Winter Salad with Maple Candied Walnuts and Balsamic Fig Dressing

"A salad is not a meal, it is a style." -- Fran Lebowitz

Despite what you may have already read on this blog, I do actually like salad.  I love the chicken, avocado, egg and bacon in a cob salad.  I love feta cheese and olives in a greek salad.  I love the ham and cheese in a chef's salad.  You get the picture.  Lettuce and/or greens by themselves are just boring.  That's why I see all these pretty salads on Pinterest and want to make them.  And I actually did make this one and it was a big hit.

I am the self-proclaimed salad maker for the holidays (along with desserts).  That way I'll get something I know that I like.  (You see, there is a method to my madness.)  And we had a fun holiday family gathering at my in-laws house.  I had to change from my standard autumn salad, to something a little more wintery, and here it was, from half baked harvest.

I love the different textures and how colorful and holiday-ey it looks.  I will admit, my only hesitation about making this one was the pomegranate seeds.  I do like pomegranate seeds and the last time I decided I wanted some, my kitchen ended up looking like a murder scene.  And I lost about a half hour of my life trying to get all the seeds out of that baby.  (Seriously, if someone has an easy way of seeding a pomegranate, I am ALL ears!)  But my BIL came to the rescue and said he would provided the pomegranate seeds.  Score!

I thought it was delicious, and there wasn't anything leftover, so I think it was a success.

From my board "My salad days."

Nutella Palmiers

"Cookies are made of butter and love" 

-- Norwegian proverb

Oh my cookieness!  These are divine!  Although I have seen Palmier cookies in pastry shops and restaurants on occasion, I had never heard the name before.  But as I sat there flipping through a year-old magazine at the Music Education Center, I came across a collection of recipes I wanted to try.  And this Palmiers recipe was first on my list.

Ripped from a Woman's Day magazine, it gave all different kinds of filling ideas for these flaky, delicious cookies.  

The next day, as I was browsing through World Market, admiring a very cute owl cookie jar (*hint* *hint* Michael), I came across a Nutella cookbook, and there was a recipe for Nutella Palmiers!  I mean, 24-hours earlier, I hadn't even heard of these cookies.  It's like it was meant to be!!!  Now I was a woman on a mission.  I ran right out to buy the puff pastry and made them right away.

Now, I know they're not as pretty as the ones in the picture.  You already KNOW I'm not a professional photographer.  And I was literally scraping the bottom of the Nutella jar, so I didn't have anywhere near as much as I would have liked.  But believe me, they tasted WAY better than they looked.

Here is what I learned from making these.  You get two sheets of puff pastry dough.  Use both of them!!!  I made a second batch, wrapped it tightly in saran wrap and stuck it in the fridge.  I did fully intend to bake them the next day, but didn't and then the dough got icky.  It also didn't really puff very well.  So there you have it.

From my board "C is for cookie."

Elf on the Shelf - 2014

Ah, those crazy elves.  Always up to something.  

Into the Halloween candy yet again.  (When are my kids going to learn to eat that stuff up before the elves make an appearance.)

Elf-Tac-Toe

Everybody loves minions!  Even the elves.

Oh dear!  It looks like the elves got injured in the boys' messy bedrooms.  The little note said 

"We were checking on you like we do every night, 

When we tripped on some stuff and it caused such a fright.  

Please pick up your rooms like all good boys should.  

And Santa will place you on the list that says "Good."

Who hasn't seen the movie "Frozen?"

This elf wants to be like Miley Cyrus.  He came in like a wrecking ball.

It looks like this game of candy chess turned into a game of Candy Crush!

What have your elves been up to?

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

And don't forget that!!!

From my board "I'm a Sagittarius."

Road Trip Fun

"In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children."

--Robert Benchley

About 3 times a year, we make the pilgrimmage back to the homeland.  The homeland being Connecticut of course.  It used to be about a 6 hour trip, but with our move it has increased to 8 hours.  We do usually manage to break it up into a couple of segments, either staying with the in-laws or with my best friend.  But still it's a lot of driving over the course of two days.  

