Thursday, June 27, 2013

Feeding a Growing Crowd

Last week Vivie and I hosted our play group.  This was my own personal deadline for getting the main spaces of our new house unpacked and presentable and I'm proud to say I met my goal (with a little creative reorganizing).

The play group is something that we really look forward to every week.  After batting the idea around to have a standing weekly play date with the new friends I had made through our activities at the library we started our "little" group in late January with 6-7 mommas and their babies. Since then we have doubled in size!  The play group is at the top of our list of priorities each week--I don't schedule anything that may conflict with it and it's often the highlight of the week for us.  We each take a turn hosting the group in our home or off site and the host provides lunch.  The "babies" range from 11 months-just turned two. When we started none of the original babies were even walking and now all but the youngest two are!  Baby/toddler development really is an amazing thing!

The last time we hosted the group was in March and our numbers and the babies' appetites have all grown by leaps and bounds since then.  When I was planning out our lunch it looked like we were going to have a relatively small group, but by the time Wednesday came almost everyone in the group was able to come plus a couple extra people and we had a total of 12 parents and 12 kids under two come over!  It was wild, chaotic, but also a lot of fun and a great way to "break in" the new house.  We waited a long time to buy a house and I've imagined having a space big enough to fill with friends and family and we finally have it and watching the littles run laps around the kitchen and living room filled me with joy.

Well, like I said the numbers for our get-together ballooned after I went to the store so I did a little creative reworking of the menu and I stretched it out just enough.  After the dust settled there was a slice of sandwich, one deviled egg and about half a cup of salad left!

The original menu was:
Deviled Eggs - recipe below
Roasted Vegetable and Goat Cheese Sandwich
Sunflower Butter and Banana Sandwiches (Usually Vivie's favorite, but she didn't touch hers)
Whole Wheat Crackers and Hummus
Strawberries and (store bought) Shortbread Cookies with Nutella
Ginger-Peach Soda

After the additional responses I decided to make the veggie sandwich open-faced and added:
Roasted Red Pepper Quinoa Salad - recipe below
Roasted Deli-Sliced Chicken and Ham with Sharp Cheddar Cheese and Mashed Avocado

I also put out some cheesy crackers, granola bars and fruit strips (similar to fruit roll ups) for the kids.

A note about hosting with sandwiches:
I love sandwiches and when I'm hosting I try to make things that I really like so they are often on the menu for casual get-togethers.This may sound a little simple and boring to serve to a group, but when you make a few changes to the norm people are surprisingly impressed. 

Goat cheese, roasted vegetables*, avocado and mustard that's not neon yellow are a few of the ways I like to make a company-worthy sandwich.  I always get a loaf of bread like ciabatta or french bread and make one large sandwich then slice it before the guests arrive.  It's much easier to prepare and store ahead of time, and it also looks fancy. 

*I roast the vegetables the night before while I'm making dinner or while we're eating dinner.  425°
for 20-30 minutes usually does the trick for tomatoes and sliced veggies.  Cherry tomatoes, zucchini and red onion tossed in olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper are my favorites for sandwiches right now.

I hope you'll try serving a company-worthy sandwich or one of the recipes below at your next summer gathering.  The salad and deviled eggs would also be great to share at a pot luck.

What's your favorite dish to serve to a crowd?


Recipes:
Roasted Red Pepper Quinoa Salad
~2 C Cooked Quinoa
1/2 Cucumber Diced
3 Roasted Red Peppers, Chopped (reserve juice)
1/4 C Feta
1/4 C Chopped, Pitted Kalamata Olives

Dressing:
3 T Reserved Red Pepper Juice
3 T Red Wine Vinegar
6 T  Olive Oil
Salt & Pepper

Toss salad ingredients.  Add the dressing ingredients to the jar the roasted red peppers were in, toss and serve (I discarded about half of the red pepper juice before making the dressing).

If preparing the night before toss half the dressing in with the salad, add the remaining dressing, to taste before serving.

Deviled Eggs
9 Hard Boiled Eggs*
1/3 C Light Mayonaisse
1 1/2 T Mustard (spicy brown or dijon)
Pinch of Salt
Ground Pepper
2 T Dill Pickle Diced (or dill pickle relish)
Paprika

I realize nine is an odd number when serving eggs, but I have a dish that serves 18 deviled eggs (thank you Shion!), so nine eggs it was (which ended up being perfect for our group).

Shell and cut eggs in half separate yolk from white.  Mash yokes and add other ingredients except paprika.  Spoon yolk mixture into center of whites or place yolk in a plastic baggie and cut off a corner to pipe in (if preparing ahead of time store yolk mixture in baggie until a few hours before serving, then pipe in).  Sprinkle with paprika and serve.

*There are many theories on how to make a perfect hard boiled egg.  My way is not perfect, it's just the way I do it.  Sometime they come out great, sometime they are difficult to peel, but this is how I do it... place eggs in a pot and cover with water.  Bring to a boil, remove from heat, cover and let sit 10 minutes.  Remove from water and place in colander, cover in crushed ice (or place colander inside a large bowl of ice water).  Allow to cool, peel or place in fridge until ready to use (I give hard boiled eggs a shelf life of 5-6 days.)

