Thank you Mr. Pavlov.................

Good afternoon. How are you all today?
Apparently we are all ravenous here. Well, ok..........just the kids. After all it is after school time. You know what that means, right?

Yep. The dreaded question my kids have asked me every day after school since my oldest made the adjustment to kindergarten life.

"Mom...........what's for after school snack?"

Ugh. Who started this phenomenon anyway? It reminds me of Ivan Pavlov and his famous drooling doggies.

(you can read all about Mr. Pavlov here)

Some days (following a stroke of brilliant forethought in the meal planning arena), I am prepared to meet their questioning waif-ish faces with a perfected swirling "Ta Da!" motion revealing some favored delight. Other days.......much like today *ahem*.........I hear their footsteps on the porch and wilt at the thought of their expectation and my pathetic emptyhandedness. No magician's "presto" moment for me. Hmm.....................

Thank goodness for Jami over at AnOregonCottage.com! Browsing her blog today, I came across her recipe for Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Bars. I decided to try them out....after all, they contain two of the most important food groups in our family: peanut butter and chocolate.

These are soooo yummy I just have to share the recipe with you!

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Bars (whew...say that fast)

• 1 c. butter
• 1 1/4 c. brown sugar (or sucanat)
• 2 eggs
• 1 c. peanut butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 c. whole wheat (or spelt) flour
• 2 c. whole oats
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 c. chocolate chips (or carob chips)

Preheat oven to 350*.

Place the better and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat until smooth. Beat in eggs, peanut butter and vanilla until well blended.

Add flour, oats, baking powder and salt. Beat until blended, scraping sides as needed. Mix in choc. chips.

Pat dough evenly in a parchment-lined or buttered 13x9 pan, using water to wet fingers in order to spread smoothly.

Bake for 25 minutes or until golden around the edges. Let cool on a rack until just warm and cut into 24 pieces.

These yummies satisfied my little drooly pups.......until they ask the next dreaded question............

"Mom.............what's for dinner?"

..........sigh..........................Thank you Mr. Pavlov.

Inspirations.............

Good Morning!

Yesterday's sun has been replaced by the grey of an overcast sky today. Ahhh...springtime in Oregon!
Well, today I wanted to share a lovely blog I discovered via a friend's post on Facebook this last week.

Jami, over here in Oregon, has a wonderful blog that encompasses many of the things I am trying to implement in our family and she's done so in a way that's easy to understand for anyone learning the art of a more simple life. I just love the way she writes. Open and honest and easy to relate to.

I have been pouring over her tips on gardening this morning as I sip my tea, taking furious notes and drawing up plans of my own for the three new beautiful garden beds my hubby built me this past weekend. (I love that man!) I am eager to try out her advice on planting potatoes and have added a bale of straw to the list of things I need to pick up from the feed store. If you are a gardener (or a want-to-be gardener like me) in the Pacific Northwest, you might want to download the wonderful organic garden checklist she put together from her many years of practice.

(Thanks Jami!)

I hope you all check out her blog today. I'm sure it will quickly become one of your favorites just as it did for me. You can click the link above or find a link on the left under my ::inspirations:: section.


A Chick Update:
I thought you might like to see some pictures of our little chicklets. They have already more than doubled in size since we brought them home. They are 3 weeks old today. The first pics are their "baby" pics when they were all fuzzy and cute. They are looking a bit more awkward and "teenager-y" looking nowadays. See for yourself:

how they looked before:

(Yes, Lady Wellington is my chick...how on earth could you tell?)

Reepicheep is the smaller Bantams, but shows no fear by pouncing on the other chicks every chance she gets.

Our pup, Quita, has taken quite a shine to watching the "Chick-flick".....(ha ha)

And the chicks are pretty interested in her too!

and how they look now:

See what I mean?

Pretty gangly yet, but they will be fine chicks someday soon!

Well, here they all are together.

We'd better get crackin' on that coop right away! These guys need a longer roost!

Mmmmm.......muffins!

Hi there-

My kids, like most, go through spurts where they will eat the same thing for breakfast every single morning day after day for weeks on end, then just when you have them all figured out they suddenly don't want that thing anymore. This is what it's been like in our house for the last few days, so in an effort to make something different than the norm for breakfast, I went searching through my favorite recipe website (http://www.allrecipes.com/) for ideas. That's when I came across a real winner. I just have to share this wonderful healthy recipe with you! You're going to love it.

Health Nut Blueberry Muffins
3/4 cup all purpose flour (I use unbleached)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup oat bran
1/4 cup quick cooking oats (I used rolled)
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup blueberries (frozen works well)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1 banana, mashed
1 cup buttermilk *
1 egg
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla extract

-Preheat oven to 350*F. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan, or line with paper muffin cups
-In a large bowl, stir together the flours, sugar, oat bran, oats, wheat germ, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gently stir in the blueberries and nuts. In a separate bowl, mix together the mashed banana, buttermilk, egg, oil and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix just until blended. Spoon into muffin cups, filling all the way to the top.
-Bake for 15-18 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops of the muffins spring back when lightly touched.

*I substituted 1 cup of 1% milk with 1 Tbsp. lemon juice for the buttermilk and it worked great.

I've also swapped out the blueberries for 1 cup of pumpkin and added a little cinnamon and nutmeg and they were delicious! My kiddos liked them best, I think.

