Preparing for Next Year! A new go at freezer cooking for the Moorhead Household!

A few weeks ago I learned that one of my benefits through our insurance is the opportunity to participate in Weight Watchers with out having to pay. We are able to get 14 meeting vouchers and as long as I attend 10 or more meetings in a 14 week period, I can get an additional 14 vouchers for more meetings. I can do this up to 4 times per calendar year. So, I've ordered my vouchers (which should be arriving any day now) and plan to begin weight watchers next week after our Christmas weekend has passed.

This evening I discovered a blog chock full of weight watcher recipes. All the portions have been figured out per recipe and the point value per serving is included. So, I'm prepping this evening for my shopping trip tomorrow. I began by selecting recipes to try, aiming to get about 60 servings of dinner entrees as well as trying a lunch item, and a couple of desserts. Here is our menu for the upcoming month:

Spinach Tortellini Soup
turkey Croquettes
Baked Ziti with Spinach
Minestrone Soup
Santa Fe Chicken
Chicken and White Bean Enchiladas
Italian Spinach Meatballs
Baked Macaroni and Cheese
Turkey Burgers with Zuchinni
Pomegranate Scones
No Bake Fudgey Snowballs
Banana Pancakes
Carrot Cupcakes

Once I'd selected the recipes I put together a shopping list for tomorrow. I am now ready to brave the grocery store with my two little girls tomorrow morning (first Monday of Christmas break) as soon as we are all up, fed and ready to go.

I'm looking forward to putting these meals together. I am planning on packaging them differently this time though. Since we will be counting points I'll be freezing meals in either single or double servings which in essence means that some evenings we could potentially all be eating different meals. However, since all the cooking will be done ahead of time it will not entail additional work from myself or my hubby!

Pictures of completed ready to freeze meals to come soon!

Ho Ho Ho Holidays!

I am really excited to be sitting by a warm fire and a decorated Christmas tree this evening after putting my girls to bed! We had a busy weekend and I was lucky enough to get a little nap in this Sunday afternoon!

We started the weekend off by continuing our tradition of taking a trip to Hallmark to pick out our ornaments for the year. Sydney got her baby's first Christmas ornament, a winnie the pooh selection, Emma picked out an iceskating Mickey and Minnie mouse, McKenzie found a Batman and I got another Santa ornament. Just as we were about to leave I spied some very cute stockings. I'd been on the hunt for just the right stockings for the girls and was very excited to see these! Everywhere I'd been looking I'd found stockings but the fabric seemed to thin, or they were covered by cartoon characters that were very popular right now, and I wanted something more classic.

So, these stockings are perfect! Emma chose the snowman and we picked the reindeer for Sydney. They each have a little chalk board where we can write the kids names, and a little pocket to hold the chalk. I figure when they are bigger they can practice writing their names themselves and that will be fun! As for now, I've written their names and they are hung with care on the hearth.

On Saturday, we had many plans, McKenzie started off the day prepping a turkey that he then took to a friends house to fry/eat while they watched the civil war. Lucky for us all the Ducks won the game and continued with their perfect season. While McKenzie was gone the girls and I began our morning with their first shared bath.

Later my mom came and picked up Emma to play at her house and then we meet back up at Aunt Nancy's for cousing Hudson's third birthday party. It was a very busy, tiring, but great day!

Sunday was yet another adventure. We went out to Ramsby's tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree. My mom and Ayaka and Akari joined us and we had a great time finding just the right tree, cutting it down and then having a bit of cocoa before returning home to continue with holiday festivities.

We all had fun playing in the trees, and Emma even got to "drive" a little tractor as we got ready to head home!

Once we got home McKenzie got our tree all set up. I started some fresh sugar cookies and we shared a lunch of sandwiches and sandwich wraps. I covered our tree in lights and then the decorating ensued! Akaria, Ayaka, Emma, my mom and myself unwrapped and hung many ornaments with care. When we were done it looked just perfect :)

After decorating the tree, we spent some time decorating cookies. Emma was so focused, she concentrated on placing sprinkles just perfectly onto her cookie. Then licked them off, got a new color of frosting and placed more sprinkles again.

Later that evening Sydney had her daily meal of rice cereal. this is about her 7th day of the cereal and she has caught on to eating from a spoon much quicker than Emma did at this age. She is still very messy but loves the cereal and I can't seem to feed her fast enough most evenings. Lately she has taken to clasping her hands in front of her while she eats, sometimes sucking on her fingers after I've given her a bite. It's just so cute! Sydney suddenly seems to be growing up so fast!

Thanksgiving Eve Catch Up

It has been quite a bit since I last posted. I'm still working on my felt food for Emma's Christmas and am also working on a line of felt Monster toys that I'm putting up for sale on etsy.com. Once I get more posted I will share the link to my storefront so you can check them out if you are interested!

