Summer Pastabilities with Hodgson Mill {Giveaway}

If you didn't catch my post from this week for my Spaghetti SouthWestern Pasta Salad, I'm reposting it here as well as adding a $25 food products giveaway from Hodgson Mill, the sponsor of the Pinterest contest on their Pinterest page.  Vote for your favorite pasta dish there by "liking" or repinning it.  I'd be thrilled if you thought mine was the best. :)

I was recently invited to participate in a recipe contest sponsored by Hodgson Mill where I created a pasta dish using their products.  I turned to Southwestern ingredients to create my Spaghetti (South)Western Pasta Salad.  {Please "like" it on Pinterest or repin it if you would.  I'd love to win the contest!}

Well, it doesn't actually have spaghetti in it, but you get the idea. I used Hodgson Mill's whole wheat bowtie pasta.

Though it seems like a lot of ingredients, it's a simple dish to stir together.

SPAGHETTI (SOUTH)WESTERN PASTA SALAD

Ingredients

• 1 box Hodgson Mills whole wheat whole grain bowtie pasta
• 1 cup salsa
• 8oz lowfat sour cream
• 1 tsp chipotle powder or chipotle sauce (from the canned peppers)
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• juice on 1 lime
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 tomatillo, diced
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 2 ears of corn, cooked and kernels sliced off the cob
• 1/2 large red onion, diced
• 1 jalapeno pepper, de-seeded and finely minced
• 1 can of black beans, drained
• 1/4 cup cilantro, finely chopped (omit if you dislike the taste)
• 1 cup cubed pepper jack cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• Crushed purple corn chips for garnish

Cook the pasta until al dente and drain.  In a large bowl, combine the salsa, sour cream, chipotle powder or sauce, garlic powder, salt, pepper and lime juice.

Add more chipotle if you like it spicier.   Toss in the pasta, vegetables, black beans, cheese cubes and cilantro.  Add additional salt and pepper to taste and garnish with corn chips and more cilantro.

Enjoy with a limeade, Margarita or Corona. 

Again, I'd really appreciate it if you "liked" and repinned my recipe on Pinterest.  And I'd be even more flattered if you made this yourself!  Let me know if you do.

WIN IT!

One lucky reader will win an assortment of Hodgson Mill's products.  Enter via Rafflecopter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I received sample products from Hodgson Mills in order to create my recipe. I also have the chance to win one of many kitchen-related prizes.

Bathroom Update

We're on the home stretch here with the massive bathroom renovation.  The guys are installing the sink, bathtub and toilet as we speak, which is very exciting after two weeks of having to piece together showers in other people's bathrooms.

The subway tile on the walls and hex tiles on the floor have been installed and grouted, and the room has been painted.  It's Sherwin Williams' Watery.

I hear that we're crazy for installing a claw foot tub (an acrylic one), but we don't care. We like the aesthetic.  We'll see how it holds up to the boys and if we tire of stepping in and out of it for showers.

We've run into some minor issues, including having the wrong sized faucet for the sink. Unfortunately I can't run out and get a replacement yet because our car won't start.  Like they saying goes, "when it rains, it pours."  The cat, the couch, the car all went kaput this week.  What's next, the computer?  Scratch that. I don't even want to put that thought out there.

We're really pleased with how things have turned out so far.  I'm eager to take my first shower over the weekend, hopefully.

I'm ready for the chaos to be over. It's been rough shuffling the kids around to accommodate naps and keep us from going nuts in the house.  Jude is especially cranky, being overtired and teething.  And I feel so grungy without a shower and with mortar and drywall dust all over the house.  I really don't know how some people can live in a house where a renovation lasts for a year or more.  That would be tough.

So we're hanging in there, optimistic for a mostly back-to-normal weekend, air conditioners blasting against the oppressive heat headed our way.

Spaghetti (South)Western Pasta Salad

As a pretty accomplished home cook, I gravitate towards certain flavors a lot.  Spicy, ethnic food--whether Indian, Mexican or Thai--often pleases my palette most.  I find myself cooking meals with a Southwest flair on a weekly basis.  Fortunately my tongue says "yes!" to cilantro (I know of many who think it tastes like soap), so Southwestern food is a great vehicle for getting my cilantro fix.

