Crock-Pot Baked Potatoes

Baked Potato with Vegetarian Chili and a side of Broccoli 

It's been hot around here and the last thing I wanted to do was heat up the house making baked potatoes all afternoon... but I REALLY wanted baked potatoes.  I decided to try them out in the crock-pot and I had great success.  After making these I read a variety of reviews saying anything from these turned out great, to they didn't work at all.  All I can say is they turned out great for me, but I suppose you should make them at your own risk.

Crock-Pot Baked Potatoes

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Foil

Crock-Pot

Toppings of Choice

 Make sure each potato is wrapped tightly in foil with no exposed skin.  Cook on low for 8 hours.

Instructions:

Scrub your potatoes well and make sure to dry thoroughly.  Wrap each potato in foil making sure they are tight with no exposed skin.  Place potatoes into crock-pot and cook on low for 8 hours.  When it's time for dinner pop them out, remove the foil, and enjoy your yummy baked potato with your favorite toppings!

 

Be careful, these babies are steamy hot!

Everyone has their favorite baked potato toppings.  Do you love the classic: butter, cheese, bacon, and sour cream?  Are you more a fan of veggie toppings?  I personally am a fan of the chili baked potato which I enjoyed here.  I threw a can of Trader Joe's Vegetarian Chili on the stove and then spooned it onto our potatoes with a side of fresh organic steamed broccoli.  

It was such an easy quick dinner, great for a night when you have somewhere to go and not a lot of prep time.  These tasted just like a baked potato that had been in the oven for hours.  The girls gave them 2 thumbs up and I'd definitely make them again!

 

Let the Craziness Begin...

Our crazy fall schedule is officially in full swing with the start of this week.  My church Bible Study (which luckily has a wonderful kid's program... yay for it counting as a day of K) starts up again tomorrow.  This means almost every day and night of the week we have something going on.

On Monday nights handsome hubby and I do pre-marital mentoring for couples at our church. On Tuesday morning I take the girls to Bible Study, we go to the library, and then we go to Gama's house where we spend time with her and then have family night where the granparents, siblings, and kiddos get together for dinner and games or activities of some sort.  On Wednesday morning the girls have gymnastics and then we rush home to try to fit our school all in before lunch.  On Wednesday nights the girls go to Sparks, and for anyone else who does the same you know the rush and craziness of dinner's and the late nights that ensue on AWANA night.  On Thursday's Nana comes over in the afternoon and I either make a family dinner for all of us, or every other week hubby and I get a date night while she puts the girls to bed.  This leaves us Friday night for family movie time snuggled on the sofa, and the weekend to relax (or do any one of the myriad of things that needs to happen that weekend) as well as go to church and get all our errands run for the following week.

Phew!  We've had a nice few weeks getting used to our school schedule and adding in 1 thing at a time, but now it's all on the schedule and we're ready to rock!  Let's just hope it doesn't fly by as fast as the summer did... I'm not ready to think about Christmas yet.

Progression

I don't know about you, but one of the great rewards of homeschooling is watching your kids work through something they found difficult and coming out on the other side having made progress.  Handwriting for us isn't necessarily the most fun part of the day... but it's starting to be.  The girls are getting better by the day with holding their pencil correctly and having good control over what their tiny hands are doing.  It used to be a big area of frustration, but over the past week they each seemed to have flipped a switch in their brains and are doing so much better.  They also LOVE to color and draw on the animal picture on the back of each of their A Reason For Handwriting worksheets which has also helped. 

Aside from our handwriting lessons I've been working with the girls on writing their names and writing their numbers.  We usually do this at least once a week in their notebooks.  Poor Av just hadn't been able to write a good 3.  She always made an extra loop in the middle and felt like she would never get it right.  I worked with her to try to make 2 c's backwards and touching but she continued with her little extra loop.  Then a few days ago while doing her math worksheet she jumped out of her chair and proclaimed, "I did it mama, I did it!  I made the best 3 ever!  Take a picture, take a picture so we can show daddy!"  So here she is, my proud little peanut with her Best 3 EVER!  Her smile doesn't get more genuine than this and I will always treasure this image!

Creamy Mushroom Pasta {Vegan & Gluten-Free}

Gluten Free Brown Rice Pasta with creamy mushroom and asparagus sauce.

