Cinnamon buns are delicious

So we had the fortune of having dinner made for us on Tuesday by Aunt E. Since I am pregnant (which I have yet to announce on here but my only followers all know this so I will have another post to talk about it), I was told to eat a TON more meat and veggies. E treated us to an amazing meal of calzone-mania. We had a cheeseburger calzone and a broccoli-tomato-Alfredo calzone. Before going into the cinnamon buns, I'll tell you what was in these because you might want to try this at home.

(E bought dough for this project at our local pizza shop)

Cheeseburger calzone layers:
ketchup and mustard (mixed)
ground beef, browned and drained
pickles, sliced
onions (caramelized and diced)
tomatoes (chopped)
American cheese
ketchup and mustard (mixed and spread on top)

The veggie calzone: -- dipped in tomato sauce
a ton of broccoli, chopped
tomatoes, chopped
alfredo sauce

She cooked them on a pizza stone at 400ish degrees until the dough browned. And they were UNBELIEVABLE. IG and I ate the leftovers today and thought they were maybe even better after a night in the fridge. I wish I took a picture of these bad boys, but we were all too hungry and dove in to eat before I thought of it.

After Aunt E put them in the oven, we noticed that we had a LOT of pizza dough left and she had the best idea in the world. Let's make cinnamon buns! Neither of us had ever done it before so we did some searching and used the following recipes below. I have to say, these were AMAZING. Cinnabun couldn't have done it better, for real. The best part was that while these were baking, we did yoga and my wonderful hubby made the icing for us.

Cinnamon bun recipe (modified from Better Homes and Gardens)
dough - pizza dough :)
filling:
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup flour
1/3 cup butter
AND 1 cup chopped apples (this made it super yummy)
mix together and spread on dough.
Then roll the dough and slice into individual rolls. brush with half and half.
Bake for 20 minutes at 375, brush again with half and half.



Icing - from a recipe in "Brunch" by Jennifer Donovan
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tbsp cream cheese
1 tbsp butter (softened)
2 tbsp boiling water
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix and drizzle over the cinnamon buns! ENJOY!

Pancakes, anyone?

This morning we had pancakes! This is usually a special occasion or weekend treat (or lazy dinner) at our home but I was inspired by really yummy blueberries and our cool pancake molds that we got from Aunt E at Christmas. While I often make pancakes from scratch (it is just as quick as Bisquick - recipe below), this time I used a mix we received over the holidays by Bob's Red Mill.



I added a 1/2 cup of blueberries to the Red Mill mix and poured them into our airplane and pick-up truck molds. They tasted delicious! IG was very confused why I had to cut up the airplane, but he ate a ton of pancakes and loved them. See our cool mold photos below!

Recipe for whole wheat pancakes from scratch (NOT the ones we made today):
- 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
- 1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1-1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg beaten
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1/2 cup milk

Best seat in the house

Some of you mommy veterans are going to laugh when you read this post... because you're going to think I'm nuts. But just let me go with my dreams for now :)

Why would they laugh?? Well most people say potty training boys is really hard and takes a long time. Most don't get it down until after 3. But we're giving it a go with IG now, because he's showing interest and I don't want to miss this window.

Lately, IG has started identifying whether he went 'poop' or not and goes in the little space between the couch and the wall when he is going #2. Sometimes he goes into his room and brings out his wipes to signal to me that it's time to change him. I think a lot of this is thanks to using cloth diapers, IG knows when he's wet/dirty because the cloth doesn't pull away the moisture like disposables do. Who knows what the reason is, but he is into it so for the past couple of weeks we've been sitting on his little potty once a day for about ten minutes with his pants off and read, sing songs, and just hang out. He LOVES his potty. Any time A or I use the bathroom, he likes to come in and sit on his potty just like mommy and daddy.



He has yet to actual GO in the potty, but for now we're applauding his attempts at sitting there and being still for 10 minutes, which is an amazing feat anyway. When he actually GOES into the potty, I am going to have a party! Even if I could just get him to poop in there, I would love life. I love using cloth diapers and everything that it stands for and helps environmentally, but I do have to admit that swishing poopy diapers in a toilet is not a fun time. We got this sprayer thing that is supposed to hook to your tank and (like a sink sprayer) hose off the goods for you... but we never hooked it up.

So wish us luck - I don't know if this will work but if we can capture his interest and encourage him to go in the potty now, I would be so happy!!

(Okay stop laughing...)

Pie Party

Last night we went to a pie party hosted by two of our closest friends. Everyone brought a pie to share and it was a lot of fun. I decided to try EACH pie and deemed Jenny (the hostess/birthday girl) the winner with her amazing apple pie. There were all kinds of pie to try! Bean pie, butternut squash pie, key lime pie, pumpkin pie, peanut butter pie.

I know you're all wondering.... what kind of pie did Becky bring?! Well I brought my dad's famous ham pie, which was a huge hit. I didn't include it in the actual taste testing contest of my own, but I do have to say it was the pie with the least amount left at the end of the evening. Now, if you've never had ham pie, you have to try this really easy yet delicious recipe. People are always very impressed by this pie when they see it because of the lattice design on top, but let me tell you, it really is the easiest thing ever. Normally, we eat this pie as a breakfast dish, usually after the holidays when my mom has made a huge ham and has left overs. My dad's recipe (with my notes in italics) are below. Enjoy!!!



