Foody Friday - Monster Smoothies

Last Friday I returned from two weeks in Indiana to find my garden was huge and full of weeds. My Swiss Chard leaves had grown larger than my hand! It's no surprise Kansas is hot and dry. I've found that Swiss Chard handles the heat much better than spinach which bolts to seed quickly. Last summer it lasted well all summer long despite 100+ degree temps. Swiss Chard is very similar in taste to spinach if it is picked when it's small. But these leaves are bigger than my hand and the taste is starting to turn bitter. Even if everyone in my ate salads morning, noon and night it would take us a while to get through this amount of Swiss Chard. 

I just hate the idea of throwing away food from the garden.

I stumbled across this recipe for a Spinach Smoothie and figured Swiss Chard would work just as well. I mixed up a batch; it wasn't bad but it wasn't great either and it definitely wasn't anything my kids were impressed with. 

So I tweaked it and hit gold! 

Or green in this case. 

Monster Smoothies

Place the following in a blender. 

1 cup milk

1/2 cup yogurt

2 sliced bananas (frozen sliced if you prefer)

2 HEAPING tablespoons of peanut butter

3 T honey (or so, I didn't measure this)

Pack in the remaining blender space with spinach/swiss chard. 

Blend until liquified. 

May the Wild Rumpus BEGIN! 

"Let me try!!" 

"Mmmmm....yummy!" 

Yap: "Hey let me have some!"

Yahoo: "NO!!" *gulp gulp*

Yap: "Ah maaaan!"

Yahoo: "Oh, okay...Here you go!"

Yap: "Yum yum!" 

Yap: "Do I look like a monster yet?"

We took half of this batch and made popsicles from them. They were even better than the smoothie. 

I know, I know...it really looks gross. Honestly though it doesn't taste any different than a peanut butter banana smoothie. Anyway, calling it a Monster Smoothie makes it a whole lot more fun to eat! 

Most importantly though...I'm making a huge dent in my garden's Swiss Chard!! 

Weeks 21 and 22; Rest and Architecture

Vacation put me a bit behind on my 52 week project. I think this week is actually week 23. I'll get caught up eventually :) For the themes Rest and Architecture I took some photos during vacation. 

Week 22 - Architecture 

1/3 sec, f9, ISO 1600

This one was taken in the Mad Anthony Brewing Company in Warsaw, Indiana during a date with my husband. I LOVE their SCOTCH EGGS and Harry Baals Irish Stout! I slowed my shutter speed way down to get the fans to blur and then I desaturated the color of the beams and increased the vibrance of the lights themselves. I really like all the lines and angles in this photo that direct your eye to the lights. 

Week 21 - Rest 

1/200 sec, f14, ISO 800

After a very busy couple of days Yahoo fell asleep in a wagon at the zoo. Even in the bright sunshine being hauled over some bumpy paths she found some rest. I wish I could have joined her for her nap :) 

I've been trying to shoot at an high ISO at all times lately (800,1600) even outside after I read an article about combining a high ISO with a fast shutter speed to create sharper images. I think it worked well to make Yahoo sharp but maybe I should have lowered my f-stop to 6.3 or so to make it out of focus in the background. Rest and sharpness don't really go together. 

Next week I'll try to have Week 23 - Coil and Week 24 - Stop posted. Hopefully that should get me caught up and back on schedule. 

Thistles

I love thistles. I know weird. But I just like the bushy purple flowery part. 

Anyway, these were taken behind my sister's house during our visit home to Inidiana. 

Officer and her Mini Me

This is a pic of my sister, the Officer, when she was 4 or 5. 

This is a pic of my 3 year old daughter Yahoo. 

And here they are both together about two weeks ago. 

It's eerie how much these two look alike! Yahoo sure doesn't look anything like me. 

See?? Yahoo looks more like my sister than she does me! 

 You'd think that after carrying her in my womb for nine and a half months (I swear!) and going through a C-section to give birth to her she'd at least have the courtesy to LOOK like me! 

This is my favorite photo of the two together! I have to say that the way "looks" get passed down in my family tree has always amazed me.

I don't know if I want Yahoo to grow up acting like my sister the Police Officer! That may be more than I can handle! 

A long, sad vacation.

Hello my loyal blog readers,


I bet you are all thinking that I have fallen off the face of the Earth. Close...I just returned from spending the last two weeks back home in Indiana which is so vastly different than SW Kansas that it feels like another world. And I already really miss Indiana. I've only been back in Kansas for a day! 


DR and I didn't plan on being gone for two weeks. No, we planned on leaving on the 18th of May, visiting my family in northern Indiana and then seeing DR's family in southern Indiana, attending a high school graduation and being back home on Memorial Day, the 28th. But our stay was extended, unfortunately, and we didn't make it home until the first of June.


