Leading the Double Life: recipes

Recipe Alert! Turkey Taco Bowl

I LOVE being in the kitchen. For less than an hour. Because then I go insane. Mostly from tripping over baby dolls and fake kitchen utensils that the girls carry in and throw all over the floor as I try to cook.

So when I come across an idea for a quick and easy dinner recipe, I’m ON IT LIKE WHITE ON RICE.

I’ve been reading about these taco bowls everywhere lately. So I pulled a little bit from here and a little bit from there and I came up with a really quick and easy (and reheatable!) version of this Pinterest sensation! I hope that you enjoy it as much as we did!

Happy Monday, friends!

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2:03 PM
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NOM NOM: RECIPE ALERT! (Don't forget the giveaway!)

10 months

When Hershey and I get home from school, it's about 4:00 and it is on like Donkey Kong. Jane and Emma are done with their naps for the day, and ready to play with Mama and Daddy. But by 4:45, they just want to chow down.

For the past few weeks, we have been waiting to eat until after they go to bed, which means we were eating at around 8:00 every night, and then going to bed at 9:30. That's just NO GOOD. It's no good for our waistlines, and no good for avoiding heartburn and getting a full night of restful sleep now that the babies are pretty much sleeping through the night.

When I shop, I often find myself drawn to chicken thighs. I have a chicken teriyaki recipe that I've been using for years that uses chicken thighs, and they are so versatile, so I buy them often. And the best part is that they are SO SUPER CHEAP and have equal parts light and dark meat. I mean, they are a pain in the butt to clean if you plan to strip them of all of the fat, but I learned long ago to just let the fat lie, as it adds an extra layer of nomminess to the dish.

But I was sick of teriyaki.

So I found this recipe on Pinterest, and it was SO EASY. I used skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs, but I stripped the skin and most of the fat from the thighs. I put brown rice in my awesome rice cooker while we gave the girls their bedtime bottles, and sauteed some sliced up onions and red peppers (I sautee them in canola oil, put some s&p once they get a lil crispy, and then toss in about 1/4 cup of white wine and let it all cook down). I threw all of it together on a plate, and the whole dish took 20 minutes. We ate before 8:00, and I had enough to bring to work with me for lunch the next day.

This is an extra great recipe because I now know that I can make it as the girls are having some Cheerios or Puffs before dinner, and then we can eat WITH the girls at 5:00, which is well worth it because once we put the girls to bed, I can just SIT DOWN for the rest of the night. This is key, because the 3 hours between when we get home and when the twincesses go to bed are CRAYYYY!

Additionally, I've been trying to do some different things for Jane and Emma in the food world, since they are chewing now. It's super easy to just take the ingredients of whatever I am making for us for dinner and throw them together into a dish and bake them in the oven. I also keep sweet potatoes and zucchini on hand at all time. Here's why:

The girls LOOVE sweet potatoes, and they mix with almost anything, or they can even eat them alone. I wrap them in tin foil and bake them in the oven on 350 for about an hour or so. Then I slice them open, peel the skins off of them, and mix a bunch of cinnamon in. I mash them up with a fork, and they LOVE them!

Zucchini is another fave of Jane and Emma, and it mixes with everything and gets them some greens. The taste is so light, I can literally put them with anything and the girls will eat them. Sometimes I even just mix them with some cheddar cheese and toss them with the sweet potato for a hearty, easy meal for them. I put the zucchini into little 2 oz OXO containers and freeze them, so that I can just pop one out and mix it with whatever the girls are eating. It's such a great way to get them their balanced meals!

Side note: I took one of the thighs from the package from the other night and baked it in the oven, and then mixed it with some sweet potato and shredded cheddar cheese. I cut the chicken up really small, and served it to them chunky. They initially made a funny face because of the texture, but once they got the hang of chewing it, they loved it!

Another really fun thing that we do now is have scrambled eggs together for breakfast on the weekends. At 8:00 I pop Jane and Emma in their chairs and give them some Cheerios, and they watch as I scramble eggs. I mix the eggs with some cheese and sometimes a peeled, seeded tomato, and they have a ball feeding themselves and watching me eat with them! It's such a fun weekend tradition that we have made!

Listen, there are only a few hours left to enter the giveaway! I'll be announcing winners tomorrow, so keep a lookout!

I hope that these recipes help you to simplify your life. Please keep an eye on my Pinterest page for more recipes like this one, as I am a TOTAL foodie, I love to cook, and I'm always looking for the path of least resistance for making family dinners fun and delicious.