Last week I was in the mood for a creamy pasta, which can be a bit difficult if you can't use dairy.  I decided to just play around and whip something up with some ingredients I had on hand.  You'll have to bear with me since I usually make things up as I go and don't write things down. I didn't decide to blog this until I was about to plate so I'll try my best to remember what I did and be as accurate as I can with the amount of ingredients.


Creamy Vegan Mushroom Pasta

Ingredients:

1 T Earth Balance
1 Onion - Chopped
4 Cloves Garlic - Minced
2 cups Mushrooms
2 cups Asparagus
1 tsp Thyme
Sea Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper - to taste
1/2 - 1 cup Light Veggie Stock (I used one that didn't contain tomato)
1 1/2 cups Unsweetened Coconut Milk
1 tsp Cornstarch
2 tsp Water
1 package Brown Rice Pasta (or pasta of choice)

Occasionally stir cooked pasta with veggie sauce to incorporate flavors.

Instructions:

Melt earth balance in pan and cook onions until they are translucent (about 5-6 mins) add mushrooms (I used a full bag of pre-sliced from TJ's) and cook for about 10 minutes then add asparagus (chopped into 2" pieces) and garlic and cook until asparagus is done.

Add veg stock (I used organic no-chicken broth) as needed to keep veggies from burning.  When veggies are done add the remaining veg stock, thyme, S&P.  Add coconut milk to your sauce - making sure it's unsweetened.

Create your cornstarch mixture by adding 2 tsp cold water to 1 tsp cornstarch in a separate bowl.  Once that's combined add it to your sauce to thicken and stir it all to combine.

In a separate pot boil your water, add salt, and cook your pasta as directed making sure not to overcook.  When pasta is complete strain and transfer pasta to your sauce and mix it to incorporate.  Keep it on low heat for about 5-10 mins while occasionally mixing to incorporate the flavor into the pasta.

Plate and serve immediately enjoying your yummy creamy pasta goodness!

 

Plate and serve immediately then watch it disappear from everyone's plates!

School Away From Home

The Wynn - our gorgeous school away from home.

For the past week we've lived, schooled, and worked away from home.  Every year handsome hubby has a trade-show in Las Vegas, and since it's close enough for us to all drive and his hotel expenses are covered by work we've always gone along.  My thinking a few years ago was that even though he was super busy with work and we hardly saw him... it was easier to be there doing something different with little ones than to just stay home and be alone for the week.  Now that they are older they enjoy going becuase we can swim, shop, and play during the day and they are much easier to handle regardless of where we are.  Daddy is still busy and going from morning until the wee hours of night, but us girls have fun girl time and enjoyed our week. 

 I brought along a mini white-board which was perfect for our lessons.

I brought our school stuff along and we just pounded through our work which took about an hour each morning and then we were off to enjoy our day.  I did our reading in the afternoon to give us something to do during the heat of the day and break things up a bit.  Poor peanuts came down with a cold the day before we left so we couldn't swim as much as I had wanted, but I'm glad we went because while they still had a cough they were feeling much better after a few days and really enjoyed the trip.  It's always nice to change up the routine a bit but now it's back the grind.  We're home now and I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend before it all starts again!

August in Review

I'd have to say we've had a wonderful first month of Kindergarten. I love that we started a bit earlier than our local public school so I have some flex time for a longer Christmas break and or some day's off near the end of the year.

 

Lacing Cards, Math-U See practice, Alphabet Writing Review, Snack Time, Alphabet Order Review

We spent the first week doing mostly alphabet and number review to reacquaint ourselves with everything we learned last year. We went right into all our curriculum and the girls are doing really well with everything.  They love art, singing, and our fun activities, and put up with the worksheets that round everything out.  They've started gymnastics once a week for an hour and it's a great outlet for their energy.  It's also been wonderful for them to work on their flexibility, coordination, and ability to follow directions from someone other than me.

 Practicing first names with capital and lowercase, A Reason for Handwriting Letter Worksheets, Number Writing 0-9

Both girls are slowly but surely improving their handwriting.  This is still by far the area that gives them the most frustration.  I'm having a bit of trouble getting Avalyn to hold her pencil correctly, and she's all about being quick and sloppy so it's something we'll have to keep working on.  I'm hoping that repetition is the key though so along with their handwriting worksheet each day I have them write their names and numbers once a week as well as put their name on the top of everything they are working on.

