Good morning, sunshine!

The sun is shining, birds are chirping, daffodils are blooming...

I took a nice little morning walk to Whole Foods to get some steel cut oats, because, as I learned, instant oatmeal is processed! This is might be tougher than I thought!

Bananas, pecans, and a little maple syrup

It's going to be a good day!

Goodbye, processed foods!

Today, I was eating a Cheez-it.

I started thinking about how Cheez-its are made. Processed flour, processed cheese, salt, one million preservatives. Um, ew?

So I thought I'd try cutting out processed foods for one week. Its kind of like the time I tried out being a vegetarian - so far, so good! As it turns out, lots of foods are processed. I found a list online of "unprocessed foods" : essentially fruits, veggies, proteins, and grains. I can do this for a week, right? But this means no more Goldfish during Rainbow Room snack time!!

Tonight I made Tabbouleh. I slightly followed this Barefoot Contessa recipe:

1 cup cracked bulgur wheat

1-1/2 cups boiling water

1 lemon, juiced (1/4 cup)

¼ cup olive oil

3-1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 tomato, seeded and diced

      or 2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

1 cucumber, unpeeled, seeded and diced

1 onion, diced/ 1 cup minced scallions (white & green)

1 clove garlic, minced

1 Tbs. red wine vinegar

½  cup fresh mint leaves, chopped

½ cup fresh parsley, chopped

1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper 

Pour boiling water over bulgur wheat and add the lemon juice, olive oil, and 1-1/2 tsp. salt. Stir, cover with plastic wrap, and let it sit at room temperature for about 1 hour. 

In separate bowl, combine tomato, cucumber, onion, garlic.   Toss with bulgur wheat.  Add mint, parsley and pepper.  Mix well.
Chill, covered, at least 1 hour before serving. Flavor improves if it sets a few hours. Taste before serving; add more lemon or S & P if desired. 

**I didn't use mint or tomatoes and I added some feta**

Mm, mm, unprocessed goodness.

Happy Birthday, Crotty!

Despite the robbery scandal, I headed to NYC this past Saturday to celebrate Miss Crotty's birthday and catch up with some Cornell friends!

There were cupcakes, courtesy of Francesca...

Barefoot Contessa Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting - yum!

...Mini macs (unfortunately sans photo) a la Katie Post. Sooooooo yum yum yummy. Recipe here.

And lots of birthday fun!

Everyone in black, so New Yorker!

Happy Birthday, Katherine!

Hello from Emily (Melanie's favorite little sister)

Melanie told me to "be funny."  I don't know if I can live up to her standards, but I'll try.  I decided to make Rainbow Cupcakes for Peter and his roommates because I am the best sister in the world..(sorry Mel) with the neon food coloring we have at home. With the extra batter, I made a neon cake, which turned out to be about as flat as a pancake, but it looks cool nontheless. Here are the pictures I took of my masterpieces.

Also, since I'm making a guest appearance on Melanie's blog, I will post a picture of my prom dress I got this weekend. It was a tough choice between the patterned one that I got and a turquoise 30's style dress. With a little help from Melanie via texts and three strangers who were in the dressing room next to me, I chose the patterned one (my mom, my friend Kaitlyn, and the sales associate, who was really really helpful, liked the 30's style one slightly better, but they still think I made the right choice). My mom thinks the dress is very "me".

And in case you wanted another update on the Life of Emily, I am leaving for a 10 day trip to Spain and Morocco in 17 days!  Then, two days after I come back home, a French exchange student, named Fanny, is coming to stay at my house for a week!

Some bad news

Just wanted to let you all know that my blog posting is going to take a temporary hiatus, as a mean mean robber stole my computer (Fina's too!). I am holding out hope that it will be found, but for now Mike is generously sharing his old (read: high school) laptop with me. Keep an eye out for my computer and the robber, and if anyone tries to sell you a pretty white wonderful Macbook - it's mine.

Rainbow Pancakes

This week in the Rainbow Room we've been learning about...rainbows. So, naturally, we needed to bake something rainbow-themed. Ali discovered this awesome blog post about rainbow pancakes, and we made them today!!

We were worried that it would take a long time but it wasn't actually too hard. We used a basic pancake mix, separated it into 6 bowls, colored the batter, and cooked the pancakes one color at a time.

I had a dance party with the kids while Ali did the pancake-flipping.

Mini-stack for the kiddies.

Slightly larger for the teachers :)

Mmm, mm, goood.

I love...

...the way little kids think.

Yesterday at lunch, one of my four-year-olds turned to me and said, "There was an earthquake in Chile you know". I was impressed - who knew that little ones pick up on stuff like world news? Anyway, the conversation continued...

"Want to know what an earthquake is? An earthquake is when the earth has a quake. A quake is a big ball that rolls in the earth, and bumps into Africa. Africa bumps into the rest of the world, and that is a quake. The whole world shakes."

I LOVE that. A quake starts out as a ball that shakes the world. I need to revert back to my four-year-old mind more often; what a fun and different way to think of the world!

Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.

Ever have one of those days? The kind of day where nothing seems to be going your way? A day when the T is running late, work is stressful, library books are overdue, the gym is jam-packed, the kitchen is a mess, and you realize: it's only Monday???

I had a day like that.

