with the peels.

One thing we use the apple peels for is to chop them up small, freeze them and add a few to our oatmeal for breakfast. This is great but we had too many apple peels to use in this way. This week I tried making an apple glaze with them and it turned out great! Here is the recipe I came up with for it.

Ingredients
leftover apple peels and cores
water
2 tbs brown sugar

Put peels and cores in a saucepan and cover with water. Boil for about 30 minutes and the strain out peels and cores leaving apple infused water. Boil until the mixture has reduced by half or until you get it the consistency you want.  Add brown sugar and stir to dissolve.

Finished apple glaze

This would probably be great on a dessert but we used it to cook pork chops in. Pork and apples just go together and are a natural pairing.

The above is not a great picture (especially since I forgot to take the picture until after I'd started eating it!) but it shows how we incorporated the glaze in to a meal. These are apple glazed pork chops with salt and vinegar broiled potatoes and cabbage and onion sauteed in butter. Yummy! 

Honey Wheat Sandwich Bread

Continuing my bread baking kick is a fabulous honey wheat sandwich bread.

It's another o knead bread which I love but it does require more yeast that my other no knead varieties because it has a shorter rise time. This is a nice one if you don't want to wait 12 to 18 hours for your bread. It also has a great, slightly sweet flavor and is cooked in a loaf pan so it's perfect for sandwiches. This recipe makes two loafs.

Ingredients
3 cups warm water
4 1/2 tsp dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup oat flour
2 cups white flour
2 tsp salt

Directions
Grease loaf pans and set aside. Combine water, yeast and honey and stir until yeast is disolved. In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix thoroughly. Divide in to loaf pans and loosely cover, let stand in a warm spot for 20 minutes, dough will rise slightly. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Turn out of pan and cool on a rack.

This bread is fantastic hot out of the over with lots of butter, yum!

Sriracha Hummus

For his Birthday Eric got a Sriracha cookbook and much like many of our cookbooks it has been sorely neglected. Well yesterday I had some chick peas to use up so I decided to whip up some Sriracha hummus.

Check out my awesome food styling skills, it has a touch of parsley and everything ;-)

This is my second attempt at homemade hummus and it turn out a thousand times better than the first. When will I learn that spicy makes everything better? Here is the recipe I used. Me being me I couldn't help but tamper with it a bit so it differs slightly from the original.

Ingredients
2 cups cooked chick peas
1/4 cup tahini
2 tbs olive oil
4 cloves garlic
2 tbs Sriracha plus more for garnish
1 tsp salt
1/2 tbs cumin
1/2 cup water

The recipe couldn't be easier. I just put everything in a bowl and blended with my emersion blender until it was smooth. The original recipe didn't call for water but I felt like it was thicker than I wanted it to be so I kept adding until I got the consistency that I wanted. I ate it on tortilla chips because I was too lazy to make home made pita this time. It was so good! I will never make plain old boring hummus again!

Home Made Stock

It may come as a shock to all my foodie friends that I've never made my own chicken stock before. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it myself but having an aversion to meat with bones in it I have always avoided home made stock in the past. I know, I'm a wimp. I like to pretend that my meat was never alive to begin with.

Well in the name of better health and saving money I finally bit the bullet at made my own chicken stock last weekend. I started by using a whole chicken since that's what I could easily get to Publix and we happened to be there anyway but in the future I may try using different chicken parts and see what happens. The upside of using a whole chicken is that I was able to use the leftover meat to make some yummy chicken salad :-)

My new 5 quart stock pot

whole chicken, yum...

simmering with all the flavorings

After simmering for about 2 hours

Stock divided in to containers and ready to freeze

 I studied a number of different recipes and came to the conclusion that I could pretty much put whatever I wanted in my stock. I used parsley, thyme, bay leaves, lemon peel, carrots, celery, peppercorns, onions, garlic and enough water to cover everything. I also added salt at the end.

I made soup with my homemade stock just yesterday and it was delicious! I can't believe how yummy and cost effective it is. I will definitely make it again and experiment with different chicken parts. This is a project that's well worth the effort, plus it makes the house smell amazing!