Easter Fun

Another fun Easter Extravaganza at Rancho Holmes' this weekend. We started with the egg hunt. 60 plastic eggs filled with all kinds of goodies with some quarters and dollars thrown in. Each kid gets assigned their own number and they're off!

Daniel making good progress:

Collin quickly movin to the next hidey-hole:

A lot of the eggs were in obvious places. Athena, you are getting warmer, warmer....oh you are hot!

The kids kept walking past eggs that were hidden in plain sight so Mr. H jumped in with some clues:

The boys with Grandma Lucy and the booty:

Then it was on to the treasure hunt to find the baskets. I made a treasure map with clues to find the hidden eggs. Each of the 6 eggs had a letter inside. Once they found the 6 eggs and the letters they had to unscramble them for the word that would send them to the baskets.

The map is a drawing of the house and each written clue was on the map in the general area where the clue was hidden. They were so funny. The first clue I just drew a picture of lips (in the upper left corner). I have a big arrangement of Tulips there (get it, two lips, tulips?). They needed a little help with it so here's how it went:

Me: What is the picture?

Them: Lips

Me: How many?

Them: Two

Me: What two words did you just say?

Them: Crickets

Me: How many? Them: two. Me: What's the picture? Them: lips. Me: Put the words together.

Them: two lips. Me: Say it again. Them: two lips, two lips, TULIPS! TULIPS! FLOWERS!

Me: YEAH!!!

That got them on a roll and we ended up with the final clue. Except I froze the clue in a block of ice.

Their first thought was to put it in the sink to melt the ice.

That wasn't working so well so Tyler suggested they take it outside and smash it on the driveway.

So how'd that work out?

Oooooh, not so good. But, wait! Let's try that again...

Bingo! Mission accomplished. So now they had all six clues and the six letters. Now what I did not realize when I chose the hiding place (the shower-I needed a large space to fit all the baskets) was that there is another word that you can make out of the letters. SHOWER are the letters. So when the kids put the letters on the counter for some reason they were fixated on the word starting with WH. Here they are:

Here is a close look at the letters:

At this point they had the letters arrange as WHEROS. Both Mr. H and my Mom immediately saw a word that if you just moved the E and O around......OH NO! Stop the presses! Did you get it?? I immediately jumped in and told them IT STARTS WITH AN S!!!!! Whew....ok, so they figured out the word SHOWER and found their baskets:

On to the final event, egg coloring! Pretty Athena:

Creative Collin. He got a telescope for Christmas and has been using the planet Uranus in conversations as often as possible. So here is his egg. We ran out of room so the S is around the corner and we only had room on the front for URANU....you can see the S when you turn the egg:

And the always smiling Daniel:

It was a fabulous day and I'll finish with one last picture. Boys will be boys......magnets....nose....

Easy Grilled Chicken and Cauli-rice

Eating well is not that difficult. It just takes a bit of planning which we do on the weekends. We try to plan simpler meals for weekdays and will cook more time consuming meals on the weekends. We really like the versatility of the cauliflower rice and our shopping list usually has at least 3 heads of cauliflower. A food processor is essential and you can make a lot of cauli-rice ahead of time and just keep it in a large tupperware container in the fridge to use throughout the week.

This batch would have been enough for 2 dinners but we made it all and we got a dinner and 2 lunches out of it. I had bought a bunch of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and when I get home form the store I take a little time to trim them, pound them, and separate into 4 packs in ziplocks. Then into the freezer and thaw them as needed. Thaw them the night before and mix up a little marinade with olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh chopped garlic, shallots, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and some mustard (either dijon or a nice grainy brown). Right before I leave for work in the a.m. I throw in the marinade and it's ready to grill when I (well Mr. H is the grilling master actually) get home.

We have 2 for dinner and 2 more left over for lunches. For the cauli-rice I mixed 1/2 cup chicken broth with a couple TBS of this great paella spice mix from Sprouts, chop some garlic and green onions and thaw some frozen carrots and peas. Pretty!

Saute the garlic and onion in a little olive oil. Add the veges and the cauli-rice along with the sauce.

And you have this beautiful rice:

Along with the grilled chicken it is a delicious, healthy, satisfying meal:

Things

It's spring. The rosebush is going wild. Very pretty with lots of blooms.

I saw Hop today with the grandman, nephew and Grandma Lucy. I was actually LOL'ing a few times. Fun movie!

We tried the miracle noodles yesterday with some of Mr. H's fabulous chunky meat sauce. I have to say I was under-impressed. The texture is just too weird. I am going to try Dreamfield's pasta next. Also going to try zucchini noodles. We'll see. I'll post comparisons.