Don't get me wrong; I love my job. I usually love my life. But today - oh, today. Today is now approaching...over. Thank goodness. 

To make myself feel better, I first cooked up a little homemade granola. There was something so comforting about making a quick, healthy breakfast treat that will last me throughout the week. Recipe here.

Delicious and nutritious! I can feel the good vibes coming my way already :)

Then, I remembered I needed to share a not-so-nutritious recipe from yesterday (as always, thanks, Bakerella!).

Ugh. Just try it.

THEN, I got ready for bed niiice and early so I could hop into my marshmallow cloud bed asap. It really is that comfy.

And finally, I submitted this photo to cuteoverload.

Come on. This pup even makes snow look cute.

(Photo courtesy of the McDermott clan)

Sweet dreams and happy thoughts!

French onion soup

Yum, yum, yummy! This weekend Mike made french onion soup, and I got to be the photographer - nice little reversal of roles. I am proud to say that we didn't really follow any recipe, we (mostly Mike) made things up as we went.

My personal chef!

Start out with a LOT of onions (2lbs)

Carmelize.

Add broth & spices - we used salt&pepper, cinnamon, fresh rosemary. Simmer.

Make some easy homemade bread.

Assemble your toppers.

Stick it under the broiler.

Devour.

Reason #62 why I love my job

My kids LOVE to play restaurant. Most days, I overhear them in pretend saying, "I am Chef Gusteau! Two pancakes, coming right up!" Any sort of toy, block, piece of paper becomes a slice of pizza to serve. They always ask for a pad of paper to write down orders. So, Ali and I decided to help them open their own restaurant! On Monday, we took a little walk around the neighborhood to check out the restaurants in our area. We got to brainstorming and decided on a pizza restaurant. We made a menu:

Assigned roles:

-Host and hostess

-Food waiter/waitress

-Drink waiter

-Prep chef

-Cooking chef

-Table cleaner-upper

-Floor cleaner-upper

(we had to get creative to give each kid a job!)

My two little chefs helped me with our pizzas, one cheese, one veggie/pepperoni

Unfortunately my camera battery died right after this photo was taken, but I can assure the pizzas were delicious when they came out of the oven.

One of my kids suggested that everyone dress up for the restaurant. As a result, Fred* showed up in a three-piece suit. WITH A TIE. It was possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.

We invited another class into our restaurant, Little Miss Sunshine* handled all the orders, and it was a smashing success. We may turn this into a business!

Reason #62A: The other day I turned around and found this on our whiteboard:

"March"! Written by a four-year-old! By himself!

My kids are so smart :)

Spring has sprung! (for now)

The weather this weekend has been a-maz-ing. Yesterday Mike and I spent the afternoon puttering around Boston - took a little eating tour of the South End, people-watched in the public gardens, pretended we could afford the gorgeous townhouses of Back Bay. We started off the day at Gaslight, and as promised, I ordered the caramelized banana crepes with almond paste. Deeeelish! Mike stuck with the onion soup.

(camera phone pic, unfortch)

We wandered around the South End, stopping for chocolate chip coconut macaroons at Flour, a tour of the Berkeley Community Gardens (I want in!), and some wine and cheese for dinner at the South End Formaggio. It was such a gorgeous day that we decided to head over to the Public Gardens, along with everyone else in Boston.

In the half hour we were there, we saw 2 dogs wearing shoes, roughly 500 adorable babies, 50 squirrels, and one doggy stroller. It was the kind of day that makes me want to own and walk a dog like this one:

Oh please oh please oh pleeease!

Busy Bee!

It has been a whole WEEK since I've posted! Between busy days at school, a work party, and a quick trip to Raleigh, I feel like I haven't had a second to breathe! But I do have lots of things to update on.

First things first...

Thursday to Friday I went to a conference in Raleigh, NC with my fellow teacher, Kate. The conference was about green and natural play and living within urban environments. It was really interesting and I learned a lot, especially about the importance of making nature and green spaces accessible to everyone. One of the speakers showed us examples of European cities that are trying to reduce their ecological footprint and go entirely "green". It convinced me that I need to live in Copenhagen - 40% of the population rides their bike to work! 

 Though the conference was fun, I honestly had more fun exploring the children's museum where the it was held - Marbles!

There was a farming section:

"Under the sea"

AWESOME oversized Legos that my kids would love:

And an adorable book nook where we discovered this little porker doing some light reading:

 

 

Hellooo, cuteness! I want my walls to look like this!

It was nice to get out of Boston for a day or so, and I think we brought the sunshine and warm weather back with us...!

Rainbow Cupcakes

I teach in the Rainbow Room at school, so when I saw these rainbow cupcakes in the latest issue of Family Fun (yes, I am a subscriber) I knew I had to make them. They came out beautifully but took a lot of effort. First, make cupcake batter and seperate into six bowls.

Color each bowl with food coloring:

Purple: 9 drops red, 6 blue

Blue: 12 drops blue

Green: 12 drops green

Yellow: 12 drops yellow

Orange: 12 drops yellow, 4 red

Red: 18 drops red

Starting with purple, spread a small amount of batter in each cupcake liner. Spread each color so that it covers the color underneath it.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove cupcake liners.

Beauuutiful!

Top with a buttercream "cloud"

 Enjoy!