I have this {shh! healthy!} cookie recipe that I've been developing for years. It's as healthy as you can get for a cookie. Last year I took a plate of these cookies to a potluck event that my midwife puts on for her birth center clients every year. I put a sign next to the plate, describing what is in the cookies. When I came back at the end to get my plate, someone had written a note on the back of my sign raving about my cookies, and left an email address for me to send the recipe. At that point, I figured it was about time for me to share my recipe.
Peanut butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Set oven at 375
1/2 c peanut butter
1/2 c butter or coconut oil
Mix together and add:
1 1/4 c packed brown sugar
(Right now I'm subbing 1 cup of honey because I'm not eating refined sugar. They're good with honey, but not as sweet)
2 eggs
2 t vanilla
Mix til incorporated then keep mixing while you add:
1 3/4 c flour ( I use kamut flour when I have it, or whole wheat flour that I grind myself. I like it ground really fine. It is difficult to tell that it's while wheat...my kids love it!)
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt (I use kosher salt)
2 1/2 c oatmeal
1 c chocolate chips
If I have raisins I throw them in too.
Drop on cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.
They turn out so thick and chewy and delicious, and definitely satisfy my sweet craving, while filling me up with some great fiber.
I hope you'll like them as much as my family and I (and my potluck admirer do)!
We got back from New York just a few short days before Halloween. I had a plan to have all the Halloween costumes ready
before we left for our trip...or at least have all the materials assembled so that I could quickly make them. But since I have never been very good at juggling a billion things like packing, grocery shopping, cleaning, getting house ready for sitters, AND making costumes...you can guess that the least important thing didn't happen. So I didn't get around to making the little boys' costumes and the adults' costumes (the adults were going to be trees and the little guys were going to be owls...riding on the trees). But the big boys' costumes came together nicely, in a fast and furious kind of way. Finished just about 10 minutes before their school costume carnival! Whew!
But first:
10/25/12 - The day after we got back from NY and saw our precious children again!
the big guys wearing their I ({heart} NY shirts that we got them in Chinatown. Can you guess which boy does NOT like wearing a shirt with a heart on it? Partent FAIL!
And we were not up to the challenge of getting a picture with all the kids holding still, apparently.
Joshua and Toby thoroughly enjoying their Magnolia Bakery cupcakes.
Ollie too!
Mmmmm hmmmm...yum!
And now...on to the Hobbitses:
Here we have Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee with their hot out of the sewing room costumes. Actually, it wasn't too hard. I only had to sew one cloak (the other one was from our jedi costume), and the suspenders. I bought the pins and THE RING off of amazon. And I bought shirts, pants (which I cut off) and wigs at the Goodwill thrift store. I know that Sam wig is a little gran-gran crazy! It took me a few days to get it to relax.
Ollie photo bomb!
pretty Hobbity, right? I made them wear actual shoes outside of the house.
I gave up on the idea of making a costume for Ollie and just decided to go with something we already had. We thought this Leiderhosen grandma sent from Austria was ADORable!
On actual Halloween he wore a cute owl hat with it and looked like the Tootsie Pop owl. I would like to post a picture, but the pictures are on my phone and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get them on blogger with my new imac. URGH.
Here they are on Halloween, with the Sam wig looking better. :)
Happy way late Halloween!
10.24.12
Our final day of our vacation left us until 4 pm to squeeze in every last item deemed most important on our agenda. Before we left Oregon, I got on Facebook and asked my friends what we HAD to see...and we got so many great answers, and did lots of research....so we had a huge list of things we wanted to see. I showed our list to my sister on the day we arrived, and she laughed, told us to pick the top 1/3 of the stuff on our list and said that was all we would be able to fit into a week. I can say that we got to see *almost* everything on our list. We did have to majorly fly through a few of those museums...but didn't feel too bad about that since we had a great discount with our
city passes. But we did have to cross some crazy cool stuff off of our list, like the New York Botanical Garden, with the last remaining old growth forest from before Europeans. And going to see WICKED...or any Broadway show really. We tried one night to leave Milo with my sister, and we made it all the way to Times square, when she called us and Milo was screaming and wouldn't stop. So we came back to get him. It was our first attempt at leaving him with anyone besides Brent. And it was FAIL. Oh well! They're only babies for so long. We also really wanted to visit "New England," or anywhere out in the countryside...but we realized we had so much to see in the city that we might we wasting our time to leave. That will have to be another trip!
