Welcome to the Monday after Thanksgiving, also known more recently as Cyber Monday, but I prefer to call it detox Monday. 😉 I hope you all had a restful and heart warming weekend with family and friends. My family and I had a good time eating, talking, eating and more eating these past few days. I certainly had my fill of turkey for a while, so I thought I’d focus today’s mentionables on VEGGIES. 🙂
1. Baked Veggies. Thankfully, I didn’t have to cook much for Thanksgiving, except for a veggie dish. I choose to bake them because they tend to turn out crispier and more appealing to a kid’s taste buds (think pseudo french fries). I did a random assortment of them for a dinner we went to at our cousins’ home (where a friend treated us to a Heritage turkey that was smoked and seriously the best turkey I’ve ever had!). Unfortunately, we were running late that night (what’s new?!) so I didn’t get a picture of the baked zucchini, mushrooms and carrots I made, but I did take a picture of some baked carrots I made another night this week.
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| These almost taste like yam fries, but are less heavy. I got the recipe here. |
You can essentially bake any kind of veggies. The one that the kids love the most though (even our dear picky son!) is cauliflower.
2. Stray Cats. Continuing on our theme of veggies, here’s a story I wanted to share about how vegetarians are likely made…
C is starting to pick up on words and being able to spell/read them. One of the first words she wanted to know how to spell was chick. Then came chicky and chicken. If you can’t tell, she loves chicks of all kinds. 😉 But with her newfound reading skills under her belt, she made a somewhat traumatic discovery yesterday. She came up to me and pulled me down to her level. With her warm breath tickling my ear, she asked, “Why does Meow Meow’s food say chicken on it?!”
Doh. You see, Meow Meow is this stray cat we inherited that has been living outside our house for the past year. We originally had been feeding these two other cats (which we named Bob and I forgot the other one’s name) that our neighbor had asked us to feed when he moved away. Long story short, those cats disappeared and this new one showed up.
So, back to C’s discovery… she was appalled at the thought of a cat eating a poor chicken. I told her with a regretful look, “Yeah, sorry, some animals eat chickens.” Her little face fell at the thought. Then she exclaimed, “Some people eat chicken, too!”
Double doh. One of these days, we’ll need to explain to her that the Chinese word “ji” we’ve been using to refer to the meat we eat is the same word we use for her beloved chickens. We might have a vegetarian on our hands in a few years!
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| Here’s Meow Meow (sometimes referred to as Kitty – yes, we’re not very original when it comes to names, haha) venturing into our house. |
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| Here’s Meow Meow eating her chicken (gasp!) breakfast. |
3. Sound of Music. Okay, what does the Sound of Music have to do with veggies? Well, if you remember the opening musical number to the movie, it’s called “The Hills Are Alive“. Hills equal verdant vegetation. 🙂 Anyway, for those who loved the original Julie Andrews movie, you may be interested to know there’s a remake of the Broadway musical coming up this Thursday on NBC. The best part is that it will be a LIVE broadcast. I watched the “making of” video and was very impressed with the cast and the set. Oh, did I mention, Carrie Underwood is playing Maria? I definitely think this will be worth watching.
Have a happy Monday, everyone! 🙂