Idea: Grower Market Bounty

I love going to the growers market for some inspiration on what to have for dinner on a busy weeknight.  There is a local growers market on Thursdays, nearby where I work.  This week I was able to find some awesome deals

I ran down there on my lunch hour and picked up a wonderful tasting locally made spinach and cheese tamale topped with fresh salsa and sour cream, sorry but I forgot to take a picture!

One of my favorite bakeries, Coquette was selling their wonderful bread.   This week I picked up a loaf of Thyme After Thyme, a wonderful loaf artisan loaf with roasted garlic and thyme.  I also was able to find some organic Angus ground beef being offered by a local ranch. Additionally there was a local farmer offering hydroponic tomatoes (first time to try these, pretty tasty but no replacement for a nice summer tomato off the vine).

I also had some Rogue Creamery Oregon Blue Cheese that I had purchased at the vault sale a while back.

This was the result:   YUMMY.

Blue Cheese Burgers w/ Garlic Mayo:
(this is an approximation of amounts, since I did not measure anything)
Serves: 4

1 pound of lean Angus Ground Beef
1/4 Cup Oregon Blue Cheese
1-1 1/2 teaspoon Grill Mates Hamburger Seasoning
8 Slices of good quality artisan bread (roasted garlic a plus)
8 Slices of Tomato
8 leaves of lettuce
2-3 thin slices of Red Onion, rings separated
2 Tablespoons Mayonnaise, I prefer Best Foods
2 cloves garlic smashed  (run through garlic press)

In small bowl, mix together the mayonnaise and garlic and mix well.  Set aside

In a medium bowl, mix together beef, blue cheese and seasoning, combine until just mixed, being careful not to overwork the meat.  Form in to 4 equal size patties, I shaped mine oblong to fit better on the bread.

Cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes each side (these would also be awesome grilled, but i was having technical difficulties that day, so I just did them on the stove top).  Get a good sear on each side.  Only flip once, let rest a couple minutes.

Meanwhile, lightly spread mayo over the sliced bread.  Place burger on on slice of bread, top with lettuce, onion and tomato and second slice of bread.  For easier eating, slice in half.  Enjoy!

Idea: Simultaneously post on Facebook and Twitter

Social Media......

A friend of mine recently gave me the idea to begin posting on Facebook and Twitter with my ideas not just on the blog.
So,  I took a look at it and decided how can I post everywhere at once.   I've done this once before with my 'regular', if you will, Facebook page, Twitter account and LinkedIn pages and that was pretty easy and I can now post in one location and have it posted everywhere.

I looked at it to look into that see how I can make that work for my blog, a new facebook page and a new Twitter account.

This post is testing that out.

Here are the steps I took:

• First, I created an email account for my Blog, and new Facebook page and Twitter account.  Always best to separate your 'public' you from your 'private' you just a little. Especially since you open yourself up to lots of SPAM, and not the kind in the can, which I hear some like fried in a pan.
• Second,  I created a new Facebook page using create page.  This does assume you already have a page that you are creating this from.  If you don't have a facebook page, or use facebook, well this probably isn't all that interesting anyway.  I know there are lots of folks who prefer to stay far, far away from it!
• Third, I created a new Twitter Page.
• Lastly, I used TwitterFeed to link it all together.  WikiHow has a great tutorial for this.

Viola, all together.

Now for the true test.  Let's see if this post makes it to all my feeds.  Cross Fingers. 

Guess what I could make that work! So now all my posts also post to my facebook account and to my Twitter account.  How lucky is That.  Next is the auto posting to Pinterest......

Idea: What's for dinner Sunday 5/22/2013

Dinner around the table.   I think it is very important to eat around the table as a family.   We make a point of doing this at my house nearly every night.

I often like to make something a nice family dinner on Sundays.  Addionally, it's often the night we invite others to dinner as well.

This time we had a new dish I created.  I was looking for something a little different.

Slightly Jerked Chicken w/ Pineapple Mango Salsa served with Coconut Quinoa

You need to plan ahead a little to have this meal, the level of heat will increase depending on the length of time you marinate the chicken.   I marinated ours between 2-3 hours, I didn't want it getting too hot for the kids, next time I might marinate it longer or add some additional heat, it was very flavorful, but not in the least bit spicy.
 

