Eat Your Vegetables!

A couple of weeks ago I bought a cookbook called "The Sneaky Chef". You may have heard of it. There was a whole big controversy between the author of this book, Missy Chase Lapine, and Jessica Seinfeld, who came out with "Deceptively Delicious" shortly afterward. I only felt right buying the book that came out first.
Anyway, this is a book full of recipes for foods that kids love to eat, but altered so that the recipes include healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables.
Anyone that knows me well is aware that I hate to cook. I have a select group of recipes that I use to make dinners for our household. I choose them because they're quick and painless. Occasionally I will try a new recipe for the sake of variety. These sneaky recipes… not so quick and painless. I spent the better part of Sunday afternoon mixing up these "make ahead" concoctions that would later go into the actual recipes.
First up - "Brainy Brownies". Sneaky ingredients? Blueberries and spinach. When they were finished baking, I took a bite. Tasted like brownies, but with a weird aftertaste. Teagan munched on them, but she didn't devour them like she does fruit snacks and marshmallows. I also tried Packed Pizza Bagels which hid carrots, squash, and white beans. She took a bite, and quickly spit it back out. 0 for 2 so far. Anyone know how to make marshmallows healthy?

All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Tires

So it’s been two weeks since our accident, and I wasn’t able to coordinate the insurance, body work and rental car until Monday the 12th. Therefore, I’ve been driving on a spare for 2 weeks. It hasn’t been a major problem since I don’t do much driving overall during the week. That is, it wasn’t a problem until Friday.
As usual, my timing is impeccable. Sometime Friday after work, I managed to drive over some sort of massive spike which took up residence inside of my tire. Not the spare tire, but the good front tire. Fortunately it didn’t blow and I was able to get home safely. In fact, we didn’t even know what happened until Rog’s running buddy Frank brought our very flat tire to our attention early Saturday morning.
Not a huge deal, just another minor obstacle to overcome as we deal with this inconvenient accident.


On another note, we’ve had some major storms blowing through the Midwest since yesterday.
I took a picture of my view as I headed out the door this morning and looked up our street.

Fear and Grace

Neither of which our girl seems to have. I think this picture accurately depicts her lack of both of these characteristics. I was thankful to have the camera close by.

Another word(s)

No major news, but while I was playing with T last night, she pretty clearly said the word "ball". Seeing as how she was holding a ball at the time, I think she meant, you know, "ball". Also, on Thursday as our PAT rep was leaving, repeatedly and excitedly saying "Bye-bye", Teagan did a few times say "I-I", so we'll have to keep working on that one, but it's a start. Her babbling is getting a lot more varied and closer to approximating actual speech, so we think she might be on the verge of something more concrete.

RogM