Get in my belly!

For a skinny b*#%h, I really love to eat. Like, really. Snacks before dinner. Seconds of dinner. Dessert. And then the second dessert that I sneak after hubby goes upstairs to shower. "Hmm? What cookie crumbs? Honey, I really think your age is starting to affect you.." I've already opened the one bag of Easter candy we got to put in plastic eggs. I'm an addict. Luckly, I also really enjoy (now that I know how) to cook. For one thing, it's the one time during the day that I get to myself. No little monkeys or monkey daddies in the kitchen while Mommy is cooking. Do not test me. ;) Also, sometimes I cook with wine. Like, in the sauce. Like a glass full, right? I mean, it's in the recipe...
I also enjoy taking pictures. I'm really inexperienced, and have never really taken the time to sit down with my camera and figure it all out. But it still makes me happy. So I like to cook, put wine "in my sauce", and take pictures of dinner. Kenz is going to grow up thinking that before any meal is served, it must be properly photographed. It's like saying Grace in our house. Anyway, I've collected some foody shots and thought I'd share them, as well as brief recipe descriptions, with you guys. And no, I'm totally not eating cookies as I write this. They have lemon in them, so I'm counting it as a serving of fruit. Several servings.

Cheesy Polenta Sausage Bake
Ingredients:Packaged polenta, sliced
sausage, I use vegetarian, italian style
one green pepper
onion
handful grape tomatoes
mozzerella cheese
vodka sauce
olive oil
fresh basilSlice polenta, dice half the onion, shred the basil and put in baking dish, drizzle with olive oil. Broil on high, until onions look brown on edges.

Meanwhile, add sliced sausage and the other half of onion, roughly chopped, to skillet. Cook until cripsy brown, adding diced pepper toward the end.

Add sausage mix to polenta, slice tomatoes, and pour about half a jar of vodka sauce over. Top with mozzerella cheese (mmm, use plenty!) and bake, at 375, until cheese is bubbly.

Top with fresh basil, and invite me to dinner.

The next dish is a Barefoot Contessa recipe. I think it's meant to be a side, but it has all the dietary needs of an entree, so we eat it as such. And it's so pretty.

Lemon Orzo with Roasted Vegetables and Feta
Ingredients:
Orzo
Feta, cubed
two non-green bell peppers, roughly chopped
two japanese eggplants, roughly chopped
red onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, sliced
pine nuts
fresh herbs, chopped
additional fresh basil, shredded
lemons
olive oil
Add all veggies, garlic, herbs, and olive oil to roasting pan. Roast at 425 for 40 mins.
Meanwhile, cook orzo- al dente.
Combine orzo and roasted veggies in bowl, making sure to get all the gooey brown pan-leavings.
Add juice from two lemons, fresh basil, salt, pepper, toasted pine nuts, and cubed feta cheese.

I guess I forgot to say grace that night, as I don't have a picture of this plated- but I put fresh rosemary sprigs on top and lemon wedges to the side. It's a good spring/summer dish and I believe we ate this with sangria.
Lastly, what we had for dinner tonight:


I don't actually have a recipe for this, nor preparation pics, but it's pretty self explanatory. Broiled Ono (fish) fillets, on greens, with a sauce of lime, teriyaki, a touch of beer (really, just for the sauce!), some chinese 5-spice, and salt/pepper. I cooked this with mushrooms and added mandarin oranges in the pan towards the end. The side is wild rice Inari (stuffed sweet tofu skin.) The fish was a tad overcooked, to be honest, but eating it with the sauce and juicy oranges made it ok. The preperation was a definite keeper, though it was originally supposed to be Ahi, and I should've stuck to the plan.

And for those of you who skipped all the food mumbo-jumbo looking for that picture of MacKenzie, here it is. This is what I do to little girls who come into the kitchen while I am cooking.......

New toys and boo boos.

All the kids around here have Ripsticks. For those of you not in-the-know, a Ripstick is a skate-board, that flexes in the middle, with only two wheels. It's a lot of fun, an excellent workout, and tricky as heck. Hubby had to have one.
Said Ripstick arrived in the mail a few weeks ago (2? I dunno..) He uses it to walk the dog. To get the mail. To race with the girl (age 6) across the street. He loves his new toy. He had a friend over the other day to try new tricks. I was pretty impressed:

(Btw, the pants he is wearing are called Thai pants- styled after Thai fishermen's. We own many pairs, and they are one-size-fit-all. Highly recommend. Although I had a neighbor ask if we were from Africa the other day. "Um, no, the East Coast. Why?" "Oh, I just wondered because of those pants you guys always wear.." Ha. )

Here's his friend trying. He totally has shoulders. Girls, enlarge the pic.

Kenzi got in on the action, too:

And, then, last night, the inevitable happened. A wipe-out. I'm kinda bummed I wasn't there to see it happen (does that make me a bad person?) but he came home looking like this:

It actually looks worse in person. Without going into too much gory detail, I'll just say there were rocks and tweezers- I love playing nurse :) Enjoy your next meal, everyone!

Why I shouldn't bother.

I know I kinda gave the impression in my last post that I was not successful in getting any cleaning done. This is a half-truth- I got most of it taken care of, in about triple the time it should've taken. Is that a success? You tell me.. But, the place looked better yesterday, anyhow. However, this is what I faced as I was heading to bed last night:


And this:
This is why I should just give up.

I should be cleaning.

I stayed home from a planned park playdate today to clean my house. This is pretty major for me- if I actually make plans to clean, you know that means the place is filthy. I'd take pictures, but I'm too embarrassed. Thing is, keeping Kenzi home all day is NOT conducive to a clean house. Because it means she needs to play, inside, with all her toys, in every room, at the same time. So as I clean my kitchen, she is busy destroying the laundry room, which I then tackle next, as she goes upstairs and tucks all her dolls into our bed, leaving a trail of their clothes in the hallway. Sigh. She is taking a nap now, which means uninterrupted work-time for me, and what am I doing? Eating frozen lasagna and typing to you lovely people.
So it goes.
Happy Monday to all. Hope everyone is well-rested, and had a wonderful weekend. Ours was mixed. Here are several things we did not do over the weekend:

• Go surfing. DH finally gets cleared for going in the water again, and the waves are flat!!! Oh, the irony. And my poor hubby.
• Clean the house. Pretty much all weekend, nothing. Eh.
• Go pee-pee in our panties. That's right, everyone, not only did hubby and I stay dry (I know, sniffle, we're all growed-up) but the little one had a dry pull-up even overnight! She even came to get us from the back kids-room at a birthday party! Where Happy Feet was playing, no less. She still has accidents, but she totally gets it now.
  
• say "no" to that second Lemon Drop Martini at afore mentioned party. MMM. I had no idea.
  

And here's what we did do over the weekend:

• Spend $100 on macaroni and cheese. Ok, not exactly, but we went to Target to get ingredients for mac and cheese to bring to the b-day party, and left a hundred dollars poorer. I can't even recall what we got now that was so expensive- I have a hunch it was something we didn't need, though...
• Sing until we were hoarse. Karaoke!! Ooh, it was fun fun fun. Kenzi even enjoyed it, singing her ABC's and Happy Birthday. I think a video was taken, I just need to get it sent to me to post.
  
• Clean up after some jerk-faces. We had a wonderful picnic Sunday evening, at a local beach, watching the sun set (and storm clouds roll in). Another family was near us, and as they left, we noticed a mound of trash they had left behind. We're talking dirty diapers, empty beer cans, the works. It was so disheartening. Hubby came up with a good bumper sticker, though: "Life's a beach- just keep your trash off mine." I'd put it on my car.

I don't really have any pertinent images to post right now- my camera is in Hubby's car. I think I can edit this and add them in later, though. So check back. Until then, here's MacKenzie blowing bubbles. Literally.

Spring.