I was recently invited to participate in a recipe contest sponsored by Hodgson Mill where I created a pasta dish using their products.  Naturally, I turned to Southwestern ingredients to create my Spaghetti (South)Western Pasta Salad.  {Please "like" it on Pinterest or repin it if you would.  I'd love to win the contest!}

Well, it doesn't actually have spaghetti in it, but you get the idea. I used Hodgson Mill's whole wheat bowtie pasta.

Though it seems like a lot of ingredients, it's a simple dish to stir together.

SPAGHETTI (SOUTH)WESTERN PASTA SALAD

Ingredients

• 1 box Hodgson Mills whole wheat whole grain bowtie pasta
• 1 cup salsa
• 8oz lowfat sour cream
• 1 tsp chipotle powder or chipotle sauce (from the canned peppers)
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• juice on 1 lime
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1 tomatillo, diced
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 2 ears of corn, cooked and kernels sliced off the cob
• 1/2 large red onion, diced
• 1 jalapeno pepper, de-seeded and finely minced
• 1 can of black beans, drained
• 1/4 cup cilantro, finely chopped (omit if you dislike the taste)
• 1 cup cubed pepper jack cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• Crushed purple corn chips for garnish

Cook the pasta until al dente and drain.  In a large bowl, combine the salsa, sour cream, chipotle powder or sauce, garlic powder, salt, pepper and lime juice.

Add more chipotle if you like it spicier.   Toss in the pasta, vegetables, black beans, cheese cubes and cilantro.  Add additional salt and pepper to taste and garnish with corn chips and more cilantro.

Enjoy with a limeade, Margarita or Corona. 

Again, I'd really appreciate it if you "liked" and repinned my recipe on Pinterest.  And I'd be even more flattered if you made this yourself!  Let me know if you do.
Disclosure: I received sample products from Hodgson Mills in order to create my recipe. I also have the chance to win one of many kitchen-related prizes.

On the Hunt in the Fridge

Have you ever taken note of the abundance of plastics all around us?  From our toiletries to our food packaging, they're everywhere.  As part of a blog tour sponsored by Evergreen, I was encouraged to take a look in my fridge and really pay attention to the kinds of cartons that food is packaged in.

Without looking in my refrigerator, I would have guessed that plastics dominate the packaging in there.  I've thought about (and became depressed) about this before, the fact that we're mostly forced to buy excessive packing materials in our food shopping.

Surprisingly, about half of the food is packaged in plastic, the other in glass.  Starting with the fridge door, I noticed that the condiments are about half glass and half plastic.

The one item that bugs me the most, not just in writing this post but when shopping every week is that the eggs at our grocery store don't come in cardboard cartons anymore.

Inside the fridge, I found a mix of plastics, cartons, and glass.

I like that in my town, glass and plastics #1 and #2 are recyclable.  However, much of our food items are sold in #5 plastics (like yogurt) which we aren't recyclable in our town.

I had no idea that paper cartons can be recycled.  I found out this info from the Evergreen website.  Unfortunately, we can't recycle milk cartons in our town, unlike paperboard.  I was surprised to learn a lot about paper cartons that I hadn't known before.

DID YOU KNOW?

• Over 41 million households have access to carton recycling, and that number is on the rise. In addition, cartons are made from renewable materials - more than 70 percent of the carton is made from paper, all from trees from responsibly managed forests.
• Packaging plays a very important role in keeping food and beverages fresh. The environmental impact of a package is just as important as the contents inside. 
• Cartons are recyclable where facilities exist. The paper fiber contained in cartons is valuable. Recycled cartons are used to make products such as tissue, office paper, wall boards and other building materials.  To learn if your community accepts cartons for recycling, please visit www.recyclecartons.com or check with your local recycling program.
• Cartons are made with renewable energy. More than 50 percent of the energy used to make the paper in Evergreen Packaging’s cartons comes from biomass.
• Responsible forestry promotes new forest growth, and these forests help to diminish greenhouse gases. Forests remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in trees. In the US, due to both increases in the total area of forest land and increases in the carbon stored per acre, an additional 192 million metric tons of carbon are sequestered each year through responsible forest management programs nationwide. This offsets roughly 11% of the country’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing almost 135 million passenger vehicles from the nation’s highways.

