Happy Friday! I took this entire week off from work and blogging, something I haven’t done in ages and now I don’t know if I can go back to real life! 😉 Cape Cod was, as always, perfect! I do have one quick link to share today, though!

This week I have a post on Babble: How I Got My Kids to Eat Fruit for Dessert (and Enjoy It). The post includes a scrumptious recipe for poached peaches with vanilla yogurt sauce. It’s pretty heavenly and perfect for using up those ripe summer peaches!

Have a great weekend and feel free to share whatever you like in the comments for Show and Tell!

Greetings from Cape Cod! My mother-in-law just finished planning our dinners for the week, so I’ll just share her plan!

MONDAY:
– Christmas in July, complete with Yankee Gift Swap! (Roast chicken, stuffing, veggies – the works!)

TUESDAY:
– Seafood Sam’s

WEDNESDAY:
– Date night – couples get to go out, grandparents/aunts/uncles watch the kids and make Mac ‘n’ Cheese

THURSDAY:
– Chicken on the grill, corn on the cob, grilled veggies

FRIDAY:
– Clear out the fridge

SATURDAY:
– On the road to New Hampshire

SUNDAY:
– No clue! 😉

As you can see, it’s vacation around here so I’m not much of a help with the meal planning. But I’m certain some of you have some great menus to share, so please do! Share your menus in the comments! Thank you!

Happy Friday, Everybody!

Unbelievably our East coast visit is almost halfway done. Tomorrow morning we pack up the Sienna that Toyota has graciously lent us for the trip and head north to Cape Cod. We didn’t visit the Cape last year so we are very excited to get back!

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about TV. That’s just not right. I have a Netflix show to recommend today that is super funny and cute. But first you need to know that the name is TERRIBLE in my opinion (and pretty much everyone’s opinion everywhere). Nate and I didn’t even consider watching it just based on the name. But my friend Wendi texted to say we had to watch it, and I trust her, so we did, and it’s the best! Okay. Ready for the name of the show? Drumroll….Scrotal Recall. I KNOW. The name is just plain silly, but I’m telling you, this show is hysterical while also endearing and sweet. (Definitely rated R, just so ya know!)

Two food links to share this week!

• Babble: 3 Kids, a Mom & a Kitchen: Popcorn Ball Ice Cream Cones
• Solly Baby Blog: Best Dinners for New Parents (lots of great tips in there!)

That’s it! You know the drill, share your stuff, too! Whether just a little something from your life, a favorite new show, a link to your blog, a new recipe to share, whatever! Share away!

We are in New Jersey right now visiting my family. My sister-in-law Cora introduced us to a new way to eat chocolate for lunch yesterday. I’m always up for making chocolate into a meal, so I was 100% on board!

Cora had recently taken her little girl and my niece Sophie to a cafe called Marigolds. They ordered the Nutella panini off the menu and discovered something quite delicious – a panini made with Nutella and fresh sliced strawberries!

Of course we had to try making it on our own and that’s what we had for lunch yesterday! And before you start thinking it’s all weird that this is an actual sandwich that you can have for lunch (my mom couldn’t quite wrap her brain around it), this is basically a PB&J if you really think about it. Nutella is a hazelnut spread, so that’s just like peanut butter, right? And fresh strawberries are way healthier than sugar-laden jam. So, you know. totally the same and way healthier! (Okay, not totally, but whatever.)

The cafe even served the Nutella panini with homemade potato chips. This is LUNCH, people. I swear!

Whether you agree that this makes a healthy and nutritious lunch or not, I do think you’ll agree it’s delicious. Seriously, DELICIOUS. You’re welcome.

Grilled Nutella and Strawberry Sandwiches

 

Print

Prep time

5 mins

Cook time

5 mins

Total time

10 mins

 

As created by my sister-in-law Cora Wallin, inspired by Marigold's in Summit, NJ

Author: Jane Maynard

Ingredients

• Good crusty bread
• Fresh sliced strawberries
• Nutella
• Butter

Instructions

1. Spread Nutella on 2 slices of bread.
2. Layer sliced strawberries on one side then put the sandwich together.
3. Butter the outside of both slices of the sandwich and grill in a pan over medium heat until golden brown (like a grilled cheese sandwich) or cook in a panini maker.

