A Little Bit of Everything

This has been another busy and crazy week, but we've had a lot to celebrate!  

My grandmother turned 90 on Saturday.  She has dementia and lives in a memory care facility in Nashville.  I'm not sure she understood it was her birthday we were celebrating but I know she was happy to see Sophie and she was having a really good day.  And I know she has the biggest sweet tooth ever, next to mine, so she was thrilled to have a delicious birthday cake. 

We were happier than we appeared!

How lucky are we to have another photo of the four generations of Essenpreis/Corum/Powell ladies?  Here's our last four-generation photo a year ago:

Christmas 2011

Just for fun, here's a photo of my great-grandma Dena Willmann, Grandma Ruby Essenpreis, mom Jan Meyer, and me.  

We continued the celebrating on Tuesday for my mom's birthday.  I wish I had a photo to share from her birthday, but we were having too much fun to think about photos!  Happy birthday, mom! 

I haven't written much about my love of cooking on this blog, but it's one of my hobbies and I love trying new recipes and experimenting in the kitchen.  Jason, Sophie and I are all vegetarian, although we occasionally eat fish.  It surprises people to hear that Jason went veggie first, but he did.  I know one day Sophie will ask for a hot dog or a chicken nugget and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.  For now, though, she's on Team Veg.  

On Saturday and Sunday I made a couple of recipes ahead of time for this week, including parsnip and potato mash, vegetarian sloppy joes, and a veggie lasagna. 

Parsnip and Potato Mash courtesy of Skinnytaste.com

Sloppy Chicks Courtesy of keepinitkind.com

I followed the Parsnip and Potato Mash recipe pretty much exactly, but I modified the Sloppy Chicks recipe a bit.  I had extra firm tofu on hand that I needed to use sooner than later, so I drained the block and squeezed out the extra moisture before adding it to an olive oil coated pan heated to medium (5 out of 10).  I crumbled the tofu in the pan and cooked more of the moisture out, letting the tofu brown just a bit before removing and following the recipe otherwise.  I added the tofu back in before simmering the mixture.  I served the sloppy chicks with the parsnip and potato mash, and Sophie actually kind of liked it! 

I love browsing through new recipes and am always looking for friends to share their favorites.  It was great to have a couple of meals prepared in advance this week so we could enjoy our limited family time together in the evenings.  

Until next week!