Thursday, June 06, 2013

Fun in the Summer - Now with Recipes!



So, here is a selection of photos from our Disneyland trip. We had such fun! We stayed 1 night at the Disneyland Hotel and 2 nights off-site (check prices and you'll understand why). I'm not good at travelogues, so I'll let you look at our kids cute faces and make up some story of our fun.



At the end of our trip, I said my final goodbye to Children's Hospital Los Angeles.  It was an emotional day - I'm not normally this splotchy on good hair days.  CHLA had been my work-home for almost 9 years.  Hard to believe I won't be back.  

Now we are back in Logan.  If our condo would ever close escrow (beginning to believe that escrow is a Magic Fairy who hates me - this condo has serious bad escrow karma - we have "fallen out of escrow" more times than either Dave or I has ever been "in love."), then we can buy a house and make this move permanent.  I love house shopping but I hate house buying.





(As an aside, here are the houses we are in love with, but we will probably buy something boring and practical because the truth is that we are boring and practical people with grand ideas of being something, well, grander).

And now I focus on the serious business of feeding my children in between the work calls that will not end (I was a sucker to believe that 9-month contract lie) and the house issues.  Here is a photo of my baby eating his cauliflower soup - look how happy he is with his vegetables and whole grain crackers! It can be done, my friends, because trust me, these are not easy kids to feed.


My recipe this week is a modification of 7-layer dip.  Most of my meal decisions are based around whatever is about to spoil.  This week, I had multigrain organic flax seed tortilla chips that were peeking at the expiration date. I still forget that eating fewer preservatives means that food that I used to think of as having lifetimes that rival nuclear isotopes must now be eating in less than 10 days.

So, here is what we do with 7-layer dip to decrease the fat and increase the nutrient content:

The ingredient to 7-layer dip remain the same: tomatoes, avocado, sour cream (or plain Greek Yogurt if you're really going healthy), onions, cheese, beans and peppers.  It's the preparation that changes.

In a food processor, chop 1 tomato, 1/2 onion, 1/2 green or red pepper and 1 clove garlic.  Add 1 tsp of Cumin and a little season salt to give it that "taco" sensation.  Then add 1-2 cups of black beans.  I buy canned organic and rinse them to remove sodium.  If you enjoy soaking beans, then go for it but make sure you blanch them or you will be stinking up the room in an hour.  Continue to process this mixture until it has the texture of refried beans.  You may want to add more seasonings such as Chili powder or whatever you consider to be a "Mexican" flavor.

Spread this mixture as the bottom layer in place of refried beans.  I like to cook it at 200 degrees for 5 minutes to wake up the flavors, reduce gas-producing compounds, and make it easier to spread the sour cream or yogurt.  Yes, that's the next layer.

Then I sprinkle the top with cheese and avocado.  It's not the "7 layer" look but you get all the flavors without the chunks that turn children off a dish that's full of protein, antioxidants, and fiber. You will be surprised how filling this dish is when prepared this way!

My last thought is this: Add vegetables to your Campfire Dinners! We added broccoli tonight and it was the hit of the meal! So experiment!

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