Breakfast

I woke up this morning to discover that we were out of coffee.  That's gotta be the worst thing ever.  

Desperate times called for desperate measures...

So I packed up the kids and headed to the nearest Timmy's drive thru in my pajamas.  The morning improved however, when I discovered that Tim Hortons has a fantastic Allergen Chart on their website.  We almost never go out to eat anymore because of Emerson's allergies.  But this allergen chart means we'll be heading to Timmy's a little more often because I can easily find all the items that are Emerson friendly.

Turns out the berry oatmeal is dairy free.  Turns out that Eme loves it.

She pretty much single handedly ate the entire large sized bowl of oatmeal.  Atta girl!

I'm a little embarrassed to tell you what Caleb ate for breakfast.  Let's just say there was a lot of white sticky sugary goodness all over his car seat and face when we arrived home.  Ah well... I REALLY needed my coffee this morning and a little donut bribery sure did the trick :)

Weekend Plans and Dairy Free KD

I have two very important things to say today.

First of all-- I'm not sure what your weekend plans include, but if I was crutch free and had two healthy working knees I would be spending my Saturday at the Fieldstone Vintage Market.

It's a market being held here in Abbotsford at the Eco Dairy on Sumas Way.  Sounds like there's going to be lots of awesome vintage collectors and local artisans setting up booths and selling their wares.  I would LOVE to go-- but alas-- I don't think my knee could handle it.  But if you need something to do and want to get out of the house-- check out the market!

For more info you can take a look at the Fieldstone Vintage blog or their facebook page.

And now for my second very important thing.  I made dairy free mac and cheese out of that Daiya cheesy stuff.  A little almond milk, some Earth Balance butter, a pinch of flour, some "cheese" and I had the most amazing dairy free cheese sauce.  I mixed it in with some macaroni and let Emerson go to town.  She was totally digging the dairy free, somewhat cheesy, orange goodness.

She polished it off like nothing... and then proceeded to smear gooey cheese sauce all over her face and in her hair.  Oh the things a kid's gotta do around here to get a bath these days... let me tell you.

Another Dairy Free Experiment

The days are feeling fall-ish.  Yesterday I decided to make soup-- it just felt like the right thing to do.  I haven't cooked in a long long time-- cooking and crutches just don't seem to go well together :)  But Doug was working late, the kids and I were hungry, and I had all the ingredients for corn chowder-- so I decided to go for it.

But... not only did I make my usual corn chowder-- I also decided to try my hand at a small batch of dairy free corn chowder for the little lady.  The picture says it all.  Major success.

My normal recipe usually includes farmer sausage not bacon-- it makes awesome corn chowder.  I get my farmer sausage from the Fine Foods in Waldheim Saskatchewan.  It's not exactly the store down the street-- but they sell the best!  I take the casings off while it's still partially frozen so that it kind of crumbles as you fry it.  Add some onions, potatoes (with some water), salt and pepper, corn (frozen, fresh, or canned) creamed corn, and an assortment of milk ingredients-- milk, cream (yes please!), maybe some cream of mushroom soup and lots of cheese!  Not exactly Emerson friendly.

But, I had some Daiya dairy free cheese in my fridge so I decided to give it a try.  The package says it's "Deliciously dairy free"-- I'm not convinced.  It smells a little funky to me-- tastes funky too-- but Emerson doesn't know the difference!  Once the potatoes were cooked, I added the corn, some almond milk (with a little flour to help thicken it up), a little extra dairy free butter for a bit more flavor, and the cheese-- or should I say "cheese".  

It melted pretty well and actually tasted pretty creamy.  The dairy free version wasn't as tasty as my normal corn chowder but Emerson ate it up!  It actually wasn't too bad.  Eme loved it.  And she loved it again today at lunch.

So did Caleb (he ate the dairy friendly version)-- he had TWO bowls full last night and even drank the last bit of soup right from the bowl.  While I tend to discourage this kind of messy eating behavior-- I was happy to see that he enjoyed it :)  So, I'm thinking that this meal will be a staple in our house over the winter months!  And even though the Daiya dairy free cheese was a little bit nasty to me-- I will likely be purchasing it again :)

A weekend in pictures

I had an absolutely fabulous long weekend... let me share!

First up... this weekend was extra special because it was our 7th wedding anniversary!  Over the past 7 years we've had some pretty terrible anniversaries-- we've celebrated by driving all day and night across western Canada in motor home with 6 other people, we've moved, one memorable anniversary I had shoulder surgery and my broken jaw wired shut, one year we couldn't find a babysitter so with took Caleb with us out to Red Robin's and the other's we've managed to squeeze a quick dinner in after work when we could find a babysitter.  Not so special.  This time around we had willing babysitters so we took off-- for most of the day!  It was fabulous.  We ended up enjoying a warm sunny day on Granville Street in Vancouver.  Perfect.

On the way in we stopped on Main Street to peek into a few antique shops.  There are some pretty expensive antique stores on that street but there were also some pretty reasonably priced places too.  My favorite was The Sellution-- they had a TON of stuff that had me dreaming.

Aren't these chairs amazing?  They are begging for a makeover...

We did a lot of walking and a lot of window shopping.  My absolute favorite store was Country Furniture.  They had so much great stuff in there.  The store was full of casual country furnishings mixed with vintage-y and industrial pieces-- lots of comfortable linen slipcovers, rough rustic wood pieces, metal, distressed lamps and artwork... I loved it.  I can't afford anything in there... but I will definitely be going back for inspiration :)

Once we had walked and window shopped enough... we went for dinner at the Red Door.  Such good food.  So great to sit on the patio and enjoy a warm summer evening with this guy...

