Show Us Your Life: Side Dishes

Today I'm linking up at Kelly's Korner to share one of my favorite super simple side dishes for fall: parmesan truffle french fries. Normally, I keep side dishes pretty simple. Most nights of the week make some brown rice or frozen veggies for sides. About once a week I try to make something a bit more exciting and these truffle fries go perfectly with everything from hot dogs to filet mignon. Saturdays are the night hubby and I put the kids to bed, I cook something a little special, and we enjoy dinner just the two of us with a bottle of wine.

Enjoy!

Parmesan Truffle French Fries

 

Ingredients:

• one bag Ore Ida Shoestring Fries (I use about half the bag to serve the two of us... and we eat a lot)
• 1/2 cup parmesan cheese (preferably grated over shredded)
• white truffle oil to taste (I start with about 1 tablespoon)
• fresh parsley (optional)

 

Directions:

• Bake fries per package directions until nice and crisp.
• Remove from oven and immediately drizzle lightly with truffle oil and toss
• Add parmesan and herbs if using and toss
• Best served immediately

Happy Friday!

I am so glad it is Friday! Fridays are great days in my book. They are the one day a week that my mom doesn't work, so she usually helps out with the kids or we go to lunch. Weekends are never really days off with kids, but hubby is home so there are four hands, which makes things a lot easier.

Tonight I'm looking forward to eating this delicious looking pasta recipe I found on ValSoCal.

And drinking some of this. It's probably my favorite inexpensive sparkling wine. You can usually get it on sale at Kroger for only $9.99. And those who know me, know I have to have a bottle of sparkler in my fridge at all times... no celebration necessary for this girl!

I'll be back next week to share some pics of a fun/crazy event I'm participating in this weekend. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

The Zoo with My Little Animals!

What a day! Well, technically it's nowhere near over yet, but when you're a mom, there's BN (before nap time) and AN (after nap time). The first part is over! Everyone in the family seemed to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning... including me!

I know on days like that, the best thing to do is pack a lunch and get out. So, as soon as B woke up from her morning nap we headed to the zoo. As an aside, if you are a stay at home mom, I highly recommend having memberships to places like the zoo and the children's museum. It's really nice to be able to head out to those places on a whim and not feel required to stay all day just to get your money's worth.

Little peanut says the funniest things these days. For example, when we saw the sea lions, he kept calling them the "rawr fishies." He calls lions "rawrs". So, sadly it made complete sense to me :)

Of course, no trip to the zoo is complete without a ride on the train and a scam trip through the train gift shop (they make you walk through it to exit!).  Here's hoping for long naps.

P.S. I'm seriously considering quitting blogging again because of how terrible blogger is acting.  Everytime I add pictures, it acts so strangely and each time I move my cursor it drags the picture all over the post?!?

 

Picky Picky

People, we have a picky toddler on our hands!  I felt like I did everything right when it came to feeding Peanut, but he is full blown fussy these days.  I'm sharing because I feel like I've tried a little bit of everything to help him become a better eater and things have only gotten worse.  For example, in the last week he has refused pizza, a cheese quesadilla, and last night macaroni and cheese (!!).  Last night really clinched it for me, because he requested the macaroni.  This is not about the taste.  Most of the time he will not even touch the food once he's decided he doesn't want it.  There's no "one bite" rule in our house, because there simply is no convincing him to touch something he's decided he doesn't like. 

See?  He used to eat veggies!!

So, I'm doing a little experiment.  People say kids won't starve themselves.  They will eat when they're hungry.  Peanut has been known to defy expectations and the norm though.  When he was five months old, he went on a nursing strike.  Did I mention he also didn't like bottles?  Yeah, so that means he refused to eat. Period. For about a week, I could only get him to nurse once a day.  Usually in the middle of the night when he was quite drowsy. 

Back to the experiment.  For two days, I'm only offering foods that aren't his favorites and nothing else.  No fighting, bribery, or comments.  Just, here is your meal.  Don't want it? Fine.  I'm not getting crazy here with all spinach salads, but I'm certainly not going to offer him a plate of pancakes or he'll just stuff himself with that.  I figure he can't possibly starve himself to death in two days.  So, we shall see.  I may have aged considerably over the next two days, but I'm sticking to my guns!

Halloween

We had so much fun on Halloween this year! Peanut actually really loved trick or treating last year, but he couldn't actually say "trick or treat."  This year we practiced throughout October and read a lot of books about Halloween so when the actual night came he was so psyched.

One thing that I've looked forward to about having two children is dressing them alike (what mother doesn't love that?? ).  So for Halloween, of course they had to have coordinating costumes.  Peanut loves Curious George and likes to pretend to be a monkey so when I found a super cute monkey costume at Old Navy that was that.  What goes with a monkey you ask?  A banana of course!

We started off the day with pumpkin pancakes for breakfast.  Daddy went into work a little late so he could eat with us.  Dinner was a jack o lantern pizza and then we hit the streets with Peanut's best friend Timothy and some other friends of ours. 

He stayed up way too late and ate way too much candy, but hey, I figure its just one day!

Keeping Up and Catching Up

Well hello!  I'm not sure anyone is still reading this little blog of mine, but in honor of national blog posting month I've decided to get back on the wagon.  There have been quite a few changes around here. For one, our little family of three is now a family of FOUR!

Last year, between my pregnancy and my brother unexpectedly passing away, I sort of lost my desire to blog. My brother is a long story for another day, but I'd like to get back to documenting the kiddos and sharing thoughts and recipes.

So here goes:

We found out we were expecting baby no.2 in November, and in January found out we were having a little girl!  We were so excited!!

In April, we celebrated Phillip's second birthday with a Choo Choo themed party, which was only appropriate because he is obsessed with trains of all kinds!

 

In July, I gave birth to beautiful baby Natalie Rose Kelleher.  She was 5 lbs 15 oz and 19 inches long.  Blessedly, I was only in labor for about 18 hours, which seems mighty short compared to my 50 hour labor with P!



 

 

I'll be back again tomorrow (hopefully!) with some more updates and pictures.



18 Months!!!

I can't believe my sweet little boy is 18 months old!  Actually, he's been 18 months for about a week now, but I'm slow to be able to get on the computer these days, ha!  He had his 18 month check up yesterday, and here are the stats:

Height:  32.5 inches - 55th percentile
Weight:  21 lbs 10 oz - 5-10th percentile
Head:  18 inches - 75th percentile

We've been worried that he is not talking enough yet, but the doctor said he is doing just fine and obviously understands a lot.  For example, when she asked him if she could look at his ears, he pointed to his ears and when she asked him to stick out his tongue he did!  Haha, so proud!!  So far his words are no, hello, cheese, shoes, car, go, this, Dada, and VERY rarely Mama. 

He LOVES Elmo, reading books ('Where the Wild Things Are' and 'Corduroy' are favorites), playing outside, and pretending to cook.  His favorite foods are rice, pizza, apples, cinnamon bread, and mexican food!  He still nurses once a day at bed time. 

He was a great sleeper for several months, but lately has been really difficult.  We are hoping that this is just a passing phase!

He has a little book about pumpkins that I bought his last year at Halloween and so he knows about pumpkins and points to them everywhere we go.  It is the sweetest thing!  We took him to a pumpkin patch this last weekend and he loved it so much.  He picked out a little pumpkin to take home and he loves to carry it around and show it off.

Here are a few more pictures of our fall so far: