One Handed Eating

The books giving advice to first time moms are limitless.  Walk into any bookstore and you will find rows of books with information about how to get baby to sleep, what baby should be doing at different stages, maintaining a healthy relationship with your spouse once baby comes, the list goes on and on.  What no one tells you, however, is that you must master the art of one handed eating. This essential skill is not addressed in any book I have read.  So, my advice to anyone is once your see the plus sign, eat one handed from that day forward.  Hopefully by nine months, you will be good enough that you can actually finish a meal.

I am horrible at one handed eating.  It is a lot harder than you think.  In the past two months, I have dropped fried chicken, lettuce, and oatmeal on Evan, just to name a few things.  Once, I actually flicked a tomato seed in his face. As I attempted to eat a subway sandwich, a tomato seed fell on Evan's shoulder.  I tried to flick it off and instead I flicked it directly onto his cheek.  I know, mother of the year right here.

By now, Evan and I have a pretty good schedule going and I am able to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner while he is napping or Bill is home to entertain him.  Snacks, on the other hand, are a whole different ballgame.  Because I am breast feeding and working out, it is really important that I get enough calories every day.  Getting the right amount of healthy calories is hard and I actually have failed in this task every single day this past week.  So, I am on a mission to find healthy snacks packed with calories and goodness that I can easily eat one handed.  Enter granola bars.

{Click pictures for the recipes}

Sure, I could buy granola bars from the store.  In fact, I have done this several times.  However, most are loaded with sugar, do not seem to satisfy my hunger, and well, lets face it, cooking new things can be fun.  

I made the no bake energy bites last week. Seriously, these did not take longer than 5 minutes to make and they are so delicious.  And so easy to eat.  I can popped 3 of these in my mouth in less than one minute while holding Evan and changing out the laundry.  These things are breastfeeding mom's dream come true.  I also eat these while getting dressed to run and they seem to help keep me satisfied throughout my workout.  I am so glad I found this recipe.  Try them, you will not regret it. 

I made the chocolate chip peanut granola bars this morning.  They take a little longer than the energy bites, but not much.  Basically, you just melt the peanut butter, honey and coconut oil, add that to the dry ingredients, press in the pan and sprinkle chocolate chips on top.  I actually substituted unsalted butter for the coconut oil because the only coconut oil I could find was $11 and I am too cheap to spend that on a recipe I am not sure I will like.  Also, make sure you only use the 1/4 cup of chocolate chips.  It was so tempting not to pour the entire bag on top :).   It says that you can place the pan in the freezer or refrigerator to set.  I, of course, used the freezer method because I could not wait to try them.  In keeping with my goal to take pictures daily, here are some pictures of the process. 

Basically, you just add this: 

To this:

Add some chocolate chips, and voila, you get this:

Next time, I think I will add the chocolate chips to the dry mixture and stir them in because my chocolate chips did not seem to set very well into the granola mixture.  Other than that, these bars were delicious!  And saving the best for last, my sous chef: 

Anyone have any good recipes for easy snacks that I can eat one handed?  If so, please send them my way. 

Lazy Sundays and cooking adventures

Bill, Evan and I had a great lazy Sunday.  For starters, Evan slept for 8 1/2 hours for the fourth time in five nights, so we were well-rested and ready to take on this beautiful day.  On the to-do list was grocery shopping, leisurely running, sugar cookie decorating, and the completely random, but totally necessary trip to Sam's.  Are Bill and I the only ones who go to Sam's for no other reason but to browse and eat samples?  I hope not.  Today wasn't a great day at Sam's because despite being there during lunch time, there was not a sample to be found.  I know, right!

After returning home from shopping, I decided to go on my 2 1/2 mile easy run with no headphones, no cell phones, just me and mother nature. Well, actually just me and suburban Oklahoma with not a tree over 6 feet tall in sight, but you take what you can get.  It was such a beautiful day and people were out.  Kids flying kites, families having picnics, I saw it all during my short run through the neighborhood.  It was so nice to see people out and made me thankful that Bill and I have a great neighborhood for Evan to play in when he gets a little older.

Also, on my agenda was baking sugar cookies.  True to my completely random personality and forever changing hobbies, I have always wanted to be able to decorate a decent cookie.  I don't think by any means I am going to open a bakery anytime soon, but I am determined to figure out how to do this.  I have tried to bake cookies on several occasions.  I remember one Easter Bill and I tried to decorate cookies and ended up with about 3 dozen broken-eared bunnies who looked like they suffered through a bad kindergarten class.  Then during Christmas 2010, my friend Sharon and I embarked on a journey of beautiful Christmas trees and perfectly round red-nosed Rudolphs and ended up with a Ziploc bag full broken pieces dipped in God knows what.  It was bad.  So this time, I set out to research first.

 I started out by reading every single word on the recipe posts of this blog: Sweet Sugar Belle.  I really liked her recipes, but I think I will use vanilla extract next time instead of almond.  I wanted to use almond because it sounds so official and baker-like.  Vanilla just seemed homemade and I am on the quest for a cookie I can be proud of. One that you would think I paid good money for.  But, it turns out that I kind of like vanilla. No, I really like vanilla.  So, I think next time I am going to use almond for the cookie and vanilla in the icing.  I will let you know how it goes.

Because Bill and I are trying to get used to our new camera, we are committed to taking pictures daily.  So, sorry for the heavily loaded pics of my cookie adventures.

Evan helped:

Then he got bored.

And the final product:

Not bad for my first time.  I have about 1 1/2 dozen more clovers frozen and icing in the fridge, so I am going to practice again next weekend.  Also, I plan on tweaking the recipe and trying new recipes until we find the one that is perfect for us.  But, overall, I think my first time deserves a B+.

Bill had his own adventures going while I transformed into Betty Crocker, which included making me delicious fish tacos. 

I am now stuffed and ready to go to bed.