3.3.3070

Happy Sunday! I brought all my design files for the weekly menu graphics, but I just discovered my travel laptop doesn’t have the right software. Whoops. So, instead of a picture of my menu how about one of my mom’s hydrangeas? Flowers are prettier than menus, anyway.

Even though I don’t have a PDF of the meal plan and shopping list, I still planned a menu for the week!

MONDAY:
– BBQ Chicken on the Grill
– Fresh NJ corn on the cob and summer fruit

TUESDAY:
– Chimento Chicken (aka Chicken Croissants)
– Side veggie

WEDNESDAY:
– Taco night

THURSDAY:
– Leftovers

FRIDAY:
– Eat out for our last night in NJ

SATURDAY:
– Arrive in Falmouth, MA for our annual Cape Cod vacation
– No idea what we’re having for dinner yet! Who cares, we’ll be on the cape!

SUNDAY:
– Sweet Tomatoes Pizza in Sandwich, MA

You all know the drill – we want to see what you’ve got planned for dinner this week, so please share your weekly menu in the comments! Thank you!

Hey everybody! I am officially on vacation and enjoying every second. Also, flying with kids is SO MUCH EASIER now that I my youngest is almost 4 years old and my oldest is 10. I didn’t even have that anxious feeling in my stomach that normally accompanies our plane rides. I really am shocked at how much easier it was than it has been for, oh, the last 10 years.

Okay, enough travel talk, today I have a public service announcement. I must share two of my favorite goodies with you because it would be a crime not to.

First off, we flew through SFO this week and had a layover in Terminal 2. That terminal is, in the words of my friend Rebecca, magical. I love it when I have a layover there and usually spend a small fortune on food. My favorite spot in the terminal is a shop and deli called Napa Farms Market. They carry a vast array of wonderful Bay Area food products. One of the brands they carry is CC Made, a Berkeley-based artisanal caramel company I discovered at a food show years ago. CC Made has a dark chocolate caramel sauce that is TO DIE FOR, but they never have it at Napa Farms Market…until this week! When I saw it on the shelf I think I may have done a little jig. I know I at least squealed. I believe you can buy the sauce on the CC Made website, in case you need to get your hands on a jar, too!

The second item I want to share is barkTHINS. Fair Trade USA has sent me samples of barkTHINS several times and I even created a granola bar recipe using their pumpkin seed flavor. Anyway, suddenly I’m seeing barkTHINS EVERYWHERE…from gas stations to grocery stores to Costco, so I can regularly feed my addiction. My kids are addicted, too. barkTHINS are dangerous. So, maybe this public service announcement is more to warn you about the addictive power of barkTHINS than anything else! 😉

That’s all for today! Enjoy the goodies!

Happy Sunday, everyone! So, today’s menu post is a bit unusual. First, I’m sharing Friday’s Show and Tell links with you today because, quite honestly, I forgot to share them on Friday. The kids and I were having too much summer fun!

Second, I don’t have a menu planned for this week! The kids and I leave on Tuesday to visit family on the east coast, so I honestly have no clue what our food plans will be. If you need inspiration, click here to see menus from past weeks. I always read through everyone’s comments on older menu posts to get ideas when I do my own planning each week. They are such a great resource! Also, just because I am not posting a menu doesn’t mean you can’t! If you have a menu planned, please share it in the comments!!!

For Show and Tell this week, I have several things to share with you!

• For Babble I wrote a post about how traveling to Malawi as well as meeting Stephanie Nielson from the Nie Nie Dialogues transformed making my kids lunches from a chore to a privilege. It’s a goodun, especially the last paragraph.
• I wrote another post about the Malawi trip, this time for BabyCenter and focused on the personal impact that the lack of electricity has on people’s lives there. Here’s the link to the article: Can you imagine raising kids in a home with unreliable electricity?
• For Parade’s Community Table: 12 Not-Just-Strawberry Shortcakes!
• And another for Parade: 17 Summer Sips: Cocktails to Beat the Heat

That’s it for today! As I mentioned earlier, please post your menus in the comments. We especially need you on these weeks I’m traveling to provide inspiration for others! Thank you in advance and have a wonderful week!

