Recipes that make us both happy
As we approach the end of Lent* here are a few hymns that are really on my mind/heart.
*We are Orthodox Christians and Easter this year for us isn’t until May 5th. It’s a Julian calendar versus Gregorian calendar thing. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48067272.amp
Our Father (Kedrov setting )
By the waters of Babylon
Holy Thursday 15th Antiphon
Behold the Bridegroom Cometh
Here we are three full months of 2024 completed. How?!? I’m stopping in with a short 1000 Hours update. In a cold winter climate, the recommended breakdown of hours is to average 1/day in January and February and 2/day in March. It ramps up in April to 3/day and after that I’m not sure because I frankly haven’t looked that far ahead…
So far we’ve done really well at meeting and exceeding those averages. In January we got 35 hours, February 45, and March 66! We passed the milestone first 100 hours mark on March 11, several weeks earlier than we did in 2023. I’m a bit nervous about ramping up to three hours a day, but longer, warmer days will help a lot!
Our outdoor activities have included:
As our third child (blog name TBD) is a month old, I’ve been reflecting on the differences and similarities between my three births and postpartum experiences. There’s a lot that too personal to me to post about, but I thought it would be fun to compare giving birth in the US versus Canada. TD was born in a birth centre within a hospital in Ohio, with a midwife. The boy was born in Canada in a hospital with a family practice doctor. This newest one as born in the same hospital as her big brother but with an OB. In no particular order, here are some differences that I found interesting: (Disclaimer that these are my experiences in one place in the US and one place in Canada and may not be general.)
I haven’t actually met anyone else who has given birth in both countries, but I kind of really want to in order to compare our comparisons!
The kids and I made an attempt at 1000 hours outside. We didn’t make it. I think we hit around 800-850. I made a tactical error in the tracker I picked and my filling in strategy of randomly filling in to get a cool stained glass effect looked nice but made counting difficult… So 800-850 is my best guess from eyeballing it. While it was technically a failure, I am counting it a success. My hope was to establish good habits of prioritizing outside time, and making it an integral part of our routines. I feel like that was definitely accomplished and the kids ask to go outside when we haven’t made it outside yet for the day, or on days (like today) where 100 km/h winds make it not really safe to play outside in our wooded yard. We found new fun things to do outside. TD got incredibly confident on her balance bike, and the boy learned to ride his. We found new spots to explore, and have an ever growing list of outdoor things to do and places to visit.
We spent a lot of time outside doing various activities including:
Weather was actually not the biggest factor for us in not meeting 1000 hours. I’m really proud of the variety of weather we got outside in. We went out in glorious sunshine, cloudy weather, on foggy days, in the rain and snow, when it was windy, and when it was calm. The only weather I really avoided was extreme cold (-20 C) or high winds. Our maritime kids are overall pretty tough! Investing in wool pants as a base layer and good hats and mittens etc has also been helpful.
The two biggest challenges for me were when the timing just wasn’t good and striking a balance between outdoor life and the need to do things inside too. The first was tricky because sometimes we couldn’t get outside until one or both kids were at their low point of the day. There were definitely times we just pushed through a screaming or whining child for a bit until said child got over it (usually quickly). In the end I never regretted making the kids go outside even when there was resistance. Balancing outdoor and indoor time was a challenge because it’s (usually) way more fun to be exploring outside than doing chores inside. Yet, the family needs to eat and the house needs to be cleaned etc. I often struggled with figuring out how to get a lot of time outdoors without totally neglecting the necessary work inside and I think that is in large part due to the ages of TD and the boy. They turned 3 and 1 in March and February respectively, so they were (and are) dependent on parental supervision outside. Randy spent a lot of time outside with them as well, but the fact remains that they needed an adult outside with them. I’d also feel like our days could be entirely spent on food prep/meals, the boy’s nap (a time I try to spend doing things she wants with TD as much as possible), and going outside. While that’s fine some of the time, clean floors are nice too ya know?
For this coming year, I’m hoping to address the two biggest challenges simultaneously by figuring out a better routine and having more designated indoor/outdoor chunks of time if possible. I still want to have flexibility and we’re definitely routine people not schedule people, but I’m hoping that the kids will be less prone to being annoyed we’re outside/less tired when we go out, and I’ll be better able to balance inside and outside time.
Here’s to 1000 hours in 2024 (or at least getting closer)!
(One of my favourite memories of outside time – a beach walk in November and this kelp mop the kids found and we’re obsessed with.)
** Found this in my drafts from over two years ago. No idea why I haven’t published it yet, so here it is!**
Cook 12 oz spaghetti according to the package directions.
While cooking noodles, stir fry 16 oz of frozen stir fry vegetables* in 3 T oil.
Also while the noodles are cooling, combine 1/2 C almond butter, 1/4 C low sodium soy sauce, 1.5 t chili powder, 1.5 t maple syrup, 1/2 t ground ginger, 1 T rice vinegar until well mixed.
When noodles are done, reserve 1/2 C of the cooking water, then drain. Combine noodles with the sauce and stir fried vegetables. If it’s too dry for your taste stir in as much of the reserved cooking water as desired. Adjust salt and pepper as needed.
Last year, though I stopped blogging about it pretty early in the season, we had a successful gardening season. A few things took too long to ripen or just never did great, but overall it was a big success. After our first year gardening in Atlantic Canada, which was not very successful, this was a confidence booster. I was excited for this year, had big plans, and then it turned out to be overall a bust of a season.
