Recipes: Sweet potato lentil soup and pumpkin scones

Heya…

In my last post, I wrote about some delicious lentil soup and also some pumpkin scones.  And whatdya know? Some of you want the recipe.  Ask, and you shall receive!

Since I didn’t anticipate blogging much about either, I only have this photo:

Sweet potato lentil soup:
Ingredients:

• 1 red onion, diced
• 1 large white yam, cubed
• 2 green peppers (optional, but good)
• About 1+ cup cut up carrots (real carrots, not baby carrots)
• 4 cups veggie broth (chicken broth okay too)
• 1 package TJ’s pre-made lentils
• Spices (approx): garlic salt to taste, black ground pepper to taste, ½ tbsp of cumin, ½ tbsp of turmeric

Directions:
In large pot, heat up about 1-2 tbsp olive oil.  Begin browning onions.  Add in cut up carrots and diced yam, cover on medium heat (to steam / soften yam and carrots) for about 5 minutes.  Add veggie broth and peppers and spices.  Bring to boil.  Let simmer for about 30 min.  Add lentils.  Continue on low heat until you feel like eating. 

This is a fast and easy recipe and extremely low cal.  It makes about 4-6 larger servings.  Calories are approximately 300-450 per serving (depending how you divvy it up).

Oh and it’s baby approved.  I pureed it a bit and Bean loved it.

Pumpkin Scones:
Recipe is actually my own — click here to see the first time I made them.
Ingredients/Directions:

In one large bowl Combine:

• 1.5  cups Trader Joes pumpkin pancake mix
• 1 heaping cup old-fashioned oats
• 1cup  flour (any kind — I used AP flour this time)
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Dashes of pumpkin pie spice (as you wish!) (I used a heaping tbsp)
• 3/4 cup coconut milk (I used stevia sweetened vanilla coconut milk)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil

Mix together well.  The dough will be crumbly and not overly moist.  Feel free to dig in with your hands to integrate the dry with wet ingredients.

Divide dough (eyeball it) into 9-12 chunks.  Mold into triangular or circular  pieces with your fingers.  Place on ungreased cookie sheet.  I made 12 ~2+” circular scones.

Bake in a preheated oven at 375* for ~14 min until bottom turns golden brown.

Serve warm with a little butter (or PB, or pumpkin butter).

Enjoy!

Bean’s Baptism and Baked Goods

…because those things go together right?

I just got back from an awesome, much needed Spin class.  Why much needed?  Well it may have to do with some dark chocolate covered raisins dipped in PB straight from the jar that I had last night.  Oye, fat kid moment.

It’s been sort of a fat kid week.  Over last weekend, we had a lot of family in town for Bean’s Baptism and I definitely ate more than my fair share.  I’m pretty sure my stomach is twice the size and needs a little shrinkage so I can eat normal people portion’s.

Zach and I decided several months ago that we would baptize Bean.  It was just a matter of where and when.  We are not overly religious nor do we belong to a church.  After some deliberation, we discovered we could baptize Bean at Stanford Memorial Church:

 

Since Stanford is where Zach and I met, it felt like it had sweet sentiment.

We were so fortunate to have so many people partake in this moment.  My Mom and Greg (Obbie and Grandpa G) came in last Tuesday night and babysat on Wed and Thurs for Bean.  My Dad (Grandpa) arrived Thursday evening and got some 1-on-1 time with our big boy, who has changed quite a bit since he last saw him in January.  My in-laws (Cookie and Poppy) arrived Friday afternoon.  By then we were getting a pretty full house.  My bestie (one of the Godmothers) arrived Friday night and Carly (SIL, and the other Godmother (yes we have two Godmothers)) arrived Saturday afternoon.  It was chaos; it was loud; it was festive; it was exhausting; and it was wonderful.

Luckily Bean doesn’t have an anxiety around new people, and despite his cold/runny nose and his first tooth, he had nothing but smiles for everyone.

