The Windy City

Well, we are back in the mid-west! Jake is here finishing up the final touches of the Thornton Rock Quarry job they started back in 2010.  We are staying in a cozy little house right on Lake Michigan in Porter, Indiana.  We didn't bring our "house" this time because it is winter in the midwest... A)most campgrounds are closed around here this time year and B)we were scared w wouldn't get here or make it home!

The weather has been fantastic, especially considering it is FEBRUARY!  We have really lucked out!  The first weekend we were here, it snowed about 8" but quickly melted.

We were able to make it to our dear friends Dan and Chasity son Case's 5th birthday party!

They live in Nashville, Indiana, about an hour south of Indianapolis.  Wes and I went down for a long weekend to visit them, see their beautiful new home and enjoy the company of their 3 beautiful babies, Wes' new bestfriends!

This last weekend, they were able to come up here and visit with us.  We spent the weekend in downtown Chicago, sight seeing and hanging out in the Windy City!  There is so much to do and see here, we definitely did not fit everything we wanted to do in one weekend, but we did get to see quit a bit! Unfortunately they had to leave Saturday, but Jake, Wes and I stayed Saturday night as well and continued on our little city adventure through the weekend.  The nice part about being February (and the fact that it did snow Friday morning!) the crowds were kept indoors.  It was quit chilly, but nothing a little bundling up couldn't take care of.  From our hotel we walked to Navy Pier and checked out all the little shops and museums... Not much was open on the boardwalk this time of year, but it was nice not to be shoulder to shoulder people and enjoy our stroll down the pier!

 We went to the Shedd Aquarium, very neat experience... Fish and aquatic life from all over the world!  They have beluga whales, dolphins, an indoor coral reef, and tons of stuff for the kids to do. Wes really enjoyed the big fishies!

They also had a little tide pool the kids could play in... Boy did Wes have fun!  Considering his favorite thing to do at home is sneak into the bathroom and play in the toilet, he was over filled with joy that he could splash around as much as he wanted in this water!  It did require a complete clothes change and a major freak out when he was taken away from the water, but he had a blast!

Next door to the Aquarium is the Field Museum of History... an AMAZING collection of artifacts, some of the best in the world!  There were dinosaur fossils, the earliest human remain fossils, a gem display from around the world, a display of the lions from the Ghost in the Darkness even!  I wish we had more time to explore, we could have most definitely spent a whole day just inside the museum.  There was a mummy exhibit on display with tombs and all - very intricate and beautiful!

We had a ton of fun just walking around this huge city!  Chicago really is a very neat city, the architecture is amazing, the streets feel so clean (for a big city that is....) and people are very welcoming and friendly.  Of course the food is amazing and there's just so much to do!

The sky deck at Willis Tower (used to be the Sears Tower - tallest building in the US!) was incredible.  The views of the city are breathtaking, and the glass encased "room" you can walk out over the city was CREEPY to say the least... my wonderful husband who repels off 300' cliffs for a living wouldn't even walk out there with us!

Millennium Park is a must see as well, the famous "bean" is really pretty cool, there was a neat ice skating rink their this time of year too.  If Wes was only a little bit older we may have enjoyed that as well!

 Such a great weekend exploring, but glad to leave... We must have walked 10 miles and this outta shape mama is worn out!  

We also got to enjoy the largest car show in the US when it came to Chicago a few weeks ago.  Wes really enjoyed walking around the convention center checking out all the "vroom vroom's".  he loooves cars and of course made friends with everyone he saw!  

We got to go see daddy at work when the helicopter came to fly on the mesh panels.  He was a little scared of the big chopper, but mesmerized at the same time.  

Wes loves playing on the beach and the sunsets here are Amazing.  We have a view most days of Chicago across the lake and the sound of the waves are so peaceful... I'm going to have a hard time sleeping when we leave without them to put me to sleep!  I sure am going to miss this tranquil place, but I am ready to go home. Wes misses all his grandma's and grandpa's and I'm sure they can't wait to see him.  It looks like next weekend or sometime shortly after we will make our 3 day trek home. Wish us luck on the loooooong car ride, but for now enjoy some more photo's of our "home" for the time being!