Why? Well, primarily the weather. While much of North America toasted and roasted, we were in a perpetual rain system. Seriously, we got at least 2.5 times the normal rainfall. It would literally rain for over a week. The sun was barely seen for much of the summer. Turns out, if it’s too dry you can water. If it’s too wet, there is no giant light bulb in the sky you can turn on… Most of the seedlings just sat there for weeks and weeks looking puny and sad and half drowned. Very few seeds sprouted and most of the ones that did drowned. A few things did ok, namely the arugula that was volunteer from last year, the carrots, and celery. We did get some green tomatoes in late September. Something that I thought about A LOT thus summer as I watched our garden flounder was that I’m grateful that we weren’t dependent on this garden. Sure, it would have been awesome to have cheap, fresh produce we grew but we’re not dependent on it. I thought a lot about people who are dependent (or people in the past who were) on having a good gardening season and how they fare when the weather just won’t cooperate, and it made me grateful for what we did harvest, and for the grocery store!
Modified from this recipe. Originally I was going to just list the changes I made but it was 6 or 7 alterations and that seemed confusing! No pictures because I’m a terrible food blogger and honestly, it’s not a gorgeous looking thing. However, what it lacks in looks it has in taste!
Sauté onion, garlic, and carrot in oil until soft. Add spices and ginger and fry two minutes. Add broth and lentils and bring to boil then reduce to simmer until lentils are soft (20-30 minutes). Add coconut milk, vinegar, spinach, and pumpkin and heat to serving temp and serve with rice.
I’m truly blessed to have friends and family across the entire political spectrum. And every year around this time several of them express that they don’t like Independence Day because America just doesn’t seem worth celebrating any longer. It’s slipped so far from what it was, what it should be.
Those people who feel that way? They’re split evenly across the political spectrum. From different viewpoints, from opposite sides of the arguments, they’ve come to the same conclusion. This country is missing the mark. Maybe, just maybe, if we could all start from that point – something is wrong and we want to fix it, and instead of labeling people as Other, the Enemy, Not My Kind of Person, rather see ourselves as all concerned citizens, working towards a common goal, yet coming with different ideas, then maybe we could have a better country. A shot at keeping that Republic.
One of my goals for 2023 was 1000 hours outside with the kids. Two months in, it’s overall going better than expected. I made a couple simple rules for what counts as time outside: Both kids need to be outside. It needs to be… outside. In other words, so long as both kids are outside, it counts. Given their ages if one (or both) end up taking a stroller nap, I’m not going to sweat it. They’re still outside getting fresh air. Our activities so far have included:
Walking (on the sidewalks, around the lake, by our city’s waterfront, going to do errands on foot)
Playing at the playground
Bird watching
Shoveling
Playing in the yard
Hiking along the beach
Stroller rides
Sledding
Playing in the sand at the beach
Boat/ship watching
We’ve had some really amazing times outside, especially when bird watching. It’s been a joy to work on setting new habits of being outside more consistently. There have been a couple days when -40 windchill made going outside off the table for two small kids with the winter gear we have. We’ve definitely missed our outside time on those days. We’ve also had some outings where one or both kids has been annoyed and cranky and crying basically the whole time. That’s just life with small kids!
My winter time goal is an hour a day. Most days we’ve been hitting that easily. Some days it’s been less when it’s been very cold or intensely sleeting. Other days it’s been more. Our January hours were a bit low (19) but it’s fun to see that as the habit has been built, the February numbers are better (28), even though the weather was worse in February. We’ll definitely need to be averaging a lot more hours in the warmer months, but that was always the plan.
How is it (or will be in less than 3 hours) already 2023?!?! 2022 has been a busy and blessed year.
Highlights of 2022
The Boy was born in February. Absolutely incredible to believe there was ever a time he wasn’t in our lives. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, remembering there was ever a time before your children existed? Before The Boy was born, I worried a lot about how TD would handle the shift from only child to big sister. He is her favourite person. Their burgeoning and blossoming relationship is truly one of the biggest joys in my life.
We had a ton of family and friends visit from May-November. If Randy reads this he’ll be a bit surprised that this is a highlight because it was also really stressful for me having such a stream of visitors. However, as time passes the stress fades and leaves only the good memories. We live in an out of the way place, and it means a ton that so many people visited us.
We camped three times, went to Ontario, and had an epic 3 week US road trip. Again, stressful at times, but lots of great memories.
There have been a lot of just nice ordinary days. Lately I look at my husband and kids and think, “Wow. I am just incredibly blessed by them.”
I completed the one goal I had* (besides “birth a baby and adjust to having two kids 2 and under”) and read 30 books. I also read approximately 3269 books to the kids. *There may have been other goals but I don’t remember them …
In August I was thrilled to become an aunt for the third time! And later that month a godmother for the fourth time. Both new ladies in my family are deeply loved.
Goals for 2023
I like to make some goals for the year. They tend to be pretty low stakes goals but I enjoy thinking about them and deciding on them.
1. Read 30 books. Embedded in this is to read from a physical book daily, in front of the kids. Most of my reading happens at night on my e-reader and I want my kids to see me reading books for fun.
2. Read the Orthodox Study Bible in a year. Did it once years ago and want to try again.
3. Do 1000 hours outside with the kids. Sort of cheating by starting the tally yesterday, but when it’s this warm in Atlantic Canada in December you take advantage!
4. Identify a few pain points in the house and work on solving them. We have a few areas that just don’t work well – think always a mess and The Place Things Go to Be Lost.
5. Be off all social media, except blogs, in 2023.
I am 98% sure I had a couple others listed on the back of a Walmart receipt, but can I find it or remember them? No, of course not! Happy New Year! May 2023 be joyous!
Vegan Husband, Omnivore Wife