Daffodil Days

Where has the time gone? Where is my sweet cuddly rosy cheeked baby?

He’s growing up. Just under a month ago he turned 5 years old!! He was so excited that his grandpa and granny could be here for the big event. Especially since his birthday is so close to Christmas.

If you know J.E. at ALL, you know that he lives for two things — panda bears and Thomas the Tank engine trains. As you can see from the pictures below, he had a pretty good birthday.

He was so excited about the Percy shirt from Gma J with his name on it. I have to peel it off him to wash it!

Part of me likes being creative with Thanksgiving leftovers more than I like the feast. (only part of me; I like the feast a lot, too!) I thought I’d share a few of my favorite ideas for handling the abundance in the fridge the day after Thanksgiving:

1. Cranberry sauce — I love to make this stuff but I really don’t like to eat it that much. In fact, pretty much no one in my family likes to eat it but I really love to make it. It just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without homemade cranberry sauce on the table. (BTW, I make mine by the recipe on the back of the cranberry bag except that I substitute half of the water with orange juice. By this recipe I can choke down a bite or two.)

As much as I enjoy seeing the beautiful bowl of cranberry sauce in the beautiful Thanksgiving cranberry sauce bowl, it has always killed me to dump all but 3 or 4 bites (K. and W. usually try to choke down a bite for me, too, just to be polite) in the trash a week later.

This year I found a solution — CRANBERRY THANKSGIVING SMOOTHIES

Here’s the recipe as I found it at one of my favorite frugal sites — The Hillbilly Housewife:

* 1 can (16 oz.) cranberry sauce
* 1 bag (16 oz) frozen unsweetened peach slices, partially thawed
* 1 container (6 oz) vanilla yogurt
* 3/4 cup orange juice
* 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Add everything in blender and blend until smooth. Depending on how sweet your peaches are and how tart the cranberry sauce (and of course depending on your personal taste) you may want to add a little sugar or sweetener to your smoothie.

The Hillbilly Housewife called it a Thanksgiving Smoothie but that name makes me think there is turkey and maybe even some leftover dressing in it and, quite frankly, that turns make stomach a little. Cranberry Thanksgiving Smoothie sounds better. I did not make the smoothie as written. In fact, I had none of the ingredients in her recipe. Here’s how I did it:

1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup cranberry sauce (made with 1/2 orange juice)
2 frozen bananas

It was pretty yummy. The first time I made it I added a pack of stevia but it didn’t need any added sweetener. It was quite sweet all by itself!

We pared it with a piece of yummy cranberry bread for a very festive day after Thanksgiving breakfast.

I’ve got to run take care of a baby. I’ll post more later…

I love to make granola and my family loves to eat it up — all of them!! In fact, I have to make at least a double batch or I won’t have any for a meal. It gets eaten up as soon as it’s cool enough!

There are literally thousands of ways to make granola. I’ve tried a good many of them. This one is our favorite:

Almond Coconut Granola

Ingredients
• 2 cups old-fashioned oats
• 3/4 cup sliced almonds
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut (I buy a one gallon container of big unsweetened coconut flakes from Tropical Traditions. I have only bought this once about 2 years ago and I haven’t run out yet!! Currently they have the gallon container on sale for $9.99)
• 1/2 cup toasted chopped pecans
• 1/3 cup (packed) brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons honey

Preparation
Preheat oven to 250°F. Mix first 6 ingredients in large bowl. Melt butter with honey in heavy small saucepan over low heat. Pour over granola mixture and toss well. Spread out mixture on baking sheet. Bake 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Granola will not look completely dry when you get it out of the oven but will be perfect after it cools. Store airtight at room temperature.

I’m hoping to get a batch or two of this made today. I’ll post a picture if I remember to get out the camera before all the kiddos eat up the granola!!

(originally posted to the old blog on 20th June 2008)

We generally have a set menu for breakfasts. We have the same thing
every Monday, Tuesday, etc. Sometimes we’re in the mood for a little
flair. This week instead of smoothies and peanut butter toast on
Wednesday we made breakfast parfaits.

I had four parfait glasses that my mom gave me years ago. Using them
made the meal so much fun! I put a spoon of vanilla yogurt in the bottom
of each glass followed by a spoonful of granola and some fresh fruit (in
these parfaits we used mangoes and strawberries but we use just bananas
if that is all we have on hand). Then I repeated the layer one time.
They were delicious and refreshing.

(This was the post that came before the vanilla extract post. I’m really just curious to see if my picture links still work. Originally published 7 Mar 2008)

Last Saturday was N.’s day to help make dessert. We had a great time
together!

Disclaimer: Don’t panic about the 5th of Vodka on the counter. It is
actually homemade vanilla extract.

Cute mother/daughter shot.

Just for fun here is a belly shot from that day. I was 18 weeks. Next
Thursday is the big day to find out if there is a blue hat or a pink hat
in there.

[update: well, it's going to take some work to re-create what was lost! The photo links are not transferring. I have to go back to my files and upload the old pictures to photobucket and then insert the code directly into the new blog posts. Oh well. I'm not in a hurry. I may try to figure out how to change the date I'm posting things so I can put them in the right place! We'll see...]

(originally published 7 Mar 2008)

I’ve already had a recipe request. Whoo-hoo!

This recipe is from Martha’s Family Cookery Book by Martha Greene. Her
website is Marmee Dear & Co.

Basically you just put 4 whole vanilla beans in a fifth of vodka and let
it stand for at least a month before using. I like to turn the bottle
over a few times once a week or so. Sometimes I split the vanilla beans
but they look a little “furry” over time when I do this. Another good
idea is to buy 2 fifths of vodka up front so you have extra to “top up”
your extract as you use it. The vanilla beans are a bit expensive (about
$3.50 each) so I like to make them last as long as I can!

There are several posts from “Daffodil Days” that were lost when the server crashed. I’ve missed having them here as a reference — especially a few of the recipes. It was nice not to have to hunt them down but just click on the blog when I needed them!

Most of the old blog I saved as text files before the crash. I believe I only truly lost the very last post and I don’t even remember what it was. I’m going to copy and paste below the text from my post about how to make your own vanilla extract. I need to make some ASAP to have for Thanksgiving and Christmas baking!! I needed some today and had to pay almost $3 for a teeny tiny little 1 oz. bottle!!

Of course, if you homeschool, your fresh flower arrangement is very likely the latest science experiment!

J.E. has said a couple of things lately that just cracked me up. The first was Sunday morning. I pulled a pair of hand me down shoes out of the shed for J.E. at the last minute and one of them didn’t have a lace. I ran to the bedroom and found the perfect lace in the first drawer I looked in. As I was lacing the shoe I was telling J.E. how cool God is that he allowed me to find just what I needed just when I needed it. He replied,

“Yeah. God’s my favorite spirit.”

Tonight at dinner:

“Chicken is like gum. You have to chew it.”

I love that boy!

Today we skipped all of our Saturday obligations and enjoyed a lazy Saturday. It was WONDERFUL. I wish we could do it every Saturday!! I even stayed in my pjs until 10 AM!! We didn’t bother with breakfast until about 10:30 when we had homemade waffles with butter and syrup:

After dad returned from his overnight trip we headed to a local grainery to replenish my supply of SAF Yeast. One package of this stuff lasts me well over a year and is absolutely the BEST for making breads and pizza crusts. The grainery owner informed us that we were just in time for feeding the goats!

The great thing about not having any obligations all day is that you have time to stop and smell the roses — or, in our case, the cotton:

Hope your Saturday was as fun and relaxing as ours!