Natural Mama

As some of you may know, our believes with Wes is that he came into this world so perfectly precious and natural, we want to keep him that way for as long as possible.  This started during pregnancy... I was very careful to eat natural foods, limited processed foods, I didn't drink (obviously... but even the "occasional glass of wine" they say is OK I stayed away from), didn't take any medicines, even shy'd away from CAFFEINE! (most of the time...)  In delivery, I opted for no drugs, no epidural or pain meds of any sort (and YES I would do this a million times over!).  I breastfeed, EC and we chose to keep him "in tact" (uncircumcised...) which to my surprise would be the topic of more conversations then I could count... and very heated, strong beliefed conversations!  I was unaware after making this decision for our son that so many people would disagree with our decision.  But we stand by our decision, especially after talking with our Dr.  In his words exactly "It is purely cosmetic".  Being that there is no medical reason for circumcision I am very glad we chose this route.

So for those of you reading this and beginning to think this blog may not be for you, I encourage you to keep an open mind and while you don't have to follow the same believes as we do, I decided to write this portion of my blog for other mama's out there looking for more natural ways of healing.  Among many other "natural" choices we have made for Wes, yet another is commercial medicine. It has been all over the news this week of another "infant medicine recall" which Tylenol has published.  If you notice these days, all of the "infant" medicines on the market specifically direct you to your doctor if your child is under 2 (kind of ironic they still call it "infant" medicine don't ya think???)  I decided to add this part to my blog after hearing about all this on the news lately in hopes that I can help at least one baby in the process.  Please don't feel I am preaching my beliefs here, I do know and fully understand that what we practice in our household is on the extreme edge and I do not expect you to take everything we do into your own practices (I mean come on, who really potty trains their 6 week old!!!  -  (for more information see EC))

Try googling infant cold medicine and you will be SHOCKED at what you read (thank GOODNESS I did this one night in a moment of weakness...)  It was 2:00 in the morning, after spending a restless night with Wes and a sniffly nose and cough keeping us both up (OK, truth be known, Wes slept quit well in my arms, it was this mama who was so worried and flinched every time he sniffled or coughed that couldn't sleep)... I was steps away from getting in my car, going to walgreen's and finding something that would ease his cold.  I decided to dig out my phone and look up first which medicine would be the best to buy, so that I didn't have to sit in the store reading the back of every box in my p.j.'s (which I would totally do - I would NOT pick one until I thoroughly researched every one haha).  Ironically the articles that came up were not on which medicine's worked best, but which medicines were related to INFANT DEATHS!!!  AAHHH!!! talk about scaring the bageesus out of this mama!  I laid awake for at least another hour reading article after article about how horrible infant medicine is, how most brands have relinquished all medicines off the shelves for any children under the age of 2 and blah blah blah.  Holy Moly.  News flash.  Luckily with that cold, we only had 1 bad night - the next day he was just fine and I was thanking my lucky stars that I didn't give in.  Since then he has had a couple of colds, most of them not too bad until the week before last.  He woke up one Monday morning with a slight fever (100 - 101, luckily never got higher then that) and spent all day snuggled up to me on the couch (which for those of you that know my son, you know he does NOT snuggle... at all)  I knew instantly something was up.  Now I know a lot of mom's whose first choice would be to go to fever reducing medicine.  But if you look up what a fever actually is you will understand that a fever is the body's natural defense to fight off infection by heating up the body to kill of whatever it is inside causing the illness.  So why would you want to lessen the fever?  In sense you would be making the illness worse right?  So, I was prepared with medicine on hand JUST in case the fever got dangerously high (which, thanks to my dear friend "dr. nissa" I was also ready to try egg whites on the bottom of the feet!) Thankfully none of that was needed, we just rode out the fever and inevitably within the next few days the coughing and sniffles started up again.  We had one bad night of up all night coughing, so this time I went on the search for a natural cough suppressant for infants that is SAFE and all natural.  Honey as some of you may know is great, but you can't give it to your babies under the age of 1, so I kept my search up.  I found that lemon is supposed to work as well.  So, I made some lemon water, gave it to Wes from a bottle and voila! problem solved!  Our first test was with a nap, went smoothly.  Now of course he still coughed a little throughout the day, but I could tell a drastic difference.  The best result came that night.  Now when I say coughing all night, I mean the night before, Wes was literally coughing allllllllllllll night long (luckily he slept through most of it, he wasn't awake coughing, crying and whining, but THIS mama sure was!!!!)  That night, I nursed him just for a few minutes (which I will also add is your babies best defense against any sickness is your mama's milk), then finished with a bottle of warm lemon water (recipe to follow).  He really liked the lemon water too which I was glad to see.  He slept allllll night, did not wake up once.  The next morning around 6 he did wake up coughing again, I gave him some lemon water with breakfast and throughout the day and he was just fine!

