Long Week

Rowan has suffered for 3 nights now with a high fever and is pretty awful during the day. I hope we turn the corner soon. He felt cooler this morning, but did still have a 101 fever, better than the 103-104 in the night! This flu is awful, I hope no one else in our family gets it. So it has been a hard week, but there have been good things too. Athena was lucky enough to still go to playgroup yesterday while mommy stayed home and napped with the baby and made brownies. A good friend picked her up (and another friend too) and brought her to playgroup so she could be with her friends and enjoy the 75 degree weather! She came home happy and warm and I realized it was the first time I had let Athena go with someone other than family, well her school I guess isn't family but the teacher is a family friend. So it was a big step for me and a big step for Athena because she used to cry just going to her grandparents houses. She is growing up and so mature these days.
Here is what we ate this week:
I know I've blogged this before but it was the lemon garlic sauce from ED&BV. I just love how easy this dinner is and so satisfying. Like I said before, double the sauce recipe and use half of it to fry up some seitan and broccoli and dinner is served!
Tuesday I made burritos. It was one of those nights where I messed everything up. The beans were fine, I just put in the pressure cooker so that was pretty brainless. The rice was mushy and I didn't use a recipe but it was OK. Then I made the vegan cheez whiz sauce and really messed up. Rowan was napping and I heard him start to wake up so I quickly threw in the final ingredients. The only problem was I had swapped the cumin for nutmeg. I realized my mistake but it was too late so I just added the cumin too. The cheez sauce would have been good if it weren't for that darned nutmeg incident. We still ate it, well not athena, but chris and I and now we have a container left of it in the fridge that won't get used because, well, it was too weird! Athena ate her entire burrito that night though and I am just amazed at what she will eat!
Wednesday night it was tasty tempeh chili from La Dolce Vegan. I love that recipe as you may already know and we have renamed it "pregnancy chili" since I couldn't get enough of it when I was pregnant with Rowan. I must have been craving the double dose of protein from the tempeh and beans. I always double this recipe so we will have left overs.

Thursday night Rowan was sick and I felt awful too so Chris and Athena went out for burritos.
Friday's brownies from TJOVB. I have made many failed brownie attempts in my life as a vegan but these turned out well. They taste like a lowfat brownie though, so if you are searching for something super decadent then these may not be it. Well, maybe they actually are it since I did make a few changes to the recipe. I used whole wheat pastry flour and I used 1 cup of sugar instead of 1 1/2 cups. I just couldn't bring myself to put that much sugar in when the recipe only called for 1 1/3 cups flour! I didn't even realize until afterwards that they don't have any oil, thus pretty lowfat. I like these and the texture is good. I'd make them again for sure since they actually held together.
Yesterday afternoon I had to get out of the house so took the kids on a walk to the neighborhood farmers market. It was such a beautiful day we headed up the hill afterwards to look at the horses and let Athena run at the park for a few minutes. I carried Rowan in the ergo the whole time to minimize him spreading his germs.
Last night it was ED&BV's Mellow Lentil "Sniffle" soup since all of us have the sniffles. I was hoping to win over Athena with this one, soup hater that she is, but she still does not like soup. Oh well, Chris and I enjoyed a couple bowls each and she finished her lunch for dinner. This soup is great and just what we needed last night.
After another rough night with Rowan, I wanted a normal weekend morning and so I made pancakes from, you guessed it ED&BV. They are the Rasberry Cornmeal ones although actually mine were strawberry. These are good but aren't like my standard variety. Athena loved them too and I felt good about her eating her oats and cornmeal for breakfast. Make sure you let the batter sit for at least 5 minutes as my first batch didn't really stay together while the 2nd batch was just fine and easy to flip.

So I'm almost done with my super long post but just one more thing. Here is a pic of Rowan the day he got sick. I had no idea this was going to be so bad!
Do you think it was from all that dirt I was letting him eat!:)