We downloaded a series from Netflix called Harper's Island. Good reviews which caught my eye. A lot of murder/mystery cliches but after watching a couple episodes we were hooked. WHO IS THE KILLER?????

Oh, It's Easter!

Yes folks it's Easter time! A favorite Holiday at Rancho Holmes'. Baskets and treasure hunts and egg coloring and hiding plastic filled eggs! The growing stash of goodies:

Oh boy, can't wait!

Things

It was our daughters birthday this week and her friend at work made her these amazing cupcakes:

They are so pretty and the petals are mini marshmallows cut in half and sprinkled with colored sugar crystals. Wow.

I ordered some Miracle Noodles from amazon.com. I plan to have them this weekend with a big pot of chunky tomato sauce. We have not had spaghetti since January when we went primal. Jonesin' for some spaghetti! I'll let you know how they turn out. Mostly positive reviews but a few negative ones. We'll see. I'm also going to make some Lo Mein with them. Yum! They contain zero net carbohydrates and zero calories, no gluten -made of a healthy natural fiber called Glucomannan. It comes from the Konjac root. I'll post the results.

And last but not least.....I am the eggman, I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob:

 C'mon? Don't you see the resemblance?

That's my bro and sis-n-law's puppy Chloe the Mastiff. (the top picture) Ain't she pretty?

Brownies (No Sugar, No Flour or No Harm, No Foul)

Another, I think, lower carb success. I used Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa and they came out a rich, dark, almost black color with a nice dark chocolate tang. But any cocoa will do.

Preheat oven to 350 and generously butter a 13 x 9 x 2 pan.

So for the flour substitute I used a combo of 1 cup walnut meal (I ground the walnuts myself in a food processor) and since it comes out a little coarse I also added 3/4 cup almond meal. Sprouts has almond meal in their bins and it has a much softer texture closer to flour. Then added 3/4 cup of the Hershey's Dark Cocoa, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp kosher salt for the dry ingredients.

Yes I am a messy cook, move along, nothing to see here....

In a small bowl whisk 2 room temp eggs, then add 1 cup room temp coconut milk, 1/2 cup honey and whisk again.

 Mmmmmm.....honey.....

Add 2 tsp vanilla extract and 1/3 cup melted coconut oil and mix well. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and make sure you mix well so all the dry ingredients are blended. At this point you can either gently fold in some chopped walnuts or just sprinkle some on top once the batter is poured in the pan or skip the nuts if you don't like them in your brownies (I like lots of nuts in my brownies but to each his own-I sprinkled nuts on half and they all sunk in just as if I had folded them in).

Bake for 35-40 minutes and voila:

Cool completely before cutting. They are a lighter cake-like brownie but very delish. And you are cutting out a couple cups of sugar and a cup or so of flour from the traditional brownie recipes. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 cup walnut meal
3/4 cup almond meal
3/4 cup cocoa
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 large eggs room temp
1 cup coconut milk room temp
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup melted coconut oil
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Things

So I buy a lot of the reusable bags from different stores. I end up sending many of them home with people when they need a bag to tote food or stuff home or maybe need a  purse (Patty, but that's another story). I didn't really need one today while I was at Sprouts (I love that store and have one right around the corner...if you don't then you should move near one) but this strawberry one I just had to have:

I was also surprised the other day with a box in the mail from my sis-in-law Patty. I had a little camera tripod on my amazon wish list for Christmas and didn't get it. Lo and behold in the box was my cute little tripod.

Now I couldn't take a picture of it with the camera mounted on it cause well....I just couldn't. But it's really cool and you can place it or attach it anywhere:

How cool is that? It's great in the kitchen now when I am taking pictures while cooking. Before I would have to hold the camera and take the pic with one hand (that was usually covered in food) while my other hand was adding ingredients or stirring. Now I can set it up and just reach over and "snap." No more food particles all over the camera!

She also included a card thanking me for things that I do for her and my nieces. But I think she will have to abstain from sending me thank you gifts because shortly after I got it she was in an accident and I was called to pick her up. Picking her up was not a problem at all but the accident thing......well if that is what comes with a gift...I'm just sayin....

On another note I was with the Grandman the other day. He lost his first tooth!!!

There's the new one...the next one is starting to poke through.....get wiggling!

So we were driving the other day and we heard the Pink song "Pretty Pretty Please" 3 times and we were just belting it out together. Then another song came on that I can't remember but sounded like nails on a chalkboard so I switched the station.

Daniel: "Gram! Why do you want to spend so much time with me when you don't like my music?"

Gram: "But Daniel, I like a lot of your music, do I have to like every song?"

Daniel: "Well, Mommy likes ALL of my music."

How do you argue with that logic?

And when he was getting in my car he slipped and hit his you know whats and said "Awwww, I smashed my tentacles!" I love that little man: