Angry Bird-day

The angry bird birthday party was a huge success!  I have never had such a good time planning a party.  Thanks to pinterest, I'm already looking forward to the next one!

I think photos are probably the best way to tell you how great it turned out.

The lifesize angry birds game.  We had originally planned on painting the boxes to make them look like wood and ice, but we decided kind of last minute not to spend the extra time and money. No one cared. :)

The ammo.  Found these balls at Wal-Mart (Large size were 2.50 each, small were 1.50) and freehanded the faces on with acrylic paint.  I had to let them dry and do a couple of layers to get good solid color. 

Things like this leave me in awe of my husbands creativity.  He came up with this slingshot using scrap lumber, exercise bands and a whole foods bag!  The head swiveled too!

I made a trade with a friend from church: photography for these awesome angry bird cupcakes. Gotta love the barter system and talented baking friends! 

The popcorn bar.  Printed the faces for free off here: The Party Animal.  Air popped popcorn into one dollar buckets from Michael's and provided an array of flavors and toppings like Parmesan cheese and M&Ms.

The bags for the popcorn bar. 

The boys and I made these cute little guys to use in place of confetti when decorating the tables.  Little pom-poms, 5mm googly eyes, pipe cleaners, tacky glue and card stock. All from Michael's.  These were a cheap little touch and were a lot of fun to make. 

And the very best part, my sweet Asher.  So proud to be 5. 

The food was devoured before I was able to get photos but I can share my recipe sources.  I went with as much of an angry birds theme as I could without getting too processed in the food. I intended to make little signs with cutesy names and clip art, but alas, time ran out.  So the theme was lost on most people but they all enjoyed the taste!

Angry Birds Party Menu

Mini Pigs in a Blanket

Sweet Smoked Piggies (Bacon wrapped little smokies in brown sugar and butter)
Red Bird Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Chips (I put the apples and strawberries in the food processor so it would be a little more salsa-y than this recipe.  And I omitted all the sugar. It was quite sweet enough without it)
Angry Bird Rojo Roasted Salsa (Recipe below) and tortilla chips
Ham and Cheese Sliders (Did these on Kings Hawaiian rolls)
BBQ Pork Sliders (Recipe below)
Very Angry Eggs (Deviled eggs made by the mother in law)
Popcorn Bar (Angry Bird Food)
We also had a bit of randomness like some mason jars of black olives, grapes and blueberries. And a plate of Asher's all time favorite food, Cheese!




Red Roasted Salsa


6 lb. roma tomatoes
2 sweet vidalia onions
10 serrano peppers
1 bunch cilantro
a head of garlic
1/4 cup of honey
3 T. Kosher Salt

Preheat oven to 350.  Slice the tomatoes and onions in half.  Cut the caps off the peppers.  Peel the garlic.
Lay it all out in cookie sheets (I use pampered chef stoneware so they don't get too charred or stick) and roast for about 30-40 minutes.  You want things to get nice and toasty, a little black around the edges, slightly caramelized.  Keep checking it though because if it burns on a regular cookie sheet, it will wreck havoc by sticking.

After roasting is done, put the ingredients through the food processor with the cilantro, salt, and honey.  You'll have to go in batches because this makes a lot of salsa.
Taste and adjust.

You could turn up the heat with more peppers.  I originally started with 20 but they were HOT so I only put 10 in.  I also made this the day before and packed it in mason jars in the fridge for the flavors to meld a bit. It was delicious.


BBQ Pork Sliders
Makes 12 Slider Sandwiches (we tripled for the party)

1 pork tenderloin (either pre-marinated or plain)
1 package Kings Hawaiian Rolls
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
a splash of apple cider vinegar
1 T. BBQ Rub (any variety either sweet or spicy, I used Pampered Chef Smoky Applewood)

If using a plain pork loin, rub it down with some additional rub before cooking. If it's pre-marinated, don't do anything extra.

Cook pork loin at 350 for 45 minutes.
Let rest for 10 minutes before cutting so juices and redistribute.
Slice thin.

Slice rolls open for sandwiches.