It has been very busy around here, especially for McKenzie. Last Tuesday night after we finished dinner with my parents at our house I got a gall bladder attack. I'd been having them since March of last year. Lately they had been getting worse, and lasting longer. I had scheduled to have surgery this coming December. However, once this attack began I decided it wouldn't hurt to go to the ER to get some pain meds to cope with the attack. As it happened my surgeon was on call that night and offered to do the surgery on Wednesday instead of waiting till December. I'm so glad to have said yes, as now I'm feeling quite close to normal and have all that pain behind me. So since I've been laid up for the majority of the time I don't have much to report on.

Today I worked on cookies and pies for Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to having a bunch of McK's family as well as my parents over for the holiday tomorrow.

Felt-tastic Handmade Christmas Gifts

This weekend I have spent a LOT of time working on Christmas gifts!

While browsing crafty blogs on Friday night I found a blog where a mom was making felt food for her daughter's play kitchen. I immediatly loved the idea! I looked around and googled some pictures, and got some ideas. (Pictured here: FELT LUNCH a ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato sandwhich on wheat bread, a bag of potato chips, and a carrot.)









Saturday morning I bundled Sydney up and headed to the craft store where I purchased many colors of felt, embroidery thread, needles and some stuffing. When I got home I made the cut outs I would need for multiple different felt
food items. And then I had the idea to create a car for my cousin's little boy for christmas, then when that was finished I made a truck for her other little boy. I think they turned out pretty cute!

Once the vehicles were out of the way I went back to my original plan of food making and began to sew and stuff, sew and stuff. So far I've created lunch (see above) and these other fun items:

Two bright colorful doughnuts!

Two popsicles, one cherry and one grape.

(probably the most boring looking items)

And, last but not least Felt Breakfast! Here
we have two sunny side up eggs, an orange slice, pancake with butter pats and two slices of bacon.

I have plans to make popcorn and some sort of noodle dish as noodles are Emma's favorite food! I'll definitely update and let you all know how those projects progress!

Thursday Lunch at home!

Today is Veteran's day so I got to stay home from work and hang out with my girls! We had a great morning. We took a long walk downtown where we got Emma some warm cocoa and a coffee for mom. When we got home I asked Emma what she wanted to eat for lunch and her answer was "Noodles!" pause "Meat!" two of her favorite foods!





So, for lunch today Emma had a "sea" of raman noodles, surrounded by a "reef" of greenbeans with two happy hot dog octopus "swimming" around :-)











First she sampled some of the noodles.

Followed by the octopus. She started by eating the legs, and then the faces. Lunch was fun and tasty :)

Sunday Evening

In preparation for the week ahead I spent about an hour this evening making up some onigiri for our lunches and for snacks. Emma was "helping" too by making and eating her own onigiri.

I made some traditional triangle shapes, a few stars and hearts as well as some bears and faces.

I also pan fried a few to try something else I saw this weekend at the cultural symposium at Linfield.






While at Uwagimaya yesterday I picked up some mini sauce bottles that will be great along with the bento lunches that I've been putting together. I filled the fish bottles with a soy ginger salad dressing and the upright bottles with sweet chili sauce.






My favorite face of the evening.













Here is a video of Emma cooking with me :)

Fantastically Food-filled Saturday!

Today was the Verbort Sausage festival that McKenzie has been looking forward to since last year when we left it! He, a friend and Emma made their way out there today and met up with Grandma Valerie and had a great time eating sausages and all the sides!

Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of returning to Uwajimaya with my mom, Sydney and two Japanese exchange students from Linfield Akari and Ayaka! We had an amazing time. I had a list
of items that I have been wanting for my bento
creations plus I was very excited to learn more about the items in the store since the majority are written in Japanese and we had friends with us who not only speak the language but also were able to guide us to the best products and share their favorite items with us!

Akari and Ayaka had a great time visiting the store as well. They have been in the States since the beginning of the school term and they were very excited to pick up some familiar snack foods and condiments. Here you can see us browsing the snack aisle. The girls had also brought a
shopping list so that we could purchase items for
cooking an authentic meal for dinner. We had a lot of fun finding the items on their list and also asking questions about other items.

Sydney however, after people watching for awhile decided to take a snooze as we finished our trip. She really did such a good job! She loves being out and about as long as we are constantly on the move and keeping her moving around!







Once we finished our shopping we headed out into the dreary, but not rainy Oregon weather and headed back to my house to begin our evening full of cooking.


We had a fantastic meal! Emma and McKenzie arrived home shortly after us and joined in the fun. Our guests put together a feast. We started off with green tea and salty/sweet rice crackers before the cooking commenced. Then Akari and Ayaka worked together making Oyako-Don an egg and chicken dish served over white sticky rice. They also created a delicious Miso soup with a special fish seasoning, seaweed strips and tofu. In addition we steamed some pork buns and some purple yam buns. We also had a salad with ginger soy dressing and some sushi and onigiri rice balls that I put together as the girls worked in the kitchen.

We all really enjoyed the feast, Emma even tried to use chopsticks...and then pretended the table was a drum for the rest of the meal! I'm looking forward to when the join us for Thanksgiving, Akari says she will teach me the correct way to roll my sushi! I can't wait! See below for more pictures!







Salad, sushi, onigiri and molded hard boiled eggs!