Math-U-See Worksheets & Review

Math is continuing to go really well, and it's still almost too easy for them.  They know their numbers up to 100 from last year, can count by 10's and recognize and write their numbers pretty well so I'm continuing to plug along with 2 lessons each week since everything is still basic counting 1-10.  It almost feel silly at times, but I'm hoping this is just giving them a great base for math and that they will just stay ahead as it gets harder.  I might get an extra workbook that goes over time, money and some other simple things to give them something to learn that they don't already know.  At least they are loving their math and haven't complained about the fact that it's easy and they think it's fun... so I'm just going with it!

The Path to Clean Eating

For the past 2+ years our family has been moving in a direction towards healthier eating.  It started slowly by just trying to be more aware of what was in our food.  We believe strongly that what we eat and put into our bodies has a direct effect on our health and well being.  I had always shopped at Trader Joe's for a few things here and there, but knowing most of their food was preservative free, and that they cared about the ingredients that went into their food along with a great selection of organic ingredients... I fully made the switch and haven't looked back.

I began finding or developing recipes that used only TJ's ingredients and quickly got the point where I almost never went to the "regular" grocery store.  My shopping is done at TJ's, the farmer's market, and the health food store.  Like many people I also became aware of the amount of meat and dairy we were consuming and stared doing "Meatless Monday's" which led to mostly meatless or vegan cooking.  I'm at the point where almost all the meals I cook are now meatless, aside from the occasional fish or chicken dish about 1-2 times a month.

Despite the fact that we were eating really healthy I was noticing that my health wasn't very good.  I was having almost constant tummy issues and it didn't seem to matter what I ate, I'd almost constantly feel sick.  Just over a month ago I decided I'd had enough.  I decided to go on a 3 day juice fast to cleanse my system, and then move towards a super restricted diet so I could begin to rule out possible food sensitivities or intolerance.  Each day I drank about 48oz of "Mean Green Juice" from the Joe Cross documentary Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead along with about 64oz of water.  After the 3 days of juicing I eliminated gluten, dairy, meat, grains, eggs, corn, processed foods, and sugar.  I ate only fruits, veggies, and nuts for the first 2 weeks and then slowly started adding in other things.  The goal was to feel good and then slowly add new foods to see how I felt and to help determine if they were safe foods or not.  Over the rest of the month I added rice, corn, some meat, and some sugars. 

I wasn't sure what this was going to look like for my family, and that was the most daunting part in the beginning.  I decided to keep their breakfasts and lunches normal and then make dinner for all of us based on my dietary restrictions so we could enjoy dinner as a family.  This meant transitioning to brown rice pasta's, lots of soups, salads, lentils, and mainly veggie based dinners.  Luckily the girls have been fine with everything and have even loved some of the new recipes!

I got a little over-excited at the end of the month when we went out for date night and tried dairy on my gluten free pizza which made me realize I'm definitely lactose intolerant. :-(  I'm hoping to try gluten soon and keeping everything crossed I'll find out that dairy is the source of my troubles and I'll be fine with gluten.  If not though I'll continue on doing the best I can to feed myself and my family so I'm healthy and happy and able to serve them better.  I feel so blessed to have already been on this path so the foods I'm having to make now don't at all seem weird like they would have a few years ago, and many of my standard recipes are already gluten or dairy free. 

I've been on the hunt for gluten free and diary free recipes and plan to post a few of my own as well.  Let me know in the comments if you have food restrictions in your family and how you've dealt with them.  Feel free to link me to any great recipes you love and check back soon for some recipes from me!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

At the end of our last school year we read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (which is a free kindle download on Amazon.)  The girls really love our chapter books and enjoyed the adventure we took together to the Emerald City.  Before we started reading it I added the movie to our library queue so we could watch it for family movie night when we were done.  Sadly, it took 7 months for it to finally be our turn so it was just a bit delayed.  We got our movie on Thursday so I figured Labor Day weekend would be the perfect time to watch it.

We all snuggled up on the sofa for family movie night and watched the movie as the girls eyes lit up and they squealed with delight as each new song was sung.  We compared and contrasted the differences between the book and the movie as we enjoyed the silly antics of the scarecrow, tin man, and cowardly lion.  The girls loved the good witch and thought she was SO beautiful!  It was such a fun evening and great to remember watching this as a young girl with my family.  I'd definitely recommend the Wizard of Oz to anyone else starting out in chapter books with their kiddos.

Now we're on to our next chapter book adventure... it's hard to believe  the girls will be reading them on their own before long.