The Mango Salsa.  Let it sit for at least an hour prior to dinner to let the flavors blend together well.

I also had some asparagus and mini heirloom tomatoes I needed to use, so I decided to roast them in the oven, while they were delicious, they really didn't go with the Chicken.

How-To:  Pre-heat oven 400°F trim asparagus and place in a single layer (more or less), top with your halved tomatoes, drizzle with some EVOO (no more than 1-2 tablespoons), salt and pepper to taste, pop in the oven and roast for about 20 minutes or until desired tenderness of Asparagus.  I like mine just past crisp, no soggy asparagus for me, thank you! 

The chicken off the grill.  It's pounded to about 1/2" thick, so it cooks up really fast.

Dinner is Ready!

Dessert was a simple fare of Lemon Cherry Parfaits.   Parfaits are the easiest thing to make.  Just layer some pudding, some fruit and top with some whipped cream.   I didn't feel like putting a ton of efforts in to making dessert tonight, so I layered some Lemon Pudding, Light Canned Tart Cherries and topped it with some Cool Whip and a little lemon zest.  I think some fresh whipped cream would have made it better and some fresh strawberries.....

Life is a bowl of Cherries (black sweet cherries!).

Came home the other day to a box a cherries left for us by some good neighbors.  YUM.

Idea: Girl Rainbow Birthday Parties

It is time to begin planning my daughters birthday.  This year's theme will be a Girl Pirate Theme Slumber Party.  Stay tuned for updates on that.  

Last year she had a Rainbow Slumber Party.  It was great fun for all, and pretty easy to setup.

How to plan a successful Rainbow Slumber Party:

 

The basics:

• Plan to send big brothers to Grandma's!!  (Actually you don't have to do this, but trust me when you get to the next step, big brother will be happy to go!).
• Determine how many people you will invite.  We invited 9 girls because I can sit 10 around my dining room table.   Send invites a couple weeks prior to the party for optimal attendance.  Be clear on your invite that you need a RSVP.  (My daughter is diligent with reminding her friends have their Moms call!)
• Determine how long you want your party to be and what activities you will do and create a schedule.  We had the girls dropped off on a Friday at 5:00 PM and two pickup times:  9:00 PM Friday night for those not sleeping over and Saturday at 11:00 AM. Having two pickup times was a hit because of sports some girls had morning games or other obligations and no-one felt they had to miss out if they couldn't sleep over.
• Plan to serve breakfast, dinner and snacks.
• I suggest having a couple of other adult helpers to set up the next activity while one is still in the works.

 

The Invites and decorations: 

Printed all the details about the party on my computer. 

Sydney Rubber Stamped the front page

• For this party we made our invites.   Simple and easy, with a color printer, some rubber stamps and color pens.
  

• Decide on what to do for decorations.  Honestly, this theme was the EASIEST theme ever.  Most of the decorations can be purchased at your local dollar store. We did a rainbow balloon theme table cloth, papers plates, steamers, dangling swirlers and lots and lots of multi-color balloons.  I suggest you purchase at least two of the table clothes, then you can switch them out after messy crafts and pizza the night before and have a fresh one for breakfast.




The Menu:



• Dinner Pizza:  (we did little Ceasars, Hot and Ready Cheese and Pepperoni.  Kids could care less and it is quick, fast and cheap).  Sprite poured over Koolaid ice cubes
• Dessert:  Cupcakes and Ice Cream
• Movie Snacks:  Concession Stand stocked with rainbow favorites (Rainbow Popcorn, Rainbow candy such as Skittles, licorice, and giant suckers).
• Breakfast:  Rainbow Pancakes w/ syrup, rainbow fruit platter, OJ and Milk.

