Cozy breakfast for the cold weather

The changing seasons have reminded me how our favorite morning comfort food tastes even better in the cool weather. Thes are great because they freeze well and can be used in place of store bought freezer waffles. Enjoy!

Oatmeal-Buttermilk-Blueberry Waffles
Makes 16 little square waffles

2 cups quick oatmeal
2 cups lowfat buttermilk

Combine oatmeal and buttermilk in a bowl and let stand to soften, about 10 minutes – less if in a real hurry. Softer it is, the tastier it is. Even overnight is fine.

Add in and stir:
3 eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons canola oil
dash of vanilla

Add and mix well:
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt or less

Once that’s combined add:
½ cup white flour or white whole wheat flour
1 cup frozen organic wild blueberries

Spray a light coat of oil or Pam on a preheated waffle iron. Put a heaping cup of batter on the iron and bake as directed. You end up with 4 big waffles, 16 little squares.

Halloween time

I was just pointed to a blog post that dealt with frugal/repurposed Halloween costumes (thanks for the tip @rachellechong).

We're pretty much going down that road ourselves this Halloween. The girls announced a few weeks ago that they wanted to be a soccer team ... they saw some big girls playing soccer and Big girls hold Big sway around our house these days. Of course they want to be a PINK soccer team so we're just rounding up some pink shorts and tops and I'll baste on some big felt numbers. They'll carry some soccer balls we have around and I may well invest in some cheap knee socks and head bands.

My husband decided he wanted to dress up as the coach and it was a very easy call for me to be referee. Figuring out my costume will probably be the biggest challenge!

Reduce your carbon contest

Dorky, snide remarks about "carbon-free" sugar aside, I'm all for greening the kitchen. Here's a great opportunity to offer up nuggets of wisdom about eco-friendly cooking. And to earn prizes in the process (Kindle anyone?)!

It's thanks to the folks at the Brighter Planet Blog. Happy Blog Action Day 2009!

I'm all for going green...

...but carbon free sugar?!? I don't think this new packaging was the brainchild of chemists:

(Chemistry refresher... sugar's basic formula is CH2O)

Big plug for etsy's alchemy!

I can't be the only one with a growing pile of craft projects I'll get to ... when? And yet I keep feeding it, assuming that the day will come (and in some cases that I'll be magically imbued with new found art skills) to complete the projects. One of these was improving the horrible, drab blackout curtain in my kids' room:

It's a vital, necessary thing, but such a downer to look at. So I imagined sewing on some decals, or cutting out some fabric scraps to liven things up. This was not happening so I decided to try out Alchemy, the new custom order site by Etsy. Etsy is just what it sounds like. OK, so etsy doesn't really sound like anything but what it is is a fabulous online craft source. Alchemy is a place where you can post your craft project and people bid on doing it.

I posted a picture of the curtain and a description of the mural I wanted and within 24 hours I had 3 bids. I picked my favorite Etsy provider based on the links they sent, mailed off the curtain and 2 weeks later got:


The girls adore it... and it had all the elements they'd asked for... a sun, flowers, a tree and a bird. And the price was completely reasonable!

Two sewing thimbles up for Alchemy!

On the budget front: Gilt Groupe invitation link

Gilt Groupe is an online sample sale for very high end clothes. The best part is they have a children's category, which often has really nice stuff. It's a great place to find unique but -- thanks to the site's discounts -- within reach special occassion kids gifts. The sale this week, for instance, featured Tea Collection and Saurette.

It's invitation only. Here's a working invitation link:
http://www.giltgroupe.com/invite/handknit

In an emergency, think about text and twitter

My husband and I were talking about emergency preparedness this weekend. One of the subjects we covered was how to be in touch. We both were in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001 and it was just Blackberries working that day... people passed them around to those who didn't have them so everyone could get an email out.

We don't have Blackberries now but we settled on text messages since they're a similar technology. On the old-school front, we also reminded each other of the one, non-cordless phone in the house that'll work even if electricity goes out.

Today there was a great article in the SF Chronicle taking the text idea one step further. You can program a message, like "we're okay" into your phone and also put in the numbers where you want it sent (something they didn't say: remember always include numbers of friends/family OUTSIDE the state since those are more likely to reach their target and can be a point of contact for everyone here). Then you can just quickly hit send in case you ever need to.

Cheap, easy way to display/frame kids' art projects

The girls are starting to really draw and paint. I know one of the important rules for parents looking to encourage their kids is to display their art on occasion. Unfortunately in our apartment our refrigerator is hidden out of view, so that old standby won't work.

So I set out to find a substitute with minimal nails and tape on the walls. Here's what I came up with. The key ingredients were black poster board from the drug store and three bulldog clips at an art supply store. Then out of our tool/sewing kit I got some thread, picture hanging hooks and a little felt pad. I hooked the picture hanging hooks UPSIDE DOWN on our moldings. Then I tied thread to the part of the hook where the nail would ordinarily go. I tied a bulldog clip to the other end of the thread. I repeated this four times and was ready to hang two pictures in our formerly drab hall.