Rather than have a fancy dinner out pre/post Baptism, we chose to do a picnic at Cuesta Park in Mountain View — 70* and sunny.  Perfect.  We ordered sandwiches from one of our favorite cafes and brought along plenty of other snacks and baked goods.  And we also may have brought some wine/beer

 

Below are some pics of the Baptism day, which went off without a hitch.  Bean thought he should sing and dance with the choir and talk during the sermons, which was highly amusing.  The priest that baptized Bean definitely drenched his head and slathered his head in oil — he even spiked his hair at the end.   The ceremony had a wonderful vibe and we were so happy with how everything turned out.  Below are a few pics of the day:

 

 

 

 

Okay, now on to the goods.  Baked goods.  I made three different items — all delicious.  All highly recommended.

First up, Pumpkin Oat Bread and Candy Corn M&M Cookies:

 

I used this recipe for the Pumpkin Bread.  It is quite possibly one of the best breads I’ve ever made and eaten.  Since I made 4 mini-loafs, I baked for about 45 minutes.  Oh and totally Bean approved

And I used this recipe for the Candy Corn M&M Cookies.  They had such a sweet sugar-cookie like flavor — the almond extract really made these cookies. I will most certainly be making variations of these come Christmas time.

And for the celebratory Baptism dessert, I made this Maple Pecan Cake:

 

The bestie and I made this a few years ago for a Friendsgiving and it blew our mind.  You can find the Cooking Light recipe for it here.  Oh and you can also use the leftover (if there is any) maple frosting to coat a slice of pumpkin bread.

So there you have it.  A weekend that was pretty darn perfect: family, friends, good eats, vino, sunny days, a special occasion, delicious treats, and a lot of laughs and love.

Since I seem to be on a baking spree, let me know if you’ve tried any new (Fall) recipes that are worth baking!

Real Housewives of Menlo Park?

Hi friends

Do Sundays make anyone else feel extremely anxious?  Despite getting my nails done today and going for a 1hr and 45 min hike, I feel frazzled.  I think it’s because I didn’t get done what I wanted today.  Argh.

You’re probably wondering what my title is about huh?  No I’m  not a RH of the Silicon Valley, though that would be highly amusing.  I went to my first Dailey Method class on Friday, which took place in Menlo Park.  My immediate thought was holy crap, I’m in a room full of women whom all could be on Real Housewives of Menlo Park.  They were all somewhere between 30-55ish, quite beautiful, had some works done (well done, I must say), were fit beyond belief and sporting Lululemon like it was the uniform.  Oh and they obviously didn’t work or happened to have the day off.

But perhaps you want to know about the class huh?  It was great!  I definitely worked all my muscle groups to the point of fatigue and even some cramping on the pulse movements.  It was pretty intense, though it didn’t feel too hard at the time.  My triceps have been burning all weekend.

I’d love to go more often, but at $20 a pop, I can’t say it’s quite worth that much.  I’d probably go a handful of times per year though.  I’ll stick to Spin as my main class-style exercise for now (which I did Saturday)

After running baby-related errands on Saturday, Zach and I went to a new(er) restaurant in Mountain View for dinner: Barracuda.  We started with some beverages:

One of those isn’t mine

And ordered some apps of spicy edamame and crunchy sweet peas (not pictured):

Zach ordered a trio of items that also came with a salad and miso soup.  I think there was some pork dish, chicken teriyaki and of course sashimi.

I went with a vegetable fantasy roll with mango salsa and unari (rice filled tofu skin).

Everything was so so good!  I will definitely be returning here — in fact when my Mom is out in a few weeks, I may just have to take her with me!

As long as we’re talking about food, might as well share what I baked per Facebook request:

Um yeah, those would be peanut butter chocolate bars with mini Reeses PB cups on top, based off this recipe.  Since I’m still keeping my sugar in check, I had a small square to make sure they were share-worthy and immediately packed them all up for my and Zach’s coworkers.  Out of sight out of mind…I hope!

Alright, time to unwind with some vino and Olympics!

Ever felt like you were in the Real Housewives of…?

Favorite vegetarian sushi item?