Tuna Salad

This is one of the easiest and yummiest ways to prepare tuna salad:

Tuna Salad

1 pouch of light tuna
1/2 Granny Smith apple, peeled & diced
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped
mayo
kosher salt
pepper

Mix it all together, and pile between 2 slices of really good bread. The amount of mayo, salt, & pepper used depends on how you like the texture of your tuna salad. Enjoy!

Sticker Fun - Courtesy of Nana

Ladybugs

When Gisèle gets some fuzz in her mouth (from the carpet or a stuffed animal), she tells us she has a ladybug in her mouth. No idea where it came from, but it sure is cute!

Breakfast Bread

This recipe is from the Pioneer Woman's recipe site, Tasty Kitchen. I've only made this once, but we really enjoyed it. It's basically banana bread with apples and cinnamon added, and it makes a great snack. This browned very quickly in my oven, while the very middle never quite set, but it was good even so.

Breakfast Bread
(makes 1 loaf)

3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
2 Tbsp sour cream
1 egg
3 bananas, mashed
1 apple, peeled & diced (I used Jazz)
1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup cinnamon sugar

-Preheat the oven to 375 and grease a 9x5 loaf pan.
-Beat together the wet ingredients with the sugars (except apple.)
-Mix together the dry ingredients (except cinnamon sugar.)
-Combine the dry mixture with the wet, and stir just until moist. Fold in the apples.
-Fill the loaf pan with half of the batter, and sprinkle almost all the cinnamon sugar on top. Spread the rest of the batter on top, and sprinkle with the remaining cinnamon sugar.
-Bake at 375 for 45-55 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
-Cool in the pan about 20 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.

Stickers

When Gisèle goes pee-pee in the potty, she gets a sticker. When she goes poo-poo in the potty, she gets 2 stickers. Earlier this week when Jamie picked her up from school, he was told that she went pee-pee in the potty there for the first time! Yay!! She got a sticker when she got home. Apparently she was asking for it the whole car ride home. :) The pictures here are from a few weeks ago when she went poo-poo in the potty at home. She still doesn't ask to use the potty very often, and it's still usually an exercise in futility, but we're not worried!

She's funny with her stickers. She likes to put them on her arm, but will only leave them for 5-10 seconds at a time. After that, she likes to share them with Mama and Daddy for 5-10 seconds at a time. When she has taken them off and stuck them back on so many times they're barely holding on, she'll either stick them to one of us and forget about them, or get really excited and tell us that she needs to throw them in the trash. She loves throwing things in the trash. :)

BBQ Sauce

Jamie is very particular about BBQ sauce. He knows what he likes, and he has high standards. That being said, he loves this! This is a recipe I'm really proud of. I started off by using a recipe from Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa), before quickly realizing that I didn't have everything she called for. I made this up out of necessity, and it turned out great! There are a lot of ingredients, but it comes together easily. We used this the first time we ever grilled ribs, and it made enough to mop the ribs a few times, and have some left over for dipping. All these measurements are approximate.

BBQ Sauce
(enough for 1 slab of baby-back ribs)

1/2 onion, chopped/minced
2 cloves of garlic, minced (I use bottled)
1/4 c oil
4-5 oz tomato paste
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup dijon
1/4 cup soy sauce
2-3 Tbsp sesame oil
2-3 Tbsp molasses
2 Tbsp liquid smoke
1 Tbsp chili powder
1/2 Tbsp cumin
1/4 Tbsp red pepper flakes
2-3 Tbsp brown sugar

-Saute the onions and garlic in the oil until softened, about 10 minutes.
-Add the rest of the ingredients & simmer on low, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.
(We didn't have any leftover, but I imagine this would freeze really well.)

Eating a Burrito (from the middle)

Hippos & Monkeys

What would Gisèle call Batman riding on a Harley eating a Krispy Kreme?

A "super-hippo" on a "monkey-cycle" eating a "nodut."

In general, Gisèle speaks very well. This morning, she came out with "Daddy, please pick up shoe!" and "Mama, Baby Miles get big and come out Mama's belly." She also loves to describe everything going on - "Waffle hot - steam - on yellow plate with DIP!"

She's also started to read her books to us. She likes her Dr. Seuss books the best (currently), and loves to point out what is happening in Fox in Socks. "Beetle-Beetles and blue socks!" She'll also read along with us when we're reading her the potty-time book of "The Cat in the Hat."

On the potty front, pretty much nothing is happening, and we're okay with that! She rarely asks to go, and when we ask her if she wants to, she says no. I think she would have regressed quite a bit when Miles arrived anyway, so I'm okay being at this point now. It'll happen when it happens!

Peanut Butter Squares

This is really easy to put together and makes a yummy dessert - they taste a lot like Reese's PB Cups to me. These are generally ingredients I have on hand anyway, so this could be dangerous! This is another recipe from Pioneer Woman's recipe website, Tasty Kitchen.

Peanut Butter Squares

2 cups peanut butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup butter, melted

topping: 4 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate melted with 2 Tbsp peanut butter

-Combine all of the ingredients (except topping) in a bowl. Mix well and press into a buttered 9-inch pan.
-Spread the melted topping on top, and then chill until topping is firm before cutting into squares.

Reading is Exhausting

Morning Cuteness

Jamie was putting the bag of ground coffee away this morning after measuring out what he needed. Gisèle waved and said "Bye-bye, coffee! See you later, alligator!"

She makes loving parenting easy.

A Jamie-ism

"She was sitting next to me, so she showed me her rack."

(talking about a co-worker, as they played a game of Rummikub.)

:)