Then we stopped at Meinhardt's for flowers, grabbed dessert, and headed home to rescue our babysitters.  A perfect day.  Although Doug seems to think that next year we'll spend our anniversary window shopping at motorcycle shops and maybe stop at a pet store or two... :)

Can't wait to see what the next seven years hold honey!  Love you.

Now... onto a couple of other highlights.  These ones are not as special and significant... but they are still important in my books.  We made a quick trip across the border to pick up some groceries on Monday morning and I made a new discovery at Trader Joe's.  Dairy free yogurt.  It's a soy product but it tastes pretty close to regular yogurt.  It's the same consistency-- which is a big one-- an even contains live active cultures.  Emerson loves it.  I'm so happy.

And... we picked up a ton of fresh raspberries.  Yum.  One of the best things about living in the Fraser Valley has to be the fresh berries.  I picked these up-- no joke-- at a little farm just down the street.  It was a 3 minute drive.  We've been eating a ton of fresh raspberries and I've already washed and frozen several pounds so we can enjoy them later.

The one downside... Eme now refuses to eat anything that's not a raspberry.  Dinner time last night was quite the battle.  While I did eventually get her to eat her steamed broccoli and beef vegetable soup-- she still won-- because my kitchen was trashed in the process and I had to give her a bath-- twice-- she was THAT dirty.

To kick off the work week I packed up the kids and hit to zoo for the morning.  The train was broken, it started to rain... but we still had fun.  We did a lap around the zoo and saw the more interesting animals.

Caleb particularly liked the giraffe this time around.  He figured his name was probably Sir Topham Hat.

Emerson really couldn't have cared less.

And now we're home.  Hooray for nap time!!

Pre-Easter Fun

Let me first start by thanking those that participated in the "paint the table" poll.  I loved reading everyone's feedback-- unfortunately I am still hopelessly undecided :)  In the next few days I'm going to try and decide where the table will reside in the house-- that will hopefully make the decision making process a bit easier!

Well, over the past few days we've done a few Easter-ish things.  First up, I decided to bake paska.  I try to make it every year at Easter.  This year, however, I tried my hand at dairy free paska!  Instead of milk, cream, and butter I used soy milk and dairy free margarine.  I tweaked my mom's fantastic paska recipe-- it's truly the best recipe ever.  I'm totally unbiased when I say that :)  The verdict?  Still delicious.  Really though, what doesn't taste delicious when topped with icing and sprinkles?

Emerson had her first taste of paska.  She loved it.  I've been giving her bits of bread and rice lately and she will sit for the longest time trying to pick the pieces up.  So cute... she's still very unsuccessful.  What we have noticed is that she definitely uses her left hand more than the right.  Look's like we're two for two in the lefty department!  Doug is rejoicing.  If the kids get his height and my lefty-ness we're going to have some killer volleyball players on our hands :)

On Saturday I had three extra chickies at my house.  To keep them busy we had an Easter candy/craft party.  We made these cute little chicks.  The kids had scissors, glue, and paper flying everywhere.  If I had an extra set of hands Emerson would have been able to make one too... she unfortunately had to sit on the sidelines in her Exersaucer watching the other kids craft it up.  I don't think she really minded all that much.  In the end, the candy/craft party was a smashing success... the kids liked the craft and had some pretty great sugar highs going on.  They all crashed just in time for nap time... perfect.

These little munchkins got to do a bit of paska taste testing for me.

They approved.

Adventures in Dairy Free Cooking: Macaroni & Cheese... or so you think

This may look like macaroni and cheese, but it most definitely is not.  

My diet has been dairy-free for almost 2 weeks now, and I'm starting to get used to planning and cooking dairy free meals.  The one thing that's been in the back of my mind for the past few days is how I'm going to make kid friendly dairy free food for Emerson when she's old enough to eat "real" food.  As I've been thinking about the best way to provide dairy free options for her, I've decided that I am not about to start making 2 of everything-- one with dairy and one without.  While I will still have regular milk, cheese, and yogurt in the house for Caleb, trying to make as many of our meals dairy free is really the best option-- especially since Doug is lactose intolerant.  So, I figured it's time to start practicing now.

Over the weekend I was enjoying some yummy (dairy free) butternut squash soup from Trader Joe's... as I was eating it I thought to myself, "this is the same consistency and color as the 'cheese' sauce you put in macaroni and cheese... hmmmm."  At lunch time today, I decided to give it a try.  As I was cooking the macaroni, I whipped up a fake, dairy free cheese sauce.  Here's what I put in it:

1 Tbsp vegan Becel

2 Tbsp Tofutti (a tofu substitute for cream cheese)

Sea Salt

Onion Powder

Enough Butternut Squash soup to make 1 cup of sauce

1 Tbsp steamed carrot puree

I whisked it all together over med heat until it was smooth and cheesy looking-- the pureed carrots were a last minute addition.  As I was about to pour it over the macaroni I decided that it wasn't orange enough.  I remembered that I had made some carrot baby food for Emerson, so I pulled 1 serving of carrots out of the freezer, warmed it up, and stirred it in.  I strategically decided to let Caleb enjoy his lunch while watching some cartoons-- I figured that if he was distracted while eating he would be less inclined to notice that his mac and cheese tasted a bit different.

Results?  I thought it tasted pretty good!  It doesn't taste exactly like KD, but it's pretty close... and healthier.  Caleb?  He didn't notice.  He ate the whole bowl.

I felt so sneaky.  Then I felt a bit guilty for being so deceptive and whipped up a batch of Rice Krispie squares and offered Caleb a piece... he didn't want it!!  Fine with me.  Glad you enjoyed your mac & tofu squash... more Rice Krispie squares for me!!

I'm going to go ahead and call this dairy free cooking experiment a success :)