Mix ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar and rub together for sauce.

Serve all together on a tray for people to assemble their own sandwiches.  I stacked the rolls up on one side, spread the meat out on the other and used a little mason jar with a spoon in it for the sauce.
You can also cook the meat the morning or night before, wrap in foil and just heat it up before serving.

Opening Day

Shopping malls always make me feel plain.   I recently went on the search for some jeans that fit my postpartum bod.  After wiggling into several pairs and surveying less than satisfactory results in the mirror, I left defeated.  I am not a fancy woman. I don't dye my hair and a lot of make up makes me feel like I'm pretending to be someone I'm not. I cannot justify the expense of pedicures. I like shoes that are easy and I lean towards clothes with character rather than style.  These things are generally truths of which I am confident.  However, I feel so out of place in a mall full of expensive, fussy clothes and the people purchasing them that I sometimes get a little deflated.  I forget how different we all are, how we all have different places to feel comfortable.

Farmer's Markets are my place to fit in.  You will not go to the farmer's market and feel frumpy. How can you when you are surrounded by life and talent and wholesome food being handled by the hands that grew it?   I love a farmer's market; they make me feel alive and exactly where I should be.

Yesterday was the opening day of the Certified Arkansas Farmer's Market in Argenta.  "Certified" means that every vendor is selling wares made or grown locally.  I was a bit late arriving due to a soccer game, but I wasn't too late to score some lovely salad greens, cream honey, and a quart of fresh picked strawberries. Buying food in this fashion makes me realize what we lack as a nation is respect and appreciation for our food sources.  Mass production, the pesticides and preservatives that are harming us, and the ability to transport foods across nations and oceans to buy out of season all make it possible to buy a 2 lb. carton of strawberries in February.  But do you appreciate it?  Do you pick up each berry and notice how jewel bright it glows in the sun, how the juice burst forth as soon as your teeth break skin, how there is no way to eat it without closing your eyes?  Or do you just let the last few tasteless berries mold in the fridge before remorselessly tossing them in the bin?

Something about a farmer's market commands respect for it's wares.  Every table is carefully lined with jars and produce, the people who created them full of knowledge and able to answer questions with ease about their products.  Each item purchased represents their hard work.

One more addition and I'll leave you for the day.  I just have to visually elaborate my point.  Jeremiah and I were putting together a fruit pizza for a church potluck this afternoon and polished off the last of the fresh picked berries from yesterday's market.  To finish the recipe, I pulled out the remainder of a carton of conventional strawberries I'd grabbed at the commissary this week.  I can only describe the difference in the taste between real food and mass produced food. The difference is huge but my descriptions are largely ineffective. It's really one of those things that you can only truly understand by comparing them yourself.  I do wish I could hand every one of you these berries to try because you would become a believer in locally grown, seasonal produce I am sure.

Since I can't do internet wide taste test, however, I'll have to settle for a photo.  Which one would you rather eat?

The Homemade Pantry

Read any good books lately?  I have.

A few days ago, I followed a link and stumbled upon a blog that I knew at once I would love.  Eating From the Ground Up is written by Alana Chernila.  She talks a lot about my favorite things, family and real food.  It just so happened that I found her blog about a week after her first book, The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making , hit the shelves.  On a whim, I purchased it.  

The little brown Amazon box hit my doorstep two days later and I ripped it open like a child on Christmas.  My darling husband looked on skeptically but at this point he is used to such excitement over things like new cookbooks.  By noon the next day, I'd devoured the book cover to cover.  Now I love a good read and I love a good cookbook, but most of all, I love an instance where the two come together to make something completely wonderful.  Alana's book is filled with delicious recipes and beautiful photography woven together on a rich tapestry of family life.

The title pretty much sums up the recipe content of the book.  Learn to make everything from mayonnaise to fruit roll-ups to pasta and soups.  What normally might come across as intimidating endeavors become downright achievable with Alana's blurbs about "tense moments" (you know, those times when cooking that you aren't sure everything is going to plan) and instructions on storing the foods for later use. 

