Tuesday, February 24, 2009

"Spoon People"

Now I am not a "crafty" person, meaning I have never been good at or particularly enjoyed making crafts. At Girls' Camp I hated the craft we always had to do, mine always turned out ugly. I never attend Super Saturdays, and I rarely enter stores like Michael's or JoAnn's Fabrics. Just not my kind of stores, you know? However, for the last couple of days my two girls have been sick, so we have been prevented from spending time with friends, or from going to the YMCA, because we don't want to make everyone else sick. The weather has been cold so we haven't been able to get out by ourselves either and just go for walks or head to the zoo. The result is that my two year-old is going stir crazy. So, in an attempt to add some variety to her life, I pulled out The Preschooler's Busy Book, which was a gift we received from Brock's sister and her husband for Christmas. I looked up a couple of things I thought we could do and headed to Walmart for a few supplies. One "craft" I tried was called "Spoon People." Here is a picture of my attempt at a "Spoon Person."


I was fairly satisfied with the result, and I thought my two year-old daughter, who was helping me glue on the hair, eyes, clothes, etc., would be thrilled with it. When we finished and I handed it to her to play with, she gave me this look that expressed some hesitancy, like she was embarrassed. I guess the toy her mother had made for her was not really up to par. "Come on," I said, "look how fun this is." She finally accepted the toy with a resigned air, as if she was humoring her mother. If this is how she is going to act at two, I wonder what she is going to be like at thirteen.



Maybe we will just stick to gluing macaroni to construction paper next time and letting her paint it. At least that doesn't embarass her.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Cookbook suggestions

I've always been a fan of eating healthy. Unfortunately I'm also a fan of delicious food and it can sometimes feel like those are mutually exclusive. We also feel a lot better when we eat more fruits and vegetables but have found it difficult to incorporate those into our daily fare. Enter Moosewood. My older sister gave us The New Moosewood Cookbook for Christmas and it's been really fun so far. Before you read too far I should give you my review of the books and then see if you want to read further. These two books are for people who want to incorporate more vegetables into their diet and aren't afraid of a little work in the kitchen. They don't take that long to make relative to other made from scratch dishes (usually anywhere from 40-60 minutes) to prepare. Some of the soups take special ingredients, but most are fairly simple. Another feature that I particulary like about one of the books (Daily Special) is at the bottom of each page are suggestions of what to pair it with. With that out of the way, back to Moosewood.

The Moosewood Restaurant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moosewood_Restaurant) is a restaurant in Ithica New York that started in 1973. They found that their vegetarian dishes were selling best so they became a vegetarian restaurant. They have about 10 cookbooks our right now and the two we have are winners. Enjoy