Today we celebrated the winter solstice with my mom and step dad at our house. After the laziest morning ever (read: I didn’t get in any exercise) I make a quick trip to Wegmans like a complete fool. I needed a few things for our little party and ended up fighting my way through what can only be described as the the biggest, craziest crowd of the year. The phrase “what the hell was I thinking” comes to mind.

A while ago I received a coupon in the mail from Foodbuzz to review the Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastries. It was my choice to opt in for this product review and although this isn’t something I would typically buy, I figured I’d go ahead this time knowing I’d probably use it for a party – and that’s exactly what I did.

The pastry sheets are simple sheets of dough that you can use for good or for evil… I mean, sweet or savory. I opted for the savory route today. I had no motivation to come up with any sort of original recipe and I therefore need to give major props to the recipe on the back of the box for helping me out today.

Spinach-Cheese Swirls? I’m fairly sure that’s my middle name.

I set the pastry sheets out to thaw for about 40 minutes, as directed.

I shredded some pepper jack cheese and mixed with a little parm, kosher salt and garlic salt.

When my sheets had thawed I brushed them with raw egg. (That’s a fun sentence to take out of context. Try it.)

I sprinkled the pastry sheet with the cheese mixture, topped the cheese with fresh spinach and then things really got rolling.

By the time I got to the second sheet I was feeling warmed up and ready to strike out on my own. I left the recipe on the back of the box behind and scrounged the fridge for ideas.

I smeared some spicy vegetarian re-fried beans on the second pastry sheet, topped it with a little pepper jack cheese and finally, some of the Pace Picante salsa that showed up earlier in the week also for our review.

Product placement at it’s finest.

I’ll be honest that I’m not crazy about the ingredient list of the pastry sheets – but for an occasional meal I’m not going to sweat enriched flour, monoglycerides, palm oil and high fructose corn syrup. No big deal here for a once and a while thing.

Now please note that the recipe said to cut the rolls into slices and bake them that way, but for a variety of reasons I decided to throw caution to the wind and cook them whole. Due to the fact that I used fresh spinach instead of thawed frozen spinach, I was afraid the fresh spinach leaves would get dragged out by the knife as I sliced through the uncooked roll.

I brushed the tops of the rolls with more egg and into the oven they went at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

Pretty, no?

Well don’t get too excited because they weren’t cooked in the middle. I guess those people who wrote that recipe actually knew what they were talking about.

But never fear, I sliced them up and put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes and they puffed right up like they were supposed to. Crisis averted.

These turned out great – both the spinach and bean versions were awesome and we couldn’t decide which ones we liked better. We made a spinach roll and bean roll play tic tac toe to determine a winner but it was a Cats game so we still don’t know which roll was victorious.

The little health inspectors did their duties when my parents arrived with more snacks, plus dessert too.

We only made them ask 15 times if we could open presents before we finally caved.

American Girl dolls for Ava and Maxine. Huge hits. Huge.

Gotta love gifts for foodies. A Mandolin! Oh man, it’s gonna be a veggie blood bath here tomorrow – just you wait and see!

And a new salad plate too.

Plus gifts for new home owners – given I fried my last cordless drill with my mad picture hanging skillz.

The rule here is that you’ve got to have messy hair and a crazy look in your eye when you hold a drill. I’m taking my new drill with me to Wegmans next time I go – I’ll fit right in.

• Like a School Girl
• There’s Always a Silver Lining
• The Reasons I Had Kids

For the last week or so I feel like I’ve been walking around with my head in the clouds. I barely recognize my life right now. I’m so distracted it’s almost like I’ve got an innocent little crush on my new house. Moving to the new house seems more real now as our official Moving Day draws ever closer and our whole life revolves new house excitement.

It’s funny because as giddy as I am about the new house, I still love the house we live in now. We’re not moving because we’re unhappy here; we’re moving from the burbs to the city to make our homeschooling lives easier.

Still, I can’t help but feel a little guilty as I walk through the rooms of my current house daydreaming about what life will be like in the new house.

Fortunately we had something pretty easy on the agenda for today. I don’t know that I’m worth much in the way of brain power right now.

