Month: May 2016

One day I’ll travel the world and eat food. Explore and eat food. Maybe meet some new people and eat food. Overall, I really just want to eat food. Until that day comes, I’ll just be here, trying recipes that are filled with spices and flavors that are outside our usual.

 

I have great friends who are always willing to be guinea pigs for new recipes. This one didn’t disappoint and was the star of the night. Dried mint, cinnamon and cumin make this dish warm and earthy. It’s my favorite go to now since the spice mix makes enough for several small batches. So I’ll show you two ways to prepare the dish that surely won’t disappoint.

Our trio consists of potato, cauliflower and radishes. If you are able to, buy fresh radishes with the greens still attached. When I went shopping this week, the fresh batch looked mighty sad so I went with the radishes already prepped and packaged. Your actually going to eat the radish tops so make sure they are in good condition.

In a bowl combine your chopped veggies, slather them with olive oil and sprinkle in enough seasoning to coat. If you are doing an entire sheet tray, use all of your mixture.

Bake at 425 degrees for approx 15-20 mins, or until your veggies are tender and golden. If you serve this with dinner, top with a generous dollap of plain greek yogurt, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and the radish tops if you have them. If not, fresh mint with do. I made this along with Moroccan coucous and grilled chicken.

I will make an entire batch for myself and gorge shamelessly. They are that tasty. Which made me think that roasting them for breakfast and adding an egg on top would make me just as happy. I was right.

Omit the lemon and yogurt and instead top with an over easy egg. Then listen to the birds chirp outside and drown out the sounds of your bickering children because you are enjoying brunch. If that juice had champagne in it we would really be onto something. But I save my morning drinking for weekends. Or at least closer to the weekend. Tuesday is close right?

Moroccan Mint Roasted Vegetables

1 1/2 tsp dried mint

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

vegetable mixture of your choice

olive oil, lemon wedges and greek yogurt

optional: radish tops, freshly chopped mint

Combine all spices in a bowl or if you have a pestle and mortar grind your first 3 ingredients and add the rest and mix. Coat your veggies with olive oil and seasoning and bake in 425 degree oven for 15- 20 mins or until veggies are tender.

Dear Reid,

Just a few months shy of your second birthday and you are adorably walking the line between staying my baby boy and growing up. You try your best at telling us what you want and need but most of it is still words and sounds that I can’t quite make out. While you want to feed yourself and use regular cups, you struggle to do it correctly at times. Don’t feel bad, even when you grow up you’ll still manage to get food down the front of you, we all do. You don’t want to be coddled and when your ready for sleep you want to be laid down and left alone. Your excited to head out the door, with a wave and a goodbye. No more tears when you leave mama’s side. You follow the older kids and want so much to just run and play and have no boundaries. So I continue to warm your bed time bottle, and relish in the moments when you search frantically for your “ankie” and pacifier to settle in for a snooze. I want you to be independent, self sufficient and able to communicate clearly. All those wonderful things that make you a big boy. But I also want you to stay little and run to me when you fall down and get hurt. I want to follow you around aimlessly and watch you explore and learn. I want you to never grow out of your babble because your attempt at sounding things out is so incredibly cute. You very well might be my last baby so I want you to stay small and cuddly for as long as I can keep you because so quickly you’ll need me less and less. It’s for pure selfish reasons that I don’t want you to grow up.  I don’t mind changing your diapers, scouring the house for lost pacifiers, and washing bottles every day. Because you like to use a regular cup, and your eager to sit on the potty yourself and more often than not you come to me for comfort instead of looking for a pacifier. It’s moving quickly and I’m the one unprepared, not you. So bare with me a little while longer and let me hold onto the tiny version of you, because I’m doing my very best to embrace the boy you are becoming.

We have been serious landscapers lately. Yard work is so easy and fun and isn’t exhausting at all, said no one ever. If I take anything away from being a new home owner it’s buy a place that has an EXISTING lawn or your prepared to have a crew of people ready and willing to do it all at once. Doing it all yourselves is incredibly hard and tiring and while it’s satisfying to know your own sweat and tears created it, sometimes we imagine we just close our eyes and snap our fingers and all our projects are complete and we can kick back on our gorgeous lawn and simply enjoy the view. Almost there my friends.

But first, we started out all this by buying a new car. A new used car. Really the only complaint we had about the Jeep, was its size. By the time you loaded the kids and the dog, any bags and attempt at groceries it was jam packed. We took this opportunity to upgrade and buy something with more room and buy older and used so we could drive away without a car payment anymore. We did just that.

We bought new wheels for it and put on our tires from the Jeep we had just bought and our family ride is complete. I foresee lots of road trips and adventures in this puppy.

With that out of the way, we started the work. Our goal for this summer is to expand our lawn by taking out trees and the natural brush in both the front and the back and once that’s complete we plan on boxing in the playhouse and filling it with sand and a few more play structures. We have an incredible view of the inlet from our front yard but come summer the trees fill in and we start to lose that.

We cut down trees, so many trees. Ripped out bushes and brush. The roots you guys! There are so many roots, I swear we’ll never pull them all out. Trees were fallen, cut up, hauled off, stumps dug up and debris cleaned.  We still have more prep to do before we can bring in topsoil and seed it but we’ve made pretty good progress considering it’s been primarily Andy and I.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

(There is about 6 weeks difference with these comparisons but I forgot to take real before pictures so this will have to do.)

 The end result is to clear out the tall skinny birch trees and add more grass and evergreen trees to our yard. Which required us to actually get more trees. The beauty of living in Alaska. We loaded up the kids and some lunch and hit the trail down the road in search of those perfect bushy christmas worthy trees to plant.

In no time at all we had all that we could load up and travel with and headed back home to prep our spots and plant our new green additions.

By the end of each day we are all filthy and tired, and I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a disaster Reid always is. This kid lives to be outside and manages to be covered in dirt and mud from head to toe. Every single day. We know we’ve really worn them out when it’s 10 am and these guys are still fast asleep.

Summer is right around the corner and the days to come will be more digging and planting and watching our home become more and more like we envisioned it to be when we bought it. I’ll leave you with that and hopefully in a few months I’ll update you and show you just how far this little yard of ours has come.