Studio D wedding & lifestyle photographers BLOG

Here’s this week’s post – and a list of things I have learned this week:

1. It is easy to get sidetracked with eating things that are not bad for you, rather than focusing on things that are GOOD for you.  ( To prove this, I developed a cookie recipe that I have called Not-Bad-For-You Cookies.  They’re pretty yummy, actually.)
2. It takes kids an entire week to recover from a weekend conference.
3. I will never take little kids to every day of a weekend conference ever again.  Next year, we are getting a babysitter for Saturday.
4. Homemade baby cereal is surprisingly easy to make.
5. Homemade whole wheat tortillas are also surprisingly easy to make.
6. Brown Rice noodles are not made for eating.
7. Trust your instincts.

April 15:  Out of EIGHTY-FIVE frames, this was the best one.  Not a great batting-rate.

April 16:  I saw a delicious-looking pad thai recipe from a certain clean-eating recipe book (which shall remain publicly unnamed), and couldn’t wait to try it out.  It looked so fresh and lovely and the picture literally made me drool.  I planned to make it Monday night, but we had an appointment to go to at the end of the day and we were all starving by the time we made it home at 5:45.  Elijah was pulling everything remotely edible from the cupboards, begging for a snack (croutons, uncooked rice, canned tomatoes…) and there were dishes and canned goods all over my kitchen counters.  (I’ve been reorganizing and resorting all week.)  So with limited space, an exiled toddler and a growling tummy, I set to work trying this new recipe.  I usually get pretty creative in the kitchen and rarely follow a recipe exactly, but with being new to clean eating and wanting to be “teachable”, I followed it to the letter.

I should have known as I opened a can of tomato paste and dumped it into a measuring cup already full of blackstrap molasses.  I should have jumped ship as I poured boiling water over the icky brown rice noodles.  But for some reason, I kept on, mesmerized by that tantalizing photo.  When everything was ready to go, and all I had to do was add the chicken, my retreat instinct triggered and I just couldn’t do it.  There was no way on this earth that I was going to eat something that disgusting, not in the name of health, and certainly not in the name of bravery.  And there was no way that I was going to let some poor chicken’s ultimate sacrifice be so worthless and contemptible!

By this time, there were 2 crying babies, a prowling husband and a very harried wife.  I was about to throw it all out when Craig stopped me (he’s maybe only half Scottish, but its definitely the dominant gene pool) and told me it would probably be better if we threw it in the microwave for a couple of minutes….Yeah…no.  I let him try to salvage it while I caught my breath, looked at that picture again and told myself, “I can still do this.”  I don’t know if what I came up with is even close to pad thai, but it was SO GOOD!  And it looked exactly like the picture in the book…

April 17:  I love him! April 18:  High-flyer April 19:  Brotherly love-looks. April 20:  So far away! April 21:  For everyone that feels bad for Craig:  this is a french toast sandwich made with homemade cinnamon raisin bread, bananas, almond butter and maple syrup.  He eats well…