I’m going to get caught up on a couple of BzzAgent and Influenster posts first, but look for more substantive content to come shortly!

Much love to all of you!

Here’s what we’re eating:

Breakfasts will be biscuits and jam for Eric, and fruit and yogurt for me and Ethan.

Lunches will be sandwiches, chips, fruit, veggies and cookies for Eric, and soup, fruit, veggies, and a few days of leftovers for me.

Dinners will be really good this week!
Sunday: Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and salad
Monday: Leftovers from Sunday
Tuesday: Crockpot short ribs with polenta
Wednesday: Leftover short ribs with polenta cakes
Thursday: Chicken & squash stew, steamed broccoli
Friday: Leftover stew, salad
Saturday: Eating out (Angus Barn!)

What’s on your table this week?

Graphic by David Castillo Dominici

Happy Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for this year?

I’m thankful for many, many things. My family–my husband, who is the best husband anyone could ask for; my son, who is funny, adorable, loving, and thoughtful; and my extended family. I’m thankful for my health and the good health of Ethan and Eric, our friends, and our beautiful home. I’m thankful that Ethan’s teachers shower him with love and teach him about the world every day. I’m thankful that Eric and I both have jobs and careers that we love, where we are happy and valued. And I’m thankful that life has gotten a lot easier to handle now that Ethan is a toddler and able to communicate with us.

Wishing each of you a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving as you celebrate all we have to be thankful for!

This year, we decided to visit my family over Labor Day, and stay home for Thanksgiving. We’ll be spending the day with our friends, and we’re both looking forward to not traveling on a holiday weekend. For Hanukkah, we wanted to start the tradition of giving Ethan small gifts each night, plus a bigger gift on the last night. So this year, we’re giving him a new book every night, with some bigger gifts throughout the week. For Christmas, our tradition is that we spend Christmas Eve at my Gramma’s house with all of my cousins. I don’t know if we’ll be able to this year with Ethan, but if he’s sleeping well, then we’ll probably go for it. It’s always so fun to stay up late, play board games and UNO, cracking up about something silly. Some of my best memories growing up are of Christmas Eve nights at Gramma’s. It was my Grandpa’s birthday, so it’s always been a really special day for our family.

It’s been a while since I had a chance to do any baking with everything else we have going on. But the holidays are coming, and Food Lion is sponsoring a bake off on their Facebook page–so I wanted to come up with a good recipe to enter. Here’s what I came up with! I hope you’ll enter too–here’s the link: You can enter in one of four categories–appetizer, entree, side, or dessert. 12 winners will take home a $500 Food Lion gift card! The bake off ends 11/28–so get your favorite recipe entered soon!

Cheesecake with Spiced Graham Cracker Crust

Crust:
11 whole graham crackers
1/4 c. honey
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. nutmeg
1 t. allspice
1 t. ginger

Filling:
1 container fat-free cottage cheese
2 bricks reduced-fat cream cheese, softened
Zest of 1 lemon
1 T. vanilla
3 eggs
1 c. sugar

Heat oven to 350F. Spray inside of 9″ springform pan with pam.

Make crust: Process crackers in food processor until fine. Add spices, pulse until combined. Add honey, and process until crumbly and well-mixed. Press into the bottom and 1″ up the sides of springform pan. Chill in the refrigerator while you make the filling, about 10-15 minutes.

Make filling: Process cottage cheese and cream cheese until smooth. Add lemon zest and vanilla, pulse until combined. Add eggs and sugar, process until well blended.

Bake the cheesecake for 45 minutes, or until the center is almost set. Turn the heat off, crack oven door with a wooden spoon, and let rest in the hot oven for 30 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack. Chill.

Pictures to come–it’s still cooling! But it’s weight-watchers friendly, at 6 points per slice (12 slices per cheesecake). Enjoy!

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour for Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Food Lion. I received a promotional item to facilitate my shopping experience and review.

Breakfasts for Eric will be biscuits (homemade–we made extra Saturday morning and froze them), bagels, and fruit. Breakfasts for me will be fruit, granola, and yogurt.

Lunches for Eric will be sandwiches, fruit, veggies, and some snacky foods he loves (chips, cookies, etc). Lunches for me will be fruit, veggies, and soup.

Here are the dinner menus:
Sunday: Eggplant parmesan
Monday: Maple-roasted salmon with green beans
Tuesday: Homemade pizza
Wednesday: Leftover pizza for me and Ethan while Eric has his LASIK consult
Thursday: Hot dogs
Friday: Herbed chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries
Saturday: Eat out

Here’s what’s on our table this week:

Monday: Burgers and roasted yellow squash/zucchini
Tuesday: Stuffed acorn squash (stuffed with a wild rice pilaf that has celery, walnuts, and raisins)
Wednesday: Eggplant parmesan
Thursday: BBQ chicken with pineapple
Friday: Pizza with roasted veggies
Saturday: Grilled salmon, mashed sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli
Sunday: Leftovers

What are you eating this week?

Today is Foodie Pen Pal reveal day! This month has been a whirlwind, and I didn’t even realize it was about time to be receiving my FPP box of goodies until I was sitting at the dining room table one night and noticed a large box by the front door. “Honey, what’s that box?” I asked Eric. “I don’t know, I think it came yesterday. Probably just something else you ordered from amazon…” he said. I was so excited that he was wrong! My FPP this month was Tracy from Vermont.

