Fish tacos.

One of our favorite dishes are fish taco's. On this particular occasion we had cod. Carmen LOVES fish. She also loves asparagus & cherry tomatoes & lately (and again) mushrooms. 

Is this turning into a food blog? Do I need to give credit to Mike for his meals? Ok, fine, he made this dish.

Mushrooms.

We sure eat a lot of mushrooms around here. This is my daily regimen. In addition to mushroom coffee and mushroom tea we take (red reishi) Balance, Calm and Cleanse. I can't quite elaborate enough as to how incredibly clear-headed, energized and well-rested I've been since I started using these products early last year. See, i'm not quick to take a pill. for anything. If you do recall I suffered through 77 hours of natural childbirth. I don't take a tylenol, advil, you name it, these days unless I feel like I am on my death bed.

Google the reishi mushrooms and see how they can benefit you! & if you want to do some shopping, below is the link. Just try a cup of the Royal Blend Tea and you'll feel like...well, you're Royal!

http://www.getalphay.com/katrinabonvinicartwright

Leftover heaven.

I am not exaggerating when I say we probably have sausage 4 maybe 6 times in a year. This would be the first for 2015. @ Dinner Sat. night Great Noni cooked up some sausage & peppers. I took some home and Sunday for lunch whipped up this delicious over-easy egg cooked in the says & pep juice. A slice of cheese atop, some Tapatio hot sauce, served on a hard roll. Pure, gluttonous heaven.

Mike missed out when I offered to make him breakfast and he declined. Sorry, there was only enough left for one!

Sleeping beauty.

So this rascal decided she didn't need a nap on Saturday afternoon after we spent time having fun with Librarian Lee and shooting Barbara Jean's wall hangings & dreamcatchers. But, when it was time to head to Great Noni's for dinner she passed out at 4:46pm.

So I had to take a pit stop at the Westbrook beach. It was freezing, but it was a stunning day.

 I only let her sleep a half hour and then I woke her and brought her into Gram's. We took a pit stop on the dryer as she adjusted to what was happening. This girl & her expressions.

After a lovely bath, she had big smiles at dinner. This was before I then had to plead with her to sit at the table and finish her dinner while we had ours and threaten to take her "samantha" away. If you've been reading along"Samantha" is her little red dino that goes simply everywhere with her/us.

This is after dinner enjoying some "Land Before Time" with Great Noni. Yes, hard as it may be to believe, great Noni did actually sit down for a minute.

& shortly after this picture she get's a bowl of ice cream, sugar high kicks in and she ends up sticking her bum in the toilet water, spitting toothpaste around the bathroom, hitting her mommy and "samantha" get's completely taken away for the car ride home.

That's what crappy sleep & too much sugar will do for my little rascal. Oh I can only imagine the joys I will face when she is 16.

Banana Bread

I stumbled upon coconut flour the other week when I was attempting to make some gluten free muffins for an event Brittney and I were planning to have. Now I'm just seeking out recipes to use it. That & banana's. Chrisann at work can't stand when a banana get's brown, she usually wastes it. She brought in 4 brown nanners and wala!

I used this recipe:

http://comfybelly.com/2013/10/banana-bread-using-coconut-flour-2/

Wind chill is 20 below.

When it's snowy & the wind chill is 20 below all you want to do is the sit in front of the stove and smell a nice roast in the oven. Mike picked up this pork tenderloin, seared it on all sides in the cast iron and then baked it on 400. Meanwhile he threw some potatoes, onions and carrots into the skillet with the pork juices, deglazed the pan with some red wine and then threw this into the baking dish with the pork in the oven. Wow. This was heavenly & Carmen ate her entire plate. Which meant she got some popcorn after dinner. & no microwave popcorn either in this house. Straight kernels on the stove and shaking that pan till they pop. That's our style. & it doesn't get any better than that!

Cod. It's what's for dinner.

I stopped into the rest. on Saturday morning to grab some dough & I also picked up these 2 filets of Cod. Toasted up some ciabatta and made some fresh breadcrumbs. Some white wine, a pat of butter and lemon and this pound & a half served 3 for dinner with 2 pcs of fish leftover for lunch the next day. Can't beat that healthy eating on $12!

Breakfast.

I only eat breakfast on the weekends. sometimes. M-F I juice every day.
I whipped this up with some leftover veggies & topped it off with some super hot salsa & sour cream. Awesome.

Play dough. Homemade.

I followed a recipe online to a T and made 4 batches of play dough...this was before my muffin failure & these 4 mounds of colors ended up in the trash too. They were pretty for about 5 minutes and then dried out. We tried a second recipe and made a huge batch of red & nailed it. We've got backup play dough in the fridge for days. Yes, this is what I do on a saturday afternoon off....who would have thought? huh!

Paleo gluten free muffins.

So clearly I think I am a baker and I can just find a recipe and completely modify it to fit my desires and it will all just work out OK, right. Wrong.
I had borrowed a recipe from a gal at work, almond flour raspberry chocolate chip muffins.
I headed to the market and decided to substitute coconut flour instead of almond and blueberries instead of raspberries.
Little did I know coconut flour is an exception to the baker's rule. You need much less coconut flour than a regular recipe calls for and you need like 6 times the liquid. So my first 2 trays, sadly, ended up in the trash. What a waste of some delicious ingredients.

I had to come up with plan # 2 because Britney & I had an event @ her Healing center scheduled for Sunday morning and I was baking these Saturday afternoon. So I found a paleo recipe with coconut flour that called for maple syrup, mashed bananas, cinnamon, etc. etc.

I made 2 batches and again modified it since I knew I had the right consistency with flour & eggs, I threw in some apple sauce, some mashed blue berries, banana, cinnamon, maple syrup, a pinch of salt, coconut oil, chocolate chips & walaa! They were awesome!!

But sadly, we awoke Sunday to a sloppy snow storm and had to cancel our event so it looks like we are now forced to eat them all up ourselves!

Friday night. Pizza night.

It does seem lately that Friday night is becoming homemade pizza night.
We have not consumed red meat in what feels like ages so Mike whipped up some meatballs, using milk since we were out of eggs. Thanks chickens. What... is it too cold?
Anyhow, here's a little heart shaped meatball pizza...because we're corny like that!

New England Living

As long as I don't have to shovel it, it's quite pretty....but I am still looking forward to Spring ;)

This girl knows what's good for her.

This is a ritual in our house. For me, this is breakfast. We've been juicing for almost 5 years now. Most of the time, we are very consistent & juice several times a week, but for the past year, it's been our daily regimen and it is amazing. We go through more than 5lbs of carrots each week and we have a new love for beets, turmeric and ginger, as seen here. Carmen helps her Daddy make the juice and often goes right for the pitcher. Cutie.

Me time.

This doesn't happen often. But when it does. Oh so good. Kicking my feet up, a little poetry by Erica Jong. A happy ol' girl on the bed. On the bed!? Sure, why not. It makes her happy. & she's 12.....just stay off my leather couches. STELLA!

No better pizza than homemade.

It's true. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE a good Peppe's pizza but nothing touches this homemade dough, sauce and veggies like the one Mike makes. I have a hard time not eating two entire pizza's by myself.