Spring Wishlist: Recipe

I finally got my Bonterra Customer Card last Friday, printed out a pocket sized 'shopper's guide to pesticides' to carry in my wallet and I'm starting to feel like a bonafide card-carrying 'foodie'.  Spring is here (not really -the first day of spring is over a week past and the temperature has barely broken past 50 degress) and I'm looking forward to trying a more in-depth effort than last year's at growing fresh herbs.  Having a beautifully colorful, abundandly and deliciously yeilding vegetable garden is another item for my wishlist, but I should be able to handle a few herbs right?  Last year we were able to use our own thyme, rosemary and mint and I barely did anything after putting them in the ground near our backdoor. 

This is a 'recipe' I get from a commenter on an article about veggie burgers in The New York Times online.  I don't know about the haloumi cheese, but the simple spreads at the end sound yummy, -definitely checking out tapenades next time I'm at the grocery store.
Brush a portobello with a mixture of crushed garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Prick with a fork, then pan fry on both sides in a hot, lightly oiled cast iron skillet. Brown a slice of haloumi cheese beside the mushroom. Spread basil pesto on a whole grain/seeded bun. Top with the mushroom, cheese, sliced tomato (onion optional) and arugula, or alfalfa sprouts. I plan to use tapenade on the other half of the bun next time. Non-pesto people can forego the haloumi and make a nice yogurt/garlic/cucumber sauce instead, or a vegan sauce of tahini/garlic/lemon juice thinned with water.
I've already invested $2.49 in a little basil plant that I couldn't pass up at my grocery store, and it is currently the pride of my dining room table.  So fragrant...  I snipped a little onto my pasta and jarred tomato sauce last night and it made such a delicious difference!

Another group of recipe pulled from an article that sounds delicious and totally doable. (I'm loving finding recipes that are contained within one explanatory paragraph, three, four or five intuitive ingredients, able to be held in your mind from weekend grocery store trip, to dinnertime kitchen.) Another New York Times online article, written over two years ago, this time about cleaning out and keeping healthier, more econimic and spacesaving staples in your pantry.
IN Dried beans. More economical, better tasting, space saving and available in far more varieties. Cook a pound once a week and you’ll always have them around (you can freeze small amounts in their cooking liquid, or water, indefinitely). If you’re not sold, try this: soak and cook a pound of white beans. Take some and finish with fresh chopped sage, garlic and good olive oil. Purée another cup or so with a boiled potato and lots of garlic. Mix some with a bit of cooking liquid, and add a can of tomatoes; some chopped celery, carrots and onions; cooked pasta; and cheese and call it pasta fagiole or minestrone. If there are any left, mix them with a can of olive-oil-packed tuna or sardines. And that’s just white beans.

I'm also looking forward to Easter this year: Kara's getting a dollhouse instead of a basket, Easter-egg hunt for Isabella and Kara will be somewhere (Last year Steve put together a simple and awesome egg-hunt for the girls in my grandmother's backyard -so fun! I'm going to miss that backyard... so many memeories.  I think of that house as an extension of my body.), and making these super cute Easter cupcakes I saw on one of my favorite blogs. 
 Maybe an Easter brunch, too? Kara needs to eat more eggs; I've tried scrambled, omeletes and soft for dipping.  She's just not a fan. So, maybe quiche?

Now all there is to do is write up the shopping list and get in the kitchen. As if.

Wishlist

I've been thinking hard about what to write about this week.  Its been a tough one; I'm not really 'loving' anything right now and my focus has mostly been on how hard it is to save money.

I'm a girl who likes to dream... and since reading 'The Secret' I've been all in on the idea of 'focusing clearly on what you want'.  Well, not really all in, since I very often am focusing on what irritates and aggravates me, which is a big no-no according to 'The Secret'.  I'm coining the term 'page browsing' right now.  This is what I like to do.  It's the internet, catalog, magazine, weekly ad window shopping that I do literally every day.  It usually makes me happy, though sometimes its frustrating -what kind of mother buys $200 dollar boots while her two-year-old daughter lives in a less-than-700-square foot house in Pleasantville? 
One of my goals right now is to do less of this 'page browsing', since committing my new rule of saving at least $1000 dollars a month. (I feel fortunate that I actually have this much 'expendable' income -but don't tell anyone! You know who I'm talking about -free car, make that two free cars, I've been paying half your car insurance for the past two years, down payment on the house and closing costs, I'll pay for my family's Xmas gifts and for half of yours... you are officially cut off!) 

On the other hand, I think its good -for two reasons at least: First, its helpful to know what I'm working so hard for, what I'm torturing myself for, I'm a visual person and having pictures that make me happy keep me motivated.  I do a lot of daydreaming, its my nature, but my daydreaming does tend to take a path that leads me to finding ways to connect my dreams to reality.  Also, I am the mother of an amazing beautiful little girl so I have a firm investment in my here and now. Second, I also feel like -and this may be a bit of rationalizing to get what I want- shopping and researching product reviews and pricing and collecting website wishlists helps me to feel connected.  Feeling connected to people and the larger world of humanity is big for me, I need that.  Being culturally aware is important for anybody and, for better or worse, this is how I do it.