Ethan checking out whether he could fit into the box. The vote was yes!

Tracy sent an amazing package. Here’s a peek!

What an amazing package!

Inside, she had (very carefully) packed some really awesome goodies and a sweet card. She included granola made locally, which has nuts, oats, coconut, raisins, and a hint of maple–it’s delicious! My new favorite snack is a handful of granola, a sliced apple, topped with a drizzle of maple syrup. She included maple syrup in the package, which is one of my favorite foods. She included a roasted sweet potato dip, which looks awesome. She also included two local jams–maple blueberry and pear chipotle. I’ve only tried the maple blueberry, and I’ve never had anything so good. I’m sure the pear chipotle is going to be just as good! The box ended with two protein bars and a little box of sea salt caramels. The bars were tasty–not too sweet, only 100 calories, and pretty good. The caramels were SOOOOOOOOOO amazing. Eric and I actually rock-paper-scissored over the last one. I won. Best 2 of 3, haha!

The caramels were so good that they caused us to look at our “usual” caramels recipe and tweak it to include sea salt. That recipe is coming soon–look for a Food Lion-sponsored baking post in two weeks where I’m going to share my favorite family recipes for holiday baking/treats.

I’ll be honest. I’ve been so busy with family, work, and travel that I haven’t had a chance to do anything interesting or fancy with the goodies from this box–I’ve eaten half the granola, the bars, the caramels, and a good bit of the syrup, plus I’ve tasted the blueberry jam. I’m really looking forward to baking up some delicious things with the pear-chipotle jam–I’m trying to come up with a recipe that I can fill a cupcake or muffin with it. I also think the sweet potato dip will go into taco salad next week. I can’t wait to try them!

Hope you all enjoyed my FPP reveal. This was my third month participating, and it was a blast again!

Sunday: Chicken pot pie
Monday: Chicken rollups (lasagna noodles filled with ground chicken, and a puree of sweet potato, goat cheese, greek yogurt, and herbs, topped with marinara sauce) and steamed broccoli
Tuesday: Leftover chicken pot pie, roasted acorn squash
Wednesday: Leftover chicken rollups, steamed peas
Thursday: Whatever we can scrounge up from the fridge. Likely more rollups–that recipe made a ton of them!

I’ll post the recipes I used for the pot pie and rollups later this week, once I have a chance to take a picture of them. What’s on your table this week?

I started by reading Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches –And How We Can Change Them!, by Sarah Wu. This book was a really easy read, and made me think hard about the food Ethan eats at school every day. I’m not at the point that I’m ready to become an activist, a fighter for change, but I’m definitely thinking about it. If you have kids in daycare, preschool, or school, this book is definitely worth a read. There are also a lot of great resources listed in the back of the book that I made note of so I can use them when I’m ready to make a change.

I then poured over Urban Farm Handbook: City Slicker Resources for Growing, Raising, Sourcing, Trading, and Preparing What You Eat for more than a week. This book, written by Annette Cottrell and Joshua McNichols, was awesome. It goes through each type of food and products that people buy from a grocery store, and gives the reader “Opportunities for Change” within each category. These opportunities are further developed in each chapter, and it leaves you with a handbook that tells you how to change as much or as little as you feel prepared to tackle. The book addresses everything from grains and dairy to meat and personal care products. Some steps we’re going to be taking after reading this book include:

• Eggs: Buy organic, pastured eggs at the farmer’s market.
• Grains: Buy whole-grain flour, bake your own bread.
• Growing Your Own: Definitely expanding our container garden; we’ll also look at options for adding veggies to existing landscapes.
• Seeds: Buy biodynamically grown seeds.
• Food Activism: Buy directly from local farmers.
• Meat: Buy local, sustainably-raised meat.

These are just a few of the ways we’re changing things around our house. We’re very lucky to live in a place where we can do these things and though they’re more expensive, we get a choice about which farmer we purchase food from. I would absolutely recommend this book if you’re looking for a book that gives you some options that may fit your lifestyle.

The third book I read was The Unhealthy Truth: One Mother’s Shocking Investigation into the Dangers of America’s Food Supply– and What Every Family Can Do to Protect Itself by Robyn O’Brien. This book really made me think. The author is the parent of several children with food allergies, so she approaches the topics in the book primarily from an allergy perspective. Much of the book addresses the problems with genetically modified food, conventionally farmed/raised crops and livestock, and the increase in allergies in children today vs. in the last generation.

Working through how we were going to change how we eat, I had been focusing on staying close to home and eating cleanly. I hadn’t thought about the pandora’s box that is GMO’s and conventionally-farmed foods. After reading this book, we’ve decided to do our best to eliminate both of these things from our family’s diet. It’s a hard thing to wrap my head around–all the new brands we’re learning, all the types of food we’re now reading labels for–but it’s also shocking to me how companies have eliminated GMO’s from their overseas brands in Great Britain and Europe, and they refuse to do so here because there hasn’t been a big enough outcry about them here yet. I hope California will change that with their vote on Prop. 37 in just three weeks. Obviously, I’m no expert yet–but I’m happy to have read this book and started learning about these issues.

All told, I recommend all three of these books. Definitely worth a read if you’re looking for books that educate on the current state of the food system, and how you can impact your local food supplies.