Now go enjoy some muffins with your tea! Mmmmmmmmmm............

Peep, peep....

Well, we've gone and done it! My husband and I have always talked about getting chickens since we live in the country and our neighbors over the backyard fence have quite a few fowl themselves, but we put it off thinking "we'll do it next year".

In passing last week, I overheard someone mention that one of the local ranch supply stores would be "giving away" up to 5 chicks per family if you bought a bag of feed on the day before Easter. I told this to my husband and we agreed that we would go ahead and take the plunge. So, on Saturday, we loaded all 4 kiddos into the car at 8am (because we wanted to be prepared for the flock of chicken-buyers we were sure would swarm the place) and headed out to the ranch supply store.

Mind you, we hadn't done any breed research or made plans for a coop at this point, but that seems to be the way we tend to operate...much to my chagrin at times.

Now we have a rubbermaid tote full of tiny peeps. We each picked out one chick then hubby and I got 2 little banties to toss in the mix just for fun. Pics will be forthcoming in the next day or two.

Guess I'd better get hopping on figuring out a coop, huh?!

Homemade Mayo...

What's for lunch? Hmmm...know what sounds good to me? A tuna sandwich on whole wheat bread with fresh tomato slices....mmmmmmm. Know what stinks? When you're imagining what it will taste like and your mouth actually begins to water so you go to the pantry, dig out the tuna, lightly toast your bread and reach for the mayo....................only to find that you have none. Drat! That's what happened to me a few days ago. I finally settled on peanut butter and jelly with my 6 yr old, but it wasn't the same. Nothing could have measured up to the taste of that tuna sandwich that day.

The subject of our being out of mayo came up several times in the following days until one day when I noticed a little cookbook on my shelf I hadn't used for quite a while. It's called Snackers by Maureen & Jim Wallace.

I made myself a cup of tea and settled in my chair for a browse of this little book. Full of helpful tips on eating healthy, whole foods and (as you can see on the cover just above) more than 200 recipes using REAL foods instead of the many highly (and overly) processed foods we are used to today. I was intrigued by their recipe for homemade mayonaise and given our lack of the particular item at that time, I decided to test it out. How bad could it be?

I've never made mayo before, but I am a very experienced cook and I can follow a recipe like nobody's business so I gathered my supplies. Simple really: an egg, apple cider vinegar, salt, ground mustard and paprika and oil. It took me literally about 2 minutes to make approximately 1 cup of mayo. Now the real test.....how did it taste? I have to say, I could not tell the difference in the texture at all and the flavor was wonderful! If you preferred to leave out the spices, I'm sure it would be just as good (I would leave in the salt though). I'll include the recipe here for you to try. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Homemade Mayo

Place in blender:
1 egg, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1/2 tsp. ground mustard, 1/4 tsp. paprika, 1 1/2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice) and 1/4 cup oil.
Mix at low speed adding an additional 3/4 cup oil in a slow steady stream. Use a spatula to keep the mixture moving as it thickens until all oil is added.

Makes about 1 cup of lovely mayonaisse.

Well, it's been lovely chatting with you. I'm going to retire to the kitchen for a bit. I've got a tuna sandwich calling my name. You should whip up some of that mayo and join me in your kitchen. Tea anyone?

Blessings,

Hello!

How are you? I'm glad you stopped by. I've been thinking a lot lately about getting back to the basics of life. I know it was probably instigated by listening to financial advisor Dave Ramsey, who has sparked a burning desire in both me and my husband to become debt free as quickly as possible, but we both have a natural bent toward wanting to live the Little House on the Prairie-type lifestyle. Somewhere along the way we've gotten away from that simple life and now we find ourselves drowning in "stuff" we were convinced we had to have to be comfortable.

Reading through Dave's Financial Peace books and listening to his advice to others on how to get out of debt so you can be a greater blessing to others has really brought it home for us that we just own way too much "stuff" and we need to clear it out. It makes me acutely aware of everything around me and I have to ask myself, "how much do we really need in life?" We have stepped away from our frugal pioneering heritage and chosen to live above our means in able to afford some of the comforts of life as laid out in our present day culture.

I wouldn't call us materialistic.....well, maybe a tiny bit. We don't have a $450,000 house (with a matching inflated mortgage) or two brand new cars sitting in the driveway. We don't own any big toys like boats or ATVs. But we do have a nice 2004 Honda Odyssey van that does well at transporting our family of 6 wherever we go and we have a house big enough for everyone to have their own room ($207,000 with an only moderately inflated mortgage). We own a flat screen TV, but it's not an HDTV....much to my husband's chagrin. My husband has a great job repairing alloy wheels and he is making more money than either of us ever thought he would, but we still live paycheck to paycheck because of poor money management skills and a lack of discipline to delay gratification. If we want it and there is a way to manipulate the money to get it.....we usually do.

Unfortunately, that leads to piles of "stuff" accumulated everywhere and the hovering threat of one major disaster bringing financial ruin. It's ridiculous and we are accepting all the blame for it, but now is the time to change our behavior. We need to get back to living simply, frugally and wisely within our means. I suppose that is what birthed this blog. It's a sort of online diary for me to help keep me encouraged in the pursuit of this basic lifestyle. I am open to advice and recipes and ideas for saving money, eating and living healthy and anything else you might like to share with me. Please leave comments. I love them.

And now.............the journey begins.