Mountain Mama

Soup Sunday

Since Christmas, I've twice made Molly's Banana Bread with Chocolate and Candied Ginger and, may I just say...yum! Rich, delicious, with a bite of ginger. I highly recommend it.

This weekend, however, I wanted to bake something good yet found myself, alas, with no candied ginger. So I sorted through Molly's site again and came up with her Banana Bread with Chocolate and Cinnamon Sugar.

Once again, oh my, yum-my. I used whole wheat flour, bittersweet chocolate chips (60% cacao), and added walnuts. Since this recipe contained no milk or oil or other discernible fat (not terribly much sugar, either), I could convince myself that this crumbly cake-y heavenly stuff is good for me. And promptly ate most of it myself, straight from the pan.

So for my soup this week, I felt the need to make something super-healthy to go along with my, um, health food dessert. I found this recipe written on a piece of paper and crammed into my cooking notebook. I have no idea where the recipe originated, but I vaguely remember trying it once and thinking it was good. Lentils, sweet potatoes, spices, soup. What's not to love?

Oh yes, I feel healthier already.

Sweet Potato Stew

4 cups broth

3 cups sweet potatoes (peeled and cut into cubes--or not peeled, however you like)

1 1/2 cups dried lentils, rinsed

3 medium carrots, cut into chunks

1 medium onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp cayenne

Put all ingredients into a slow cooker and cook on high for five hours.

Stir in 1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro and salt to taste before serving.

Make sure you follow it up with chocolate chip banana bread. Your body will thank you.

Saturday morning

Making pancakes in pajamas. Frog pajamas. Pink polka dot pajamas.

Little sis wants to help but big sister won't let her.

We dream of someday being able to stay in bed while they make the pancakes all by themselves, wake us with the scent of hot butter, maple syrup.

Until then, we'll just do it all together.

What to do when you're snowed in and the power goes out (Part two)

Over the next three days, spend lots of time outside, playing in the snow.

Go sledding. Go sliding (without sleds).

 

Help Mama shovel Grandpa's driveway for a while, then walk down to our house for clean clothes, more supplies.

 

When you're too cold and wet and you've had enough, stage a sit-in until Mama agrees to go back inside, by the fire.

Peel off the layers, hang them to dry. Play with your animals by the fire. More card games. More reading.

Try to entertain yourself so Mama can read her work she brought home. Do so by painting your face with marker "lipstick."

When Daddy and Grandpa get home, they'll fix dinner again on the camp stove. Salmon and chicken kept cold all day in the freezer packed with snow, now cooked on the gas grill. Raw veggies, remarkably not-sour milk, wine for the grown-ups. Steaks for the dog (can't let them go bad).

Go to bed again by the fire as soon as it gets dark. Fall asleep immediately, exhausted from your day.

The third day--still no power--run away with Mama to Grandma's house an hour away. Baths, clean clothes, TV. Happier Mama.

Skate across Grandma's yard not even making tracks in the snow it's so hard.

Come home in the evening to power restored, hot dinner on the table, heat, lights, ahhh. Sleep in your own beds and start forming in your mind the story you'll tell of your first big power-out snow.

Be glad it's over, and know that you'll remember this for always.

 

What to do when you're snowed in and the power goes out (Part one)

When the expected snow begins, go outside. Dance around. Make tracks. Try to catch flakes on your tongue.

 Or, if you prefer, watch it all from the warm dryness inside. Where the DVDs are.

Once it accumulates a little and Grandpa gets home, make snow cream.

Later that night when the power goes out and you're already in bed, Mama will light the candles, bring out the extra blankets, snuggle up next to Daddy to watch a DVD on the computer until the battery runs out.

Sometime in the night, as the temperature drops, go climb in bed with Mama and Daddy, so that you wake in the morning piled together under a mountain of blankets. Talk and wriggle and giggle until daylight creeps in (because little kids, of course, wake before the sun).

Daddy will break out the camping gear, set up the stove on the porch for coffee and hot breakfast of oatmeal and/or grits.

After breakfast, bundle up in layers. Head outside to play.

 

When it looks as if the power won't be coming back on for a while, walk up the hill, next door to Grandpa's house. Move in there to the warmth of his gas fireplace. Play dinosaurs and Go Fish and blocks.

Read Alice in Wonderland with Grandpa. Make sure it's the original version. The copy Grandpa gave your mama when she was ten years old.

As darkness falls, make art and crafts by the light of an oil lamp while Grandpa cooks dinner on the camp stove on the porch. Appetizers of  blueberries and strawberries for the little girls, shrimp and red wine for the grown-ups. Main course of fried chicken and baked beans and salad.

Make your beds by the fire like you're camping.

Treat it all like an adventure. Be happy to be together and safe and warm and dry.

Wordless Wednesday