Today I am writing as part of a month-long blog relay for ONE called “Light for Light.” At the end of this post there is a SUPER EASY way for you to do some real good. You won’t even have to click off this site to do it, so lend your voice (and your typing fingers) and help out!

When I’m wearing my photographer’s hat, I crave outdoor light. It makes lighting photos easier, everything looks more natural, and the pictures are generally more beautiful and striking. And, for my work as a food photographer, natural light is essential. If I have to photograph something using indoor light, well, I am not a happy camper.

This week, however, I have been trying to look at indoor light differently. I’ve been looking for the beauty in the “unnatural” light that I so often disdain. Because, truly, that light is beautiful. It is warm. It is inviting. And it gives our family opportunities beyond imagination.

My children can eat breakfast in the warmth of their own well-lit kitchen, even before the sun rises.

My children can read, even after the sun sets.

The orchid in my kitchen glows under the 1 kitchen light we leave on during evening hours to light our way through the house. It is beautiful.

Our family can enjoy holidays and birthdays and celebrations of all kinds under the lights hanging over our patio, those lights becoming a part of the fabric that is our collective family memory.

I am truly grateful for this this light that provides so much life after sunset. Yeah, I still need that “perfect” daylight for my food photography, but I will no longer shy away from the “imperfect” light that the photographer in me so often avoids. I will embrace the challenge and be grateful for that light.

When I traveled to Malawi in May and discovered a world where less than 10% of the people have electricity, I was stunned. To see with my own eyes what life is like for an entire country essentially without electricity, well, it was beyond what I had ever imagined.

I heard many, many, MANY statistics on the Malawi trip, and they all affected me deeply. But there were a few that really stood out, including this: 8 out of 10 people in sub-Saharan Africa heat their home and cook food using open fires. Inhalation of smoke and fumes produced from burning traditional fuels results in more deaths per year among women and children than from HIV/AIDS and malaria COMBINED. Forget the issue of simply lighting your home, lack of electricity is literally killing people every day.

The other thing that stood out to me while looking at the homes in the villages we visited were the schoolchildren. Once the sun goes down, studying and reading is out of the question. The fact that my girls can read for hours each night is a luxury. Their head lamps for reading in bed are a blessing.

Here’s the cool thing – we can do something about it! ONE’s bill, the Electrify Africa Act, was reintroduced in the House this past month by Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee – Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY).  The bill would help provide electricity to 50 million Africans for the first time, at no cost to US taxpayers. 

Let’s help make everyone’s nighttime merry and bright!

This same bill did not pass last year and we can’t let that happen again! We need to tell our leaders that we support this bill. Simply fill out the form below and click “sign petition” and you will have helped in a significant way. Thank you!

I am participating in the #lightforlight blog relay with ONE. Each day this month a different blogger is writing about light and tomorrow Whit Honea will be sharing his thoughts at Dads 4 Change, so be sure to check it out! Here are the posts that have been published so far. They are all beautiful.

• Electrify Africa by Karen Walrond
• Turn on the Lights by Laurie White
• There is a Light by Heather Barmore
• Light for Light by Tracey Clark
• Light is Life by Elizabeth Atalay
• Beneath the Light of Their Bedroom Lamp by Rebecca Woolf

For those of you who would like to read more on the subject, here are some great resources:

• The Electrify Africa Act 2015
• 6 Ways Energy Poverty Threatens Health Care for the Poorest
• ONE Energy Policy Document
• Why Poverty is Sexist: Energy Edition
• Energy Poverty is Sexist

Brace yourselves. Today I am giving you the best oatmeal cookie recipe ever. Well, the best chocolate chip M&M oatmeal cookie recipe ever. No, really. I haven’t met a cookie this addictive in quite some time. I even made myself sick to my stomach a few weeks ago eating too many, like a 6-year-old the day after Halloween. Not one of my finer moments. But I digress…

Back to the cookies. These cookies are delicious, with wonderful flavor and texture. Additionally, these cookies are made with oil instead of butter. The original recipe says you can use coconut oil or olive oil. I have made them with half olive oil half coconut oil, and I’ve also made them with just coconut oil. I prefer the 100% coconut oil version. If you decide to use olive oil, I would recommend regular olive oil instead of extra virgin as extra virgin olive oil has more olive flavor.