Given the choice, I'd prefer to buy paper cartons in place of plastic since they seem more eco-friendly in their production and efficiency.  Considering that we buy our milk (organic and soy) in paper cartons, since they're unavailable to us in other forms, I wish we were able to recycle them.

You can learn more about Choose Cartons via Evergreen's Facebook and Twitter pages.  For every #ChooseCartons fact you share in a tweet using that hashtag, Evergreen will make a donation to Habitat for Humanity. Win/Win!
Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Evergreen and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Walls and Water

Despite being buried in laundry, pillows and cushions from the busted-up couch, and an empty fridge to attend to, we're lazily enjoying the post-vacation weekend.  Thankfully we now have walls and a new window in the bathroom, which means we're pretty close to having a toilet and sink again, once the tile is down.

Kudos to our contractors for working through the intense heat we had while we were away lounging amongst trees and water.

I could barely stand lying on a couch in the heat, let alone bricking up a window opening and leveling a floor.

The wait will be worth it, even living with a claw foot tub smack in the middle of our bedroom, along with various toiletries strewn about the floor.

We're eager to have the water turned back on soon, especially for those dark nighttime trips to the bathroom downstairs.

In other watery news, we had a great time in the Poconos with our friends.

It's a reminder for us to do more of this kind of thing, even if it can be stressful with young children (or maybe just MY children).

I hope this trip remains firmly lodged in all of our memories.

Come to think of it, I don't believe I snapped any photos of Jude.  I'll definitely be neglecting to add that tidbit in my application essay for the "Mother of the Year" awards.  Hopefully my friends got some of him, as I neglected to bring the camera and relied on the iPhone.

Enjoy the rest of this weekend friends!

Johnson & Johnson Amazing Nurses

Growing up, I remember a feeling of security regarding health and safety--not just the normal nurturing that most parents provide, but something more.  My mom is a nurse, and I always got a sense of confidence and comfort from her during the many scrapes, bruises, and injured body parts that my brothers and I encountered.

I specifically remember the time when one of my brothers stepped on a rusty nail.  I freaked out (as did he), yet my mom remained calm and orderly as she got out the medical kit and tended his wound and his spirit.  And during the time when my other brother choked on a pretzel, she was equally calm yet firmly poised to deal with the situation.

Oh, and I can't forget about the time when one brother burned my other brother's face with the bulb from a hot lamp.  Or when one brother dropped a bunk bed ladder on my cousin's head, which resulted in a trip to the ER.  The list goes on and on, especially in a house with four boys, but I can always remember a feeling of order and control in my mother's aura, most likely since she had training as a nurse.

Now that I have my own kids, I'm grateful for the calm, focused, shake-it-off-you'll-be-ok example that my mom set for me.  It's almost that I learned to live outside myself in the midst of some kind of medical situation, like when Kid A got a gash on his forehead a few years back (outside of the doctor's office, ironically).  I was somehow able to deal with the situation at hand without panicking (though afterwards I was pretty emotional), thanks in part to my nurse-mother's voice in my head.

Where would we be without nurses? Johnson & Johnson is celebrating Amazing Nurses with a contest where you can nominate a special nurse that who's had an impact on your life of that of a friend or loved one.

Considering that the healthcare field is experiencing a shortage of nurses (nationwide there is a vacancy of over 100,000 positions), it's a scary thought that the level of nursing care might diminish in the near future.  The upside of which is that the nursing field is an excellent place to start a career.

You can learn more about the contest via the Facebook page, as well as nominate a nurse for an award. The winning Amazing Nurse and his/her guest will attend the 2012 CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute show in Los Angeles, courtesy of CNN. He or she will also be honored in a video profile which will be screened before the live audience at the show, and featured on the Nursing Notes by Johnson & Johnson Facebook page.(*Eligible Nominees for the Amazing Nurses contest must be a Registered Nurse(RN), Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) or Advanced Practice Nurse (APN) who currently administers direct patient care.)

The entry period ends soon, June 29th, so don't delay!
Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour by Mom CentralConsulting on behalf of Johnson & Johnson and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Chaos Abandoned

We're heading out for a few days for some peace, quite, and lounging in water to escape the chaos of our house at the moment.

