My life is amazing.

I'm playing a little catch-up with this blog post because I haven't posted anything in forever and a lot of food has been cooked and Christmas trees put up!!  

I'll get this out of the way first, I made the Split Pea Soup from our cookbook Forks Over Knives, it lacked.... almost everything.  It was really bland and very watery.  If I make this again I would add noodles and probably celery and ... just more vegetables or something.  And probably 2 cups less water. Soo not the best thing I've ever eaten.

THIS WAS DELICIOUS.  We were watching Destination Truth and were really craving a dessert, so Joseph looked online for some good vegan desserts because, if you don't already know this, every delicious dessert under the sun is made with butter and milk and BUTTER.  But! we found this recipe for cookies that was amazing.  If I remember correctly, it was 3 cups instant oatmeal, 3 bananas, some amount of prunes, 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or applesauce), 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg.  I put a little peanut butter in it as well.  If I were to make this again I would probably put some nuts in (I didn't have prunes so I have no idea if it's good or not).  This was seriously a delicious cookie and it made the house smell AMAZING.

Layered Tex-Mex Lasagna

5 stars. So good.  I really didn't miss the meat or the noodle in this!  It had pinto beans, corn, green chiles, corn tortillas, and some serious red sauce.  If you like your local mexican restaurant you will really like this, it tastes exactly like something you'd get there.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

Our neighbors had us over for dinner on Sunday and surprised us with helping them put up their Christmas tree, BEST IDEA EVER.  Dinner was yummy and tree was beautiful!  Kendra helped me make some origami ornaments since we had three ornaments last year.  They turned out so amazingly awesome and now our tree looks fantastic!!!!!

Tim-Tam Slam.

Our neighbors, Adam and Kendra, enjoying their very first Tim-Tam Slams.  Aren't they cute?!

Haha, I don't even know what he's doing.

So I hadn't had milk in a couple of weeks and when we drank some at A & K's house it was so weird!  It was really strong and just kind of strange tasting.  I think I made Joseph drink some of my milk because I just couldn't handle it which is kind of exciting.  I love eating vegan meals and feeling generally more healthy.  We're not completely vegan yet because our supply of meaty and dairy foods seems to be never ending but in all the time we've been eating vegan meals we stopped drinking milk.  So I guess I'm just excited my body is okay with not drinking it and I don't really miss it too much anymore especially now that it tastes crazy.  

I LOVE MY BODY!  It really is kind of amazing how it knows things.  For example, Saoirse had her first taste of bananas about a week ago and she never really liked them much although I would force feed them to her everyday.  As it turns out they were likely causing an allergic reaction and she was super off the whole week until finally her body produced a lovely rash.  No more bananas, rash gone, happy mommy.  Well.... kind of happy, this means that while I'm breastfeeding her I probably shouldn't eat bananas either.  Bummer.  I guess Joseph will have to enjoy those cookies all by himself.  Anyway, I think she didn't like them because she already knew they were no bueno for her tummy.

P.S. A banana allergy is often accompanied by a latex allergy!  Weird.

My memories.

Ah, tonight was a wonderful night!  Joseph and I watched the documentary on President Thomas S. Monson (President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) which was so inspiring!  It really makes me want to be more involved in doing service for others.  He's done so much to serve everyone around him and it makes me feel like I've done nothing!  Even when I know that's not true.  I think it's a very good goal to try to be more like him though.  Very selfless with all that he does.  After the video was over we were sort of just sitting around being bored when Joseph started talking to me a little bit about the fun things they would do on his mission, one of them being "a Tim-Tam Slam."  For those of you who are unfamiliar with a Tim-Tam Slam, I'll inform you, apparently it's the "best."  You make hot chocolate (why they even drank hot chocolate in the blistering heat of Taiwan is crazy to me, but whatever) and set the cup on the floor, they would then take a Tim-Tam (a little chocolate square with some nuget inside) bite off the two opposite corners and drink as quickly as they could the hot chocolate through the straw they made with the Tim-Tam.  All this while laying on your stomach on the floor.  I can only suppose they did that because you felt like barfing afterward and could easily lay down and die a little.  Once he told me this story it became perfectly clear what we needed to do next.  Go buy some Tim-Tams and slam them like they've never been slammed before.  Alas, we couldn't find them.  So we came home and had some hot chocolate anyway.

  

Now I could pretend this is a photograph of my own creation... actually, yes, that's what I'll do.  I MADE THIS.  Doesn't it look wonderful?  I love hot chocolate.  Tonight, while drinking the scalding hot liquid as fast as I could (as it is apparently tradition to burn every inch of my mouth when I have the opportunity) I was reminded of the wonderful days of my youth.  The days where I had no cares.  When I would go and sled outside for hours not realizing I was starving, dead tired and half frozen. I would stand on the porch while my mom (pretty violently) broomed me off to avoid getting snow in the house.  And I would sit in my clean dry clothes slowly defrosting and drink some hot chocolate, burning my tongue, but completely at peace.