We hit up The George Eastman House (of Eastman Kodak fame) to tour of their annual Sweet Creations Gingerbread house exhibit with some friends today.

The Sweet Creations exhibit is a collection of Gingerbread creations made by local people and groups around the area.

Let the drooling begin.

A Gingerbread House after my own heart.

Why am I suddenly in the mood for something with frosting?

Chocolate Covered Pretzels are my Achilles heel – just in case you ever wanted to attempt to take me down.

See that crooked “T” in the “MARKET” of “PUBLIC MARKET” written in gummy letter font? I snapped this photo just as I had finished swatting a certain three year old and her snaky little tongue off that T. Who needs a flu vaccine when you can just lick a gummy letter that 500 grubby little hands have surely touched?

Grubby Hands? Observe.

Sugar Buzz? We have lift off.

Someone even made a Gluten Free Gingerbread House!

Looks like I’m not the only one that’s got a warm and fuzzy feelings toward a sweet little house.

OK gang, it’s time to buzz off.

We’re outta here.

We’ve got a lunch date with the new house!

We hit up a bagel shop on the way from the Gingerbread exhibit which just so happened right in between the museum and our new house. (Have I mentioned how I excited I am about living in the city!?) I snagged a veggie bagel sandwich and then we all went back to new house to have lunch together.

Everything Bagels are my other Achilles heel – just in case I haven’t given away enough secrets tonight.

I only ended up eating half of the bagel along with the last of the leftover black bean and salsa soup and I took the other half home for a snack later.

After lunch we did a little ice breaking.

And had a little fun that we won’t be able to have once the furniture arrives next week.

For some of us though, the ice breaking activities were just a little too intense and we decided it was time to call it a day.

We returned home to find a fun package from FoodBuzz and Pace waiting on our doorstep! Two bottles of Pace Picante salsa for us to try and review.

The timing of this package couldn’t have been better given my mental frailty. Someone scribble meal planning on my list of my New Years Resolutions please? (Just put it right there underneath “Always return library books on time”.)

I cracked the jar of medium salsa to complete a very simple bean burrito dinner.

A whole wheat tortilla, spicy vegetarian refried beans, corn, black beans and Pace Picante salsa.

Salsa makes anything taste good. I’m glad I’ve still got a bunch left in the jar to do something a little more creative with at some point in the near future. I predict that I will no longer be feeling like a school girl with her head in the clouds once I get back to the realities of moving and packing tomorrow.

• Pastry Drills
• There’s Always a Silver Lining
• The Reasons I Had Kids

Tonight, in the history of cooking in my own kitchen, I had an EPIC FAIL dinner. It was a disaster – completely to blame on a new ingredient that I’ve never cooked with before: Polenta.

I will attempt this meal again next week and will share more details on tonight’s disaster then. Until that time I’m going to be annoyingly cryptic.

Fortunately though, there’s always a silver lining.

Like a giant salad? Thank goodness there’s always a Plan B.

Packages from sweet friends named Whitney would be part of tonight’s silver lining as well.

Whit very generously sent us an awesome house warming package from a great little pottery shop she likes, The Muddy Muse.

Some house numbers to go with our new casa!

Along with a totally sweet and very Waldorf homeschooly Fairy Door for the girls that they are going to love!

I was so touched by Whit’s sweet gesture, I am in love with all three pieces! The numbers are the perfect compliment to our new yellow house! I’m not even going to show the Fairy Door to the girls until after we have moved in to the new house. I’ve got big plans to put it on one of the big old trees in our new back yard and tell them we have a tree with fairies living in it. They are at the perfect age for this and I can’t wait to play.

Thank you Whit for these beautiful pieces of pottery, this care package totally made my day!

Silver lining #3? The discovery of some holiday teas from Stash Tea.

I am enjoying some Christmas Eve Tea as I type, even though it’s only Saturday Eve. It’s a spearmint tea with cinnamon and orange peel and is quite enjoyable. I really wanted to try the Chai but it’s going to have to wait until the morning lest I lay in bed awake all night wondering if I hear reindeer hooves on the roof.

