Hunger Knows No Season

Hunger knows no season. It doesn't know that food pantry supplies tend to dwindle down in the summer months. Stomachs are still in need of food and nutrition whether it is a Saturday morning or a Thursday night, June or December. In my area, two well known food banks are working hard to replenish supplies and stock local food banks. I am so happy to be apart of this event! On Saturday morning I will be stationed at the front door of a local grocery store with a cart and handouts about hunger. My hope is that people will find it in their hearts to donate non-perishable food items and/or monetary funds so we can help stock the area food supply. All over the area local grocery stores are participating in this event, coined "Saturday Jubliee". If you can, buy a few extra items next time you are at the store and donate it to a local pantry. Some much needed items include:

peanut butter
jelly
tuna fish
canned fruits of all varieties
canned vegetables of all kinds
applesauce
beans, canned and dry
broth, all varieties
powdered milk
instant potatoes
boxed meals
pancake mix
cereal
oatmeal
pasta
pasta sauce
canned meat
powdered drink mixes
soup
bottled water

Recipe: BBQ Chopped Salad

My sister in law works for a restaurant called California Pizza Kitchen. They serve a salad that I am madly in love with!! I believe it is called the BBQ Chopped Chicken Salad. You would think I would know the full name of this dish, but when I go visit her at work, she knows my order so I don't even look at the menu!

Due to my work schedule, I do not visit CPK as often as I would like which means I crave that salad more than often. I finally called her and asked exactly what they put in their salad so I could make some at home. I did not measure a darn thing, I just threw it all together and enjoyed my salad. It is such a filling, tasty salad especially in the summer when I can get some of the ingredients straight from my garden!

Ingredients
chopped Romaine and Iceberg Lettuce
shredded Monterey Jack cheese
black beans
white corn kernnels
fresh chopped basil
fresh chopped cilantro
BBQ sauce
ranch dressing (I make homemade buttermilk ranch)
diced tomato
diced jicama
chunks of avocado
grilled chicken breast
lime

First, we grill the chicken breast and then dice it up. I do not eat the chicken, but my husband loves it. He usually bastes the chicken in the BBQ sauce for added flavor. In a big bowl I add the lettuces, cilantro, basil and jicama. I don't add anything else simply because if there are leftovers, I don't want anything ruined. In my own bowl I add in the lettuce mixture, then I add corn, tomato, beans, cheese, avocado, fresh squeezed lime juice, BBQ sauce and ranch and then I toss it all up. It is that easy! The real recipe calls for tortilla strips, but I don't care for those. If I take the time to make it all nice and fancy like CPK, it looks something like this (the hubs enjoys his salad with all the fixings, minus the strips):

Recipe: Key Lime Pie

Tonight I made my first key lime pie! Well, it isn't really key lime as I couldn't find a single key lime in the three stores I went to so I guess it is just a lime pie, but still, I can't wait to try it! Tomorrow is Easter. My dear, sweet aunt is battling a very hard journey with cancer and in an effort to help her gain some weight, I am making this light, refreshing pie in hopes it will settle well on her stomach and help fatten her up. This was quite honestly the easiest dessert I've ever made. I read no less than 20 different recipes on-line and in recipe books before deciding to just throw them all together and make my own version. I have yet to taste this pie, but so far it looks nice and it smells darn good. Tomorrow will be the true test!

Ingredients:
3 eggs, separated
1/2 cup of fresh squeezed lime juice
1 tsp lime zest
14oz sweetened condensed milk
graham cracker pie crust

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate eggs into two clean glass bowls.

2. Whisk egg whites until stiff peaks form. I whisked by hand and it took about 5-6 minutes to start to see the peaks. Once the peaks form, set it aside.

3. Beat the yolks well. Stir in the sweetened condensed milk, lime juice and lime zest. Mix all of this well.

4. Slowly mix the lime mixture into the egg whites and then pour the entire mixture into the pie crust.

5. Bake the pie on 350 degrees for about 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven, let cool on counter. Chill in fridge until served.

I'm going to garnish this with a dollop of whipped cream.

The little flecks in the pie is lime zest. If I had time I would have made a homemade pie crust, but we were also dying Easter eggs while I baked this! Maybe next time...

Butterfly House

Despite the fact that it is technically spring, winter has decided to set up shop and stay in town a bit longer. I am so sick and tired of cold weather!! It is about 20 degrees today, gag. I am longing for warm weather and sunshiny days. I decided we needed a trip to the tropics so after donning our winter coats, we headed out to the Butterfly House where we could pretend we were somewhere toasty and beautiful, even if it were only temporary.

The Butterfly House is another wonderful local attraction in our city. It is literally a house full of butterflies, about 3,000 at any given time. As you enter the house you are greeted by not only warm and humid temps, but your senses are overwhelmed by the beauty surrounding you. Butterflies of all shapes and sizes and colors flutter around you. Tropical flowers adorn the entire facility and gentle waterfalls can be heard in the background. It is a truly magnificent experience. In addition to the actual butterfly house you can also view a variety of insects such as hissing cockroaches and millipedes and other creepy crawlies that freak me out, but totally entertain my boys. It is an afternoon well spent! Enjoy the beautiful pictures!

