365: Fun Food Facts

I've been feeling extremely fatigued lately and I've just been chalking it up to first year faculty stress. But this week I noticed I was getting more headaches than usual and that when I was leaned over for more than a moment I was feeling dizzy. Anemia runs in my family and is more likely to happen to vegetarians so I decided that I needed to make a more concerted effort to pump up my iron levels. Plant based iron is harder for the body to absorb than animal-based iron, but if you pair it with vitamin C it does a much more efficient job. So my love and I have been working this week to be more intentional with our food choices. This morning she cheffed me up some spinach, red pepper and garlic eggs and cut up the pineapple we got yesterday. The spinach has lots of iron and both the pineapple and red bell peppers pack lots of vitamin c. In fact, red bell peppers have more vitamin c than an orange! Bet you didn't know that did ya? Paired with a multivitamin and some zinc I'm hope my vitamin packed meals are helping boost my blood and maybe even ramp up the old immune system so it can kick this poison oak's ass!

365: Oatmeal Cookies!

I have been craving oatmeal cookies for about two weeks now. Tonight I finally remembered to grab some oatmeal at the store before I came home. One of the few things you can find me willingly cooking! Yum scrum!!!

365: What a Good Wifey

Ange has two big tests tomorrow so I volunteered to make dinner for us. Now that may not seem like a big deal but since I cook < once a month this is a very big deal. I made vegetarian tacos. It took less than 10 minutes from start to finish. Totally exhausting ;) I'll be glad when her tests are over and I don't have to wear myself out over the stove anymore! Love you babe!

Banana Bread Party!

L asked T to make some banana bread yesterday because one of the (local) guests from the women's conference wanted to take some home to Lagos with her. I got home from the airport after dropping off the American guests and told T I'd help. Apparently I was more of a pain than a help however.

There was a bag of bananas and I said "Should I mash these?" and she said yes and went about measuring flour and other things. I peeled all the bananas and started to smash them when Tracy shrieks "AUNTY LINDSAY! Do you think we are having a party of something??? In the history of banana bread making no one has ever smashed as many bananas as that!" Ok, she didn't really say the history bit, I made that up, but that's pretty much what she was saying. I told her not to worry, that it would be ok, they'd just be extra moist and banana-y. What I didn't realize is that T is a baking perfectionist so NO we couldn't just have extra bananas in the double batch, we now had to make a triple batch. Oops, sorry.

Then I was measuring sugar. I spilled a little extra because they use grocery sacks to package the flour and sugar rather than paper like we use in the US and it slipped a little. You would have thought I killed someone. So at this point she pretty much thought I was a complete disaster. I tried to stir the batter and apparently I wasn't doing that well either so she said "Oh just give me that, you look like you are stirring a pot of noodles or something." Epic Fail.

The funny thing is, although I am a crap cook, I am a REALLY good baker. But apparently I was not up to T's strict standards. Oh well, that means next time she'll have to do it herself! Ahahahaha