The Schedule (roughly):

• 5:00 PM the girls started arriving and we started with decorating their treat bags.  I had everything separated into individual plain paper bags, supplied markers, stickers and rubber stamps.  Each girl started making their bags as they arrived to the party by claiming their bag and putting their name on it.  It was a good way to start off since it is a self paced activity.  Have Dad (or other helper) run for pizza.
• 5:45'ish Serve Pizza
• 6:00 (geez, these girls eat fast) - Start Activities:   I purchased activities kits, mostly at Jo-Ann's, so check your local crafting store.  The sell packs made for "camp" that had multiple kits for a fairly reasonable price and decent quality.  Sun-catchers, Key chains and button rings.  I let them work on them in the order they wanted, this worked well for items that needed to share.  I had 5 glue bottles, 4 sets of paints.  Pick your activities based on the level of help you want to be providing.   Most of the girls were pretty good at painting, needed some help with cutting and tying the key chains, and frankly the gluing of the button rings was pretty messy. 
• 6:30 - Serve cupcakes and ice cream (could also be an activity, of decorating with candy, we didn't do this as I decorated them)
•  7:00 Gather to open presents
• 7:15 Make friendship bracelets.  Make sure you know how to make one...hahaha.  Apparently this is harder than I imagined.  Luckily one invitee was the obi-wan of bracelet making.  After several attempt to show the other girls, she finally whipped one out for all 10 girls in about 15 minutes.
• 8:00 begin movies, we rented two.  The girls who were leaving at 9:00 still got to watch one.  Be sure to stock up at the concession stand before getting settled. 

Some additional pictures:

The  Concessions Stand:


' 
Rainbow popcorn - 
Made with various flavors jello and skipped the peanuts.
(Strawberry, Lime, Lemon, Orange and Blue Raspberry).
  


Breakfast:

We rounded out the party in the morning with some much needed fruit and rainbow pancakes, just use your regular pancake recipe and add some colors!

Idea: Spend more time with Essential Oils, Herbs and other natural Remedies

Sinus Infections

So, I have been fighting a sinus infection for almost a week now, granted it is a lot better than it was last week, but far, far from gone.

Lately, I have been interested in trying a more natural approach to healing and decided tonight to see if there is some additional things I can try.  I will admit that while I have used essential oils for years, I haven't made it my 100% approach and often fall back on it when traditional medicines do not seem to be working.

I found this website on natural remedies to treat and prevent sinus infections, there are countless others as well I am sure.

I have tried a few of these options, eucalyptus and peppermint, but not in my humidifier  I also frequently try the sinus rinse.  I am not so sure if putting the essential oil up your nose is a good idea.

Thoughts of a the brain-eating amoeba pop into my head, and while I know this was caused by using tap water, not essential oils, the image is there nonetheless.

Execution: 

Anyway, there are other things to try and while I am out of coconut oil, I do have other carrier oils, I am off to try my own homemade concoction.  I used Jojoba butter, with some vitamin E oil for a better consistency.  The essential oils: Eucalyptus and Lavender (and maybe a couple of others).  I made this concoction pre-blogging, in the future I will be better about quantities, since this is fairly useless otherwise.

As I mentioned above, the natural approach to healing is fairly new approach to me, but I have dabbled in essential oils for years.

UPDATE 5/9/2013:  So, I used this for the last two nights.  On my Chest and over my sinuses.  I must say that I am feeling better.  Coincidence?  The infection could have been on it's way out already.   So, I will continue using it and see if they continue improve.

Idea: Create a blog to journal my ideas (in case I forget later).....which is likely, I might add.

I like the idea of blogging. 

I have started several single topic blogs only to discover, I am fickle about what I want to do at any given moment and what I want to blog about.   Sometimes food, sometime hobbies, sometimes parties, sometimes kids, sometimes whatever...... Then I decided, where is it written that I can only blog about a single topic?  I will blog on all that interests me, with any luck some of it will interest you too.  At minimum, I will have a on-line journal that may interest my children one day.  Or at least a source of humour, "Oh, there goes Mom again......"  =)  So, Mom's Idea Blog was born.

I spend hours gathering ideas, books, magazines, pins on pinterest, etc...  I have maybe tried around 10% of these ideas, maybe more.  I love to entertain and create memories myself, so off I go on my journey to try to up that percentages and those ideas turn into actions.

The Execution:

Spent way too much time figuring this out, how to make it look just so....I have a feeling this will take a few days months of ongoing edits to get exactly what I like (I also strongly suspect I will never get there).    Not excited about the current layout, but it will be fun figuring it out.  It's also become clear that I will need to separate my slide show buckets into themes and whatnot, so my bats and Christmas cookies are not mixed in with the baby blankets.