The Importance of taking the time to PLAY with your kids

 My daughter just adores it when I play with her. This whole set up took about 45 minutes to construct, and that does not even include the playing time after. We created a kitchen and them pretended to follow recipes to cook food. I did not come up with any of this, I merely followed her lead. I had a blast. 

I love the thrifts store. Most of these foods we got in bags from Value Village, a thrift store in Hyattsville, MD. When older kids come for playmates they too love playing with fake foods.  Notice how we sorted all the food. Top shelf for drinks, bottom bowl for fruits and vegetables, canned goods middle left, eggs on top.....

Check out my new juicer!!!

My juicer died today after only 2 months of daily juicing...the one before it lasted 3 months of daily juicing.....so I treated myself to a Brevelle juicer...hopefully this one will last longer...

Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.4

Crockpot before and after...

Erna, a friend, coworker and son's classroom teacher mentioned on facebook about using her slow cooker. She inspired me to do the same....here is the big mess before....

and after....YUMMY!!

The kids helped cut the veggies and pour in all the ingredients.....

Luke decides to make us dinner....

Every few days Luke gets the cooking fever and want to cook us something. He will use whatever we have in the fridge and start cutting and mixing. This time he cut up zucchini, lettuce and tomatoes and had me boil the mix. At dinner he insisted on personally serving each of us.

Luke has been helping me cook dinner since he was 2. I am always amazed at how uniform these pieces look.
He washes, cuts and adds the lettuce on top. Check out the bling. Luke loves wearing these 2 rings. We love the fact that he is such an individual.
Patting down all the veggies.

Some healthy foods I've been making....

I am obsessed with zucchini. I grill zucchini, onions, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and eat it for dinner.

I made 'mashed potatoes' with boiled yam and steamed cauliflower and placed them in the Cuisinart.

My Shift in Food Thought......Soup to the rescue!

The soup craze began when I started to get a little sick, was again addicted to coffee or fearing the dreaded "coffee headache" and was not able to wear my favorite ring. I realized then I needed to start taking care of myself more. I've always been more instinctual when trying to figure out what is right for my health. You will never catch me memorizing, and following to the letter someone else's idea of how to be healthy. I think ultimately it's trust thing. I do not trust others more than myself in terms of what is good for ME. 

Now I've never been that unhealthy to begin with. I don't drink soda ever, I grill, I rarely eat meat, I don't ever drink juice of any kind unless it's pressed or juiced from a juicer, etc, etc. To me the issue has always been nervous eating. With all the natural chaos that a normal day with two kids brings, comes a lot of high-pressure moments. Food has somehow provided a sense of relaxation. My goal is to totally stop associating with food emotionally in any way. For example, celebrations do not need to always be associated with foods.  I'm slowly learning that "good times" can be surrounded by other celebratory items. Hugs, paying attention to what one is saying, playing with kids, focusing on just BEING with family, dancing, taking pictures.

So out of all this I decide to make soup. I was searching online and there are easily millions of recipes just for low-fat vegetable soups. You have a whole spectrum from hot, cold, red, creamy, heavy, light, chunky...and the list goes on. I then thought, what would happen if I just ate soup for a while just to clean out my system? I love soup and from the looks of the recipes, are super-easy to make. So for 2 days now I've had amazing mixed vegetable soups for breakfast, lunch and dinner with an assortment of beans and I immediately felt better, have not needed coffee, and now feel full of energy! I do eat other things in between by the way. One day I made thick banana-milk shake in between, but I just make sure 70% of my intake was soup. 

Now, amazingly, I do not have to think about food for it's incredibly filling and because most of it is frozen I just need to defrost. Also, you don't get bored because I made all sort of flavors. One has potatoes, hominy and cabbage and another might be less dense and have assorted beans, onions and kale. Amazingly, when I get a craving I just defrost and eat or make a tea, decaf coffee, or a decaf earl grey. The great things are that it's super healthy, absolutely yummy, filling and never boring. 

Would love to know any healthy diet changes you have made...have a great day!!