mini pizza chef

Yesterday, Katelyn got to be pizza chef for the day.

A friend from our church set up a Moms and Tots outing at everyone's favorite local pizza place, Pepperoni's.

The kids donned little red chef's hats and aprons and they got to tour the kitchen in groups of six.

In the kitchen, there was a station with pizza dough, marinara sauce, cheese, and plenty of pepperoni.  Kate was so excited about being, as she called it, "the pizza cooker."

She got to see where the pizza she eats almost every week (thanks to Dee Dee) gets cooked.

Then she sat at a table with some of her friends from church and enjoyed a delicious pizza party!

Sam and I shared our usual Pepperoni's lunch of Caesar salad and pesto and mushroom pizza.

thanksgiving leftovers: cajun style

I was lucky enough to have someone offer to cook Thanksgiving dinner.  (Thanks Grandma!)  I was also lucky enough to go home with the turkey bones for soup as well copious amounts of delicious leftover turkey.

On Saturday I cooked all day long making a Cajun seasoned turkey and bean soup.  Well, if I'm going to be honest, the crock pot was the one that really cooked all day long.  It was enough soup to feed us all weekend and we're polishing off the last of it for dinner tonight.

And look what I found!  A giant turkey wishbone!

I told Kate that we'd both make a wish and see who got the bigger end of the wishbone.  Lucky her, she was the winner.  That's okay though because my wish was that hers would come true.

And of course, the big bean fan himself, Sir Sam, was also a fan of the soup. 

kate the baker

Last Friday night Kate and I were watching YouTube videos of cake decorating.  First we watched one woman painstakingly color little bits of cookie dough and form them into a cookie log that revealed a rainbow heart when cut.  Next, we watched a video of two sisters baking one of those weird Barbie doll dome cakes only it was Anna and Elsa instead of Barbie.

Kate turned to me, grabbed my face, and said, "I want to make that."

Now, I'm no baker so I'm not sure why I said yes but I did and it was promised so I had to at least bake a cake with her.

Then she pointed to one of the sisters intricately piping little blue snowflakes on Elsa's dress and said, "I want one of those."  For good measure, she mimed what she wanted so I would really be sure what she was talking about.

"You want a piping bag?" I asked.

"Yes."

So the next day I did the best I could to recreate the promised cake baking with a piping bag scenario.  Which is to say that I took a box of store bought cake mix and can of frosting from my mom's house.  Only, I accidentally grabbed a box of cookie dough mix so we made a big giant cookie cake instead.  Also, instead of a piping bag, I spooned the frosting into a plastic baggie and cut one of the corners off.

But Kate had no idea that any shortcuts were taken.  She thought our cake decorating session was nothing short of magical.

never go grocery shopping when your toddler is hungry

Of the list of errands a stay at home mom is confronted with, buying groceries is by far one of my favorites.  It's pretty easy and I've kind of always enjoyed wandering around the grocery store.  Katelyn loves it because she gets to eat a free cookie while riding shotgun in the race car cart.

This afternoon though, I guess the cookie just wasn't cutting it.  Somewhere along the freezer aisle, between the sweet potato fries and the frozen pizzas, I noticed a trail of little pieces of cardboard littered all over the floor.  They looked familiar, I thought, and then I remembered that only an aisle over, Katelyn had climbed out of her race car, walked over to the frozen dinners, opened the door of the freezer, and pulled out a 65 cent chicken pot pie.  I told her she could have it for dinner tonight, meaning that we would pay for it, take it home, and cook it in the oven.  She insisted on holding it so I let her take it with her back into the plastic car attached to the front of the cart.

Then I realized that my child was eating a completely frozen chicken pot pie in the middle of the freezer aisle at Krogers.

And I tried not to laugh.  I really did.  I made a truly valiant effort to reprimand the two year old with a mouth full of frozen pasty in my best stern and motherly voice.

At the checkout, the cashier took one look at the mangled pot pie box and said, "Ummmmm...  Do you want this?  Someone opened it."  To which I replied, "Yes.  My daughter took a bite out of it."  We had a good laugh.

One of Katelyn's most favorite things about grocery shopping is helping us put the groceries away when we get home.  I hand her the items from off of the counter and she dutifully carries them to Dave who tells her whether they go in the pantry or the fridge.  It has turned what was once a five minute simple procedure into a half hour process that results in another fifteen minutes of me trying to reorganize the food she has thrown into my pantry.

It is double the effort but it is also double the fun.

One little quirk about Kate and her willingness to help with the groceries is that she likes to take a bite out of everything she puts away.  Most of our groceries end up looking like this...

...or this.

Oh well.  Sometimes I wonder if years from now I will be wishing that I could trade the petulant complaining about chores for a few toddler bite marks in my food.

the lazy chef

It should come as no surprise that my first weekly goal in the Year of Megan is to work on losing weight.  I mean, I've been "working" on it for what has seemed like an eternity now.

One of the biggest obstacles I think is standing in my way (besides myself - get it? lolol) has been this feeling of frustration with dieting in general.

Stay with me for a moment.  I know that sounds obvious.

I have been struggling with my weight since the fifth grade and probably before that.  Eleven is kind of the age that sticks out in my mind.  Maybe I really had chunked up or perhaps I was just becoming more self aware.

In any event, that means that I have been trying to diet, lose weight, watch what I eat, whatever-you-want-to-call-it for nearly two decades now.  Because of that, I know a lot about dieting.  Like seriously, I'm somewhat of a dieting expert.

