Blueberry Picking

Last weekend we went blueberry picking with Alexa. It was great.

If you've never been berry picking before then you are really missing out. It's like endless snack time as you fill your bucket and mouth with berries. 

At one point, Alexa's little bucket was empty, so she ran back over to the big bucket and started stealing blueberries from there. I'm pretty sure she picked a total of five berries the entire time we were there, but that didn't stop her from munching on all of the berries that we were picking. She probably ate about half a pound of blueberries while we were there.

 We filled that bucket more than 3/4 of the way up with blueberries...it only took us five days to eat them all.

We paid for 6 1/2 pounds of blueberries. Alexa ate tons and Michael and I certainly weren't shy about popping berries into our mouths as we walked along the fields.

It was a great afternoon at the Brücklerhof. We look forward to going again soon.

I really wanted to get a few cute family pictures in the blueberry fields. It was so beautiful there! Alexa and Michael however, were not as cooperative as I would have hoped. We took a few pictures that came out alright, but you couldn't see the bushes in the picture so I wasn't pleased. Michael's solution was to shove part of the blueberry bush at me. It turned out to be my favorite picture!

And yes, it was roasting hot and we were all sweating like beasts by the time we left.

Roggenstange - Rye Bread Sticks Recipe

A friend of mine gave me this very EASY and HEALTHY bread stick recipe to make for Alexa.

Please feel free to adjust the flour to whatever kind of flour you like.

The original recipe calls for Dinkelmehl, or spelt flour, but I was all out when I made these, so I used a Roggenmehl, or Rye flour instead.

Ingredients:

250g Roggenmehl (Rye flour)
60ml Canola oil
2 carrots, washed, peeled and shredded
3 1/2 Tablespoons applesauce


Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200C. Add all of your ingredients into a medium bowl and mix together until a dough is formed. For the applesauce, I used homemade - 2 small apples, peeled, cubed, cooked and then pureed. Roll the dough into a long, thin log, about the thickness of your finger. Then cut 3-4 inch pieces. You should end up with about 10 bread sticks. Place them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and bake for 28 minutes. If you used the rye flour, only bake for 25 minutes, any longer and the bread sticks will be hard as a rock. Remove from the oven and let cool. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Pool Time

We have been at the pool on pretty much every single hot day this summer.

Alexa loves being in the water, although she has started to develop a little fear (her first fear ever) of the water. She will stand in it for a little bit, but prefers to sit on the side of the baby pool instead of being submerged in it. She won't sit or float around the baby pool either.

However, she loves to go down the big water slide and have us bounce her around in the deep end. It really doesn't make too much sense to me. I guess they're right when they say that fears are irrational.

Here are some pictures that I wanted to share of our adventures at the pool.

Alexa's First Haircut

Alexa's hair was growing in this really weird, crooked Friar Lawrence kind of mullet since basically day one. I thought that once all of the baby hair fell out that it would start growing in a little more evenly. Well, some of the baby hair did fall out, but not all of it. She was left with a few really long hairs in the back left hand-side of her head, a really (really) long few hairs on top and some crazy hair sticking out on the left side above her ear. The right side is just a little longer than fuzz. She was starting to look like Einstein pretty consistently, so I thought it might be time to trim up the nutty mullet and go for a one length bob.

Prepping for the haircut! Do you see how it's only long on the left side??

The first cut!

We were up in Neuhofen at my in-laws for Sunday dinner on the 13th and I asked my mother in law if she would help me trim Alexa's hair. It was a project and a half because my child is a complete wiggle worm and was so noisy as to what we were doing that she kept turning her head left and right trying to see what my mother in law was doing to her hair. In the end, it took us three adults and about 15 minutes to make exactly three cuts. Her hair looks super cute! It already looks longer and fuller to me!

 TADA!

She was pretty wiggly after we were done. I couldn't get her to sit still so I could take a picture. This was the best shot, but you can see the mullet is gone.

I'm in trouble...

Alexa took her diaper off yesterday.

Yup.

Diaper. Off.

She absolutely refused to let me put a new diaper on her and just ran around buck naked for like 25 minutes. I was pretty much freaking out the entire time.

I finally thought to bring her potty seat into the living room. I told her that if she needed to go peepee she should sit on the potty and not pee on my floor. She immediately ran over to the potty and said "Peepee, peepee!" and sat down.

Nothing happened.

She got up and returned to playing, just to yell "Peepee!" again after about 10 seconds and then she ran back to the potty.

She did this on repeat the entire 25 minutes of nakedness.

I couldn't take the pressure.

Once she started climbing up on the couch all naked and peepee lurking in the not so far distance, I wrestled a diaper on her.

I think we might be entering the potty training phase at a very slow crawl. I'm not ready for this. I was hoping for an extra six months or so of diapers. (Who says this?!?!) At the very least until after our trip to the US.

Can you imagine being on a full plane with a newly potty trained toddler??? I'm going to have nightmares.

Technical Difficulties

Hi guys,

Sorry I haven't really been around very much lately. On top of just being busy with A doing fun summer weather activities a.k.a being outside all day and all night, I have been having a lot of spamming issues with the blog. I'm trying to tackle the problem today and so far, all of the spam comments have been deleted, but I don't know where they are coming from. I'm talking about nearly 100 spam comments randomly being left all over my blog. This is not cool. Hopefully, deleting them will be enough for now until I can come up with some kind of spam filter. Until then, I might have to set up some kind of sign in in order for people to leave comments. Anyone else have any problems with spam?

Thanks,
BeanSprouting

**Update** I've updated the comment section to allow comments only from Registered Users. Hopefully, this will solve the spam problem without causing too much difficulty for anyone wanting to leave a comment.

Homemade Granola Bars - a Successful Fail

I've been on an experimental cooking kick this past week. On Saturday, I made peach jam for the first time ever. On Sunday, I tried my hand at making granola bars. On Monday,  I made strawberry jam. (Let's face it, I'm obsessed with jam these days...you can make blueberry jam too, right?? Oh the possibilities!) What oh what will the rest of the week bring??

So, I Googled (shockingly) a recipe for homemade granola bars. I found a TON of really cool looking recipes. I couldn't decide which one to follow, mostly because I didn't have all of the ingredients from any one recipe. Sooooo, I decided to make up my own recipe.

I realize how horrible this picture is, but this was all that was left in the pan. Deliciousness.

Homemade Granola Bars

Ingredients:

1/2 cup quinoa
1/2 cup instant oats
2 heaping Tablespoons of peanut butter
3 teaspoons of honey
2 handfuls of raisins
2 handfuls of sliced and skinned almonds

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 375F.

In a frying pan, add the quinoa and oats. Let cook for 3-5 minutes on high heat, stirring occasionally. Once the quinoa becomes fragrant, add in the raisins, almonds, peanut butter and honey. Mix until the peanut butter is thoroughly melted and mixed through.

Line a loaf pan with baking paper (parchment paper) and then spoon the mixture into the loaf pan. You want it to be at least 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Bake the mixture for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before cutting.

***I made the mistake of cutting the granola into bars right after they came out of the oven.  I also, might have pulled them out of the oven after only 15 minutes. They totally crumbled and didn't hold the bar shape at all. HOWEVER, they taste AMAZING. We have been eating the mixture with a spoon. I have not quite figured out what to change to make them hold their bar shape.