My happy face Onigiri Girl!




















An "american" roll, turkey lunch meat, carrots, fresh spinach, and seaweed.

















Seaweed wrapped onigiri cube with a flower punched out of nori with my scrapbooking paper punch.















Sliced eggs from my new egg molds.













Oyako-Don chicken and egg dumpling type food, delicious!













Homemade miso soup.










Emma trying to use chopsticks!



















The group finished and eating!

End of the Week!

This week began a bit rainy and cold and seems to be ending on a sunnier note!



Emma tried on a new pair of "skinny" jeans that she got for her birthday. They are very cute, unfortunatly Emma is still too skinny for her skinny jeans and they won't stay up and get all baggy around the knees! She wore them around the house for about an hour before she got frustrated pulling them up and up and up and we switched into a different pair of pants. Hopefully they will fit her small frame in the next month or so :)





I attempted a couple more bento lunches this week as well. Here is a picture of Wednesday's lunch. In it I packed carrot sticks with peanut butter, sliced up orange segements, an onigiri decorated as a sheep using nori and splashed with rice

vinegar and soy sauce. I included a baked eggroll from my October cooking day sliced into 3 pieces and a few slices of turkey lunchmeat wrapped around cheddar cheese and celery.







On Thursday for lunch I packed a California Sushi wrap also from my October cooking day, carrot slices, cheddar cheese, a mini bagel with turkey, two oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and soy sauce for dipping. I have to say that the eggroll from Wednesday was my favorite "lunch"
item so far. The Sushi Wrap was good but the
lettuce didn't hold up in the freezer so well!
I've also included a picture of my "homemade" stackable "bento" box! ;-)

Thursday morning Emma, Sydney and I ventured out to the park since it was so sunny and clear but it was cold! Sydney and Emma went swinging together, that was quite fun. It was also Syd's first time in the swing at the park and she seemed to like it for a few minutes. Below is a short video of our fun :)

Tonight the girls and I attended Linfield College's cultural night. They had food from many different cultures and we got to enjoy some tasty treats including pad thai, sushi and onigiri. They also had Mexican food and pizza! Emma really liked her grilled onigiri. Tomorrow Sydney and I are going to go with my mom and two Japenese exchange students to Uwagimaya grocery store and then plan to come back to my house to cook up some "authentic" Japenese cuisine! I'm so excited to learn something new! I plan to take pictures through out the day and our cooking and share them here!

Meanwhile, McKenzie and Emma are headed off to Verbort to go to the sausage festival they have there every year. They are going with a friend of McKenzie's and meeting up with Grandma Valerie. Everyone is looking forward to our fun, and food, filled Saturdays!

Happy Weekend to all!

EASY Lasagna Dinner!

Well it is the first November meal thanks to my cooking day at the end of October. Tonight we are feasting on turkey lasagna green beans, carrots and left over cheese from the cutouts I made for our lunches! Freezer cooking makes everything so easy! I pulled out this lasagna from the freezer on Sunday night. Then today, Monday around 4 McKenzie put it in the oven and presto around 5:00 we're all sitting around the table and nobody had to spend over an hour putting dinner together, plus we're having a great meal in our own home, yum! This was a new recipe this month for lasagna and it is delicious! Pictured above is the lasagna and Emma's plate :)

Bento Lunches November 1st 2010

This morning I worked on lunches for today :)
Here is my special helper who really loved sampling bits and pieces of foods as I cut out fun shapes!

I made some extra rice balls with leftover sticky rice and decoratede them with seaweed making happy faces, a dog or pig I'm unsure which it resembles the most and a couple of plain
onigiri with the seaweed for the simple purpose of a place to hang onto.

In addition to the onigiri(riceballs) I made cut outs with cheese, pepperoni, turkey lunch meat and carrots.

Decorated with a couple of radishes that have some of the color punched out! It was really fun to try to get creative and play with our food!

This is my lunch that I'm taking to work today. The riceballs are just plain sticky rice with a splash of rice vinegar.

This is McKenzie's lunch. He has leftover taco soup from last night, some tortilla chips, a radish, celery sticks, and pieces of an apple pear eggroll from my cooking day!

Who knew lunch could be so fun?

Halloween Evening!

Today's Halloween festivities began with lunch with friends, here is Sydney wearing her most festive ensemble complete with little bow head band and pink socks! Wouldn't you know it even with these pink items some smarties still wondered how old my adorable little boy is!

After lunch Emma, Sydney and I headed downtown for some kid friend trick or treating we met up with some friends, family and Grandma Jean and Grandpa Dan. Emma had a blast getting candy from strangers while Sydney slept. After the vanity of candy wore off Emma spent her time pushing the stroller and trying to get her grandparents with it!

Her is Emma sharing some m&ms with her cute little bee cousin Huddy!

Emma "falling" out of her stroller at the peak of her sugar high!

Once we returned home Emma promptly fell asleep and took about an hour nap. Soon we had trick or treaters aplenty coming by as well as frinds and family stopping in to share a glass of wine and some taco soup that I made yesterday, what a successful holiday!