Denver and NM

We went to a great Children's Museum in Denver. There was so much for Jacob to do. One exhibit had clothes for the kids to dress up in and little places for them to play. He is a little sheep playing in the bird's nest.

My birthday breakfast contribution for Amy: dutch babies. I love how puffy and light they get. This was my first time blending up the batter in a blender. I think I might have to make that a regular part of the recipe.

Nate and I got away for a few days to Taos. We took the back way to get there and stopped at this church in Chimayo. I love all of the adobe in NM.

Changes

Wow! I can't believe I haven't blogged in about 2 months. We have been on vacation. That's all I can say. We had a great trip to Colorado and New Mexico--I'll try to post some pictures later. I have also been trying to make some changes in my life involving a better diet and more exercise. While in Colorado, I came across this book. It's called Ultra Metabolism. I had been wanting to make some dietary changes this summer and this book seemed interesting. I loved the suggestions he made and how he important a good diet is for your overall health, and not just for your weight. Then, when I got home I found out that I have high blood sugar, so it gave me extra incentive to work on my diet and exercise. Since then I have cut out sugar and wheat products from my diet. I am in the detox phase right now. I can re-introduce small amounts of those things later, but so far it hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. I had a few headaches the first few days, but since then I have had good energy, and have felt pretty good.

I also started doing an exercise program called cross-fit with a few girls from church. It has also been good. The workouts are short, but intense and at first I was unable to complete them. After a few weeks, I am able to complete them with no problem. Right now I am also reading Anticancer: A new way of life, which is also a great book. As most of you know, I am a cancer survivor of more than 10 years. This book makes it clear that diet and lifestyle choices do have an effect on cancer in prevention and keeping cancer in remission longer. I had not heard this information clearly stated this way before. Both of these books confirm the choices I have been making this summer and encourage me to keep going.

A typical day's food for me will look like this:
Breakfast: Banana, blueberry and soy milk shake with flax seeds
Snack: Almonds and fruit
Lunch: Cannelini bean salad, fruit
Snack: Veggies with hummus
Dinner: Fish or Chicken with vegetables and wild rice or quinoa

I feel really lucky that we have access to so much cheap, good quality produce in California. There are so many different kinds of fruit that I don't really miss desserts that much.

Easter celebration

My first attempt at Hot cross buns. They look alright, but they were heavy as rocks and almost as dense. I think I killed the yeast. Better luck next year.

Jakey is enjoying his Easter eggs. I filled them with some of toys and a few snacks. He didn't seem to notice the recycled toys.

Fresh apple pie and dressing

Here is my apple pie and I'm working on the sausage dressing. No it was not for Thanksgiving, but it was still good. The pie plate was a wedding gift , and it is my all time favorite pie dish.

Number 9

This is the Winning Hearts and Minds chocolate cake that I made for our anniversary. It wasn't anything special--mostly a lot of eggs and chocolate. It was very dense and moist inside with the slightest crispy crust on top. That part was great. Nate picked some flowers from our garden. Too they got cut off in the picture, but they did look nice.

We got to go away to Napa for a few days when we visited my parents. This is where we stayed.

We also got to go on a bike tour and got to go on free wine tastings as part of the tour. It was a great way to see everything. I would definitely recommend it, except maybe not on a day when temperatures are over 90 degrees.

This was actually our least favorite winery, but the guy doing the tastings was nice and they did have good olive oil.

Perfect Saturday morning brunch

Lowfat blueberry muffins--no guilt. Fortunately, they don't taste lowfat.

Jakey and daddy cooking. (Training him early)

Breakfast burritos

Green kamaboko salad

This is one of my favorite salads--Somen salad, but I have NEVER, EVER had to make it with GREEN kamaboko. What is kamaboko you might ask... Well it is a compressed fish cake sort of thing that doesn't really taste fishy, but tastes good in this salad. It is normally hot pink, which looks really good mixed in with all of the greens, but I do have to admit, the hot pink is equally as unnatural as the green. So what am I getting all freaked out about?

Lowfat Banana Bread

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar (divided 1/2 and 1/4)
3 very ripe bananas or 2 large (about 1 1/4 lb)
1/4 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 T unsalted butter softened
2 large eggs
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped (opt)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and 1/4 cup of sugar. In separate bowl mix bananas, yogurt and vanilla extract, set aside.

2. Beat remaining 1/2 cup sugar and butter on med. high until light and fluffy (3-5 min). Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition.

3. Reduce mixer speed to low. Beat in half of the flour mixture, followed by 1/3 of banana mixture. Add half the remaining flour, followed by 1/3 of banana mixture. Repeat process once more.

4. Scrape batter into prepared loaf pan (greased or sprayed) and sprinkle walnuts on top. Bake until loaf is golden brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out with just a few crumbs attached (about 55 minutes). Rotate pan about halfway through baking. Cool bread in pan for about 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

Makes one 9 inch loaf. Calories 240. Cholesterol 50 mg. Fat 4.5 g. Sat. Fat 3 g
Sorry there's no picture. The yogurt makes this bread look very nice, unfortunately it got attacked before I could get a picture of it and is now only a shell of its former beauty and magnificence. I will have to make it again to post a picture worthy of it.