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Guest Blog Post #2

My friend, Alana, writes a terrific blog for The Immunization Partnership, a non profit organization that focuses on providing information and access to immunizations.  Alana's taking a little time off from blogging while she welcomes her newest addition and adjusts to life as a mother of three (I know, I can barely handle my one) so I shared a few thoughts I have about the importance of getting a flu shot.  The post went up in the midst of our house closing/moving, so it's been up a few weeks, but I hope you'll check it out and see some of the other messages Alana and others have shared.

http://theimmunizationpartnership.wordpress.com/2013/05/16/youre-no-superman-or-woman/

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Happy Half Birthday!

Note: Most of the pictures in this post are from Instagram.  You can find me at erinj413 if you're on Instagram and are interested in following me :)

To My Sweet Genevieve,

Happy half birthday, baby girl!  Yesterday you turned 18 months old, a year and a half--why is this such a big milestone in my book?  I have no idea--I was like this with 10 months too, for some reason double digits really got to me and now that it's been six months since your first birthday, well, I guess it's just hard for mommas to see their babies grow up, though it is fun.

Our early Christmas miracle--you wereso tiny even in newborn clothes, but you were certainly born with strong lungs!
On the move at six months, you rolled everywhere, even under the bed!


My one-year-old at the "Pumpkin Park" where we went at least once a week for months.
I barely got your shoes off you were so excited to jump in the pool.  Your bathing suit stayed dry all evening and your pigtails stayed in :)
 It has been a VERY hectic month for us because we moved (for the third time since you were growing in my belly) into our new house!  You love it here already, even now that we have furniture in it.  You have been a trouper dealing with all the packing, unpacking and boxes (which I haven't been able to bring myself to save for you this time around) and you've transitioned to being in the house rather well.  You've had a few rocky nights, and you're having a little trouble sharing your toys now that they are all unpacked, but you have plenty of good moments to make up for those.

The deck is your favorite "room" in the house, especially now that we have a (baby) pool on it.  I think you would live outside if I'd let you--though you might be eaten alive by the mosquitoes (unfortunately, you are at least as tasty as I am to them).  Water is your passion these days and it's rare that you are fully clothed and dry. We've been to the local splash pad twice and are going to check out our neighborhood pool soon.

Splash Pad Fun (at Jaycee Park)
Chilling out on the deck of the new house.













We don't have much of a regular routine of activities right now other than our weekly play group (which we hosted yesterday and had 11 mommas, 1 daddy and 12 kids under two attend!) and going to the Kids Klub at the gym a few days a week, but we've had fun showing the new house off to friends and family.  Hopefully we'll get back to the library (since you've now graduated to Toddler Story Time) and plan to check out Toddler Yoga at the library downtown soon too.

You are also becoming much more affectionate giving hugs, blowing lots of kisses and even giving a few kisses too if we're really lucky.  You have become a dancing machine lately and will start shaking your tail feathers to just about every genre of music and recently discovered The Jackson Five (I think you might have been born in the wrong decade!).  Your newest fan is our 85 year old neighbor who we go chat with and you give "five" to most mornings.  You're dying to see the inside of his house and love climbing the steps up to his porch to try to get a peek.

Animal sounds are still your favorite things to say, and gorilla has taken the lead as your favorite recently.  You are trying to say your name and right now it sounds a lot like "baby".  You say your own version of thank you and have used sign language for thank you a couple times.  You keep coming up with phrases of words you never just say like "do it" (I'll do it) and "got these" (I've got it/I'm taking care of it).  You're also starting to identify colors--you're pretty good finding blue, green, orange and purple when we play with chalk in our driveway.  You're still figuring out how to get into everything and my plan to just keep the doors shut to rooms and closets you weren't supposed to be in was foiled when you figured out how to turn the knobs to the doors nine days after we moved in!  So, as always, you're keeping me on my toes (I'm hoping you don't crack the code to the baby gates soon, though you've been studying them pretty intensely).

You've always been a terrific eater, but lately you haven't been liking much more than strawberries, cherries, sometimes tomatoes and LOTS of milk, but you seemed to be coming around to some of your normal favorites today (you had eggs for lunch and dinner today!).  I'm also starting to make you smoothies a couple times a week which you usually really like.

Vivie I love you so much and you surprise me everyday with what you know and how fast you learn.  I can't wait to see how much you've physically grown at your check-up next week...I'm guessing 34" tall (you were 32" at 15 months) and 28 pounds (you were almost 27 pounds two moths ago)...I wonder if I'm close this time?

Love,

Momma

P.S. I can't believe I forgot to add that you met almost all of your Schmidt great aunts and uncles who were in town from Minnesota for your cousin Jordan's graduation party and that we celebrated Father's Day by going to the Astro's game where you got to meet TWO of the Chick-fil-a cows!


UPDATE: You weighed in at 28 pounds 3 ounces, were 34" tall and your head circumference was 19" -- 90+ percentile in all three categories and nearly "off the chart" in height.  We're all starting to take bets on how tall you'll be as an adult :)