While we were in southern Indiana my Grandpa Asa passed away and we stayed the few extra days until his funeral. What a time it has been, both wonderful and terrible. It's terrible that we lost our grandpa but wonderful that he was promoted to Heaven and no longer suffering from the effects of Parkinson's. It was wonderful to see so many of my family and friends that I rarely have the chance to see on our short visits home but terrible that it had to be a funeral that brought us all together. 

We'll miss you Papa Asa. He was buried in his bibs and seed hat too. He wouldn't be my grandpa without them :) 


Our family packed in a lot in two short weeks. Two weeks that felt as though it went on forever but also went by in the blink of an eye. Although it was sad that we had to attend a funeral, all of my siblings were together. That rarely happens. 

I think it's been a couple of years since we've all been together. 

We visited Grandpa just a few days before he passed away and were able to steal Grandma away long enough to enjoy some time to the zoo. 

Some AWESOME shooting time with Papa Doug. The boys shot muzzleloaders and shotguns for the first time and boy, are they hooked! No matter that their shoulders hurt a bit...they weren't going to stop. 

Yahoo terrorized a couple of kittens who finally learned to hide from her! 

Attended a graduation! Congrats Cousin Evan :) 

We couldn't make it out of Indiana without visiting DR's alma mater, Purdue University twice! We spent sooo much money on Purdue clothes because, as DR puts it, "I'm just dang tired of seeing all the Kansas State purple!"

Oh, we are posed holding our town paper. They like to publish photos of people traveling with a copy. Funny because the owners are University of Kansas fans. 

DR and I even managed a couple of date nights. 

This isn't a great picture of anything other than being a good reminder that we were kidless :) 

Uncle John Deere was awesome enough to rustle up a bunch of sparklers to play with. This was especially appreciated by the kids since they couldn't have fireworks last summer. 

This is just a sample of the tons of photos from our trip home which I'm trying to load up on Facebook right now for you family but I'm not sure how successful I'll be. There are a LOT of photos. 

Our trip was great. Long and sad but great nonetheless. I'll be forever grateful that we were able to be home and say goodbye to Grandpa Asa. I have so much to be thankful to him for. He was a wonderful grandpa not just to me but to my kids too. He reinforced the value of hard work and to deeply enjoy any and every moment to the fullest. I love you Grandpa and we'll miss you terribly. 

Foody Friday - Kale Chips

For a couple years now I've come across different articles here and there expounding on the healthiness of kale and how people should eat more kale, eat more KALE, EAT MORE KALE!!! (I've stumbled on a LOT of articles on kale.)

Alright already, I'll eat more kale!! Thus the decision to plant kale in my garden this year. I've never eaten kale before but it sure looked pretty with it's bright, sturdy, green leaves. 

"This will be great in salad!", I thought to myself. 

Then I tasted it. Ugh!! Kale is bitter!! It would take a LOT of salad dressing to cover up that taste! I seriously contemplated digging it all up...that's how bad raw kale is. I decided to give kale one more try and Googled some kale recipes to get some ideas and I kept getting results for kale chips. It was easy enough, why not try it? 

I set my oven to 350 degrees. While it was heating I heaped up kale on a round pan, as much as I could get piled on it. Then I drizzled olive oil and salt on top and put it in the oven for 15-20 minutes. 

When the leaves were getting crispy and brown I pulled them out. The leaves shrunk tremendously! I let them cool slightly, only a minute or so and then I tried them. 

Before I tasted them I couldn't imagine that they'd taste at all good, and was ready to pitch the whole batch, considering how bad kale tasted raw but I was pleasantly surprised! 

Kale chips are fabulous! They are lot like roasted cabbage but crispier. The flavor was great too with the olive oil and salt I could fake myself into thinking I was eating very light potato chips. 

Alright Kale. You are safe in my garden, I won't dig you up. 

But....can you grown any faster please? 

Marker Monday - Coffee Carpets

This was a project I did with my Sunday school class on Mother's Day. I didn't have a chance to post it before Mother's Day but it's still a nice craft that could be made any time of year. 

First, at home, my kids and I painted up a bunch of sheets of paper in various colors, patterns and textures. It was a lot of fun letting their imaginations run wild. I think it was kind of a stress free art project where they didn't have to think too much or worry that they'd mess anything up. 

I found this idea on Pinterest to help create textures. 

It worked great!! 

To make my "coffee carpet" example, I took half a painted sheet, measuring 6x9, and cut strips from the other sheets to create a pattern. Then with a white paint marker and other markers I added swirls and dots. 

During Sunday School we talked a little about how Biblical mothers would have had lots of carpets in their tents (I'm thinking Abraham time, wandering the wilderness, etc.) and asked them to design their own carpet. 

Here are my boys carpets.

When they were all finished we laminated them and gave them to mothers to use as "coffee carpets". They turned out great and painting the papers ahead of time really worked out well for all the kids. They really enjoyed sifting through the various painted papers and looking at the colors and textures.