White world and a New Moon

Weekends, especially Saturday, can get really weird ! We are a one car family in a town with no public transportation and several busy roadways with no sidewalks, so errands wait till the weekend. When the necessary errands compete with commitments, it gets rushed.

We started the day off with a bowl of oats sweetened with chopped dates and topped with fruit salad. Fruit salad is a great way to use up the last bits of the fruit so that there is room for a fresh stock. It is really surprising how satisfying fresh fruit and oatmeal can be !

Then off to run errands. The first day of spring ! All week long the temps were hovering in the 60's and there was sunshine . This morning, we woke to this
I saw a couple of very confused looking robins on the lawns as we passed. Yeah buddy, I feel the same way ! Enough winter already...please ??? It will be Easter in 2 weeks, and while my spiritual holiday was on this day , I hate thinking of Easters with no new growing things and white on the ground. Bring on the dog violets and so on !!! We did the first half of our errands , including a trip to Trader Joes where mom had to keep repeating "but it is still a cookie , guys and not really food!", and then it was time to break for lunch. Sweet Tomatoes was in the area, so we went to eat our fill of salad, soups and muffins

Salad of romaine, spinach, broccoli, red cabbage, raw butternut squash, tomatoes, zucchini, garbanzos, raisins, sunflower seeds

Signature salads including Classic Greek, Cole slaw, Island Pineapple salad, Joannes Broccoli Madness and one other I cannot remember the name of. Okay universe, if the green cannot appear outside, GET IN MY BELLY !!!

cup of vegetarian vegetable stew, 8 grain bread, fat free cranberry orange bran muffin, classic cheese focaccia and garlic focaccia- yum ! By this time I was full. I had to laugh at my son. We walked in and he got all excited for the different kinds of Cole slaw, raw cabbage and beets. He has developed a real love for most cruciferious veggies and would eat his weight in them happily. Turns out one of the tools that swayed his opinion was to read over my shoulder often while visiting Kath eats real food. I think he has a little crush on her- but more important is the fact that she is young enough to look like a peer, and she always talks about how tasty and healthy real foods are. It has been one of my greatest tools steering him to healthy eating. When I introduce something new, ,if he shies away from it I just say "kath eats it", and he happily tries it - and usually loves it.

After several more stops and the purchase of a mountain of veggies for the week we made it home and began the job of chopping, packing, portioning and so forth. It's a whole family affair these days. We are a food factory ! Bob is in charge of inventory ( shelving the stock, rotating it so oldest is used first and filling containers). Nick is in charge of data entry and assorted gofer things( makes labels, runs to get containers and zip locks) and I am in charge of manufacturing ( chopping and prepping veggies according to use in the coming week). We all work , then we spend the evening doing something fun. Over the last couple of weeks it has been movie viewing, and dinners have been sort of lite. We were all pretty full from the salad lunch but it is importaint to refuel every few hours , so dinner was snack fare
Carrots, celery and hummus, my weekly treat of a walnut brownie and popcorn for all. Air popped with nothin on it at all- we have grown to love it this way ! The movie was New Moon, as requested by my son, who decided after 10 minutes it was too scary and left to go to his room and watched The Wiz instead. We rented this as a pay per view and so Bob and I watched it. It seems we are both too old to appreciate the teen angst and adolescent ideas of romance, because we both sat there scratching our head and heckling the movie. I don't get it. It was fun to share the evening and popcorn together. By the end of the film we were joking about doing a remake with Yakko, Wakko and Dot of The Annimaniacs as part of the cast. Could be fun !

Today is going to be another day of commitments , study for me and some creative exercise. It's going to be good !