So, after all of that explanation, if your baby has a cough, before reaching for the medicine cabinet, try this method first!  I'm here to tell you first hand, it works!

Ingredients:
1 lemon
2 cups of water
3 tbls sugar (can subsitute truvia, stevia, or even honey if your baby is over the age of 1)

Fill a small saucepan with water.  Cut the lemon in half, squeeze all of the juice out and just drop the rind and everything in the pot.  Season with 3 or so tbls of sugar and boil for 20 minutes.  Taste to check the bitterness level to see if more sugar is needed.

Now obviously you don't want to give your baby this much sugar all the time, but when he's sick, I thought to myself, why not spoil him just a little :)  I will definitely be making this with honey later on though, taking most of the guilt out of it!

Not-So-Red Velvet Cake

For Valentines this year I wanted to make a cute dessert, the first thing that came to mind of course for this overly red & pink colored holiday was red velvet cake! Most of the recipes I found however called for a WHOLE bottle of red food coloring, YUCK!  Can that really be good for you?  Being Valentines I thought I would spoil little man too and let him dig in on the yummyness.  I really try to give Wes only foods with natural ingredients, being that his body is so tiny and perfect, I don't want to screw it up yet! HA! So, I started searching for alternatives.  I found that you could use beet juice to dye the cake as well... but I HATE beets and the thought of beet juice in a sweet cake made me cringe.  I got to thinking of other "reds" and thought, "hmm... when I pick raspberries, my fingers are always stained red for like a day... maybe raspberry juice will work the same!" (Not to mention chocolate raspberry cake is my fav!) So I will tell you it didn't work - BUT the outcome taste was sooo good I really couldn't care less it didn't "look" good!  Here's my recipe (tweaked a little to my liking from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups sifted flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1 bag frozen raspberries
• 1/2 - 1 bag frozen mixed berries (I just happened to have this left over in my freezer, you can use all raspberries if you choose)
• 
  
• Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting:
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoons McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1 (16 ounce) box confectioners' sugar

For the cake:

Start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees, grease and flour 2 cake pans (or glass casserole pan, which is what I used!  In this case, cook half of the batter at a time to create 2 layers).  Put your raspberries in a medium sized saucepan and start simmering on med-low heat.

Sift the flour into medium bowl, stir in cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.  

Check our raspberries.  If they have melted and start to "smoosh" easily, pour them into a fine mesh strainer over a bowl and gently press through with a fork.  Let set to drain all raspberry juices.

In a large bowl using a stand or hand mixer, cream together softened butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add eggs 1 at a time until incorporated.  Mix in yogurt, milk and vanilla.  

Give another gentle press to your raspberries, taking your spoon/fork and scrap the bottom of strainer.  Poor the juice into the cake mix and put the berries left in the strainer back into saucepan.

Stir in raspberry juice into cake mix.  At this point it will look like it might actually turn out red! yay! but it doesn't... don't worry, it still tastes sooo yummy!

Slowly add your flour mixture and gently mix together until all ingredients are well incorporated.  Poor in prepared pan(s) (if only using 1 pan, only pour in half of the batter) and bake 20-25 minutes until toothpick inserted comes out clean!