I've always tried to have activities for the kids to do in the car.  We play the alphabet game, the license plate game and others that we make up.  I've found downloads on the internet to print out, and I've even used www.education.com to print out activity sheets.  FYI: as a non-member, you can only print out a certain number of sheets per month.  So choose wisely.  Once downloaded, you can download that page as much as you want.  I've printed out individual state worksheets to find out more about a state we are driving through.  I printed out information about Gettysburg when we went there last year.  And I've printed out science pages to go along with our trip to the Virginia Science Museum.  So I've gathered a collection of pages as resources.  But I've always thought, wouldn't it be nice to have a compilation of all kinds of games and activity pages.

Well, there's no reason to reinvent the wheel.  The folks at Ultimate Road Trip Games have already done it for you!  

There is so much on here.  Scavenger hunts for license plates (and if you're in a particular state, all the different license plates just for that state!), car symbols, eateries; games of dots, tic-tac-toe, hangman.  

There's even a secret mission game that we haven't tried, but I plan on pulling out for our next road trip.  Now, yes, you do have to pay for it. It's $14.95.  But once downloaded, it is yours to reprint out forever and ever.

From my board "Family Fun."

How to Take Sharp and In-Focus Action Photos

A good snapshot stops a moment

 from running away.

-- Eudora Welty

Kids are always on the move, always moving, never sitting still.  How, then, do you ever manage to get a good picture of them? 

B is playing soccer for the first time this year.  And of course, it was the last game of the season, and I STILL had not taken any pictures of him playing.  (Isn't it always like that for the 2nd child?)  Anyway, I went loaded with camera, determined I was going to get some good shots.  And since I had a few minutes before the game started, I looked quick on-line to see if I could learn how to use that darn thing and actually take some good action pictures.  I found How to Take Tack-Sharp Action Photos by kevinandamanda.com.  Their directions were super easy and they break them down even further for Canon and Nikon cameras.  The following is copied directly from their website.

The Quick Version:

How to Take Tack-Sharp Action Photos

• Put the camera in Shutter Priority (TV or S) mode
• Set the shutter speed to 1/1000
• Change the focus mode to AI-SERVO
• Change the shooting mode to High Speed Continuous
• Set the focus point to right in the middle (Zone or Point).

Following the above, the are the shots I ended up with.

  

                                                 

Not bad.  Unfortunately the purple dragons did NOT win the game (or the season for that matter), but I think they had fun while they were doing it.

From my board "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Virginia Safari Park

"It is a perversely human perception that animals in their native habitat are running wild."

-- Robert Brault

One of the wonderful things about living someplace new, is discovering all the favorite local sites.  One of my co-workers told me about the Virginia Safari Park and we were interrupted by a resident who has a membership and brings his kids there all the time.  Decided we were going to have to check this place out.

Virginia Safari Park

Located in Natural Bridge, VA, it took us about an hour to get there.  We went during the week (school holiday), so the wagon rides weren't available that day.  No matter.  We bought our buckets of feed ($3.50 per bucket) and proceeded through the gates.

Now, these animals are not stupid.  They know what is in the cars driving through.  And I'm not talking about the people.  They know we are suckers and that if we're willing to shell out money to drive through, we're also willing to shell out a few more bucks to have feed available.  The llamas know this, the ostriches know this.  They ALL know this, but the llamas are the masteres.  They will stop in front of your car so that you have to stop and then come right up to your windows.  (Word to the wise - if you have young kids who you think may be frightened of having animals coming right up to the car, this might be a place to not visit.)

 

We ended up not feeding the llamas and ostriches because there were too many and it was honestly a bit overwhelming.  We drove farther through the park (which is quite a long drive by the way) and found some less intimidating animals part-way through.  Toward the end again, the road was blocked by the llamas and ostriches again.  

After our drive through, we walked through the Safari village part of the park.  There we encountered a budgie aviary, a reptile house, kangaroos, and a giraffe feeding area.

                                                  

All in all, a very fun, but tiring day. I'm sure we will be back.  This one is definitely worth a trip with your kids!  

From my board "Virginia is for lovers."