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Amazing eggplant meal and more

Posted on August 10, 2009 6:23 pm by TheAngelForever

I will admit it, I am a very lucky woman. Why you ask? The real list would be quite long if I tried to elaborate. Today, I am thinking about dinner at our house. If you are married, does your husband cook dinner often? I can honestly say heck yes on this!

Not many wives can say that their husband does approximately 99% of the meal making for dinner. I can and am forever amazed with my husband for doing this most evenings. JL comes home from work and makes a meal, or has prepped it the night before. Seriously, he does this week in and out. I am not a huge fan of experimenting with new recipes, but JL likes to. Thanks to this, he has pretty much cooked dinner since we got married eight years ago.

We have a kosher kitchen at home. Most of our meals are meatless because of the extreme cost of kosher meat. We typically have chicken 2-3 times a month and fish 1-2 times a week. The rest of our meals are pretty much vegetarian by nature. We had been eating a lot of soy products – veggie burgers, Morning Star galore and other items like that. JL and I liked these meals, until they started to make me violently ill. I now believe that I have a soy allergy/intolerance. This puts another major kink in our menu planning. Now we are looking for recipes with lots of beans and vegetables in them.

Each week, JL and I sit down and plan out a menu and grocery list. On Saturday, we decided to try something new with the slow cooker. The dish was called Eggplant Italian and cooked for only four hours. The smell in our house was amazing and I could not wait to try this. I was not disappointed. Here is a tease of the dish.

You can read more this latest healthy meal success and see the recipe on TechyDad’s website.

If you have any good Slow cooker dishes/soup or other items to share we would be greatly appreciative.

Categories:
food glorious food jl photos yummy

Dinosaur camp graduate

Posted on August 8, 2009 3:22 pm by TheAngelForever

Dear NHL,

This week you went to camp for the first time. Nana and Papa decided to give you a week at camp and you help us to pick Dinosaur Discovery. It was only fitting that you selected this after you loved Walking with Dinosaurs. The first afternoon there you were not too sure about things. I could understand since it was a large group mostly boys that were older and quite rowdy. Still you left me and then Daddy picked you up on his way home from work. I was thrilled to hear that you loved it! All night long you talked about going back the next day. Each day you were more excited about the next. Tuesday you made a dinosaur mask and claws to match.

Your favorite day seemed to be Wednesday when you made dinosaur eggs. When your egg came home that afternoon, you were beaming with pride.

You did so many fun projects and learned a lot about camp life in a few short hours over the week. I can not wait for your next camp adventure in a little over a week. For now I hope you rest up since you were so exhausted last night.

Love,

Mommy

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If you want to participate in Dear Kid Saturday, head on over to Cutest Kid Ever by clicking on the button below.

Categories:
Dear Kid Saturday fun milestone nhl photos summer

Agony of da feet be gone

Posted on August 7, 2009 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

I often joke and call myself an example of recessive genes. Growing up, I fully expected to be tall since both of my parents are six feet tall. Sadly, as I hit puberty and stopped growing, I realized that I was only going to be 5’3". As the vertically challenged member of a tall family (my brother is also six feet tall), I often tried to wear high heel shoes. Of course, the reality is heels are often uncomfortable and leave your feet screaming.

When I first started teaching, I would wear heels and then at night be close to tears. After I had my first son, I learned that nice looking comfort shoes were more important than adding three or so inches. Sure, I was able to get a few pair of heels that worked for more dressy occassions, like going to synagogue, but they were few and far apart. My trusty Aerosole heels are really starting to get worn out and look horrible. For quite some time, I have been searching for the new perfect shoes to have when I need something more than my flip-flops, sneakers, Teva and slides.

Several months ago, people started to chat a lot about the new line of wedges and heels from Crocs. Yes, you read that right. The brand that many connect with the bright orange shoes that Chef Mario Batali wears now sells stylish heels using their comfort technology. At the end of June I won a Twitter giveaway sponsored by Crocs (thanks George Smith Jr – you are the best). I was told to select a pair of shoes that I would like as my prize. I immediately went to look at the wedges and heels. I selected a pair of Sassari to try.

My shoes arrived on Monday. After I stopped jumping up and down, I put them on. It took me a few minutes to remember how to walk in heels, then I was able to run after the boys with my Sassari on. Please excuse my toes that are in need of a new paint job, but here are my cute new shoes.

I really love these shoes. I can see wearing them all town. I hardly feel like I have three inch heels on. All week I have been wearing them around the house to break them in. I can not wait to wear them to places and shock people when they find out that they are Crocs!

So my question to you this week is inspired by my new shoes:

Are you a creature of comfort or will you wear anything in the name of style/fashion? What is your favorite pair of shoes, fancy or not?

