Beautiful weekend

This past weekend the weather was amazingly warm. It actually got up to 70 degrees! We played outside for awhile on Saturday. Paige loves the swing and the slide in our backyard. Justin did some carpentry work to fix the ladder rungs going up to the slide.

With daylight savings time on Sunday, yesterday was a bit of a struggle getting Paige awake in the morning. Well, I think it was tough on all of us. With Justin off for spring break last week and I in Boston, we had both been sleeping in later than our normal schedule. Paige is starting to get another cold, so she had been up coughing a fair bit over night. So I let her sleep in some instead of forcing the time change on her. She also has been skipping naps lately, so the more sleep she can get at night, the better.

For dinner last night, we made these Pop Up Pancakes. They were super easy to make, and just took a few minutes longer to cook than regular pancakes would. I topped them with Strawberries, powdered sugar and syrup. Paige loved them!

Tomato Fairy

On Wednesday, Justin called and told me that he was bringing home some tomatoes and potatoes from a coworker's garden. Here's what he brought:

That same afternoon, when I left the house to go pick up Paige from daycare, these were mysteriously sitting on our deck steps:
The next day (Thursday) I again left in the afternoon to go pick up Paige from daycare and AGAIN, we had more tomatoes sitting on our deck!
When I got back to the house with Paige, we played outside on the deck for a bit and the neighbor across the street called out to us and revealed her identity! She was the mysterious tomato fairy. Thank goodness she told me they were from her garden. I was wondering if I should leave a thank you note on our porch since we didn't know which neighbor it was!

Anyone have any good recipes for a tomato sauce? I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of these! But I'm very grateful, we LOVE tomatoes. Even Paige loves the cherry ones, which we still have a carton from last weeks farmer's market.

Sloppy Joe Pie

I love trying out new recipes, especially simple ones like these. I threw this together last night. It was very quick and easy to make and very yummy. It's only six ingredients: Beef, Onion, BBQ sauce Biscuits, Corn & cheese.

Check out the full recipe here:
Equilibrium blog

If only Paige would've eaten some. She did surprise us the other night and ate most of a turkey cheeseburger! She's getting a little better with trying new foods. The trick is to just put a little bit of food on her plate, and only one thing at a time. I think she gets overwhelmed if there's too much variety to pick from. Last night she wasn't very hungry at all. She had a few bites of corn and a banana for dinner. She must've ate well at daycare during the day.

Cous Cous Tacos

We tried new dishes tonight, both for Paige and for us.

Paige had a mixture of cous cous and rice milk. She devoured it. Paige's friend Anabelle has this all the time, though her mom usually adds in some cranberries and honey. We may try it with Craisins or Raisins next time.

We had Cous Cous tacos--ground turkey, cous cous, salsa, flour tortillas from a tortilleria near Mom's work, and our new discovery, do-it-yourself taco seasoning. It's fabulous--much less salty than the typical taco seasoning pouches you buy at the store, and more flavor. Here's the recipe:

* 1 tablespoon chili powder
* 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
* 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
* 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
* 1/2 teaspoon paprika
* 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
* 1 teaspoon sea salt
* 1 teaspoon black pepper

We found that throwing about 3/4 to 4/5 of this recipe in with a pound of ground turkey plus ~3/4 cup water worked really well. You could use all of it if you wanted tacos with a bit of heat, but these are still pretty mild. We also substituted ~1/8 cup of chopped onions for the onion powder and cooked them up with the meat, and used kosher salt instead of sea salt.