Okay, so, the recipe. I begged this recipe off of my girls’ piano teacher, Jody. She has no idea where she got it from, so we just call them Jody’s Oatmeal Cookies. If I ever track down the source, I’ll be sure to let you know! For now Jody gets credit for bringing these beauties into our lives.

Jody's Oatmeal Cookies

 

Print

Prep time

10 mins

Cook time

12 mins

Total time

22 mins

 

These Chocolate Chip M&M Oatmeal Cookies are some of the most addictive cookies I've ever eaten. You've been warned.

Author: Jane Maynard

Serves: 3 dozen

Ingredients

• 2½ cups old fashioned oats
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup melted coconut oil (if your coconut oil is already liquid at room temp, you're all set. if it is solid, a few seconds in the microwave will melt it enough)
• 2 large eggs
• 4 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ¾ cups chocolate chips
• 1¼ cups plain M&Ms
• (I supposed you could do 2 cups of raisins instead of chocolate chips and M&Ms, but I'm a chocolate girl. If you go with raisins, add ½ teaspoon of cinnamon to the dough)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
2. In a large mixing bowl whisk together the oil, eggs and vanilla extract. Add the salt and baking soda and stir well. Add the oats, flour and both sugars and mix well until all ingredients are fully incorporated together. The dough might be crumbly. (Add a teeny bit of oil of needed - I have not ever added any extra oil myself). Alternatively you can mix all the ingredients except the chocolate chips and M&Ms in a large bowl all at once, but I find adding the ingredients in the order listed above makes it easier to mix the ingredients together evenly.
3. Mix in the chocolate chips and M&Ms.
4. Form cookie dough balls about 2 tablespoons in size and place on cookie sheet. The dough is tricky to work with, just be patient! Use your hands to really squeeze the dough into a ball. You may have to tuck the M&Ms and chocolate chips inside and underneath the cookie to get it to hold together on the tray.
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies begin to lightly brown on top but don't overcook.
6. Cook all the dough into cookies as the cookie dough balls don't hold together well for freezing and dough is easier to work with when it is just made. Store baked cookies in an airtight container.

Notes

The original recipe says you can use coconut oil or olive oil. I have made them with half olive oil half coconut oil, and I've also made them with just coconut oil. I prefer the 100% coconut oil version. If you decide to use olive oil, I would recommend regular olive oil instead of extra virgin as extra virgin olive oil has more olive flavor.

3.3.3070

Happy 5th of July!

Last week I didn’t follow my menu at ALL. My mom took us to Macaroni Grill on Monday night and we had leftovers that lasted us two more dinners. Then my friend Kristen from Dine & Dish gave me a bunch of her expiring Panera rewards and were able to get 5 entrees, which also fed us for at least 2 more nights. That’s the kind of summer I like, tons of food I didn’t have to prepare! Because of all the unexpected goodies, and because we grilled tri-tip for the 4th, I’m pretty much using last week’s menu. But I already did my grocery shopping so it WILL happen as planned this week!

MONDAY:
– Pesto Chicken Salad Sandwiches
– Fruit and carrots

TUESDAY:
– Carnitas Tacos
– Guacamole and chips

WEDNESDAY:
– Chicken Pasta Salad
– Garlic Knots

THURSDAY:
– Leftovers

FRIDAY:
– Eat out night

SATURDAY:
– Dinner on the grill! Veggie kebabs + some sort of meat
– Fresh fruit

SUNDAY:
– Leftovers or Breakfast for Dinner (waffles and fruit)

Click here for the free printable of this week’s menu plus the shopping list!

I know it’s summer and it’s hard to get in the groove, but that’s all the more reason to get your menu plan done! Please share your weekly menu in the comments to inspired all of us!