Fourth Day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...
Four Kucinich years (as president)
Three alternative heating options (multi-fuel stove, pellet insert, solar)
Two cast iron pans (one a skillet, one a muffin pan) and
A Bakfiet to easily carry Parker, Dema, and Josie.

Christmas 2007 Take Two:

With Rob and Dema home, we had our "official" Christmas. We made popcorn with olive oil, sea salt, and nutritional yeast for Santa (who came a second time, but don't tell anyone since it is very rare for him to do this). Santa brought two sleds (they didn't fit in the stockings) which made everyone wish we still had snow on the ground.




Rob received North Face gloves for his daily commute to work on his bike, measuring cups, and measuring spoons (the thin type which fit inside spice jars...don't know why we waited so long to buy these). The boys received fair-trade dried mangoes, tree ornaments from 10,000 Villages, and some Brio track. They also have a shovel which is more their size.

After we opened our stockings, my dad, sister (Karen), and her boyfriend (Stuart) came over. Notice the difference before they came and after as to the amount of presents. I thought we weren't going overboard this year...Karen! Oh well, I guess that is what aunts are for. My dad brought over some recycled plastic bottles (since we never have any) to help Parker with some of his weather experiments. Parker can't wait to use them.

Josie received her second present, an organic cotton cat. She had great fun watching all the chaos. She loves to have people all around doing interesting things. Parker made it his task to show her everything and explain it all to her. "This is organic fair-trade vegan chocolate Santa gave us. Doesn't it look good? When you get teeth, you can eat some."

Parker and Dema went outside with Karen and Stuart to try out Parker's new scooter. They seemed to enjoy it a lot. I was looking for foot lockers so they could have some space to themselves and put things they didn't want others to get into, but I couldn't find them anywhere so Karen bought them wooden toy boxes and locks. Dad and Rob spent some time putting these together.

There was definitely a lot of chaos. Parker said after our little mini-Christmas that he didn't need more presents, but he missed having everyone over. He just likes to have people here.

For lunch I decided to go with an old standby which I haven't made in over a year. Creamy Curried Potatoes and Peas from Healthy Cooking for Kids by Shelly Null. I've had this cookbook for almost 8 years and I've given it as a present to many people. There are so many vegan cookbooks out there now, that many of my old loves have dust on them. This recipe is so easy (takes a little while to cook down, but you don't have to do much) and excellent taste. I don't fry the potatoes (less oil and still tastes great) and I don't use a mini food processor for the ginger, garlic, water mixture (I put it all together in the pot with the tomatoes and spices and then use the immersion blender). I also used a bag of organic peas and carrots and a bag of organic corn, peas, carrots, and green beans. The more veggies the better...it just calls for peas. I always double it and we made brown basmati rice to go with the curry. For years this was Parker's favorite way to eat potatoes. Dema in his famous fashion, ate the brown basmati rice at lunch, but ate a ton of the curry later.