Strawberry Salad Dressing

Here comes one of the greatest inventions of my life.  I think I am a bit too prideful about it, actually.  I might even dare to call it phenomenal:

Strawberry Salad Dressing

¾ cup sugar

½ tsp. salt

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1 cup vegetable oil

8 strawberries, stems removed

Purée strawberries in food processor or blender.  Add remaining ingredients and blend (blending helps incorporate the oil and makes dressing a little creamier).  Serve over a delicious bed of greens and other salad trimmings (I like berries, nuts, cheese, bacon, chicken, other fruits, etc.).

This may look vaguely familiar to anyone that already has "my" poppy seed dressing recipe.  Many people have told me that recipe has changed their lives.  It has certainly changed mine (thanks to my cousin Lindsay, I believe)!  So yes, the strawberry dressing invention happened when I ran out of poppy seeds and started experimenting.  One of those happy accidents.  I will include the original salad recipe here for any of you who don't have it!  This salad has definiely kept me up at nights (in a good way).  Sorry, I can't get it to not double space:  

Spinach and Swiss Salad

2 bags (10 oz) baby spinach (or 1 bag Romaine lettuce)

½ red onion, finely chopped

½ cup sliced mushrooms

¾ cup grated Swiss cheese

½ lb. bacon, cooked and crumbled

Dressing:

¾ cup sugar

1 tsp. dry mustard

½ tsp. salt

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1 cup vegetable oil

½ Tbsp poppy seeds 

Morning Funnies

1. After Ben and I finished our scripture reading over breakfast, Henry asked, "Now can I read MY scriptures?"  What are we going to say to that?  He has been doing this for several weeks now, and it's so precious, and this morning I had the sense to capture it on video.  Here you go:

Scripture Reading from Jenn and Ben on Vimeo.

2. Ellis woke up around 10:15am.  I kept waiting and waiting for him to wake up, and it just never happened!  He has a bit of a cold, so I guess he really needed the rest.  When I finally went to get him, I unwrapped him and found this:

Two legs in one hole!  This is what happens when I am called out of a deep sleep at 2:00am and asked to change a diaper.  Can this really be safe?  I often worry about Ben getting up with the baby at night because he sleep-walks, says creepy things, and pretends to stab people in his sleep.  Maybe I should not be so confident with my own night-time childcare skills!  Hmmmm.  Bad mom evidence #379.

6 Months

Are you kidding me?  How on earth did six months already pass?  Every time I turn around, this kid is bigger, stronger, and doing something new.  Rolling over?  Check.  Eating baby cereal?  Check.  Grabbing at and tipping over Mommy's lunch?  Check.  Today I hardly believed the doctor when she said Ellis is old enough for a sippy cup and can even try Cheerios soon.  No, lady, you must be mistaken.  This one is a little baby, not a big baby.  What is this?  Do life, motherhood, and children just keep spinning faster and faster until they just pass as a blur before our eyes?  SLOW DOWN, buddy!

P.S. There is an ongoing debate in our house between a) the blurry but nicely colored pictures taken with no flash on our camera, or b) the clear but washed-out pictures taken with the flash.  Really, we probably just need a better camera.  Any thoughts?  Votes?

Netflix Oops

This is the movie we ordered from Netflix (as per Jana's suggestion, based on the Agatha Christie mystery novel): 

This is the movie we got:

It came in the right envelope, just the wrong DVD.  Pretty mysterious . . . just a little different than the mystery we were planning to watch last night!  It was pretty compelling, but we didn't quite finish it.  We'll try for Christie tomorrow night.

Signs of Spring

One thing's for sure: when spring gets here, I'm going to be ready!  We had one precious day last week that reached 60 degrees.  I was sure spring was on its way . . . but I didn't want to take any chances.  I promptly got my boys ready and took them outside for a nature walk.  As we walked, I told Henry we were on a mission to find "signs of spring."  I was just sure we were going to discover all sorts of little buds and blossoms, if not tacky Easter decorations that we could call "signs of spring."  Unfortunately, I was wrong altogether!  We actually did see one tree with a few early buds growing and probably about twenty total blades of green grass (or were those moss-covered blades of yellow grass?), but that's about it.  We saw more "signs of Christmas" than anything else (I think I counted 30 Christmas wreaths!  THIRTY!).  

Henry kept asking, "Mommy, what are those signs you were talking about?"  He is really into road signs right now and constantly points out, "I saw a no U-turn sign!,"  "I saw a 'do not enter' sign!," and my favorite: "I saw a John Deere sign!" (a deer crossing sign).  So I took about five minutes of our walk trying to explain that some signs are not actually big pictures stuck on poles sticking out of the ground, but some signs can just be symbols of something great, like spring, and those signs are little things like leaves growing, birds chirping, and people rolling their car windows down.  Unfortunately, this explanation didn't make any sense to a 3 year-old (it probably didn't make sense to you either), and Mother Nature didn't feel like helping me out

 with any concrete examples.  We gave up on looking for signs of spring and decided it would be lots more fun to name the make and model of EVERY vehicle we walked past ("Toyota" is no longer an acceptable answer.  "Toyota what?").  

Alas, I was probably jumping the gun by getting a little hopeful about spring.  Perhaps there were no signs of spring because it ISN'T spring yet, a fact of which I was reminded when yet another giant snowstorm hit (pictured above) just a few days later.  So folks, if you're hoping to find signs of spring in the first week of March, you'd better look somewhere other than Boston, MA.  Do I dare start hoping for April?

Mahna Mahna

My birth-month has officially extended into March!  I got this fabulous custom-designed T-shirt in the mail yesterday.  If you can't remember what on earth "Mahna Mahna" is, watch this video.  You will quickly be reminded!  Once again, I have the coolest brothers on the planet.  Thanks, Brady and Tanner!