how to be the world's awesomest mom.

rim a glass of cold chocolate milk with chocolate syrup and roll in sprinkles. be the awesomest mom in the world.

egg, bacon & toast cups.

easy.

delicious.

gorgeous.

breakfast 3.

whole wheat english muffin with smashed avocado, red pepper and a sprinkle of garlic powder
+ strawberries topped with turbinado sugar

breakfast 2.

watermelon + vanilla yogurt with granola and blueberries
+ whole wheat english muffin with whipped cream cheese

delana's birthday weekend.

delana, kylah, mandy, lylah and i got away to the quaintest little bed & breakfast in blanco this weekend. we ate and shopped and talked and rested. it was awesome. a great way to celebrate our amazing matriarch. somehow, all i managed to photograph was food*. what does that tell you?

*those are fredricksburg peaches, people. heaven in a fuzzy little package. so.good.

fresh baked.

ellie has a sticker chart. when she fills the chart (for doing good things), she gets to pick a "treat." recently, she chose to buy easter shaped cookie cutters and make cookies with mommy. i offered this as a suggestion, among other things, and i love that she picked it. i think quality time as a treat is so much better than some toy that will end up forgotten in a corner. it doesn't hurt that the side effect to this quality time is super yummy.

we still have more dough. i substituted 2 of the 5 cups of all-purpose flour the recipe called for with whole wheat flour. the cookies are not as white as regular sugar cookies, but just as delicious, in my opinion. i'm pretty sure the three sticks of butter + the powdered sugar icing eliminated any hint of "health" in these, however, wheat flour or not.




ellie and i ended up with a couple helpers about halfway through our date. since they were cute boys, we didn't mind their joining in.

yay for cookies!

without excuse.

i was finishing up my first trimester during the holidays, and the season somehow slipped by before i got around to making my most favorite holiday cookie, mock toffee. i had the ingredients, and it really is a snap to make. i'm blaming pregnancy exhaustion and a great need to decompress from the first semester of school. not good enough? oh, well. who made it a rule that "christmas cookies" could only be made during december?

i am liberating you to january, mock toffee!

saltines
butter
white sugar
chocolate chips
foil
baking sheet

1. preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. mix 1 cup sugar and 2 sticks (oh, yes) butter in a saucepan.

3. while butter and sugar are melting, line a baking sheet with foil.
4. line sheet with saltine crackers.

5. heat sugar and butter to a boil.

6. let it roll for 3 minutes until it's nice and bubbly.

7. pour sugar & butter mixture over crackers and spread.
8. place in oven for 5-8 minutes or until golden, see above.
(watch closely! it burns easily.)

9. pour 1 bag chocolate chips over the sugar & butter-coated crackers.

10. spread as chips begin to melt.

11. place in fridge or freezer or outside if it's cold enough (29!) until hardened.

12. break cooled cookies into pieces.

13. marvel at the glory!
14. store in the fridge to keep chocolate from melting, and ignore
the guilt of abandoning new year's resolutions already! :)

sonlight apple orchard: you-pick pink ladies.

i was reading blogs this morning as thunderstorms were raging outside. i came across a recipe for homemade applesauce, which my family often made when i was a child. (they still do.) the recipe got me thinking about other blog posts i've read recently of people taking their children to you-pick apple orchards on the weekend. that thought led me to wonder whether such a thing existed in texas. (the blogs i was thinking of belong to people who live in indiana and canada.) so, i googled. and i found sonlight apple orchard in mason, 2 hours southeast of san angelo. i checked the weather in mason to be sure it wasn't raining there. we were off with bedhead and sweatshirts 30 minutes later.

the sonlight sign.

the apple barn, built in 1860.

after a quick lesson on how not to ruin the trees from johnny applesmith (aka the owner, don), we were off to find some apples for picking.

"these look good!"

sonlight grows nine types of apples that all ripen at 10 day intervals between august and october.

we made it for the last harvest, pink lady.

the owners planted their first trees (mcintosh) in 1984.

the pink lady trees were planted in 2000.

pretty, no? i love how imperfect they are. real. not picked so early (in order to be shipped thousands of miles) that they have no time to develop blemishes. despite blemishes, Texas tree-ripened apples are said to be sweeter than others because of the long, warm growing season. there is more time for the carbohydrates to convert completely to natural sugar. this is also what allows the apples to last longer after they're picked since sugar is a preservative.

the proper way to pick an apple involves spinning the apple while holding its branch steady until it pops off. if you pull, you could pull of a part of the branch which usually includes the fruit bud for next year's crop. i was nervous the kids wouldn't be able to do it.

they did a great job.

for a time, i got very focused on taking photos of apples in baby hands.
you'll see more of these.

the rows were fun to run down.

we had to go back to the barn to get another bucket.

has there ever been a cuter apple picker?

see? told ya.

gray's biggest challenge was placing the apples gently in the bucket.
pitching them fast-ball style seemed much more appealing.

gentle is not typically his m.o.

pleased with her leaf-on pick.

if i hadn't cut her off, ellie would've picked 100 pounds of apples.

there were several tractors on the premises.

gray loved them more than the apples. he wanted to drive them.

we picked and purchased 23 pounds.
fresh-picked pink lady apples keep for a minimum of 28 weeks when stored properly.
johnny applesmith told me he's successfully kept pink ladies for up to 16 months.
homemade applesauce, apple butter and apple pies are on the to-do list.

by harvey the harvester in the apple barn.
my kids are so great at posed photos.

apple picking is hard work.

real hard work.

but so worth it! you should go!

on the way there, i was fantasizing that the trip to the orchard was a homeschool field trip. the list of lessons i could create from it was vast. a few ideas:

math: counting apples (in ones or piling in groups of 5s, 10s, etc.); paying for apples; weighing apples
science: plant parts; how plants grow; seasons; where food comes from
reading: reading books about apples before and after the trip
writing: writing short, easy, trip-related words (apple, tree, dirt, etc.); writing letters to relatives about our trip; writing a short book about our trip
art: illustrating our book; apple prints
homemaking: storing apples; preserving apples; cooking with apples (also math-oriented in the measurement phase/science-oriented in the how-it-cooks phase)

'twas a lovely day, indeed. i love fall.