Can't Live Without You - 5th Edition

Holy crapola. Peanut will be 10 freakin' months old in a few days, which means it's time for another CLWY entry. It's getting a lot easier to live without items now that Peanut is able to make basically anything a toy. Just this weekend a meltdown was diverted because of an empty Gatorade bottle - phew! Gatorade: More than just a hangover cure!

1. Organic Unsweetened Apple Sauce - Our go-to food if Peanut isn't feeling well or is extra cranky. She loves this stuff!

2. Jolly Jumper - Peanut finally started to get the hang of the Jolly Jumper over the last few months and we use it everyday. She can last anywhere from 30-45 minutes which buys me time to get dinner going. Kijiji for the win!

3. Ultrasonic Humidifier - With this dry winter weather and colds circulating around our humidifier has come in very handy! It was a bit pricey but it's super quiet and pumps out a super fine mist.

4. Playtex Training Cup - This cup is amazing. We tried a few different ones but this one was by far the front runner. Breastfed babies tend to do much better with straw cups rather then the traditional sippy cups.

5. Evenflo Highchair - This highchair came highly recommended from a friend and boy was she right! This highchair wipes down so easily and doesn't have any weird fabric seat covers to contend with. My little Peanut is super comfortable in it even at 15 lbs. It only has two wheels but this was important for us since we have a food obsessed chocolate lab that wouldn't think twice about pushing the highchair around the kitchen to get food under it.


Item that we still can't live without:
"U" Pillow
Sound Machine
Pro Biotics
Video Monitor
Jump-a-roo
Bath Sponge Pad
Fleece Sleep Sack

Passenger Goodie Bags

I don't mean to rub it in but in less then a week my daughter and I are joining a dear friend and her daughter on a trip to Florida. We are leaving the husbands home and are going to have some quality girl time in the sun. I am really looking forward to a change of pace and scenery. This will be Peanuts first flight and her little friends second time flying. I'm not overly concerned since Peanut tends to be super intrigued and quiet in new situations, however there is a chance that a meltdown or two will happen in the open skies. My girlfriend came up with a fantastic idea of putting together some Passenger goodie bags for the people sitting directly around us (Thank you Pinterest!). Since I hate packing I decided to avoid it as long as possible and put together 24 goodies bags for our voyage, 12 for each way. We are hoping our flight will be filled with numerous retired grandparents heading south who will hopefully be missing their grandchildren and want to lend a helping hand. ha! We will see. In the mean time, I should probably focus my energy on figuring out what to pack for Peanut and less on packing treats for complete strangers....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Smoothie - 5th Edition

I've posted about our Green Smoothies about a million times on this blog. Alright not a million, more like four time (here, here, here, and here) so why not post one more time. We've been drinking them more or less every weekday morning for three years and over the years we've altered the recipe slightly to experiment with taste and nutrition. Ever since being on maternity leave my husband has been in charge of making the smoothies in the morning so I decided to make his life a bit easier by putting together two weeks worth of Smoothie baggies in the freezer. The baggies include premeasured fruit, oats, flax seeds, and chia seeds. Here is our Green Smoothie recipe that we've been making for close to a year. Keep in mind that it makes two large smoothies. Enjoy!


Yield: 2 large smoothies
Ingredients
2 cups 1% milk
1/2 frozen banana
1 cup frozen fruit - your choice!
1/2 cup fat free Greek yogurt
1 tablespoons rolled oats
1 tablespoon ground flax seeds
1 teaspoon ground chia seeds
 2 huge handfuls of spinach

Pot Roast...?!

Is it weird that I've never made a pot roast? I've had pot roast before and I'm going to be honest -- I'm not a fan (Sorry Mom!). To me it always seemed way too dry and just not all that satisfying (that's what she said). I had a roast in the freezer and decided to live it up and give pot roasting a try myself. Ya, I'm wild like that. I found a great tutorial here and used the recipe with a few minor adjustments. I don't usually use multistep recipes that require, what's the word?.... ah yes, effort. It was worth it though because the roast turned out super tender and we really liked it. As you can see in the picture, I used squash instead of a lot of carrots and this was a mistake. The squash was too mushy. Stick with the carrots -- next time I will add parsnips too.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 lb beef pot roast
salt & pepper to taste
8 carrots, peeled and chunked
2 onions, peeled and quartered
1 cup red wine
2 cups beef stock
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon rosemary