First I tried cutting out sugar.  Next, I started counting calories.  In high school, I joined Weight Watchers.  And then again in college.  And then again before I got pregnant with Katelyn.  And then again after she was born.  (There should be some sort of Frequent Fatty discount for people like me.)  During my teenage years I tried the Atkins Diet for a while.  Then I read The South Beach Diet and totally revised my method of thinking on weight loss.  I drank Slimfast by the gallon my freshman year at BYU (not all at once, of course - that would defeat the purpose)  Once I tried eating only Lean Cuisines.  It was expensive and gross.  For a while, I went on Nutrisystem and had all of my food delivered to my house in a giant cardboard box.  It was more expensive and more gross.  I tried counting and measuring everything I have eaten.  I downloaded a handy little calorie counting app on my phone that I never once opened (because nobody wants to record the calories that came from eating an entire container of Blue Bell ice cream).  I've just about tried it all.

I guess there are two points I am trying to make here.

One is that I am not fat for a lack of trying.

The second is that I am burned out of everything.

And here's the kicker.  They all work.  They really do.  Every single one of those diets I've just described is pretty much effective.  Here's the key though.  You have stick to it.  Which I'll admit I haven't done.  I'm not trying to give myself and easy out and be all like, "Yeah, I just can't lose any weight because no diet will work for me.  So..."  I'd venture to say that EVERY diet will work for me if I could just stick to it.

Why can't I stick to it?

Well, that's a post for another day.

Anyway, this time around I'm trying the lazy poor person diet.  What's that, you ask?  Well, I invented it.  The lazy poor person diet is when you are too lazy to cook nutritious meals for yourself during the week but you are too poor to buy prepackaged diet foods.  I will admit that it takes some effort but not much.

Yesterday I spent about a half an hour planning my meals for the week.  I wrote everything down.  (!!! I love making lists!!!  Your mileage may vary but, besides eating, this is the best part of the diet.)  I made a list of our family meals and a list of the groceries needed.  I even made another list to organize the items needed by grocery store department.  It was truly blissful.

Next, Dave and Katelyn and I drove to the store and braved HEB on a Saturday afternoon.  In retrospect, this would have ideally been done during the week in the morning but I was really excited to get started.  I got everything we needed and triple checked the list to make sure nothing was missed.  Being lazy means that you will choose going off your diet rather than making a separate trip to the store.  Just being honest.

So tonight was where the effort came into play.  Starting at about seven, I cooked and prepared nearly everything for the week.  I sauteed, chopped up, washed and rinsed, mixed, stirred and packed away about 75% of the food we will be eating this week.  I just finished so that means I spent a total of about three hours in the kitchen which, really, is not too bad for a week's worth of food.

I made breakfast casserole muffins (which are AMAZING) to go with our smoothies in the morning.

For lunch, we have fancy mason jar salad.  (Mason jars make me feel like a hipster imposter.)  All we need to do is shake them and enjoy.

And lastly, I whipped up some baked ziti with sausage and a delicious chicken casserole (not pictured) for dinner.  So that's at least two nights taken care of.  But also there's no way we could even think about eating all that pasta so leftovers!  Holla!  Also, this will look WAY better once it has been baked.  That's kind of the point of baked ziti, I guess.

The lazy poor person diet might not have a good name but it will save you money and I think it's shaping up to be quite the healthy plan.

baby kate celebrates the luck of the irish

Every year my grandma hosts an elaborate Saint Patrick's Day party.  The meal is complete with corned beef and cabbage, carrots and potatoes, and this year a fruity rainbow that led to a pot of golden peanut butter cups.

I am not a huge fan of corned beef but I am definitely on board when it comes to cabbage and potatoes.  Apparently, Katelyn is too.

Her favorite dish of the night was lime green jello salad with juicy pears.  Katelyn loves pears.  She had never tasted jello but fell in love with it.  She is LDS so it must be part of her religious DNA, right?

After dinner, we all sat around in the living room talking when out of the corner of my eye, I saw two mallard ducks swimming by.  Katelyn's latest obsessions are Justin Timberlake and birds.  Her next favorite thing are fish.  Ducks are like fish and birds combined so we all ran out with a loaf of bread to feed them.

The mallards never did get very close to us but these ugly ducklings swam right up for a carbohydrate feast and Katelyn was delighted.  She kept trying to squirm out of our arms to join them for a swim.

She was so desperate to get down that we walked over to the grass to let her crawl around.  Freedom!

At least until she started eating leaves. :)

EGGIES!!!!!

One time at a family reunion, one of my cousins (who was probably seven or eight) picked up a small bag of potato chips and started repeating the word, "Chipees!  Chipees!  Chipees!"  This went on for fifteen minutes.  Literally.

(And I always use that word correctly.)

It has now become a running joke in my family.  Whenever something reminds us of that (It could be as simple as a bag of chips in general) we start saying, "Chippes!"

Yesterday, my mom ran into the dollar store while I waited for Katelyn in the car.  She came back with a bag full of treasures and said that she bought me a prize.  I spotted a GIANT bag of popcorn and was hoping that it was destined to be mine.  Instead, he handed me a box of EGGIES!!!!!!!!!

EGGIES!  EGGIES!  EGGIES!

I really am a sucker for TV infomercials.  I had to have a magic bullet because I just loved the infomercial.  Whenever I come across it channel surfing, I usually sit and watch it for a few minutes.  It is that good.

Eggies' big claim to fame is the fact that you can hard boil an egg without having to peel it.  I actually don't mind peeling hard boiled eggs.  Thanks to watching Alton Brown on Good Eats, I have the perfect egg peeling technique.  However, I HATE poaching eggs and I LOVE eating poached eggs.  A soft boiled egg is basically identical to a hard boiled egg.  Eggies are perfect for soft boiling eggs.

This morning Katelyn got to try the first batch of eggs from the Eggies.

You can always tell how much Kate likes a food by how much of it ends up in her eyelashes.  By the looks of this picture, the Eggies were a great success. :)