Mother's Day Tea 2010

Every year at the preschool co-op the awesome teachers prepare a Mother's Day Tea for us moms. Its complete with gifts and the kids bringing us food and then they embarrass us with funny facts about ourselves and hilarious pictures of us. Enjoy.

Meals and planning.

I am surprised to say I am having fun coming up with ways of using my veggies from the baskets each week. Last week we made Eggplant Parmesan (served with asparagus), Potato & Leek soup, and Lasagna with squash and spinich. In fact I have more fruit than veggies left, surprising!

My planned cooking for this week:
Hamburgers with steamed asparagus (I am going to make the rolls i think!)
Sauce or broth with the celery (Almond said so!)
Pasta with Chicken & Asparagus
Asparagus w/ Baked Potato (for lunch)
Salmon/Porkchops (I eat Salmon, Jim eats pork chops lol) with roasted garlic cauliflower
Baked Mac & Cheese with hidden cauliflower
Grilled Steak w/ Roast squash

I am also going to dry some mangos and apples this week. *fingers crossed*

Bountiful Baskets Week 2

This week worked out even better than last week, mostly because it was closer to my house... I got 15 minutes more sleep! No organic offering this week, so this is the conventional basket. So, on with the good stuff....

In my basket this week:
Strawberries (from California)
Apples (from Washington)
Bananas
Mangos (Mexico)
Kumquats
White Kale - I think? the tortoise is currently sampling it for me ;)
Head of Romaine
1 bunch of Celery
2 bunches of green onions
2 bunches of asparagus (mexico)
orange cauliflower (from california)

Overall I think it was a more "local" basket than the organic was last week and it was cheaper. The lettuce is perfect for the tortoise, she is tearing into the kale like she hasn't eating in weeks LOL. I need to look into freezing the asparagus or something as I am worried we won't use it fast enough this week.

Bountiful Baskets - Week 1

Thanks to some co-op moms I found a new source for organic veggies - Bountiful Baskets Co-ops. They offer both conventional and organic baskets for pretty low prices, using group purchasing to get a lower price. They claim they try to buy local as much as possible. A bit more info:

Conventional Produce Basket $15 Contribution
50% fruit, 50% vegetables, 100% healthy, delicious & fun

In the conventional basket we focus our buying as follows: High Quality, Low Cost and As Local as Possible... So, how hard do we try? Pretty hard! Most bananas are from Central America or the Carribean and are grown by a couple gargantuan conglomerate growers. We get all of our bananas from small farmers in central Mexico. This saves the co-op between $4 and $7 a box, keeps money with small farmers, and helps keep the carbon footprint small.

Organic Produce Basket $25 Contribution
50% fruit, 50% vegetables, 100% ORGANIC, healthy, delicious & fun

In the organic basket we focus our buying as follows: 100% Certified Organic Produce, High Quality, Low Cost and As Local as Possible! Much of the produce in the winter is Arizona local and regional to the rest of the co-op. We enjoy working with several local farmers. We always like it when our produce was in the ground just a couple days before distribution. You produce doesn't sit on store shelves for days before you get it!

So today was the first week we bought in and I went with the organic basket.

Our basket included:
~2 packages of romaine from Earthbound Farms
~1 Pineapple (Mexico)
~2 large Tomatoes from Earthbound Farms (Mexico)
~1 large leek
~1 large Eggplant (from Natura, Mexico)
~1 bunch of asparagus (Brock Farms, Mexico)
~1 bundle of dill from EarthBound Farms
~3 lbs of apples from Washington
~Oranges from Natura (Mexico)
~Potatos
~6 Kiwis from California
~2 medium sized squashes of some kind (Natura, Mexico)

Overall I definitely got over $25 worth of organic produce, my only concern is how much of it is coming from Mexico. I don't know if it is because we are kind of inbetween growing seasons? It is definitely from popular organic brands tho... but I would like it better if the stuff was more local. I think next week I am going to try the conventional basket and compare where that stuff is coming from. I did take a pic of the conventional and it looked like quite a bit more greens but less packaged. I am also going to try the tortilla's next week as the ingredient list looks pretty decent.

We have a cow in our freezer.

Well, only 1/12th of a cow. A very awesome friend from the co-op organized a group buy for grass-fed beef from a farm in Utah and we jumped at the chance to get in on it. Only $160 for a 1/12th of a cow and you get all this:

In our box was 14 packages of ground beef, 3 packages of beef patties, 3 packages of steak, 1 package of beef kabobs, and 3 good sized roasts. From the looks it works out to a better deal than I thought it would be. Now if we could only find local chicken/pork suppliers.

New Blog Layout

gardening post coming soon....

Christmas Eve Pajamas

Our family tradition at Christmas time is that the girls get to open one gift on Christmas Eve, usually it is matching Christmas pajamas. I try to make them every year, but sometimes I end up making a last minute run to Old Navy.

I was determined not to run to Old Navy this year and I found this cute cats with santa hat flannel, so I stayed up til 5 am last night finishing these pajamas. Each girl has her own nightgown along with matching baby doll nightgown.

I don't know when the girls stopped knowing how to smile normally! More pictures here.

Kyla's Christmas List

Exactly as given to me, spelling and all.

1. A giant toy stuffed lepord.

2. a recorder that works really well

3. a pogostick

4. the best christmas ever

5. some really warm pajamas made by my sweet sweet mommy

6. three new Didj games

7. a toy stuffed Dog. (the same size as my other toy dogs)

8. a floor puzzle

9. a webkinz dragon

10. a pack of candy canes

11. any other stuff that my mommy and daddy got me

12. a pokemon ex-pack

Interesting.