I used a third bulldog clip to keep the pictures weighted down. The only problem was when you'd walk down the hall, the clips would move a little and make a little metallic banging sound. So I used the felt pads (the little kind you put on the bottom of chairs to protect wood floors) to put on the back of the bottom clip. That stopped the sound and actually damped the movement.

The best part is, I can easily swap out the paintings for their next big work of art.

The "ingredients" are pictured below:

Did the digital television switch make your reception worse?

It did for us... But fortunately it was a pretty quick fix. It turns out that some of the stations actually changed channels as part of the switch. So you have to deploy the "rescan" feature in the digital converter box menu. That was all we needed.

Apparently in some cases that doesn't do the trick and there is this more complex "double re-scanning" trick to try in that case.

Making foaming hand soap refills for toddlers

I'm a big fan of using foamy soap for teaching my girls to wash on their own. Because the product is basically diluted soap, it wastes less if they go overboard and also it washes off more easily. With H1N1 season coming I imagine we'll be doing lots of handwashing.

On that note, I've been researching the best way to make a refill. Just adding regular liquid soap to the pump clogs the mechanism. One website I found said to dilute liquid soap with boiling water (I could see how this would dissolve the soap without creating bubbles as happens with shaking). Others suggested a variety of ratios of liquid soap to water. One place suggested 1 oz. Dr. Bronner's to 5 oz. water -- Dr. Bronner's is already so liquidy it's easy to work with.

I ended up going 1 tablespoon standard liquid soap to 3/4 cup water. I combined them in the soap dispenser and shook them up. So far so good. That's a 10:1 water-soap ratio which I read was best for not clogging the soap bottle.

Besides being a cheaper way to go than buying the pre-made foaming soap refills, making your own foaming soap can ensure eliminating an ingredient commonly used to make the soap foamier: SLS. (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate). While I am not super hard core about trying to avoid SLS, it's not something you really want to have in EXTRA doses. There are some pre-made foamy soap refills that don't have it like this Kiss My Face version.

Part of me was also excited about making my own foaming soap because I thought I could make an unscented version. I know scent free is supposed to be best for sensitive skin. But when it comes to my toddlers who are adamant about independence when hand washing I like something with a strong fragrance so I can tell easily if they've washed or not. I ended up used the last of this lemongrass soap I had on hand.

DIY Summer Camp

This is less on the green side and more on the cost cutting side... A friend just forward this AP article about DIY Summer Camps that parents are putting together in these tough economic times.

Potty training twins - together or separately?

A blog post in today's New York Times about Potty Training and the Economy pushed me to write out my thoughts on potty training twins separately.

Before potty training, pretty much every twin parent I talked to had taught their twins to use the toilet at the same time. But in our case it turned out differently (my daughters are fraternal in case that matters). I tried once with both of them around 22 months. After 3 days I threw in the towel figuratively -- that was after throwing loads of literal towels onto pee. None of us seemed happy with this experience.

I tried again around 25 months. One of my daughters then was simply ready before the other. She had used the potty to go poop for many months and seemed really interested. My other daughter was interested too, but seemed really undone by peeing all over herself and the floor or ground. She'd be upset and repeatedly asked for a diaper. So Ms. A transitioned to underwear (albeit with accidents over the course of a month) and Ms. B stayed in diapers. They both seemed happy with the outcome.

Fast forward to this month, Ms. B has been asking to wear undies, so the past 3 days she's gone diaper free. It's been A LOT easier to work with a 2.7 year old on using the potty. She has a lot more control... within 3 days she was accident free.

So contrary to what I learned, it may sometimes work out that twins learn this skill at different times. Because as much as it's been easier with Ms. B at 2.7 years, it was definitely the right thing to do with Ms. A months ago. She was clearly proud of mastering the potty skill and she's also become a lot more temperamental as the 2's go on - so I could see the two of us having control issues if we were trying now. It's not ideal to have to carry around both diapers and potty accessories, but the upside is that you can focus on each individually and the added plus for me was it was a lot less overwhelming...

Great idea for an eco friendly bridal shower (even baby shower?)

I recently checked with an organization I did a story about a few years ago. It's called Village Harvest and it does backyard gleaning. They organize volunteers to pick ripe fruit from backyard trees. And then they donate the fruit to food banks. The group also picks in old orchards that dot the San Francisco Bay Area and donates those crops as well.

