Have you ever tried a Japanese sweet potato? They are a beautiful fuchsia on the outside and inside is a soft chartreuse. They taste just like their orange relatives. I got a pound of them in my CSA bag yesterday. I like to bring one or two to work for a snack. For a medium one, I poke it a few times with a fork to make some steam holes, put it in the microwave with a paper towel on top of it and cook it for 45 seconds. Then I flip it over and do it again. I let it sit a few minutes to continue cooking itself inside. Then I slice it in half, put some butter on both sides, mash it with a fork, and gobble it up. Sometimes, I sprinkle a little brown sugar on it too. Delish!


We are going out of town tomorrow, maybe I'll tell more about it later...

Oops! It's almost been two weeks since I last wrote. Not sure where the time has gone...

Since I was last on here, we met the Woodwards for bagels, went on a runhike (or two?), watched some college football, I got sick, Jonathan went to a 49ers game, we went to The Weepies concert, and shared dinner with the Littaus.

The Weepies were so fun to see live! Deb is so tiny with a little bird chirp voice and Steve looks like a muppet. I'm pretty sure I was grinning from ear to ear the entire time. For some reason we call them Los Weeps. We're special like that. 

Here are some photos from the concert and a recipe for pumpkin dark chocolate cookies that I brought to the Littaus. I made a half batch which turned out to be about three dozen. It's easy to gobble up that many though.

Ingredients:

2 c butter

1.5 c sugar

16 oz can of pumpkin

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

4c fine whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp nutmeg

0.5 tsp allspice

1 tsp salt (0.5 tsp if you use salted butter)

2 c chopped dark chocolate

1 c chopped nuts (I used pecans and walnuts)

Cream butter and sugar. Add pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla; beat well. Stir in dry ingredients. Finally, add chocolate and nuts.

Drop rounded teaspoonfuls an inch apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

With the colder weather lately (it's been upper 60's here, brrr ;) ) I've begun craving soup. I made a huge batch of butternut squash soup with coconut milk over a week ago. But I want to share another soup I made the other day. I call it hurry-and-use-all-the-vegetables-before-we-get-another-CSA-bag soup. I guess it's technically minestrone though...


I started by soaking some "7 Bean Mix" from the bulk section, it's just seven different beans all mixed together, you could use any beans. I put a cup of the beans in two cups of water with about a tablespoon of vinegar in a bowl in the morning. There are many benefits to soaking your legumes and grains. I could go off on a long-winded tangent about it, but I am in the middle of a recipe. So instead I will just share this nice explanation with you. 


With about an hour before dinner, I began heating a large pot on medium. I added a nice heaping tablespoon of butter and about a pound of grass-fed ground beef and let it brown. While it was browning, I started roughly chopping garlic, carrots, bell peppers, and zucchini. When the beef was finished cooking, I added the garlic and let it heat up for about a minute. Then, I added some chicken stock to deglaze the pot and made sure there was enough to cover all my ingredients, you can add as much as you want depending on your preferences. Next, I drained my beans, gave them a rinse, and added them to the pot. I reduced the temperature to medium-low and let the soup simmer for about ten minutes. While tidying up the kitchen, I found an almost empty bag of pasta in the cupboard and decided to throw that into the pot. I added the carrots at this point because they take longer to get soft than the other vegetables, and let it simmer some more. About five minutes before I thought the soup was done, I added the bell peppers and zucchini. I added salt, pepper, cumin, and a little chili powder. 


It was very filling. I served it with a nice thick slice of bread and there was plenty left over to freeze for later. I look forward to defrosting it when these veggies' seasons are long past and remembering this bountiful time of year. 


If you decide to cook something like this, I encourage you to use whatever you have around and taste it many times throughout. Trust your taste buds and instincts!

Saturday was a great day for college football! We watched the Duck game at the Petersons' house with the Shulls, it was a lot of fun.


We got up early Saturday morning for a hike. It's always so nice to start the day outdoors surrounded by trees. We both feel like it clears our minds to get some fresh oxygen straight from the source.


Youth group was canceled this Sunday, so we had a little bagel date before church. This Sunday was one of those that leave you feeling like you are surrounded by caring people. We are so blessed by the great people we have met through church. We went out for frozen yogurt afterward with some friends from our home group and just chatted and laughed outdoors, it was great.


Besides that, more school work. We are dog-sitting/house-sitting for the Littaus starting Thursday. I call it Casa Littau because it's like a little mini-vacation. And Shinobi loves it, too.

We've both been forcing ourselves to get back in the groove of school the past couple weeks. I'm taking two Accounting classes and Jonathan is taking a drawing class. This is the last term for both of us, I keep chanting, "I think I can, I think I can..." It will feel so good to be done!

So, not much is new for us, but Shinobi got a fun treat this week:

I try to keep up on brushing Shinobi's teeth (we pretend it's a game) but I wasn't sure if it was really doing that much good. I have given him rawhide bones in the past, but they didn't do anything except give him an upset tummy. I was reading an article the other day about dog dental health, and a veterinarian shared how his patients' overall health has improved from suggesting the owners feed their dogs raw bones. He said that dog breath is actually a sign of gingivitis and the bacteria from it can affect a lot of areas in dogs' bodies. He also brought up the point that the discomfort that gingivitis causes in the mouth and gums is something so many dogs have to bear their whole lives and it broke my heart! I found out that bones smoked at a low temperature are as beneficial as raw bones (cooked bones can splinter in their stomach, but I didn't want raw meat all over the carpet) and, lucky for me, the butcher shop near my office sells them! I made sure to ask the butcher about the source of them and the process, and he assured me that he gives them to his dog all the time. So I bought one and had them cut it in half, since Shinobi is so little. 

Oh my, he was a very happy boy! I put down a towel for him to eat it on just in case. He went off of the towel once or twice, but then I would say, "Ah ah, on your towel." And he would pick up the bone and walk back to the towel and get back to chewing. He's so smart! I don't know how he picks up on this stuff!?!

The best part though, is that all the stains on his teeth are gone and his breath smells like nothing! I'm amazed how quick his mouth improved. Guess he'll be getting these treats more often.