A Lazy Sunday Morning

Sunday morning is pancake morning at our house. We have pancakes for breakfast nearly every Sunday morning. It's something Rob started doing for me when I was pregnant with Mairin. We've kind of kept at it, except that now I fix the pancakes.

Typically it's just 365 brand pancake mix from Whole Foods Market topped with maple syrup. Sometimes we mix it up a bit and use strawberry sauce to top them.

Today, we tried something totally new. We had Banana Cream Pancakes from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan (no, it's not the only cookbook I own, but it's the newest in my collection, so I'm trying as much of it as I can) topped with Warm Raspberry Sauce (you guessed it, also from ED&BV!!). The batter consists of spelt flour, bananas and coconut milk. They were delicious, and a very nice change from the norm. Mairin ate hers topped with whipped cream. Stella didn't eat hers at all. She loves pancakes, but she was less than thrilled with these. It was quite humerous to see her look at the pancakes (which look like your run of the mill pancake), pick it up to eat it, and get angry and spit it out when it didn't taste like the pancakes she knows and loves. But, don't let her reaction be your judge, get the book and try them for yourself, I think you'll like them.

After breakfast we proceeded to prep some green beans we got from the farmers market yesterday. Mairin and I snapped and washed them all. Then we blanched them, threw them in an ice bath, laid them out to dry and bagged them to be frozen.

Following green bean prep was pumpkin carving. I love pumpkin carving, there's something so nostalgic about carving pumpkins. One of my favorite parts is sticking my hand in the pumpkin and pulling out all of the goo. I love the way it feels and the way it smells....mmmm.

Apparently Mairin doesn't like it as much as I do. In her eagerness to help, she stuck her hand in the pumpkin and quickly let out a blood curdling scream, as she pulled out her hand covered in goo. We couldn't get her to the sink quick enough to satisfy her. Anyway, the carving continued, and the end results were quite nice. The princess of course belongs to Mairin, and the traditional jack-o-lantern is Stella's (it has 3 teeth, just like her!!).


While I did the carving (I know, it's typically Daddy's who do the carving.....I'm too much of a control freak to let that happen here), Rob washed the goo off of all the pumpkin seeds. We then laid them out on a baking sheet to dry for a bit. Before they were completely dry we sprinkled them with brown sugar, a touch of granulated sugar, and some cinnamon. Then we roasted them at 350 until the sugar carmalized and the seeds were crisp.


They taste like fall. And an added bonus was that our house smelled absolutely fabulous as the seeds roasted.

By then lunch time had rolled around. I know what you are thinking, and yes we did spend our entire morning in the kitchen.

We had left-over chili and hummus from last night. The girls had grilled cheese and tomato soup that was left over from Whole Foods Market yesterday. We eat lunch at WFM every Saturday and Mairin loves their Tomato Dill soup. This was Mairin's creation -----------> tortilla chips crumbled into her tomato soup. She insisted that we photograph it to post on the blog. And she's sure that you will all try this tasty concoctions yourselves.