Vegetable juice and bread

i'm not a fan of vegetables.  actually, I have pretty much hated most vegetables for most of my life.  they just don't taste good and I don't want them. that being said, I realize that I should eat them for a couple of main reasons:

1. vegetables are good for you
2. it's easier to convince your kids to eat vegetables if you eat them.

so I am making efforts to up my veggie intake.  having acquired a juicer in 2011, I am also trying to get it into regular rotation in my kitchen.  so after a trip to the market, I made a very... "interesting" vegetable juice.



recipe is a strong term but here's what I had: fennel, celery, cucumbers, ginger, carrots, green apples... I realize that a licorice-hater should avoid fennel. blech.




but i also found that after a couple of days, the flavors mellowed and melded and it was much more tolerable.  yeah you thought i was going to say it was "good"... not quite. but drinkable. 

so after juicing, there were tons of bit of veggie pulp with no purpose.  i also had a zucchini bread recipe sitting in my kitchen.  so i figured these bits are sort of like grated zucchini only much drier. so add some water and use them.  this bread was so tasty that pid, husband and i devoured it.  it was that good.  i think it would still be darned tasty with less sugar in it. will experiment with that next time.

cloth diapering... fun?

sometime before jellybean was born, i'd decided to reconsider cloth diapering.  this was something I thought about when I was pregnant with pid but for various reasons decided against at the time. back then I was considering gDiapers products and as it turned out they were still around when I considered it in 2012 so I did a little research and decided to go for it. 

i'll confess... part of the attraction was the cute factor.  gDiapers are just so much cuter than any disposable i'd ever seen.  so we started using them when jellybean was about 3 or 4 weeks old when we ran out of the limited newborn size diapers we had been given.  definitely a learning curve but the husband and I figured it out easily enough. 

PROS -

• adorable.  seriously.  these are the cutest.  I know you won't believe it without a picture so here's one. see... adorable, right?
• trim fitting.  ok, i'm not sure why they make skinny jeans in size 3 months.  i'm even less sure why I bought them.  but I did and gDiapers fit under them.  can't say that about a lot of cloth diapers from what I've read. 
• several parts to the system... if the absorbent insert is just wet, put it in the laundry, give the liner a rinse or wipe and reuse the liner and pant.  less laundry!
• hybrid system also has disposable, no... FLUSHABLE inserts available.  I used these when we traveled out of town and were in a hotel for Thanksgiving the other week. they flushed fine and were very convenient. 

CONS -

• counter-intuitive fastening... the Velcro closes in the back.  though if your kid is anything like a friend of mine's daughter, this is actually a pro because her daughter was a diaper Houdini and liked to break out of her confines on a regular basis.
• several parts to the system... outer pant, snap-in pouch, absorbent insert.  it can be a pain sometimes to put them all together. 
• learning curve on preventing leaks but once you master it, leaks are very, very rare

oh baby!

september 11th... not necessarily a day that stands out as "happy" for the average american.  but as of 2012, it's a good day for me.  september 11th 2012 is the day i welcomed my sweet daughter jellybean to the world.  7lb and 14oz of precious girliness packed into 20.5 inches.

Blog Resurrection...

after almost a year, i'm going to try to get back to my blog.  a lot has gone on over the last year and it's not getting covered today. 

i didn't get a chance to start my container vegetable garden this year as i've been too busy and preoccupied with this thing called "life" to have the time.

the small one just graduated from preschool - it was an adorable ceremony and my parents both made it to help celebrate. 

going to try to get 2012 beach badges today if i can find someone that has some.  time for the big 4th of july beach day!

that's all!

Strawberry Harvest Festival

so in the spirit of getting the kid out of the house for something a little more out of the ordinary, we decided to take him to a local-ish farm that i found online.  we weren't sure what he'd think of it but it turns out he had a GREAT time!

the corn castle (really a shed with corn kernels inside instead of sand) was ok and the bounce house was a hit (surprise, surprise!) so we did ok for the first couple of activities for the day. 

took some encouragement for pid to warm up to the very friendly farm animals. it actually took encouragement, the purchase of a bag of food for the animals and a few minutes of dad feeding them for pid to try it. he befriended a little white goat and fed it most of the veggies we bought. lucky goat.


after the animal feeding, we took a break for lunch and to rest a little before heading out to the strawberry patch to pick the berries. the hayride there was uneventful but once we got there, pid was very concerned that we would miss the hayride back. eventually he got into picking berries though. 


and boy did we get berries:

they were sweet and juicy and i made some fun things with them:  strawberry jam, strawberry curd, and strawberry shortcake. we also at lots and lots of fresh berries. a definite outing to keep on the list! fortunately they have various pick-your-own items through to pumpkins in the fall.