Cranky toddlers that finally collapse in an exhausted heap on the couch? Let’s call this tonight’s fourth silver lining. Although bumping this up to number THREE might be more appropriate.

And last, but very far from least, another silver lining that came in a cardboard box tonight.

At least I was entertained as I made ruined dinner. See? There’s always a silver lining.

• Say What You Mean To Say
• Not Chili
• Whensday?

Packed in today’s magic basket of super snacks?

Whole Food Energy Bar from Vega that I was sent last week to review.

I liked this one better than the Vibrancy bar actually. I especially liked that at 220 calories, this sucker easily held me over all afternoon while Maxine and I ran errands and Ava spent the afternoon at her homeschooling class.

And I totally needed the energy to play along with Maxine’s latest Take-My-Socks-and-Shoes-Off-Everytime-I-Get-in-the-Car antics.

5 or so stops this afternoon? That would mean lots of playing her new favorite I Take My Shoes Off, Mom Puts Them Back On game over and over again.

Tonight for Zachary’s birthday dinner I made Sweet Potato Tempeh Chili.

2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 glove of garlic, minced
1 sweet potato, diced
28 oz canned tomatoes
2 cups vegetable broth
1 8oz package of tempeh, chopped
1 can of black beans, rinsed and drained
(Spices are approx – more or less to taste)
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp cumin
1 tsp red pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt

In a large pot, saute garlic and onions in olive oil. Scrub sweet potato with a brush (or peel if preferred) and dice into cubes, keeping in mind this is basically ready as soon as the potatoes are done. Read: smaller potato cubes = less cooking time.

Once the onions are soft, add tomatoes, broth and potatoes. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer and cover.

You want those potatoes cooking while you get work on the tempeh!

I chopped the tempeh in my mini prep. My mini prep is pretty mini, so I had to do it in 3 batches.

Add chopped tempeh and rinsed and drained black beans to the pot. Add spices and stir, simmer on medium-low until potatoes are cooked.

If it happens to be your sweet husband’s birthday, this is where you would get to work on Birthday Peanut Butter Brownies for dessert! Gotta undo all the good stuff that birthday beet juice did for us this morning!

Be warned:

This recipe is not vegan, not raw, not gluten free, not healthy – but hey, it’s not from a box either.

1/2 c creamy peanut butter (I used natural – this would be me grasping at straws for something healthy in this recipe)
1/3 c butter, softened
3/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder
1 c granulated sugar
1/4 c brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup flour (I used a half cup of white flour, half cup of whole wheat flour)
1 tsp baking powder
dash kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 c chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together peanut butter and butter. Stir cocoa powder, white and brown sugar and eggs. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt. Add vanilla and fold in chocolate chips. Grease a 9 x 9 inch square pan (I used coconut oil) bake for 30 minutes.

Brownies in the oven – time to eat!

The chopped tempeh in this dish gives this chili a great texture. With the sweet potatoes too it’s a nice change of pace from my usual beans, beans and more beans vegetarian chili.

Ding! Brownies are done!

I snagged a couple of mini peanut butter cups during shoe game errands today knowing peanut butter brownies were on the birthday dessert menu for tonight. Oh! What do you know?! The mini prep is already out! Rinse off the tempeh and it’s as good as clean.

I asked Zak to pick up the ice cream of his choice on his way home from work, failing to mention peanut butter and chocolate were on the agenda. Mint chocolate chip and PB cup ice cream? I think it’s safe to say we all got our recommended daily allowance of peanut butter tonight.

Brownie sundae fixings assembled – let’s rock.

Warm up those pipes, we gotta sing!

Haaaaapppppyyyy Biiiiirrrrrthhhhhdaaaaay tooooo yoooooouuuuuu…

It’s pretty much a tradition here that after we sing to the birthday person, we have to sing to the girls too.

Don’t worry about singing to me – I’ll just eat.

Birthday’s rule. Watching the Biggest Loser after eating a brownie sundae does not.

• Pastry Drills
• Mom 2.0
• Like a School Girl