In accordance with my monetary diet, the first and most important material item on my wishlist is a new house.  The only true and non-negotiable criteria is that it is in a 'good' school district and is affordable.  What in my mind defines 'good' school district needs some fleshing out -its not an easily discernable trait. (Looking at school 'report cards' is not enough.)  The house is for Kara.  So, for Kara, I also want a nice neighborhood, a great backyard, a big bedroom -maybe even a playroom or play area!-, an extra bathroom, close to a park and/or library, close to her friends and family. (though, at this moment in time, this is not what I want- I have no friends, Kurt's friends leave something to be desired and both our families are varying degrees of irritating.  I tend to believe, jobs notwithstanding, that getting away -like, out-of-state style- would be good for us).

I'm really loving this first house...

And I could live in these PotteryBarn living room pictures...

(loving the new Spring Sparrow pillow cover, btw.)

What I'm loving now

What I'm loving now is actually my new phone. I thought that I would hold it my hand and be embittered by how it represented a lack of ability to communicate with Kurt about how we need spend less money -lower our outcome- and be more mindful of the important goal of getting Kara out of Pleasantville. But actually, right now at least, I really like it. I'm very interested in seeing what it can do and excited by its potential -not just to reign in the scattered tendencies of how Kurt and I manage our everyday life- but how it could make me more organized and streamline my life as it fills in details that are important to me. Of course, all this goodwill towards my new little 'device' was prompted by a few superficial but immediate gratification type of details: 1. The Hello Kitty live wallpaper I found. (Its so cute and so great, my reasons could almost just end there) 2.Not only did I get to keep all my pictures from my old phone, but now they look great! I love flipping through them! 3. the camera on this thing is... let's go ahead and say 'pretty awesome'. It has more megapixels than my $350 sony camera and will hold, I think, at least as many pictures. The phone itself has more memory, but how much can you use for pictures? Especially since I would also like to download music on the phone... There are a lot of things still left to be learned about my new state-of-the-art make-me-feel-cooler device, and the figuring out is slow going, but for right now, I'm happy with it.

...
My little 'month of March birthdays dinner party' for my family went pretty well.  My little house is so hard to arrange adequate seating for things like this, but with Uncle Dave, Mom and Steve being the entire guest list things worked out okay.  My glowing accomplishment was the Cornflake Chicken which turned out awesome -not that I would know... it looked good! (Wish I had taken pictures.)  I'm excited to do it again soon and I'll have to remember next time to serve it with honey mustard and barbeque sauce (<--great last minute suggestion by Kurt!) The pasta salad came together 'just okay' by my standards, but people did eat it. I thought it was on the bland side (needed more cheese or a more flavorful dressing than 'light italian') but it was beautifully colorful.  I was a mad-cookin'-fool that day and actually managed to do the cheesecake with cherry topping (which was delicious but was so not set) and brownie bites.  There was beer, wine and wine coolers and a pepperoni, cheese and cracker plate.  I think everyone had a okay time -it was a good get-together.  My hostessing skills definitely need refining but I think for a full-time-working-generally-disorganized-anyway-mom I did pretty well!

I'm discovering that I really do love to cook. I thought I did, I just haven't had much opportunity to test the theory. Finding recipes can be hard being a vegetarian with a variably picky-eater partner and a toddler.  My goal is to trade off between doing things I know only I will like and things only Kurt can eat, in between recipes that are chosen solely for my daughter.

What I'm loving now

(took this title from a magazine...)
...my breakfast. 0% fat Fage Greek Yogurt (15 grams of protien, thank you very much!) with sliver toasted almonds(from Trader Joe's), drizzle of honey and a grapefruit(which took me 20 tedious minutues to cut up, but was worth it).
I feeling good in a way that only a self-intiated healthy meal can make you feel (pat myself on the back) --even though nothing but sweaty exercize and sit-ups can save me from the Burger King meal of fish sandwich (with cheese!), fries, soda and Oreo sudae pie I had last night. I blame Kurt -homeboy thinks he not overweight. (Sorry, was that mean? Maybe Kurt should get his own blog.) ... (scratch that, I just had a text-convo with Kurt, he's having a salad with chickpeas for lunch today and thinks 'all the salads for lunch are why he's losing weight...' Kurt and I seem to communicate better through texting, oddly-or sadly- enough, but, one of the things I do like about Kurt is that he does often like to talk about food. ...There you go! POSTIVE!)

I'm also loving my new tea-mug I bought from the studio after yoga Wednesday night. Its black with a shades-of-blue glaze on the inside. I decided I needed it when I saw that it had cover, which I've been thinking about finding and buying for walks from the break area back to the lab. Its a long walk, and usually an awkward hustle with a napkin haphazardly covering my mug as though that would help the searing hot water to spill out. Also loving as well the Bigelow green jasmine tea I got that night -really only because it was on sale. Jasmine is one my favorites though, it has an earthy, grounded, meditational flavor to me.

...
Almost the end of the day... I have a busy weekend ahead of me, as usual. Tomorrow is: going to the mall with Kurt and Kara to ultimately get new cell phones and and higher cell phone bill. (whoopee. I don't know how this is going to work out, trying to understand a teenager's explanation of a new fancy phone plan with a toddler either demanding attention or trying to run off into a crowd of strangers. I suggested asking Lorraine to sit, but that never went anywhere so... should be interesting. Another test.) After the mall is: get Kara home for her nap, and frantically clean the house, cook chicken and cupcakes, prepare a pasta salad and cheesecake, and wrap gifts before my Mom, Scott and Steve get there. I'm excited to try a baked chicken recipe I found and I'm improvising a pasta salad -which I really hope turns out 'not-bland'. I love pasta salad -a great vehicle for lots of fresh veggies- but I don't have a lot of experience putting them together.

From me to me: wish you luck this weekend! Endure!