Method
In a dutch oven over medium/high heat warm 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Toss in onions, carrots, rosemary and thyme (be careful, oil will spit!) and cook for about 4 minutes, stirring once. Don't stir too much because you want some brown yummy goodness to crustify on the bottom on the pan. Once veggies and pan have both browned a bit remove veggies. Season roast generously with salt and pepper and put into pan. Brown each side of the roast for about 1 minute each. Remove meat. Pour red wine into pan and using a wooden spoon stir and scrape that brown yummy crustified goodness off the bottom, about 2 minutes. Pour in beef stock. Add meat and veggies back to the dutch oven and cover and transfer to preheated oven (275 degrees) for 3 hours. Do not open dutch oven during the time. Just let it do it's thing. Cook. Cook. Cook. Serve with a side of mashed potatoes. Yum
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Baby Led Weaning Update

We honestly couldn't be more thrilled with our decision to do Baby Led Wean (BLW) with Peanut. It works for us. We are three months in and she eats (or at least tries!) absolutely everything except for honey, which she will eat at 12 months. We are now up to three meals a day along with nursing 5 times. 9 times of out 10 Peanut eats what we are eating, with the exception of weekday breakfast. My husband and I still drink green smoothies and will introduce them to Peanut when she gets better with using a straw. She is fantastic at feeding herself and using a sippy cup, but we tended to spoon feed her things like soups, oatmeal and apple sauce. Her fine motor skills are pretty strong and we attribute that to BLW. Her pincher grasp was developed by 8 months and makes the whole BLW thing a lot easier. We love being able to take her anywhere and not have to worry about packing food for her since she always eat what we eat. Today we took her out for lunch with us and she ate some of my fish tacos and had cheese and artichoke dip. I'll admit that I have a stash of cheerios in the diaper bag for emergency purposes. Here is a list of some of our favourite and easy meals;

Breakfast
Oatmeal mixed with unsweetened apple sauce or mashed banana sprinkled with cinnamon
French toast dipped in apple sauce or yogurt
peanut butter on whole wheat bread
Baby muffin (new item!)

Lunch
Deconstructed sandwiches (cheese squares, lunch meat, bread squares, avocado chunks)
chunky soups/stews (chunks removed onto highchair tray, stock spoon fed)
Cottage cheese
leftover dinner
Cubed cheese
Avocado

Dinner
Chili (chunks removed onto highchair tray, stock spoon fed)
roasted veggie chucks (sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, zucchini, onion, etc.)
Deconstructed tacos
crockpot meats (they are tender to eat)
Pasta
Pizza
Grilled cheese

Dessert
Cubed pears
Bananas and peanut butter
apple sauce
high fat Greek yogurt
Cubed oranges/clementine's
cheerios

k.bye.

Muffins for Babies

It's hard to believe another year has come and gone and the holiday season is over. For obvious reasons 2014 was one of our best years to date. My husband had nearly two weeks off over the break so we had a ton of family time. We hosted a family chili/games night, Christmas dinner, and a pizza night for our friends so there wasn't much time for writing. This morning I decided to get my butt in gear and share some recipes I've made over the last few weeks.

Like her Mama, Peanut loves her carbs. She eats whole wheat bread and cheerios like they are going out of style but I wanted something a little more wholesome to give her on a regular basis. I read a bunch of recipes for baby friendly muffins online but didn't find anything that had all of the ingredients that I wanted to include so I made up my own. I rarely risk doing that for baking, but I gave it a go. The results were great! I tried a muffin - they aren't sweet at all, but that was the point. Peanut devoured them and Hope your little one loves them too. I should mention that I rip the muffin up into bite-sized pieces since she is only 9 months old.

Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup quick oats
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds
1 tablespoon ground chia seeds
3 large or 5 small apples, peeled & grated (OR 3 overly ripe bananas)
1/2 cup apple sauce
1/2 cup milk
1 egg

Method
In a bowl using a wooden spoon mix up all dry ingredients. Add all remaining ingredients and stir until just combined. Don't over mix. Spoon into heavily greased muffin tin and bake at 350 degrees for 16-18 minutes. Because there is no grease in this recipe I would avoid using muffin liners since this will likely stick a lot. Happy eating baby!