Each recipe is introduced with a personal story, just a paragraph or two from Alana with some sort of relation to the food at hand.  Within the first 10 pages of the book, I was hooked.  I was reduced to laughter at the idea of leaving out a bowl of dry cereal for the early rising two year old (haven't we all tried something like this?).  I was wooed by the idea of a wedding reception full of lovingly made lasagnas.  I related completely to the idea of cornbread as safety and mac and cheese as consolation for loss. 

Usually when I obtain a new cookbook, the first thing I do is go through and dog ear the pages of the things I must try right away.  There are no dog eared pages in my new copy of The Homemade Pantry.  No, I fully intend on properly abusing it the way a well-loved cookbook should be abused.  I've already broken the spine so it would lay flat while I made Car Snacks last night, but I want to cook it all.  I couldn't just pick a few pages.  It really is that good. 

If you fancy yourself a homemaker, give this book a read.  If you are anything like me, you'll find yourself enchanted by the idea of a homemade pantry and bolstered enough to get in the kitchen and make it happen.  As Alana says, in order to become the kind of person who makes butter, all you have to do is start making butter! 

An average day

Do you ever wake up in the morning gung-ho to just create and produce?  You know these days.  On these days, you are just the bomb.com and by George, you are going to get something done.
Then there are those days where you're one goal is to make it to the post office and you get there, unload the kids and wait in line just to remember you forgot one of the articles you were supposed to be mailing on the couch.  So you go home, get back in the car just to have the bottom fall out of the sky and you have no choice but to admit defeat rather than unload a 4 year old and newborn in a torrential downpour.

I've had both sorts of days this week and yesterday started as the former and ended in the latter fashion.
I spent a good hour yesterday cruising pinterest and googling snack recipes that included no refined sugar.  I assessed the pantry and fridge and decided the nicely browned bananas quickly expiring in the fruit bowl would probably like to retire as a lovely loaf of fresh banana bread.  I dug up the recipe and collected the ingredients, taking a photo as a good aspiring blogger should...

I mixed the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in another, all while nursing Tobias in the sling and patting myself on the back for being so darn awesome. The feeling was short lived, however, as the next moment I dropped the wet ingredient bowl and watched as a big goopy glob of bananas, egg and honey dripped down the face of my cabinet onto the floor. Fantastic.
Moments like this make me feel like a child in the classroom of my almighty Teacher.  I often find myself praying for patience and expecting God to work in the same way a fairy godmother would, tapping me on the head and granting my wish.  Up until this point, He never has.  Instead He works with grace and the knowledge of the One who created me.  He constantly gives me circumstances in which my patience is tested and given the chance to grow.  Phillipians 1:6 states "I am certain that God, who began the good work in you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns."  In other words, pray for patience and goodness and He'll work on it....but it's going to take a while.
I often fail spectacularly, but sometimes I do not.  Sometimes I simply take a deep breath, scrape the glop off my freshly clean counter and back into the bowl, access the amount of goop on the floor and remove an equivilant amount of dry ingredients to counter the loss, then mix together a tasty, albeit smaller, loaf of banana bread.  Yeah, it was a little springy but the kids didn't complain and I think I ended up with a better morsel to blog about than bread anyway.

The recipe, in case you're wondering, is quite good when you manage not to spill it.

Banana Bread 

2 c. flour. Whole wheat is best.

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (I used my vitamix to blend an apple into applesauce but you can use store bought. Just check it for sweeteners.)

3/4 c. honey

2 eggs

3 mashed brown bananas

Optional mix ins- 1/2 c. pecans or 1/4 c. chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350.  Grease a standard loaf pan. 

Mix the first three ingredients in a large bowl.  In a seperate bowl, mix the remaining ingredients.  Then slowly pour the banana mixture into the flour mixture.  Stir until incorporated. 

Pour into loaf pan. 

Bake for 60 minutes. Stick a toothpick or knife into the loaf.  If it does not come out clean, bake for an additional 5 minutes and then test again. Cool in pan for 10 minutes.  

Enjoy.