Anyway, we wrote out a very detailed agenda of where we wanted to go on our last day (down to the hours of when we needed to be where because our flight was leaving at 8:15 pm), and we struck out on our own to run a marathon around Manhattan, over to Brooklyn and back to Harlem...all by 4 pm.
We started by taking the subway to Times Square, and transferring over to Grand Central Station. It is a beautiful building, build by the same architect as the Ellis Island immigration building from the day before. I loved all the constellations painted on the ceiling. We looked in the shops for souvenirs for our children and babysitters. We bought a toy subway car and a dozen of Magnolia Bakery's famous cupcakes. And some real New York bagels and cream cheese. Then we got back on the subway (didn't even go outside) and headed down to Chinatown. The goal was to walk through Chinatown to pick up some cheap souvenirs, and navigate our way to the Brooklyn Bridge so we could walk over it.
The center picture on the bottom was a funeral procession. Brent wanted me to take a picture, but I was nervous about upsetting someone, so I had Brent stand in front so it looked like I was only taking a picture of Brent!
This collage is just a bunch of images on our way from Chinatown to the Brooklyn Bridge
FINALLY! For three days we had planned to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and had ended up crossing it off our list for a museum that had limited hours, or because it was rainy or too dark, or my sister was with us and didn't want to go, etc, etc. I REALLY wanted to walk across the bridge. It's free! And it's SO cool and utterly worth it!!
I am in LOVE with this selfie that Brent took. Hahaha!
 |
| This is a really zoomed in view of the Statue of Liberty from the Brooklyn Bridge |
Once we got across we really wanted to go get lunch at Grimaldi's Pizza under the bridge! We didn't have much time, but we decided to go for it. We had the address, but did not have a smartphone, so we found some street maps and were able to navigate ourselves to the place where we could eat famous Brooklyn Pizza that you fold in half to eat.
Too bad when we got there, we found out that they only accept cash, AND you cannot buy pizza by the slice...only a whole pizza. Well, we didn't have enough cash, and didn't need a whole pizza, AND didn't have time to wait around for a pizza to bake. SO SAD. If anyone reading this ever wants to walk the Brooklyn Bridge and go to Grimaldi's, make sure you bring plenty of cash and have extra time. I guess they're so famous that they can do what they want, but I really think not selling pizza by the slice is hurting their business.
ANYWAY...we found our way to the nearest subway station and waited to take the subway under the East River and back over to Manhattan, where we would go all the way back up to the west side of Central Park. CRAZY! And sitting there thinking that we'll be passing through this same subway station later this evening on our way to the airport!
Here's Brent sitting in the Brooklyn station, looking young enough to be a teen parent.
We decided to get out by the Lincoln Center again, so we could stop at Le Pain again to buy some delicious hazelnut spreads to bring home with us. (They are still sitting in our pantry...being savored very slowly.) And we passed by the New York City LDS Temple again:
 |
| New York City LDS Temple |
We had been hoping to go and do a session at the temple together one morning too, but there was the whole leaving baby fail that made us decide against that plan (I had breastmilk pumped, but the {brand new Avent} bottle I brought had leaked the milk out everywhere {HATE the new design}).
Le Pain is right behind the temple. How nice.
We then walked several blocks to the final destination on our New York City Pass: the National Museaum of Natural History.
Haha! New York City problems...
We LOVE, LOVE museums.
museum pigeon
Brent was VERY delighted and VERY surprised to find the one and only "Willamette Meteorite" at this museum! WOW! The city we live in, in Oregon is right along the Willamette River, at the north end of the Willamette River Valley, which is the final destination of the ancient Missoula Floods. This meteorite is a chunk of space rock that landed somewhere in Southern Canada, and was violently transported down to Oregon by the Missoula Flood. Brent has been searching for glacial erratics carried by the flood for the 5 and a half years that we have lived here. He knew the meteorite was gone, but he thought it was at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. So it was with great delight that we found it here, in New York City. You can see Brent in the top right picture of the collage looking very excited in front of the meteorite, and a descriptive plaque on the top left.
The Willamette Meteorite
More museum fun! There are 5 floors in this museum, and we had approximately 15 minutes to look at each floor. We also got free tickets to the space show there. Oh and don't forget lunch! We ate at the museum cafeteria, which was delicious and quick.
This museum is where the movie "Night at the Museum" takes place. It is one of our family's favorite movies, but the museum didn't look very much like the one in the movie.
Back underground, we had to get to my sister's apartment to pack up our stuff and get on a subway train to the JFK airport by 4:15, so we would have plenty of time.
more amazing subway art! I missed many great pictures of a butterfly and other animals because we were in such a rush!
