acorn squash stuff with quinoa

in anticipation of our unprocessed october, i got started a little ahead of schedule. my girls had a slumber party at nana's house saturday night, so M and i had dinner with just the two of us at home. we had an acorn squash arrive with our weekly bin and i planned our meal around it.

to accompany a skillet cooked steak and bright green salad, i made the recipe below which looks a lot like this image, but like a fool i didn't think to take a photo of my pretty dish.

photo credit cookingiwthmykid.com

roasted acorn squash stuff with quinoa

ingredients: 1 acorn squash, 1/2 cup quinoa, 1 cup of water plus more for roasting, 4 roma tomatoes seeded and chopped, 1 small cucumber sliced thinly and chopped, 1/3 of a large red onion diced, 1/4 cup of feta cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper. serves 2

1. pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. scrub, halve and seed the squash. place face down in a rimmed baker (i used a pyrex 13x9 pan) with about 1/4 inch of water. bake until cooked through, about 45 minutes.

2. saute the onion with a little olive oil until just soft. add quinoa and stir through quickly to toast. add water, bring to a boil, reduce heat and cooked with the cover on until quinoa is done. about 15-20 minutes.

3. after quinoa has cooled slightly, mix in tomatoes, cucumber and feta. adjust seasoning to taste.

4. place cooked squash face up, scoop the quinoa mixture into the squash and serve.

this would have been even better if i had remembered to add fresh parsley to the mixture and some on top, but i forgot. oh well. it still tasted awesome.

unprocessed in october

the blog eating rules is hosting "october unprocessed" next month. our family has been toying with the idea of eating only real (whole or without added preservative ingredients) since i did the 5 day detox earlier this month.

october 1st seems as good a time as any to make the switch. however, when i went to make our grocery list for the upcoming week, i realized that we had all kinds of stuff on the list that wouldn't work. specifically, ketchup.

so, yesterday, i made ketchup. and of course, V flatly refused to eat it. but, i have to imagine that at some point if she really wants ketchup she'll give in and hopefully like it. i was missing a couple ingredients, but it turned out ok nonetheless.

this morning, after our trip to the market, we made apple butter. M has never had apple butter which i find to be a bit sad. we're all ready to change that.

do you have any processed foods that you'd like to learn how to make?

until i met M, i didn't actually know that you could make salad dressing. i assumed it was terribly complicated which is why it came in a bottle. here's my favorite go to salad dressing:

1/4-1/3 cup of red wine vinegar
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp diced onion (optional)
salt and pepper
about 3/4 cup to 2/3 cup olive oil

1. whisk all the ingredients except the oil together
2. slowly add the oil, whisking the whole time until thoroughly mixed

a fun/not so fun 5k

yesterday, i walked the step up for stephanie 5k with a team of 8 people. M ran and took 5th place and the rest of our team were colleagues and/or kids who wanted to share the experience. overall it was really fun (with some rough patches).

our team

V convinced me that she wanted to run the whole way. wanting to encourage her excitement and in the spirit of positive thinking, i agreed. she totally had a ball! except she totally pooped out less than a mile into the walk. (at this point, i should note that this is the first 5k that i've ever ever run. ever. primarily to keep up with my child and not lose her in the crowd of thousands.)

when V expressed her absolute need to ride in the stroller, i stepped off to the side fulling intending to pull N into the carrier, strap her onto my back and keep going.

nope.

i ended up with two complete strangers helping me and my co-workers realizing i had stepped off coming back to help. i needed it. we made it about another mile before N's crying made me feel so bad for the other racers that i stopped again to try to put her in the carrier in front of me.

worse.

now she cried, no wailed, like i was pinching her. for the record, i was not. "walk! walk, mommy!"

at this point, one co-worker is pushing another co-worker's stroller, who is is pushing V in our stroller and i am walking a two year old in a 5k race. i am embarrassed at the poor form. at this point, M finds us, relieves us of N and we finish the last mile and a half very pleasantly ultimately finishing in an hour. which, frankly with all the stopping, starting, running, chasing and tears seems like quite a victory.

N rounded out the morning with a visit to a giant cow. sometimes, my life seems a little surreal.

am/pm practice

monday afternoon, i remember that i had signed up to do a 21 day yoga challenge through yoga journal. when i first read about it in the magazine, the page hadn't been updated yet and kept telling me that the program ended last december. eventually, it updated and i somehow signed up.

but i didn't get the first workout until around 3pm. too late for me to practice. so, i thought, oh, i'll just do all the workouts one day behind. no problem! however, at 5:30am the next morning when it failed to load after repeated attempts (and my technology solving skills are not the best at that time of day) i gave up and did a random dvd from the shelf.

and then i realized that we had on-site fitness that evening. i started my day with a fairly vigorous practice and ended with a more relaxing practice. we have an instructor who just received her certification and i really liked how she talked us into each pose and then held us there.

i find that holding a pose for longer breaths takes my focus somewhere different. i'm not trying to keep up, i'm trying to finesse my form. and it's exhausting! chair pose for 8 breaths is some serious business.

i actually set my alarm to get up this morning, but i felt kind of sore and rather than push it to try for a video that won't load, i chose to rest.

rested.

detox basics

mind body green posted an article about detox basics that i really wish i would have read last week before i created my own 5 day detox plan.

The author offers 5 tips for choosing a detox plan that's right for you:

1. There must be a food plan! 

Supplements alone aren't enough. 

2. What should you eat? 

Load up on organic greens like kale, cruciferous veggies such as broccoli and cabbages, and antioxidants from deeply colored fruits and veggies. These nutrients support enzymes in the liver that process and remove toxins.  

3. Don't forget the protein! 

While juicing is great, your liver also needs amino acids, which you get from eating protein. Plant-based protein sources like beans, nuts, and seeds are just as healthy as chicken and fish, which are also good.  

4. Which foods should you avoid? 

Stay away from foods that stress your liver. This means avoiding processed sugar, gluten, corn, alcohol, caffeine, and saturated animal fat from dairy and red meat.  

5. Add some liver-boosting supplements to your food plan and you will really get the detox engine going. 

Include antioxidants, B vitamins, herbs like milk thistle, and amino acids like glycine. (You can also get this as part of a liver support protein shake.) 

to read the full article, click here.

yoga tuesday: relaxing the shoulders

V, my older daughter, at times, struggles to figure out ways to calm herself down in the face of whatever it is (usually not getting what she wants). each evening, we take deep breaths together and recently we started connecting motion with our breath. we take 5 deep breaths in and 5 deep breaths out. we breath in when our arms go up and out as our arms come back to our sides. for the last one, we bring our hands to pray position before hopping into bed for books.

this is great for evening, but i wondered if the yoga instructor for the class i attended tonight had any suggestions. she has a little girl who will be 3 in a couple of months. she was very thoughtful with me and suggested doing many things that we already do- use my breath as a model, use the abc yoga deck, intersperse activity with periods of rest. she also suggested bringing her to family yoga. it might be a good way to give her more tools to put in her toolbox for when she's on her own. having the muscle memory could really help.

the only trouble is that it's offered once a month. good luck remembering when that is...

after our chat, class got started and we mainly focused on moving our shoulders away from our ears. each pose and each series of motions had a component of drawing away and back with the intention of relaxing instead of gripping or forcing.

somewhere in the middle, we did a series over and over, each of us following our own breath, moving between warrior 2, reverse warrior, triangle, side angle and back to warrior 2. it was kind of amazing. more like dancing than yoga.

i'm going to try it with V one of these days. i think she'll really like the rhythm of the flow.