Hippie Cooking Club

Emily was the host for this month's cooking club, and the theme was hippie food! I chose a recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook, for carrot mushroom loaf. It just sounded really hippieish, and I LOVE carrots. And mushrooms!



Pound and a half of carrots! This is a job for the food processor.



Mmm, carroty!



Beautiful spring flowers!



"Spiritualina" health beverages from the Farmacy.



Emily made hippie appetizers to get us started. These are marinated tofu cubes. Her family is pretty hippieish, and this is a food she ate a lot growing up.



Nuts and seeds!



Popcorn with nutritional yeast and Bragg Liquid aminos.



KALE CHIPS!



Yumi made veggie burgers!



Valerie made salads with farro and flowers.



Plus tahini dressing. YUM.



Yumi's veggie burgers. These were INCREDIBLE. Possibly the best veggie burger I've ever had?? At least tied with the Northstar burger. These bad boys have barley, garbanzo beans, mushrooms, zucchini, leeks, eggplants, nuts, garlic, spices and MORE.



"Mommy, tell everyone to look at Charlotte!!"



"Charlotte, they can hear you!"



Every once in awhile, sadly, there is a cooking club fail. Summer's attempt at spaetzle tonight was one of them. Look at how gloppy!!



WOMP WOMP.



She managed to squeeze out just a few little spaetlze nuggets. The exciting part was even that spaetzle dough blob at the bottom of the pan turned out to be delicious!!



The weather outside was completely bizarre! It was like the hippie spirits were trying to entice us with a really trippy atmosphere. Spring flowers, pink sky, and SNOW!



Pretty special. Emily wore the shirt her father got MARRIED in as her cooking club outfit! So that's pretty sweet.



Snowflakes in her hair! (Hippie.)



Carrot mushroom loaf! I wasn't sure what to expect, but this turned out to be delicious. It had a great depth of flavor!



Summer's cauliflower paprikash! Supposed to be served over spaetzle...



Charlotte and her ice cream truck! I bought three flavors of frozen yogurt.



Yogurt-covered raisins and carob-covered peanuts from the Pharmacy.



Nancy made homemade granola, and served it with fruit and yogurt. That granola was phenomenal! She sent us each home with our own jarful, too! I'm going to have it for breakfast all week!!

Happy Birthday, Ben!

Ben's birthday was on Wednesday, but we waited until Friday to celebrate because Fridays are FUN!



Cheryl and Kayla!



Gabbing.



We took up a whole room!!



Ben and me!



Tom Yum soup! MMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!



I had red and yellow curries mixed for my entree.



Ben had red and green!



Time for presents! This present from Mom and Dad matched Ben's pants!



Men!



Oooh, a shirt!



Little Kate painted this rock herself! She must know we love animals with paws!!



Cheryl got Ben a bag full of dog toys and supplies!



CAKE!



We went out back on the patio to have cake.



Kate and I both wore gray fleece jackets with pink linings! TWINS!



Ben and Rodrigo!



Derrick and Dennis!



Make a wish!






Yum.



After dinner, we took a quick trip to see the cherry trees at night. Yep, still beautiful!



They look like popcorn!



Family photo.



Happy birthday, Ben!

Cherry Trees

The cherry trees are beautiful this year! Last year, the weather was pretty terrible and the trees never reached their beautiful peak. But they're back and as pretty as ever!



It's Ben's birthday, so it's pretty nice to have a lovely day to visit the trees.



Happy birthday, Ben!






That's actually Emily and Charlotte walking there behind that tree. Those little pink legs are Charlotte! I didn't realize this was them until after I took the photos!

Daffie Fest 2015

It's springtime, and around these parts that means it's time to FROLIC! Robin hosted us in her beautiful yard once again for the second annual Daffie Fest! We ate snacks, drank margaritas, and frolicked in the daffodil patch.



FROLIC!



Emily joined us this year, so the sister component was off the HOOK. Sissiefest! What a wonderful tradition.



Happy spring!

Public Service Announcement: Pill Cartons

This morning as I was getting ready to head to the grocery store, I developed a bit of an upset stomach. I reached into the medicine cabinet to grab a couple of Kroger brand anti-diarrheal tablets, the standard dosage of which is two.



They look like this:



What I didn't realize, and didn't figure out until almost 9 p.m. tonight, was that I ACTUALLY grabbed THIS:



Doesn't the package for those nighttime sleep aid pills look VERY similar to the ant-diarrheal pills??? The pills themselves look the same, too! LOOK!



The kicker is that the dosage for the nighttime sleep aid pills is just ONE pill, so I totally took a double dose of sleeping pills at 10:45 a.m this morning. I felt a little off (dreamy?) while grocery shopping, and then as I was driving home, I couldn't BELIEVE how tired I was. "It sure would feel good to take a little nap!" I couldn't figure out what was going on. I didn't stay up late last night! I only had two small drinks last night, it couldn't be a hangover! When I got home, Ben unloaded the groceries, while I laid on the couch for fifteen minutes. I couldn't afford to rest for longer than that though, because we had dog training that afternoon! Places to be, things to do. I was like, "Suck it UP, Kate!"

I went to dog training and felt like a zombie and was sort of worried that I was coming down with some sort of chronic fatigue illness. I had plans to walk to Casa with Mom at 5 p.m. to see the Randys play their early show. As we walked, I was telling her how TIRED I had felt all day and how I wasn't sure WHY! That I was glad we were walking because I almost didn't even feel competent to drive (red flag much?!)! And also how THIRSTY I was! I had just chugged two cans of seltzer water and was still COMPLETELY parched!! (The Kroger nighttime sleep aids are decongestants!) I started feeling marginally better during the show (it's impossible not to feel great during a Randys show!), which makes sense because the pills were finally wearing off.

When I got home from the show and was getting ready for bed, I noticed the package of pills and finally everything made sense. I laughed with relief! But whoa, what a waste of a day! The moral of the story is, pay attention to your pill cartons. Duh, right?

Gravel Rouser Grab & Git City Scramble

Another March, another Gravel Rouser! Summer and I were once again stationed at a checkpoint during the Grab & Git City Scramble. This year we were at the public library, and Carl and Brad helped us out! It was nice having extra volunteers!



Pete and Kate did the Scramble on tandem!





Our checkpoint challenge was spelling bee, which was very challenging. Only a few people were able to successfully spell their word!

My Boys

Love these guys!