Take the rest of your raspberries, add the 1/2 of bag of mixed berries (or another bag of raspberries, whatever you prefer!  For a larger cake you may want to use a whole nother bag of berries).  Simmer until juice is nice and thick, strain again and reserve juice for dying your frosting.  Put berries back in pan with 3 "big" spoonfulls of sugar and "smoosh" up until all big chunks are dissolved  (if you used mixed berries, you may want to dig out any large chunks like blueberries). and simmer for about 10 minutes.  

When cake is done, let cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then turn over onto cooling rack.  Cool completely.  If only 1 pan used, poor the rest of the cake batter in the pan and cook the remaining batter.  

While cake is cooking prepare your frosting.  Mix together softened butter and softened cream cheese until light and fluffy.  Stir in vanilla and powdered sugar, little bit at a time until nice and thick. set aside about 1/2 cup to color for decorations.  Mix in some of the remaining raspberry juice until your desired color is reached.  

When cake is cooled, place one layer on your serving platter or cake stand, spread cooled raspberry and sugar mixture over the top, add the second layer and frost! Decorate as desired.  Soooo yummy!

Banana Bread packed with protein!

I recently revised a very popular banana bread recipe I found on allrecipes.com. I will post below the original recipe with my substitutions in parentheses.  My husband even agreed it was the best banana bread he ever had!
Ingredients:
3/4 c. butter (I used half homemade applesauce and half butter... Next time I would like to try all applesauce)
3 c. sugar (i got side tracked here and did not make any substitutions but next time I would like to cut it down to 2 c. one white and one brown sugar)
3 eggs
6 very ripe bananas mashed
1 container (16 oz) sour cream (i used almost all but about 1/2 c. of a 17.6 oz containter Fage Greek yogurt... The least amount of fat and most protein per serving of Greek yogurts)
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon (i added a dash more)
1/2 tsp salt (i used a dash less)
3 tsp baking soda
4 1/2 c. flour (i used 2 c. whole wheat and 2 1/2 c. all purpose)
Cream butter and sugar, add eggs until mixed through. Add bananas until mixed, then yogurt and vanilla. Stir in cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Slowly start adding flour until mixed through. Grease and flour 2 bread pans, fill 3/4 of the way and place in a 300 degree preheated oven.
I don't know difference this will make but I mixed this all by hand due to lack of mixer... I think next time I will use a hand mixer until adding flour... I don't want to much air when adding flour.


***Update - tried this again, 1/2'd the recipe for only 1 loaf and did the follow, turned out PERFECT!

3/4 c. applesauce
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1 egg
3 mashed bananas
3/4 - 1 c. yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 c. whole wheat four
1 c. (plus a tiny extra) white flour

yummo!

Chicken Cordon Bacon?

I must give partial credit to my husband for this recipe.  As we were discussing how to make chicken cordon bleu, he pipes in "what about Bacon in the middle?" Now me... I think Bacon makes anything taste good. I hear the word Bacon and my ears perk up just like those beggin strip commercials.  So, with a little improvising we made the best chicken cordon bleu ever!

Ingredients: (this fed 5 people)
5 chicken breasts
1 pkg ritz crackers, crushed to fine crumbs
1 lb of Bacon
3 slices of colby jack cheese cut 1/4" or so, then halved
Butter/oil for frying

Pre-heat oven to 350.
Cut the Bacon strips in half horizontally to make about 3-4" strips and fry up the bacon to your desired crispness.

Pound out chicken with the flat end of a meat tenderizor until about 1/2" thick (or if your gangsta like me and don't have a meat tendorizer, the bottom of a Jack bottle works quite well too)

Place a piece of cheese and 3 or 4 strips of Bacon on one end of the breast (thinnest side works best) and roll up into a ball. Secure the two ends together with toothpicks (no toothpicks? Improvise like my husband! Go outside, find a stick and widdle yourself some of your own ;) )


Now heres the step I forgot to do... but they still turned out AWESOME, so you decide.  At this point you SHOULD dredge them in some whisked up eggs... however this mama had a slight blonde moment and forgot!


Next, roll in crushed up ritz crackers and brown on all sides (you can use left over bacon grease, or clean out the pan and use oil).


Place in 9 x 13 baking dish and bake for about 20 minutes, check to see if they are done.  They should take between 20-30 minutes depending on how thick the breasts were.