Ham n Crescent Pie

8 oz crescent rolls (if you can find the container that is "30% more" or whatever, the larger than 8oz roll, get that because just 8oz is really hard to stretch)
2 beaten eggs
1 tbsp Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp green pepper (I used 3 tbsp to add more color)
salt and pepper
2 cups montery jack cheese (I used 1 cup Colby Jack and 1 cup cheddar)
2 cups ham, cubed (Ideally, you'd be using leftover ham, but if you don't have it, you can buy one of those ham steaks they sell - its like one big huge thick slice of ham)

Separate crescent dough into 8 triangles. Place 5 triangles in pie plate, press to form crust (You really have to stretch them out to fit the pie plate, you want coverage across the whole plate without holes). Mix rest of ingredients, except remaining 3 triangles, and pour into crust. Cut remaining triangles in to 1/2" strips and lattice across the top of the pie. Seal with fork.

Bake 50-60 minutes at 325 degrees.

Lazy Justice

Tonight is a Rally for Living Wages at Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem. I signed us up to go and here I am, home.... A went after a long day at work and now I am feeling pretty guilty for being the one to stay home in our cozy apartment to put IG to bed. This is an AMAZING cause that I 100% support but was too tired. Talk about social INjustice! So instead of blowing it off completely and watching TV or knitting, I thought I'd blog a little about it.

So what is this Living Wage? It is basically the idea that everyone working in NYC (and beyond) deserves to make enough money to live. That means getting 40 hours a week and benefits. There is a movement to pass living wage ordinances in cities throughout the world. Here in the US, this movement began in 1994 when a community-labor coalition mobilized a successful grassroots campaign to pass the nation's first ”living wage” law in Baltimore. Since then, more than 140 U.S. cities have followed suit, including Chicago, Pittsburgh, and San Diego, and there are movements growing in such areas as Rochester, NY and Sonoma County, CA.

The living wage movement's success has led to other local government tools to induce private companies to create middle-class jobs and upgrade low-wage work. A lot of public (tax payer) dollars support projects like the new shopping center in East Harlem or the South Bronx but then workers make minimum wage and are refused full-time work so they cannot get benefits. That means they often have to get a second job or go on public assistance, where tax payer money goes into double duty to support them. Meanwhile, the public money should've supported them from the beginning rather than make huge profits for the shopping center people. They can absolutely afford to pay workers more than $10/hr, but don't. The idea behind this movement is to get the city to back the idea that if big companies are going to come into the city, they have to pay the employees who live here. New York City passed a living wage law in 2002, but the law only covers a limited number of workers, and does not apply to employees who work in privately-owned, publicly-subsidized developments, such as the big developments coming in recently like stadiums, convention centers and shopping malls. Imagine if the Ikea in Brooklyn had to pay the employees enough to support their families and gave them benefits???

Sorry for the rant :) I just feel like this is such an obvious and just cause and want to share it with you since I'm not at the rally tonight. The rally is tonight because we're heading into Martin Luther King weekend. Did you know that Martin Luther King Jr. died 43 years ago fighting for a living wage for Sanitation Workers in Memphis, TN? I honestly didn't. But it made me upset that this has been going on since 1968 and we're still having to fight for it.



To find out more, visit www.livingwagenyc.org

Thanks for listening!

Daily Dilema

Okay so I took a couple of days off, am busy getting ready for our trip to the Adirondacks this weekend. Lucky you will get TWO posts tonight since I had prepared the one below on Monday and never put it up!

Daily Dilema:
To take the stroller? Or take the pack? That is the question. Each day when IG and I venture out, I go back and forth on the best mode of transportation for him.

Stroller pros:

-Easy to push

-Can put groceries underneath

Stroller cons:

-Heavy on subway stairs

-Takes up tons of room in the store and on the trains and in friends' apartments

Pack pros:

-Easiest to get around

-I can put him in carts in stores, which he LOVES.

-He can go on my front or back, depending on our moods

-Cozy naps

Pack cons:

-IG is getting heavy!

Probably 90% of the time, I use the pack. Especially when going to places where I will have to go up and down subway stairs. It's so much easier to have him on my body than drag a stroller up steps. We are lucky because our subway stop has an elevator but most of them do not so if I know the place we're heading to has one, I'll take the stroller. On Monday, however, I took the stroller to a non-elevator stop.

We went down to a friend's on 95th Street and I knew I'd go to the Whole Foods right there and didn't want to carry IG, the diaper bag, lunch for us AND groceries. Instead, I decided to take the stroller. After a fun play date with our friends, we went shopping for groceries and lunch. With a heavy stroller (and eyelids, IG was pooped!), we hit the road. However, instead of carrying a 20lb toddler, a 15lb stroller, plus bags down the subway stairs, I decided to walk 40 blocks to an elevator at Columbus Circle! It was actually a great ending to a nice afternoon, IG got to nap and I got some exercise AND a Shack Shack shake (oh come on, you think I'd pass that up when I was walking two miles out of my way?) I think we might make that a new ritual, it gives me a reason to get groceries and exercise at the same time!

Tonight I finished working on mock-ups of wedding invitations that I am doing for two of our closest friends. I am not going to share the invitation designs here yet, I feel like its bad luck until they get sent to the wedding guests. But I do want to share a fun re-purposing sewing story! Since I had my sewing machine out for details on the invitations, I finally was able to do some projects that were hanging around. One such project that got added to the list today was taking two of A's old hole-filled t-shirts and combining them to be one cool shirt. At first I thought it was going to look ridiculous but in the end, I think he had a great idea and it turned out really cool looking. The one shirt had weird holes across the chest, so we cut a piece off the other shirt that had holes almost everywhere (A tends to wear his clothes into the ground) and placed a rectangle on top of the holes. It's not the fanciest sew job, but A will wear it all the time and we got to reduce, reuse, recycle!