Avocado love

I have decided that working and blog maintaining aren't mutually exclusive. However, to maintain this blogs existence it's going to be down and dirty with less punctuation and capitalization. deal with it 3 readers of mine.


First up: the beautiful avocado mango salad that I made last night and ate again for lunch. So. So. Good.

I took a few ideas from recipes online but basically used what I had:
2 ripe avocados
1 mango
1/2 sliced onion
1 roma tomato
1/4 orange juice
1 lime juiced
salt
pepper
EVOO

toss together. eat. brag about your awesome avocado mango salad. don't share.

Processed food is scary

Forgive me, but I watched Food, Inc this weekend and it's got me all up in arms.

First- let me say this: I still cook with processed food. I still feed my family sugar. In fact, several nights a week I find myself bribing my two year old with a dessert to get her to eat her vegetables.

But ya'll, the food industry has some really shady practices. First they make us fat, and then they sell us things that are supposed to make us thin.

This was a really interesting article I read in The Guardian this week - Why our food is making us fat.

Processed food is scary.

Naughty children get (char)coal.

So today I was going to discuss wrestling with squash in a square foot garden (don't worry the wrestling match did occur and you'll hear all about it tomorrow) but I'd rather talk about yesterday when Lola said her tummy hurt and she needed medicine.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled program

Welp. Shortly before my last post I returned to full-time work. It was a nonstop few years of late nights and daycare for Lola.

Then this spring, I found myself in the position to stay at home again while figuring out what exactly to do next. So, Lola and I spend a lot of time in the garden, cooking, penny pinching and doing various crafts in between my job search and the occasional consulting gig.

So - I'm back! Posts coming up in the next few weeks will include: Pasta-less pasta, paper making, the best macaroni and cheese ever, making 3 meals out of one whole chicken, tiramisu cupcakes, and trying to tame my wild squash plants in my square foot garden.

To tide you over, here is a photo of Lola eating mulberries from our backyard tree and the first peas from our garden!

She's also wearing a shirt that I chopped the sleeves off of that morning because I couldn't find a short sleeved shirt. I'm all about solutions.

Happy Wednesday!

You're not doomed to the Wiggles!

At least I think that's what they're called. You need to start your kid off right, and if after listening to awesomeness they still wander over to crap music, you can love them anyway.

I've been working on giving Lola a musical education. It started with many in utero dance parties to old school gangsta rap. My craving for gangsta rap was almost as potent as my craving for Claussens pickles and olives. Recently, we've danced around the office to The Passenger by Iggy Pop which has had a nice little revival due to its use in the 'Up in the Air' trailer. I highly encourage an office dance party with or without a child. It is much more fun than those boring office stretches that you should be doing!

A lucky gift that made it to me was a compilation of various alternative rockers doing children's music called "Mary had a little Amp"  It supports a good cause, won't make you want to gouge out your eardrums, and it even has Lou Reed! It has a few great dance-y tunes, but I've found it really helps in the car. Lola and I do a lot of commuting and when she's wide awake and not ready to sleep she needs to have a toy and music on and this is one of our favorites. 

Snot-nosed Disease Carriers

Beware: those cute little cousins may have made my 6 month old giggle and smile, but they have brought a pox upon my house! Lola, The Daddy, and I have all come down with a burning throat, low grade fever, crusty eyes, and stuffy nose.  I think I have managed to not completely fail at motherhood in the past week but I definitely failed at laundry and general order and cleanliness (not to mention bloggerness.) Luckily for us, I picked up this sweet little gadget at the store a couple weeks ago. Turns out it was a wise impulse buy! This thermometer is a pacifier! It only cost about $10, and prevents me from having to stick something up my darlings bum when I'm just being paranoid.  I'll keep the rectal thermometer around to confirm but really glad I don't have to deal with snaps and diapers as frequently.