RECIPE: my favorite salad

While in college, God blessed me with a friend that you would absolutely love. To give you a little picture of what she’s like, at the end of the year our floor voted her as the “most colorful person.” She is fun, hilarious, full of crazy stories, artistic, creative and so full of life.

She is also a wonderful cook, and throughout college she often would make me salad, and I now use her recipe almost every single day. I seriously crave it and the thought of it makes my mouth water. So no matter what we’re having for dinner, this salad almost always accompanies it. Here’s my rendition of my colorful friend’s salad:

*Wash baby spinach and put it in a bowl. (I always make separate small bowls for each person, as I don’t like left over salad.) (And I like baby spinach better than the regular stuff.)

*Add any vegetables to it that you want. I often use tomatoes and cucumber, but sometimes I only have the spinach so I just use that. But you could use anything you like- peppers, onion, etc. You could also use strawberries, dried cranberries, pear slices, etc.

*Drizzle olive oil over the top. (lately I’ve been using grapeseed oil instead.)

*Drizzle a little balsamic vinegar on top.

* (I think she taught me to add salt and pepper at this point, but I rarely do.)

*Mix it up well with 2 forks.

*Put a generous spoonful of feta cheese on top

enjoy!!!

Cupcake Workouts

While enjoying an after-school snack with my 3 kids and the 2 that I babysit for, we had a Pow-Wow. This is a little something I learned as a camp counselor back in my Camp Roger days and I enjoy doing them with my family. Each person gets a turn to tell their “pow” (the worst thing that happened in their day- something ugly, irritating, maddening, not fun) and then their “wow” (the best part of their day- something beautiful, funny, fun). So one of the children is up and says that their wow of the day was PE. “Oh, GREAT!!!” I think to myself. “I love it that they’re learning to take care of their bodies and grow up to be active, physically fit adults.” “What did you do in PE?” I ask her. My mind goes back to Seymour Christian’s gym with Mr. VanderKamp, running laps until we panted and sweat, playing rigorous games of kickball and floor hockey, climbing ropes all the way up to the high ceilings. (Unless you were me, who couldn’t get past the 5 knots.) My thoughts were interrupted with, “We ate cupcakes.” “Ummmm…..excuse me?” “We ate cupcakes,” she answered. “In PE. We ate cupcakes.” Ohhhhh…..OF COURSE! Why wouldn’t you eat cupcakes in P.E.? Okay, this explains a lot. And I mean A LOT.

My sister and me doing a rigorous cupcake workout at the adorable Magnolia Bakery in New York City. Let me tell you, it was tough, but through a lot of encouragement and perseverance, we made it through. And we both felt so much better afterwards. 🙂

This made me think…..if kids are seriously eating cupcakes in PE, (and I’m not saying that I really think they’re doing this every day. This was probably just a special one time occasion. But it still makes for a funny story…….) So that means that its all up to us. (And it always really was anyways, wasn’t it?) So I’ve been thinking about how we teach our kids to grow up to be healthy adults who take good care of their bodies. During one of the Beth Moore Bible Studies I did with the ladies from my church, I remember Beth saying that pertaining to God’s temple in the Bible days, there were 2 ways in which God’s people sinned. In some periods of time they sinned by totally neglecting His temple and letting it go to ruin. But in other times they sinned by completely obsessing over it and allowing the meticulous details of it to become more important to them than God Himself. Her point was that we do the same thing with our bodies, which are also God’s temple- His dwelling place. When we’re either neglecting our bodies or obsessing over them, we’re not bringing glory to the Lord or living a life of freedom. I love thinking of this as a philosophy to guide us in teaching our children to care for their temples.

My prayer for my children is that they never believe that they need a certain body shape in order to be an important person, but that they see their worth in who they are as God’s precious children. My prayer is that they grow up with a good understanding of which foods are good for them, but also with the ability to enjoy the foods they like on occasion without thinking twice or feeling guilty. My prayer is that they lead an active lifestyle that makes them feel strong and capable of doing the things they need to do. My prayer is that they grow up joyfully caring for their special temples of the Lord, neither neglecting them nor obsessing over them.

My prayer is also that they don’t grow up thinking that PE is for eating cupcakes. 🙂

Healthy Snacks that my kids enjoy:

*apple slices with a little bit of natural peanut butter spread on the tops (I get my peanut butter at Trader Joe’s and I love it that the only ingredient is “dry roasted peanuts.”)

*celery sticks with natural peanut butter topped with raisins

*banana slices topped with a little bit of natural peanut butter eaten with frilly toothpicks

*carrots dipped in hummus

*little individual bowls with raisins, raw almonds and cheerios mixed together. Sometimes I’ll throw in a few chocolate chips in each bowl as a special treat.

*smoothies made in our blender using plain yogurt, orange-pineapple juice, bananas, and frozen strawberries, blueberries and raspberries. We made these almost every afternoon during the hot summer and they are so refreshing! My kids love them and they’re made entirely from things I want my children to be eating!

*popsicles made from the same ingredients as the smoothies

*yogurt with homemade granola on top

Have a fabulous day, Beautiful Mama!!