Happy Humpday! xoxo

7:54 PM
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Tossing My Cookies

christmas

I remember as a kid my mom spent countless hours in the kitchen in the weeks before the holidays baking cookies. If there was a party, I was at it with a beautiful tray of Mom's homemade cookies. The kitchen would be covered in cookies. Sugar cookies, spritz cookies, meringue cookies, you name it - she made it! Kenny Rogers and Bing Crosby would go round and round on the record player, and Little Lisa would slowly go insane baking cookie after cookie.

In the years after I moved out, I slowly took over the cookie baking. First, my aunt in Texas handed her gingerbread recipe down to me. Then, I started making sugar cookies because Hershey loved them. Finally, when Stella D'oro stopped making pfefferneuse, I hunted down a recipe and started baking those, too, because they are my mom's favorite and I didn't want her to be disappointed. I started to understand my mother's insanity in getting a cookie and a tray to look JUST RIGHT.

The year Hershey bought me my KitchenAid mixer was one for the books. For years, I had either mixed the cookies by hand, or went to my mother's house to take over her kitchen for a night, where I would be there until 2 a.m. losing my marbles rolling gingerbread dough. But that year, I got to make everything right in my apartment. And it was AMAZING! Until it was time to leave.

I had meticulously baked and packaged about 7 trays of cookies. Hershey stood by the door with 4 trays in his hands, waiting for me to gather up the rest. I picked up the first tray and WHAM! - dropped it right on the floor. And immediately started sobbing. On Christmas.

Since then, I have slowly gotten OUT of cookie baking. Space restrictions, electric ovens, and pregnancy have taken all of the gusto out of me. This year, I swore it would be different. I wanted Jane and Emma to have the same warm memories of Christmas as I had, of mom baking delicious smelling cookies while singing Christmas carols ad nauseum in the kitchen.

I have been collecting Christmas baking goods for WEEKS. Red and green chocolate chips, Christmas themed cupcake decor, rolled oats and dried cranberries. I was going to bake my little heart out.

Yes, this outfit really happened.

Saturday was the annual holiday party at our friends' house. I promised cookies. I was going to do it this year! I dragged out the box of cookie trays, bought 2 dozen eggs, checked my sugar stock, and got to work. At the suggestion of a fellow mommy blogger, I bought some packaged snickerdoodle dough, figuring it would be an easy way to beef up my baking with minimal prep.

Boy, was I wrong.

Saturday morning, I strapped Emma into the Baby K'tan and got to work. I quickly realized that I had forgotten a.) butter and margarine, and b.) some of the cookies I was planning to bake had to be refrigerated for 2-4 hours. I spent 10 minutes rolling snickerdoodle dough in cinnamon sugar. When I put them in the oven to bake, I saw that I had rolled half of them into 1 1/2" balls, and the other half in 1 tspn balls. I burned half of the cookies trying to get the other half to bake. *F.M.L.*

A baby's eye view.

I then decided that I would just bake cupcakes, since those are usually my signature dessert, anyway. I got them all ready and into the oven, and then Jane woke up from her nap. In the process of changing Jane's diaper, getting her dressed, and letting her taste a cookie for the first time, I completely forgot about the cupcakes -- and overcooked them. UGH. This was not my day.

I said a little prayer of thanks that my friends are both understanding AND forgiving, finished the cupcakes anyway, and forged ahead.

This morning, I made a list of ingredients I needed in order to properly bake my Christmas cookies. It looked like this.

MAN was I unprepared.

So I'll be spending today trying to pretty-up. I am going to go get my shaggy dog bangs trimmed, a mani/pedi, and take care of my eyebrows, which are starting to resemble this guy:

Not kidding.

Tomorrow I'll be in baking ~~hell~~ heaven. Listening to Kenny Rogers. On repeat. I've posted my aunt's gingerbread cookie recipe here. Be forewarned -- baking these is not for the weak of heart.

I'm so excited to put Jane and Emma into their little Christmas outfits and see the looks on their faces when they see all of the presents for them. They'll probably be more excited about the wrapping paper than the actual gifts, but I'm good with that. We could probably just wrap up a BH&G magazine and let them go nuts. Something about seeing their tiny, pudgy hands reaching for the colorful paper, slapping and ripping away at it, just warms my heart to the fullest. And THAT'S what the holidays are all about, aren't they?