What used to be this monstrosity:

has become this:

A little frightening, to be sure, not to mention weird not being able to shower in your own home for 2 weeks.

Our soon-to-be new bathroom is in progress, though these first few days of demo and building have been weary for myself and the kids, especially that Jude hasn't been napping so much on the go.

But we're making it through, and hopefully our contractor can bear with the 90 degree heat that's making its way in for the next few days.

We're the lucky ones, heading out for some much-needed fun in the mountains.  See you in a few days!

Beyond Repair

No surprise that the whipped cream on the top of my super-terrific week is that it's Friday night and I'm staring at the broken guts of my sofa, the first true casualty of Kid A's burgeoning gymnastics career.

 

Now how does one even begin to put those pieces and springs back together?  Cripes.
The house is currently a shambles, including our poor, sweet Oscar who we thought would be venturing into the void this evening.

 

He won't even look at me for a photo, he's so mad that I sent him off to the vet, thinking he wouldn't come back (this is actually the third time--fooled again!).  I was sobbing for you though, old friend, wanting you here yet not wanting you to suffer and hobble through your life.
Turns out Oscar was sent home with a bag of medicines and a steep receipt for services rendered (like rehydrating him--thanks Doc.).  He's old, hobbled, falling apart, and as Chris says "too sick to use the litter box yet too well to meet his maker."  Or something like that.  He's a real Bob Barker at heart.

I'm waiting for a wall to collapse on me, or maybe just this couch.

Dare I leave it 'til morning?  Watch out Oscar!  You've used at least one of your 9 lives tonight already.

So what would you do? Fix it? Experiment with a floor-focused Moroccan seating arrangement of just pillows (god knows we have hundreds of them).  I'm at a loss, though maybe morning light will come with an answer.  Happy weekend friends!

Tin Punch Father's Day Medallions

This week while cleaning out a cupboard, I came across some leftover frozen juice container metal lids, which I used for a previous craft project a few years back.

Rather than throw them away (I seriously have a problem with hanging onto potential craft supplies) Soren, the neighborhood kids and I set up shop at the kitchen table and revisited my tin-punch craft.  We were specifically going to make some "Father of the Year" medallions for the dads, though my son wanted to make an "e", just because there was an "e" in his name.  I love 4-year-old logic.

The kids get so excited when they get to use "adult" tools like hammers, nails and pliers, especially that these are considered "Daddy's tools", even though in this house, Mommy uses them all the time.

And I'm glad to report that we had no smashed thumbs during this entire project, even though there were four kids, ages 3 through 7.

It's a simple project with a lot of bang (yep, pun intended) for your buck (or lack of bucks since all the supplies were basically free).  Here's what you'll need:

Hammer | Metal juice lids |long nail or screw | scrap wood | paper | pencil | scissors | clear tape | ribbon or string for hanging

STEP ONE
Trace the lid on a piece of paper and cut it out.  Draw your design on this circle template, then tape it to the metal juice lid.  Your image should be big, basic and not too detailed.  When finished, put your lid onto a piece of scrap wood as not to damage your table.

STEP TWO
Now you will punch holes along the lines, spacing the dots pretty close together (imagine you're creating a dot-to-dot image).  You'll just need to tap the nail 3-4 times lightly; you don't need to puncture the metal.  Easier said than done when it comes to a preschooler.

STEP THREE
When the design is finished, remove the tape and paper and punch a larger hole at the top for hanging.  Adults are better at this step, as it requires tapping the nail all the way in and wiggling it around to make a larger hole.  Thread a ribbon or string through the hole, tie and hang.

The older kids especially liked this project, and actually made 3-4 of them each.  I was asking them what their dad's favorite things were, like hobbies, etc. and their answers cracked me up.  "He really likes to crush cans and cash them in for money."   I wasn't sure one of them could render a drawing of a tin can on a tin lid though.  It is uncanny (another pun, yes!) that kids think parents' hobbies are work.

This would be a fun project for the upcoming Olympic games, making medals for a backyard competition. Maybe if I come across some more of these lids, we'll do that and I'll post.