Why, hello.

This would be my view for much of our 4 hours in the woods today. Who wants to walk when you can be carried?

Despite lugging around 30 lbs of toddler, we had a great time with our homeschooling friends and our day outside!

We walked the trails at a local park and spent the day exploring the woods. We inspected animal tracks in the snow, listened to birds and best of all, waited for chickadees to come eat pumpkin seeds and walnuts out of our hands.

It turns out that some of the birds along these trails are pretty friendly and are use to crunchy granola hikers that come baring seeds and nuts in their backpacks. As soon as you stop walking the chickadees will start fluttering nearby. Chickadee just might be Latin for “stalker”. If you have a little something to offer these cute little stalker birds and hold very still, they will come and inspect the contents of your hand.

All the kids got to experience the magic of having a little bird steal a snack from their hands. Although multiple attempts were made, this was the only picture I managed to successfully capture of these speedy little birds!

The kids loved it and completely embraced it. There was much squealing, mostly from me as chickadees landed on my camera trigger finger, arm extended, waiting for just the right moment to CLICK!

On our way out of the woods we discovered the squirrels wanted in on some nut action too.

The squirrels were skittish but if you didn’t move too quickly or suddenly, they would come up and snatch a walnut.

And then scamper off to nibble on it just a few feet away.

Looking back, it was a pretty incredible day all around.

Something else that’s pretty incredible? Black bean pancakes for dinner.

Cindy of Sparkle a Day fame made bean pancakes last week. I remembered her bean pancakes this evening as my beans that spent the day soaking cooked on the stove and I considered what their fate might be.

I googled around to come up with a black bean pancake recipe and mine went a little something like this:

Approximately 3 c of cooked blacked beans (I cooked the entire 16 oz bag of beans and used about half of them – canned beans would certainly work, I would have used 2 15 oz cans if I’d have gone that route)
1 roasted red pepper (from a jar)
2 cloves of garlic
A couple tablespoons of hot sauce (use more or less to taste)
cumin, chili powder and cilantro
1 cup of water

Combine all ingredients in food processor and puree until smooth. In a separate bowl whisk together:

3/4 c flour
1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp salt

Add bean mixture to flour mixture and stir until well combined. Heat up a frying pan and add a small amount of olive oil. Scoop about a half cup of batter into to pan and cook like pancakes. These do need to cook a little longer than pancakes – and I sort of expected them to bubble, but they didn’t. I flipped them when they started to look slightly cooked around the edges, which took about 4 to 5 minutes.

Bean pancakes and tossed salad for dinner.

Homemade guacamole and salsa for “syrup”!

These were awesome and a welcome change from my usual soup or bean burger route.

And yes, I totally color coordinated my condiments with the holiday season! Thanks for noticing.