We are visiting 3 sets of grandparents and one set of best friends this year. A LOT of traveling around, which I'm hoping will mean that the girls will be snug in their beds all night each night! I'm going to need a vacation from this vacation this year.

What are you all doing for the holidays? What are some of your favorite holiday recipes or holiday memories?

BTW, I was able to snap a few shots of Jane in the controversial onesie.

Headband was made by Sweet Caroline Crafts, who, if I haven't already said it enough, I LOVE!!!!

It's a rainy, icky day here in Jersey, and the temperature is quickly dropping. But I'm hoping for some snow! I hope that you all have a wonderful, fun and family-filled holiday!

Please don't forget to vote by clicking the images below! Thanks everyone! <3

11:56 AM
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Awesome Sauce

baby food

Holy snowfall, Santa! We got dumped on here in NJ on Saturday. And not the good get-a-free-day-off-from-school-and-play-in-the-snow kind of dumped on. The ruin-your-holiday-shopping-for-the-day kind of dumped on. And here in Bergen County, we suffer from the dreaded Blue Laws, meaning retail stores are closed on Sundays. Thanks for ruining it, Mother Nature.

At least we still got in some godparent time! They must be SO happy to come home from their honeymoon in Hawaii to this mess.

I've been talking a lot about making Jane and Emma's baby food from scratch over the past couple of months, so I figured it was time to put the puréed apple where my mouth is. The one good thing about being snowed in on the weekend is that I got to make ALL of the girls' breakfasts AND dinners for at least a week. Awwwwesooomee!

I'm not going to lie to you. In order for it to be worthwhile, you must make at least a week's worth of food in advance, and that takes a lot of time. At least an hour and a half (including clean up and if your kids leave you alone). Having 7 month old twins, the being left alone is the hard part.

But I love being in the kitchen and who can be cranky with a sous chef as cute as this?!

To start, I bought this book all about weaning your baby onto solids, and it comes with a lot of quick and easy recipes. And so far the girls have loved everything.

The most important tools that I use the most are my rice cooker, my food processor, my Magic Bullet (which was bought as a gift for me by my husband for Xmas 3 years ago so that I could make individual margaritas, go figure I now use it for baby food making), these OXO food storage containers, and a vegetable peeler. I also use a wok with a bamboo steaming insert, which works GREAT for steaming multiple veggies at a time.

I try to remember to clean as I go, because a.) my husband has made fun of me for YEARS because of what a messy cook I am, and b.) it is a bear of a job to try to clean up when space is limited. We still live in an apartment, and our kitchen is FAR from ideal, so everything gets in my way.

Below are Jane and Emma's favorite recipes so far. We are moving on to the second stage of weaning, which means socializing the girls (aka family dinners!). Yesterday morning Jane and Emma sat at the table and had their apple sauce while Mama and Daddy had their breakfast. The looks on their little faces when they first realized that they were sitting at the big girl table and eating at the same time as us was PRICELESS!!!!!

Apple and Pear with Cinnamon

2 medium apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
2 medium pears, peeled, cored, and chopped
1/4 cup unsweetened apple juice or water
Generous pinch of ground cinnamon (optional, but DO IT!)

Put the fruit into a saucepan together with the apple juice or water (I use filtered H2O) and cinnamon (if using, which YOU ARE), cover, cook over low heat for 6 minutes (or until the kids start screaming). Blend the fruit to a smooth puree (I use the Magic Bullet for this).

Start this recipe at 6 months. Makes 4 portions. Suitable for freezing.

Potato, Carrot, and Corn

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium potatoes (8 ounces), peeled and chopped
1 cup water
1/3 cup canned or frozen corn kernels
1 to 2 tablespoons of your baby's milk/formula

Melt the butter in a pan and saute the onion for 1 minute. Add the carrots and saute for 5 minutes. Add the potatoes, cover with the water, and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes. Add the corn and continue to cook for 5 minutes. Puree through a food mill and stir in the milk to make the right consistency for your baby.

Start this recipe at 6-7 months. Makes 3 portions. Suitable for freezing.

I have to say, Jane and Emma were PRETTY patient while I busted my ass in the kitchen all morning. They are getting quite independent! *tear*

I hope that your weekend did not get snowed out and that you were able to enjoy the holiday season which is now in full swing! We finally got our tree up AND Hershey hung our icicle lights. It's finally beginning to look a lot like Xmas around here!

Have a great week! xoxo

P.S. Janey says, "PLEASE VOTE FOR US!"