My Birthday Pie

Yes, it's true. I'm another year older. As of last Friday, I'm officially in the last year of my 20's.

A couple years ago, we decided to have pie for my birthday, instead of cake. This is a tradition we've continued because I don't really like cake very much, except cookie cake, which is actually a cookie.

Anyway, last year Mr. M brought home some kind of amazing, chocolate creation from Village Inn because if you're going to buy a pie, that's the place to do it. But this year, since we're dining in, I decided to make my own pie. I wanted to make an easy one though because who wants to be peeling apples on their birthday? Not this girl! So I set out to find a yummy looking pie on Pinterest and ended up pinning approximately 6,742 recipes. I seriously love pie, guys.

I finally settled on this President's Day Cherry Pie. Also, I just NOW realized as I was typing this that there's a reason why you would associate a cherry pie with President's Day. I try to do my part on a regular basis to help you all feel a little smarter. You're welcome.

Here's how it turned out:

It was delicious, and it only took our family 2 days to eat the whole thing. No comment on who ate the most.

Valentine's Day With Mr. M!

Since Valentine's Day was on a Thursday, Mr. M and I decided to have our "date" on Saturday night.  We've been wanting to try making our own sushi, so we thought Valentine's would be a good time to do that.

By the way, I highly recommend having a "date" at home once in a while. We gave the kids sandwiches and put them to bed a little earlier than usual (which is pretty early considering they usually go to bed before 7:30 anyway), and then we made and ate our dinner and dessert while watching a movie. Fun! We haven't cooked anything together in a long time, so it was a nice new thing to do.

We are a little wimpy, so we didn't want to try using anything raw in our sushi on our first attempt. We enjoy eating sushi with raw ingredients, but we just didn't want to accidentally food-poison ourselves. Here's what we used:

-Nori (dried seaweed wrap)
-Sushi rice
-Rice vinegar with a little sugar and a little salt added to give more flavor to the rice
-Crab Stick
-Bacon
-Avocado
-Cucumber
-Steamed Asparagus

Here's our sushi-making station:

Surprisingly it wasn't difficult to make. You just squish the rice down onto the Nori, add other ingredients, and roll it up using a bamboo mat. Then cut the roll into pieces. We watched this video to get a good idea of how to do it.

Here's the finished product:

And it was SOO yummy! We'll definitely be doing this again soon.

Then for dessert we made dessert nachos, which I've been seeing on Pinterest a lot lately and drooling over. We used:
-Cinnamon Sugar Pita Chips
-Caramel Praline Frozen Yogurt
-Dark Chocolate Syrup

Look how pretty:

It was an excellent date! I'm pretty sure we've gone out to eat for Valentine's Day since we started dating 10 years ago, so it was different, but in a good way!

Valentine's Day With the Kiddos!

Valentine's Day started out with Heart Shaped "Funfetti" Pancakes. I got the recipe here, but tweaked it a little since Little Miss is allergic to eggs. I just used flax and water instead of the eggs, and they tasted great!

Here's Super B with his Pancake:

I'm pretty sure Little Miss liked hers too:

Later in the day, while Little Miss was napping, Super B and I made some sugar cookies to give to his preschool teachers at his Valentine's Party on Friday.

Here he is cutting out the hearts. Don't judge him for wearing pajamas all day. Thursdays are our stay-home days.

Here's my Grandma's sugar cookie recipe, adjusted for Little Miss:

3.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup butter, margarine, or shortening
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. ground flax seed mixed with 3 Tbsp. water (or 1 beaten egg), FYI the flax made little brown flecks in the cookies, so I think I'll use 3 Tbsp. of applesauce next time. I've used applesauce in place of eggs in other cookie recipes with lots of success.
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup milk (any kind, I think we used rice milk for these)

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar.
3. Add flax/water (or egg), vanilla, and milk and stir until well combined.
4. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and salt.
5. Gradually add dry ingredients into butter mixture, stirring until well combined.
6. Refrigerate dough for at least 2 hours, preferably over night.
7. Roll out dough onto a floured surface (or parchment paper if you're too lazy you don't like to clean flour off your table).
8. Cut out with cookie cutters, and transfer to a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
9. Add sprinkles if you wish.
10. Bake for 8-10 minutes.
11. Cool and enjoy!

Here's the finished product!

We bagged them up and attached super cool Batmobile Valentines to them before we gave them to his teachers.

Overall it was a fun day, and I didn't miss restaurants at all! Stay tuned to read about my "date" with Mr. M!