Going Green: Stage Two

The two peas started on their green journey a few weeks ago by mixing spinach into several dishes. Then they advanced to trying new recipes. This week's winners are parsnip soup (a mix of recipes from foodnetwork.com and epicurious.com) and a green smoothie.

Parsnips are part of the carrot family. They are devoid of color unlike carrots, though. The soup started out as four chopped garlic cloves, one half of a chopped onion, and two chopped celery sticks sauteed in two tablespoons of oil. Then we added five chopped carrots and three chopped parsnips. The entire contents simmered in about one teaspoon of ground ginger root, a dash of basil, a dash of pepper, and two cups of chicken broth for about 20 minutes.

After being pureed in a blender it took on a beautiful pumpkin-orange color. We pureed half of the original mixture of vegetables at a time and added a little more water, or some cream, until the soup barely moved continuously in the blender (we didn't want it to become watery).

We added salt and nutmeg to taste. We added a few pieces of turkey bacon and a tablespoon of sour cream as well. Very yummy! The recipe makes about six servings.

Our green smoothie has one and a half handfuls of spinach, about a half a cup of cranberry juice, two bananas, a can of peaches (in pear juice, not drained), and a cup of blueberries. We pureed it in the blender until it was really smooth and frothy. The contents will settle after it sits for a little while. It tastes delicious! If you'd like to try another green smoothie recipe, you can visit my sister's blog at togetherforeverinlove.blogspot.com.

 

Family Home Evening

The two peas are finding that simple family activities are the very best, and taking some time to practice their talents helps them to unwind. So this week they decided to combine these two ideas and pull out their violins, which have been collecting some dust. It always amazes this wife how the hubby can play as if he hadn't taken a break!

Halloween Decor

The wife loves paper. Give her some paper and she'll build castles. 

She was recently thinking about how to decorate for Halloween on a low budget when it occurred to her that the two peas owned construction paper, glue, and scissors. And that got her reminiscing about elementary school craft hour. So, with some orange and green construction paper, and a few short pieces of pipe cleaner, she decided to make a family of pumpkins as a table display. 

 They are fun and easy to make.

For the tall lantern-looking pumpkins, fold a piece of paper in half and cut strips into it every inch or so, without cutting all of the way through the paper. Unfold it, and glue the ends perpendicular to the fold together.
For the small round pumpkins, start with strips of orange paper. Glue them together at the middle of each strip and lying perpendicular and all different directions from one another. After 15 minutes, glue the ends of each strip together. They make a sphere. Take a smaller strip, glue it's ends together, and glue it to the bottom as a stand.

With how simple these are to make, and the wife's obsession with paper, the two peas might have a paper pumpkin epidemic on their hands very soon....

Sewing Disaster, eh?

The wife was finishing an exciting project - a kind of sweater she's had her eye on for a long time - and then suddenly in a moment it was gone! (The front of her sweater folded underneath the next cut she was to make...and the rest is self-explanatory.)

"Ugh!" she exclaimed and her head went right into her hands. There she sat not making a sound. She was feeling dumb, dumb founded, and forlorn all at the same time. What happened next, you ask? Well, it'll never be the same. She can't wear it as it is with that big hole; it won't keep her warm that way. But she'd just been reading again about being creative and finding solutions to unexpected every day catastrophes, and it wasn't going to change the eternal nature of things, so why not! Let's patch it up with some hearts and flowers!

Here's the lucky little winner of a sweater:

1. She cross-stitch the hole closed.

 2. She added small hearts right over the cross-stitching.

3. She added a flower rolled and stitched together from some left over fabric.

 Et voila! 

Different sweater than she planned, but still nice looking in the end.

 

Date Night Done Simply

"How about a walk?" asks the wife, and the hubby says, "sure." Out they go, camera in hand, arm-in-arm and jacket laden to inspect the geography round about. And as they go they talk and laugh and listen.

Sites around the neighborhood and local park:

Date night can be so simple and so fun.

Green Food

The two peas are going green! (Or trying to anyway.) 

But just in their food. Baby steps.

So, they've been eating plenty (and I do mean plenty) of spinach, in whatever they can get it into. The favorite so far is spanakopita. They must eat it twice a week! 

 The second favorite is colorful vegetable sushi, which only the wife consumes. It's soo good! Carrots and cucumbers and avocados. Oh my!