We got back to my sister's place right on schedule and had to throw everything into our bags so fast that I forgot my dang glasses! But we made it. And we took a long subway ride back down Manhattan with all our bags, during rush hour (packed train!), through Brooklyn, and over to the airport in Queens...and I must say that by the time we were over there we were the ONLY tourists on the subway. It was quite strange. And we slept on and off in the plane for about 4 hours, in which Milo was a perfect angel who didn't make a peep. And Brent sat next to a drunk guy who asked all about our LDS faith for the first hour or two (while I half-slept)...and BELIEVE me when I say that he asked all the question that you would expect a drunk guy would ask about the LDS religion. Lol! But he was nice, and got some good closure from Brent's answers about the afterlife and how our loved ones are living after they die (his wife had died recently).
We made it back to Oregon where our lovely friends Tara and Tiana were there to pick us up and drive us home, well after midnight. Our lovely children were happy to see us in the morning...though they did have a great time having their Auntie and Uncle stay with them.
New York City. If you haven't been there, I highly recommend it. Going there, being there kind of feels like...it makes the world more relevant. When I hear about NYC, or watch a movie filmed there or see a landmark...now I have a map and a picture in my head. And I like that.
10.23.12
Of all the iconic NYC landmarks, the Statue of Liberty is the one I ALWAYS dreamed of visiting. We finally got to use the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island portion of our City Passes on Tuesday. We went down, all the way to the end of the line in Manhattan with my sister (who had never been to Ellis Island after living in NYC for 7 years!). Excitement.
The subway station at the end of the line: Battery Park.
I absolutely LOVED riding the subway around Manhattan. Every station is a little different. This station was a lovely little art museum by itself.
The weird thing about this station is that after we got back, and Hurricane Sandy happened less than a week later (!)...we saw pictures of this subway station completely under water. :(
we saw this park on the way from the subway to Battery Park...just proof that we were thinking about our other kids back home!
That, and I found it interesting that all the playgrounds were fenced in with these signs on them. I wish playgrounds were like that everywhere. It would be much easier not too loose a wandering toddler!
At Battery Park, we ducked into this old Fort called Clinton's Castle so my sis could buy her ticket. I was struck by the contrast of old and new. New towering above the old. Old sandwiched between the new. That beautiful, old house in the middle of two modern office buildings is the James Watson House.
inside Castle Clinton // Old & New
The view from/of Battery Park
This statue was right off the pier where we were waiting in line for the ferry. The rescue. Hmm...
Waiting in line for the ferry, our first pictures of Lady Liberty and Ellis Island.
 |
| The different views, angles and details of the Statue. I LOVED seeing her up close. I must say she is a lot smaller than I had imagined. We really wanted to take the tour up into the statue itself, but it turns out that the tour was closed until November. :( But after Hurricane Sandy blew through {the WEEK after we left!!}, the ferry to the Statue and Ellis Island are closed indefinitely. So we feel pretty lucky that we were able to squeeze in this trip before the devastation. |
On the Ferry and arriving at Ellis Island.
some of the views from the ferry...terribly sorry about the splotches on the lens! I think I took care of it.
We couldn't spent all day in the museum at Ellis Island. It is all about the Immigrants who came to America. Anyone who came in between certain time periods, came through this big building at Ellis Island. It so happens that our grandmother, great aunt and grandfather (Elfrieda, Johanna and Fritz) came through Ellis Island from Eastern Germany (now part of Poland) on their way to Salt Lake City, Utah between WWI and WWII. It was fascinating to take the tour and follow in the footsteps of our family. Literally.
And I DO mean literally! This is the stair case where the people would leave after being processed...and the stairs have grooves worn in them from all the people who passed through here! The stair on the right was for people who planned to stay in NYC, the stair on the left was for people who were heading elsewhere in the country, and the stair in the middle was for people who were not allowed to enter the USA.
Just a few panoramic shots of the GREAT room where the people had to wait in order to be processed:
We ate lunch in the cafeteria with a smiley baby.
...and we were PROCESSED! What a cool place! The workers there are so enthusiastic.
Here's an example of one of the processing labels on the left,
and information about how to find out if your ancestors passed through Ellis Island on the right.
Here are some of the interesting things I saw in the museum:
the language tree, with many words we use today and the countries they originated from
a picture of young women being checked for a certain contagious disease. If they had it, they were sent back to their country of origin.
looking down from the building
walking around the building
building detail
 |
| Beautiful skies...getting back on the ferry and heading back to Manhattan. We would've stayed longer, but the museum closed. :( |
The view on the way back.
Back in Battery Park
