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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

snippets for my peeps

Lately “snippet form” has been how we live and how I want to examine life.  With three people whose ages added together STILL don’t equal 20, the day is just that: a bunch of snippets strung along like pony beads on elastic cording.  I never know what I will be doing in five minutes, even if I’m doing something that should take 30, because… you just never know, as the great Oswald said.  :)  (For the record, as I’m sitting to finally hit ‘publish’ after proofing this post, it took me 4 hours of snippets here and there to just put together this mess!)

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Cole and I had fun making Easter baskets with Dot Paints.  He’s still not really very into organized crafts, though.  He loves puzzles and his interactive books, though.  Every morning when we drop off Carter at preschool, Cole and I sit at the table at “Carter’s school” and work a puzzle or two together.  I feel like we should hustle out the door and let Carter have ‘his’ school to himself, but hopefully it’ll help Cole when it’s time for me to leave him there two mornings a week next fall.  We’ll see!

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Speaking of “Carter’s school,” they had an egg hunt on Friday, and Cole and I helped set up, then I got to watch the kids tear around searching for loot.  Carter has eagle eyes, and found so many that he was given the ‘extra special job’ of re-hiding some so that the pokier kids had a chance.

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He had as much fun rehiding eggs as anything.  It was all part of the game to him.

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Cole mostly blends in with the preK class because he’s so tall.  It’ll be funny to see him with kids his age next year, he’s so much bigger than most 3 year olds.

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Look who got a waffle maker!  I made a double batch of whole grain batter so I could freeze the extras for breakfast during the week – this batter is light and fluffy because it has whipped egg whites folded in, and that is not weekday morning cooking in this house.  Bunny can’t abide by a cold breakfast—cereal is a dessert or snack to her—but she is not so spoiled that I am spending an hour on breakfast on the average school morning.  The recipe I used is in an old, out of print cookbook, and I adapted it to be partly whole grain anyway, so here:

Whole Wheat Waffles (1 batch)

2 eggs, separated
2 cups buttermilk (or, 2T vinegar with enough milk to make 2 cups)
1 c all purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
1/2 c butter or ‘buttery spread’, melted (or oil)

Heat waffle iron.  In a large bowl, combine egg yolks and buttermilk, then add flour through salt and mix until smooth, then stir in butter.  Beat egg whites until soft peaks form and fold that into the batter.  Bake in waffle iron according to instructions (different irons use more or less batter, time).

The kids loved the waffles, and a double batch made enough to freeze for probably 3 breakfasts.  I toasted some today and, you can HAVE my Eggo, man.  These rock.

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I saw a tip a few weeks ago suggesting muffin tins for coloring eggs and we tried it out this weekend.  Every year before I’ve used every cup and mug in the house and had a huge hassle with cleanup.  I’m fully converted to this technique.  Full-on, fully.  :)

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Watching eggs take on color… not as bad as watching paint dry, but still a little boring.  Cole wandered off after 2 eggs (see: inattention to crafts, above).

I made most of the colors this year with food coloring and vinegar, and we all agreed the colors were a lot richer than the little tablets.

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Pretty!

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Our Easter morning tradition—aside from nibbling on chocolate bunny ears—is cocoa with a Peep on it.  This year it was chocolate overload.  Hopefully “EB” will bring the more colorful kind next year, as it was just a bit too much.  I think, by the time it was cocoa time, the kids had consumed as much chocolate as the average Swiss citizen does annually, so maybe they were just ‘over’ the flavor.  I tend to just let ‘em at it with regard to Easter goodies, to “get it over with”, and, go at it they did!  I am sick of chocolate just from watching them ingest all that.  Blech (and I love me some chocolate, too).

Easter dinner was dessert-free as a result.  I had thought about making a lemon cream or meringue pie, but it seemed like too much by the end of the day.  So, we had a feast of ham, fauxtatoes, greens, corn on the cob, artichoke hearts, deviled eggs, and a really yummy salad.  It sounds like a lot, but really, I put the ham in the oven at 275 for a long time, and the rest was minimal work… okay, the eggs were time-consuming, but I made them so much earlier in the day that it didn’t feel like part of the work for dinner.  :)

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This little dude is in our thoughts as he undergoes a sleep study tonight to try to determine… why he doesn’t EVER sleep, among other things.  Fingers crossed that an answer comes quickly, because I know he—and his MAMA!—need to sleep more than an hour here and there.

Hope you had a great weekend, and are having a great week, too.

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