My Toddler + Big Kid

So my babies aren't quite babies anymore.  Kira just turned 3 this month and Will is a whopping 13 months old.  Here are some things I want to remember about them.

Kira:
- She has a really good memory especially for songs.  She loves music especially her "princess music" which is simply a Disney/musical station on Pandora.  She has memorized all of the princesses' names though she has only ever seen Tangled and Cinderella.

Kira with a little slug friend.

- Did I mention she is in to the princesses right now?  We were tired of her waking up in the night and asking for "mugasik"(music) to be turned on.  She had a little projector/white noise machine with a timer that would play music.  I came up with the brilliant idea of just getting her a night light so that it would stay on night.  I let her pick out whatever she wanted since they were all about the same price and I wanted it be special enough to replace her "mugasik."   She chose the princess one.  We don't have to get up as much at night.  Two birds, one stone.
-She has already memorized the first 57 questions in the children's catechism as well as several passages from Scripture.
-Just this past week or so she started to get interested in writing her name so we've started to work on that.
- Even though she loves princesses, her favorite part of just about any movie are the animals.  While watching Cinderella, she starting freaking out when the horses pull the carriage to the ball.
- She watched her first movie in theatres this past June.  We saw the new Cinderella for $1 each.
- She knows either the sound or the letter name of just about every letter of the alphabet.

Will
- He took his first step a week after his 1st birthday.  He still crawls more than walks but each day he walks a little longer.  He is relatively steady and probably walks about 25% of the time.

Observe the mess.  

- He know quite a few words including some, ow, go outside, come, hi, and bye.
- He understands a lot now such as "time to eat" or "go change your diaper" or "go get a book."
- He loves the outdoors including eating dirt.
- He is kinda the class clown in our house.  He hits his own head and then shouts, "Ow!" and then giggles like crazy.  Sometimes he does it to make us laugh but other times he does it when he hears us laughing about something else.
- He has already mastered going up and down stairs.

Summer Cookin'

I love cooking seasonally.  In the winter I make soups weekly and things like meatloaf and mashed potatoes or a roasted chicken seem to work wonderfully.  In the summer though, I like to keep things simple and fresh, fresh, fresh.  Right now our garden is the biggest and best it has ever been which really isn't saying much.  It took a long time but all of our heirloom tomatoes are getting ripe at the same time and we're currently bringing in 5 cucumbers or so a week.  We also have harvest 3 butternut squashes and have 3 more that are probably just about ripe.  Oh, and did I forget to mention the abundance of fresh herbs?  I love the game of trying not to let any of my fresh produce go to waste.  So far I've made refrigerator pickles, lacto-fermented pickles and frozen tomatoes 3 ways: Diced, salsa, and balsamic roasted.  I'm totally loving things like pasta salad with fresh veggies, stir-fries, and sandwiches.  My current favorite summer sandwich would be the caprese grilled cheese.  All you have to do is make a grilled cheese sandwich with mozzarella, pesto, and fresh tomatoes.  

There is one recipe that I make repeatedly throughout the summer.  Summer cannot end until I've made this at least 10 times.  It is THAT good.  I got this recipe from my friend Wendy.  Give it a try, you won't regret it.  

This picture is slightly deceptive because I ran out of Mozzarella cheese and had to use some colby jack.  It still tasted wonderful.  

Tomato Basil Pie

1 9" unbaked pie crust

1 1/2 C shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Enough ripe tomatoes to slice and pile high (maybe 4-5)

1 C loosely packed basil leaves, crushed OR 1-2 T dried basil

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 Mayo

1/4 C grated parmesan cheese

1/8 t pepper

Prebake the pie crust.  Remove the pie crust from the oven and sprinkle with half of the mozz. cheese.  Allow it to cool for a few minutes on the counter while you slice tomatoes and drain them on paper towels.  Pile the tomatoes high over the cheese.  Combine the remaining ingredients (except the mozz cheese) and spread over the tomatoes.  Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or til it is brown and bubbly.  Try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting by yourself.  

What about you?  What recipes are you loving this summer?  I'm working on planning out my menus for the next week and would love to hear what I should add to the list!

So Monday...and a Quick Tip

Ok so it is Monday.  We just got back from being at the river with Aaron's family for the past two days.  The trip was a lot of fun but a long weekend + 2 toddlers + being tired out myself + a giant mess covering every surface in our house + having no milk and only 3 eggs left = grumpy Monday.  Fortunately, both kids are taking a nap right now which means that I have a few seconds to pull myself together and prepare for the afternoon. My one bright spot this morning was getting to harvest all the veggies that ripened while we were gone.

This is my happy place.  Of course the grass was all wet and muddy from the rain so my kids were kind a nasty by the time we back inside but I'm still happy.  

See all of the above tomatoes?  That is the ones I've harvested in the past 2 days.  The tomatoes have been unrelenting these past 2 weeks or so and I've loving it.  Of course there are too many too eat right now so I've been trying different methods of preservation.  Which brings me to the second part of my post: My quick tip.  

Whenever life gives you too much of something, just freeze it!  It helps if you have a large chest freezer but you can also squeeze quite a bit into a small refrigerator freezer. For instance, do you have too many tomatoes?  Try cutting them (if they are larger), drizzle them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic salt and then roast them in the oven at 400 degrees for 1-2 hours.  Pop the into a freezer bag and then pull them out in the winter to add to pizza or pasta.  

Another easy one is bread crumbs.  Whenever you have some bread or even a hamburger bun that is about to go bad, just spread some butter on it and pop it into the oven until it is toasted.  You could also add seasoning at this point such as Italian.  When it is toasted and cooled off, put it into the a food processor until crumbled and throw them into the freezer.  Next time you need bread crumbs, they are ready to go and will never mold as long as they are in the freezer.  Seriously, it is so easy and I love not feeling liking I'm throwing away good food.