I awoke this morning to the sounds of our many many birds who live in the mountains facing our house. They tweet and sing away constantly, but this morning was different. I suppose it's springtime here in Hawaii. The morning 'chill' has lessened, the grass is seeding, and the birds are looking for some action. Loudly. It wasn't a bad alarm clock- if I had wanted to get up at, say, 7am.
I have to say, although I LOVE Hawaii, I miss the seasons of the east coast. I almost ache for my garden back home in Maryland this time of year. Every day, something new would pop up out of the ground. My tulips lining the path would be in bloom. The forsythia would be going insane. And our pear trees....oh, I miss them in all their stinky glory. But we have some pretty major flowers here, too. And since I plant a lot of seeds, I still have the joy of watching my babies grow up. In honor of springtime, and because I still feel icky and want the morale boost, I'm sharing some photos of my favorite flowers we have here in the garden. Or at least the ones I could take a decent picture of.

A terrestrial orchid.

I'm not sure the name of this one- it's a hanging plant, outside of Kenz's playhouse.

MacKenzie's birthday lemon tree. These blooms smell like love. Wrapped in Heaven.

Our snowy-white hibiscus. I don't see many of these around here.

Another hibiscus bloom- just opening.

Called a "coral tree." One of our centerpiece plants.

Some kind of iris. It's a teeny bloom- so delicate and perfect.

This flowers abundantly with perfect purple stars.

This lantana is taking over our front bed, which we love. The baby blooms look like little butterflies, and fittingly, the butterflies love this plant.

Not all of our gardening is for decorative purposes. We do try to keep some edibles and shade plants around. But I'll write about our practical plantings another time.
And for those of you who don't give a darn about my flowers, and simply want more pics of MacKenzie (sheesh!) here's a good one of my little helper:

Copping out.

I feel like dookie. I have all day. Not sure what's up, but it's not fun.
I ate fruit chews for dinner. Eh.
Hubby said, "what, no blog today?" Hmm. Maybe? I have some photos I can post...I'm not really up for much more than that. It's hard to be cute and witty when you feel like dookie.

So here are some random Kenz pics for your viewing pleasure.
A quick tech note- any of the pictures can be viewed larger by clicking on the image.

Yes, I'm proud, and yes, this will come back to bite me in the a$$ when she's a teenager. I don't care.

I've been carefully cultivating a love of household chores.

Kenzi is covered in chalk, not dirt. Ok, maybe chalk and dirt. A group of kids like to come and play with her- this is after they did her "makeup." They're fun kids. The cone is not ours.

I'm an overprotective mother and playground behavior scares the poopie out of me. But, no knocked out teeth yet.

I don't even know.

A FOOL in love.

Happy April Fools day, everyone!
This day is super-special in our house. Many of you will know this story already, but it's so nice for me to re-live, that I'm going to post it anyway.

Many years ago there were two friends. They liked to climb together, and went to the same climbing gym. The boy thought the girl was cute and silly, but she was fresh out of a relationship, and kinda young. The girl thought the boy was buff (*blush*) and intelligent, but she was fresh out of a relationship, and he was kinda old(er). So they stayed friends, and safely held each other up high while climbing, learning to trust each other and admire the buff muscles of the boy (*blush*).
April Fool's day came around and the girl wanted to play a trick on her dad. Growing up, he was the undisputed King of pranks. She wanted something major.

The girl asked the boy if he would like to go down to meet her dad (first time ever), and announce that they had gotten married and were soon moving to Hong Kong. The boy said "yes" (!!!!!). The boy took the girl to a mall and bought her a wedding band (his idea). They went down to the bar where the girl's dad was with his girlfriend. They made their announcement. The rings and the boy's ridiculous knack for acting (ahem, lying) sold it and the girl's dad believed them. I won't go into too much detail here, but I think some teary-eyes were involved- rounds of drinks were bought (all of the girl's dad's friends were there and offered congratulations)- and "welcome to the family" was said. Remember, the girl's dad had never before met the boy. He showed so. much. class. that day. The boy and the girl didn't fess up until the next day (the news was unintionally spread to the girl's sister, who threatened to disown the girl). It was epic. And rather romantic. See, to really sell the story, the boy and the girl had to pretend to be in love. They held hands. They had their first kiss. It was so warm, and comfortable, and real-feeling. And they knew they were no longer "just friends."

And the rest is history.
Can we have a collective "awwwww"?

Studmuffin, I love you. You really are my superman, and I am so lucky to have this life with you. Thank you.