The founder told me that next weekend they're doing a bridal shower... someone contacted them saying that they wanted to have a bridal shower that involved giving back. Picking fruit to donate to food banks fit the bill. So a group of women are going to come to an old pear orchard and have a picnic/picking party. They decided on a "pear" orchard for the shower (get the pun?). Photo credit for above:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/suttonhoo22/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Thought I'd pass on what seemed like a nice green shower idea. Now for a visual pun. This photo is titled:

Pear: Shaped

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Great baby finger food: Black Bean pancakes

I got an email the other day from a friend who was looking for iron-rich baby foods. My suggestion was dried apricots (cooked and mushed). She wrote back a few days later with this recipe for black bean pancakes. Thought I'd pass it on:

I put some cooked potatoes, canned black beans, and onion in the cuisinart, then added some whole beans as well for fun texture. Mixed in egg and rice cereal to stick it all together (and for that extra iron). Fried in a little olive oil. Too bland for my taste, but E likes them and I can spice them up when he gets a little older.

For laughs: Craigslist parody

Because I spend a lot of time on Craigslist, Freecycle and the like trading in kid gear, this new Weird Al Yankovich parody tickled me a bit. Wanted to pass it on.

Toddler friendly fruit muffins (dairy free version too)!

With summer in full swing, the farmer's markets are packed with fruit (and people... mob scene today at our). Trying to do organic on the cheap means I gravitate to the boxes of really ripe fruit that many of the farmers sell for a fraction of the usual price. But that means you either have to 1) eat the fruit right away, 2) cut it up and freeze it for later or 3) bake with it. I usually opt for 1 or 3 since our freezer is this magical place where I put things and promptly forget about them (were that the icebox worked for my problems too, but alas.)

So here's one generic fruit muffin recipe that is great to make with toddlers and can take almost any fruit you throw at it (and I think that these muffins freeze better than the fruit by itself). Also, you can make it dairy free by substituting orange juice for the milk (I usually do half and half). Thank you to my friend Megan for the lead!

EASY FRUIT MUFFINS
makes 12

2 cups flour (I use half white whole wheat/half white)
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tsp. grated lemon zest (optional)
1-1/2 cup fruit

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Mix dry ingredients together: flour, salt, baking powder, sugar. In a small bowl, mix fruit with 1/4 cup of the dry mixture. Add wet ingredients to the mixing bowl. Stir in fruit. Do not overmix.

Split dough among 12 regular size muffin cups. Dust with sugar if desired. Bake for 20 (+?) minutes.

MMmmmmm, peach muffins, apricot muffins, mixed berry muffins... happy summer! Of course these work just as well in the fall with apples, pears, cranberries, just give it a try.

Virtual Mother's Day Card

So we're making little paintings to send the Grandmas for Mother's Day, but for the card I wanted to try something new. I've been into the applet "Wordle" for analyzing the word patterns in my work stories lately. I thought for Mother's Day cards, I'd try to get my girls to free associate about each grandma and their great-grandma and then turn those associations into a Wordle "Word Cloud."

What I did was type the words and phrases we talked about for each Grandma into a word document and then we pasted them into the Wordle text box. We're sending them via email (to make them into jpeg files you have to take screen shots).

I'd imagine this could work well for other purposes with pre-writing, but fairly verbal young kids. It was great fun and I plan to do it again.

Sesame Street spoofs

It is really rare to find kids entertainment that rocks both my daughters' world and mine. Still, as annoying as some of the music and educational shorts are, I try to watch everything with them. So when I stumbled onto a bunch of Sesame Street spoofs of TV programs, I was over the moon. Below is one of our favorite Sesame Street spoofs, 30 Rocks, though it would probably only be funny to an adult if you've seen the original show (30 Rock).




Other ones that do well with my kids include this take off on Law & Order (it's called the Missing M). And then there's A's Anatomy, and Dancing with Triangles (which has all sorts of super subtle humor).

There's also Desperate Houseplants, but in my opinion, it's just kinda rich in double entendres and not much else.

Another reuse for old clothes

We've been doing a lot of painting lately. I took a bunch of my dads worn and stained dress shirts off his hands. In reverse, they make great smocks! They'll work as full body bibs too... Just need to cut the sleeves off rather drastically.

Coupons for healthy and organic foods and products

It all started because I've become addicted to Tofurky Italian Sausages. I thought I'd look and see if there were any online coupons for these glorified tofu dogs. My search landed me at this page: the magazine Eating Well's coupon page.

It's actually a well set up site... you select the coupons you want and type in your email. The coupons land in your in box and you print them out.

So I was suddenly on the prowl. And found these totally useful coupon sites next:

• Coupons for Seventh Generation diapers and other Seventh Generation products
• Coupons for Organic Valley dairy products
• And this site Mambo Sprouts, that currently has some good coupons up for products including BioKleen and Method cleaners, and Maranatha Nut Butter and more. You can also sign up there to get coupons in the mail.

I did notice some online grousing that some stores don't accept online coupons because they're printed from a computer. And I guess they look like could be copies? But so far I've had good luck with them. Hope you do too...