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #60

Categories:
Aloha Friday customer service interesting me moments photos shopping

Tie-Dyed Cheesecake Results and B-day summary

Posted on August 6, 2009 8:31 pm by TheAngelForever

All day Monday, JL and I kept talking about how we could not wait to try the Tie-Dyed Cheesecake experiment that we made on Sunday. We were anxious to see if it would live up to our memories of the amazing cake that we had while at Disney’s Pop Century Resort in May. Monday evening finally arrived. JL and I dropped the boys off to have dinner with Nana and Papa. From here we drove to a new Chinese/Japanese/Thai restaurant to try. On our way we saw the fire engine that was mentioned on my Worldess Wednesday.

It was so nice having dinner together and not worrying about what the kids would eat. We quickly decided on some sushi rolls to share and ordered our meal. After a little while, our sushi appetizer arrived. Not only did it look amazing, it was absolutely delicious.

Just as we were finishing these up, our meals arrived. I decided to go with something safe, but not something that I typically get (beef and broccoli) and JL tried something quite different (spicy orange tofu).

Thanks to my digital camera being with us most of the time, we were able to capture the photos of our wonderful meal. Of course, taking photos during your meal gets you looks. Our waitress came over. Of course, I had to explain that we blog and take pictures to show JL’s birthday meal. A little while later, while waiting for our packaged leftovers, the waitress and another come over. The two of them were singing happy birthday to JL while carrying ice cream with a lit candle on top.

Once we were done with dinner, we went back to my parent’s house to have the much anticipated Tie-Dyed Cheesecake. I quickly opened up the spring form pan so we were able to see more of the colors.

Then it was time to sing Happy Birthday to JL and dig into the cake.

Finally, it was time to cut inside and see if it looked anything like the much loved cake from Disney’s Pop Century Resort. Here is a reminder of what the cake there looked like.

This is what we saw when we sliced inside the cake . . .

As you can imagine, we were all disappointed. It looked nothing like the cake of our dreams from the memories in May. This cake was 2/3 red velvet and only 1/3 cheesecake. NHL actually thought the cheesecake was frosting on top of the regular cake. Basically the proportions of the cake were flipped.

Don’t get me wrong, the recipe is not a bust. It was not horrible. However, as cheesecake fans we loved the cheesecake part, which was a mere blip in the cake. In the end, we figure we would try this recipe again. Next time we would likely use 1/3 of the cake mix, or possibly only 1/4 of it. Then we would at least double the cheesecake portion. We figure this would fix the proportions. In addition to this, we would not cook the red velvet all the way during the first time in the oven. We figure mostly baked would allow it not to dry out quite as much. Of course, we may also try this recipe that my friend who made this on Monday found after we had both made these cheesecakes. Certainly not going to be any complaints from the family about eating another cheesecake!

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Submitted as part of Grace’s Kitchen Friends on Feels Like Home.

Categories:
baking birthday Disney food glorious food jl looking back photos yummy

Happy Birthday Mr. President

Posted on August 4, 2009 9:18 am by TheAngelForever

This morning NHL woke up. One of the first things he said to me was that it was President Barack Obama’s birthday today. Yes, my almost six year old son knew that the President’s birthday is today.

You may be asking yourself, how or why he knows this fact or several others about United States Presidents that he rattled off to Nana and Papa last night? The answer is mainly that he loves to learn. When he hears something, he sets it to memory. Just like his Daddy had when little, NHL has a some what photographic memory.

Of course, the real answer is that we bought sets of U.S. Presidents flash cards and ones of the United States. Nana found them at Target in the dollar bins as you walk in. NHL loved them so much while visiting her a few weeks back that I went and looked for them. As a teacher, I love having as many educational and fun things around the house.

Sunday JL and NHL decided to look at the U.S. Presidents cards. They sat there for quite some time reading about each of the presidents. JL noticed that President Obama’s birthday was the day after his. NHL recalled this and as you know said it first thing this morning. Last night he was even able to tell Nana several other facts about more distant presidents.

While NHL was playing with the cards at my parent’s house he asked me which presidents were around during my life. I knew most of them. What I did not realize was there was one other. Since I was a December baby born after an election I was technically born during the Ford administration. Sad that I never really thought about that, but I always remember Carter being mentioned when I was older and never thought about when he was sworn in. To answer NHL’s question I quickly pulled out all of the cards for the presidents and showed them to him. Then we talked about the two presidents during his life and how there will be many more to come.

Anyone else notice how different #43’s photo is compared to the rest? I thought it was odd how his was a close-up shot rather than the more traditional portraits. I’m assuming the current president’s photo was a quick one they used to get this product out fast.

Yesterday while on the way to drop the boys off to Nana and Papa (we were going out to have dinner for JL’s birthday), JL asked NHL how old he thought he was. NHL guessed 31. When JL told him he was 34, NHL immediately said "Oh, so next year you can run for President Daddy!" So there you have it ladies and gentlemen, TechyDad will be running for president in the not too distant future – LOL!

So what kind of fun educational items do you have/use with your children or did you love when you were a child? Please let me know in the comments because inquiring minds would love to know.