What we ate

This was Thursday!  This week has gone on forever and ever.  I felt like Tuesday should have been Friday, so that was depressing. And then the rain returned and that’s just blah blah blahhhhh…

Pancakes for breakfast!

This is the norm.

I make the batter the night before with 1 banana, 1 egg, canola oil, flax meal, flour, salt, baking powder, and then however much milk to get the right consistency.

I asked for this griddle for my birthday for this exact reason.

So much faster than a pan.  I never clean it or take it off the stove because I basically use it every day for pancakes so why bother.

“Is it a butter day?” they ask.  “Sure” I reply.  I don’t give them Earth Balance every day, but today I felt like it.

He told me his looked like Mickey Mouse and then looked at hers to see what shape hers could be.

This is her telling me “Donald Duck”.

I make several batches while sipping my coffee and they each eat about 10 pancakes.  Today I gave them some tangerine cuties too.

Total plot twist!

I haven’t had a smoothie is ages but I got out the blender to soak some cashews and suddenly a smoothie sounded good. I used vega one chocolate with a frozen banana, frozen watermelon, ice, and almond milk.  With purely elizabeth granola (leftover from florida) on top.

On Thursdays I go to “school” with V after I drop P off.  She had a snack at school, which always thrills her since it usually involves some processed food I don’t give her.  Today it was raisins, a tangerine, a cheese stick, and ritz crackers. Obviously the cheese was the best thing on the plate since I stopped giving it to her at home (for no real reason other than P is allergic and it’s easier to feed them the same thing).

The theme of the lunch was “green”.  Sometimes I randomly do this (mostly when I see the opportunity and it fits with the meal).  I did “orange” last week with cuties, roasted chickpeas, and carrots.

Anyway, they had avocado bread, peas, celery, and pears for lunch.  I ran out of room on the plates for cucumbers, but that’s because they chose what plates they wanted and as every parent of a toddler knows, you DO NOT try to mess with that kind of minutiae or you’ll have a puddles of tears in front of you. So small overpacked (cucumber-less) plates it was!

And for moi…a monster salad.

I destemmed and massaged a bunch of while the kids were eating.  I got through a lot of kale, and last week WF had an awesome sale.  I combined it with a coupon (both on their app) and got 3 organic bunches for $4.  Should last me at least a week.

After tossing it in miso dressing, I added a whole avocado (no judgement please) and then topped it with the rest of the macadamia nuts.

I loooooove when I reach the end of a jar because then I get all the salty nut dust in every nook and cranny of my salad.  MMMmmmmmm.

I go through these about as fast as I go through kale.

1.5 pounds in 1.5 weeks.  I think?  (Again) no judgement.

Ohhhhh yeahhhhh.

I ate about 20 more carrots than shown too.

While they napped I made dinner.  Blending cashews, sautéing onions, roasting chickpeas, and turning it all into tomato soup that was just waiting to be re-heated before dinner time.

Meanwhile…I was on hold with the hospital sorting out our insurance and getting us new doctors and a 4 year old (!!!) well child appointment for P.  We switched insurance for allergy trial reasons but I hadn’t gotten around to picking out new MDs for us…and with all the colds going around I knew I needed to get that all squared away. Also, my first born is somehow turning four this month.  What. The. Heck.

The phone call dragged on forever and ever and by the time I was done, the kids were up from naps, changed, snacked, toileted, and loaded in the car.  Off to a friends’ house!

When we got home, all I needed to do was turn the stove on and let the soup warm.

Oh and toast some bagel slices.

This creamy tomato soup is from Angela’s first cookbook.  I’m sure she always dreamed of it being served out of Thomas and Elmo bowls.  😉

I called it pizza soup because P doesn’t like tomatoes and I’m a sneaky MF. He thought it was hummus though, so it really didn’t matter.  Either way, I made the ratio of soup to chickpeas nearly even to help them eat it better since their spoon/broth work isn’t totally amazing.

I skipped the chickpeas (to decrease my fodmaps for the day) and opted for these Simple Mills crackers instead.

I looooove Simple Mills products.

Last week when I was at WF trying to find their pizza dough/flatbread mix I noticed they stopped carrying their mixes and crackers.  No bueno!  I asked them what was up and they said it was a recent thing, but since I asked, they’d get some mixes back.  They’d been making room for their cookies instead, which is all well and good, but there are a million gluten free cookies on the shelves these days.  There aren’t any other GF pizza dough mixes though.  I think that’s why the employee at WF was so quick to get Simple Mills reordered.  Once he realized there was nothing else for me to buy, he figured he better fill that gap in the market.  Previously, I’ve tried Vicolo GF crusts and Udi’s crusts, but neither were at my WF.  Has anyone tried the TJs GF crust?  It looks so thin and cardboard like.  If I’m going to buy a processed item, rather than make my own crust, it had better taste good!

About this soup though!  It tasted just like pizza!  And the crackers went so perfect with it! Both were packed with flavor.  I loved it and would happily eat it as a dip or spread it on dough and eat it as pizza!  The cashews made it so rich.  Angela’s recipes have all been solid gold, and I have a bunch bookmarked for when Kyle goes out of town in a week (that use ingredients he doesn’t love, like zucchini and dill and portabello mushrooms).

Finally, I polished off the rest of the chocolate bars from the other day.  I forgot my promise to myself of not going back for seconds.  Now that I see this I am reminded that I want to try to stop that (I went back for some chocolate covered almonds).