This is one of the 250 birthday cakes throughout the city in honor of our 250th birthday. 

Blue Morpho on a flower.

I don't know this species, but its markings were gorgeous.

Do you see the blue butterfly in flight?

Blue Morpho Butterfly

I love this little waterfall!

Another Blue Morpho Butterfly, I love her colors!

These are all Blue Morphos inside a little tree "cave". 

A Blue Morpho with his wings closed. 

Enjoying a lunch of rotting fruit, yum?!

See if you can click on this picture to make it bigger, the details on the wings are amazing.

Hibiscus Flower

No clue what this flower is, but it is so pretty!

Please do not copy or use my photos, thank you!

With a Chick Chick Here and a Chick Chick There

It's a girl! Times six! We are official chicken owners as of yesterday afternoon. If you had asked me 15 years ago what I would be doing with my life I can say with certainty that playing chicken farmer was NOT on that list! How things have changed.

Our friend, Greg, lives on three acres not too far from us. He enjoys wildlife and is a country boy at heart. He approached us a few weeks ago, asking if we'd like to get some baby chicks. We'll keep them in our home in a brooder until they are ready for the coop he is making (which is quite the coop!). We have six chicks here and our other family friends have six more chicks. Together we'll have 12 chickens to lay eggs. You know my stance on animals therefore none of these babies will ever been harmed or used for meat. They will live a long, happy life eating an all natural diet and will have access to sunlight and clean water and they'll be free to roam when they want and of course they have access to lots of love (hehe!). Yes, I realize how hippie that sounds, but if you have no idea of the horrid conditions chickens are exposed to in mass farming, please educate your self right away. The deplorable conditions are not only inhumane, but they pose a serious health concern to both the animal and the consumer.

Here are my sweet girls: Shelly, Sandy, Emily, Lola, Hippie Chick and Betty White. Aren't they precious?! They are so sweet and love to play with us. I have a feeling we'll miss these little darlings when they graduate to the coop, but luckily we are close enough that we can visit a few times a week.

Not Just a Snow Day

This winter we've been hit HARD with bad weather. I don't believe we've had this many snow days in quite sometime. Kids are restless, parents are scrambling to find sitters for their kids so they can go to work and schools are trying to figure out how to juggle a multitude of school related issues that are effected by these lost days. I bet many of you didn't realize that one of these school related issues is food. I'm not talking about food budget or what to plan for lunch, I am talking about the children who will go without a meal or two when school is not in session. For many students, school is the one place they will receive breakfast and lunch. School is the place where they are guaranteed access to milk, protein, grains, fruits and veggies. Sure school lunches may not be the best source of nutrition, but that food sure does feel good to a hungry belly. I was absolutely blown away when I popped on the computer tonight and read this article:

 http://www.ksdk.com/story/news/2014/02/17/school-lunches-st-louis-cold-weather/5567571/

Children should be playing in the snow or building forts out of blankets on their snow days, not walking the frozen streets in hopes of scoring a meal or money to buy food! Imagine this scenario: a child ate breakfast and lunch at school on Friday, February 14th. He was off school Saturday and Sunday and again on Monday for the holiday/snow day (many schools were going to use this holiday as a make up day). Who knows and what this child has eaten since Friday afternoon. His first real meal may very well be Tuesday morning when he walks through the school doors. No child should ever have to worry about when and what he will eat. No parent should ever have to wonder how they will put food on the table. Hunger is a social issue that not only pisses me off, but it saddens to the core. There has to be something we can do to help this innocent children. I give regularly to the local food pantry and I also hold several food drives in my preschool, but I can't help but wonder what else we can do to to help. The next time you are at the store, pick up some extra cans of food and donate it to the local food pantry, help make a difference!

Is It Worth It?

It is 11:11pm on a Saturday night. The house is silent and still. I sit here by the glow of the computer going through my paperwork, trying to place 77 preschool students into prospective classes for the upcoming school year. I have already physically worked a 40 hour work week in my early childhood program. As the teacher and director, I work a double load. After my kids go to bed each night I sit up answering emails, writing lessons, going over employee needs, all of the things I couldn't do while teaching. I am tired and wearing thin, yet I love my job. My sweet Alex claimed to have a bellyache earlier so he is sprawled out on the couch next to me. I look at his little face as he slumbers away and I wonder if this is all worth it. Sure, my salary double this year and I've been able to provide my boys with so much more. Yes, I have job security as far as I know. True, I work in a very positive, healthy environment as opposed to what I walked away from. I love my staff, my students, my families and the foundation of what has become in my program. I can say with 99% certainty that I "heart" my job. Yet, I cannot help but wonder if my kids are suffering. They are in school full time now so working makes sense. I miss a lot of special events like last Thursday when Brennan read a petition at the all school Mass. Or the days when they had a noon dismissal and I needed our college aged sitter to get them from school. Part of me thinks, "They love Danielle and had fun, it was ONLY three hours!" The other part of me thinks, "You should be the one they come running to each day, not a babysitter!" I look at Alex's sweet features and wonder if I am screwing up my kids. Is this job and all the work all worth it in the end? One day they will be all grown up and won't need me when they have a bellyache at 10:00pm. That really pulls at my ol' heart strings. How do I know if I am making the "right" choice for my family?