Making frinds like my daughter does

Being a mom is a wonderful opportunity. The kids teach me great lessons. As we were waiting for the last flight to go to SLC, our kids had been awake for almost 24 hrs. They were tired but still wanted to play. My daughter saw a girl about her age and she asked me if she could go ask her to play. This girl was running around barefoot, she seemed a bit older than my daughter, and she had darker skin color. Perla went and asked her if they could play together. The rest is hours waiting at the airport filled with laughter and games and teaching each other words from the languages they spoke. My son joined the fun too. And if you were someone sitting close you would probably say that these kids knew each other for a long time. After a few days we went thrift shopping and my kids were looking at toys. My son was picking all sorts of toys, but my daughter picked only one doll. She said that she picked that one because it reminded her of her friend she made at the aiport. This was a barbie doll, with black hair and darker skin color. I just love the pure love children have. I love to see the world through my kids eyes. It is a fun filled world, filled with people to love and have fun with. 

Passengers waiting said that they had a lot of fun seeing these kids play so well together. It was amazing!

Look at them. Don't they seem like best buddies! 😀

Here is Miss P with the doll she picked at the store. You can tell from her eyes she is very happy she found a doll that looked like her friend.💓

I am glad I get to keep this memory of my sweet girl forever!

Warmly,
Juli

Friend to Friend

 This Sunday the Church showed a broadcasting only for kids. I am used to participating in devotionals, general conference, fireside etc, but they had never done something just for kids. I can't describe how much I loved this event. The length was great, only 45 min. They had a variety of activities from drawing, to rock art, to general authorities sharing messsages, other kids from around the world, and songs. The event was even conducted by children. They did such a good job! 

Usually my kids are not very focused during church events, but this time it was different. This broadcast had captivated their attention and they wished it was longer. It too wish that they keep making these kind of events for kids. The whole family enjoyed watching it together. 

Our prophet, president Russell Nelson, also spoke. Perla kept notes while he talked. He invited the children to help other, be an example and plan to do acts of sevice to others. 

We will surely remember this event. That's why I decided to write about it. 😁

Warmly,

Juli

Valentine's day and surprise snow

Dear Blog, It feels so good to be back writing again. During these past years I have come back to this blog to look at old pictures and remind myself of the sweet memories. This week I don't remember the reason why I came to the blog but I felt that I needed to start writing again. So I will start by sharing a special occasion from last weekend

Valentine's day came with a surprise snow! What a special day for all of us here in Albania. The last snow we had here was in 2017 I believe and it lasted only a few hours on the ground. This time it snowed all night. Actually I was so excited I couldn't sleep at night. I woke up and checked the snow out of my window several times. I couldn't wait for morning to come and I was also afraid that it might melt before we got to go outside. 😀

We woke up and had a good breakfast (Saturday and Sunday we indulged in good food). We tried to prepare the food with lots of LOVE. The table cloth after breakfast looks like a battle field where there is blood shed. 😋 I guess it means the food was good.

After food was snow time. Since it doesn't snow almost ever here we don't actually own any snow attire. So we had to come back home change and go out again with dry clothes. The kids had tons of fun; they made an upside down snowman. I had seen these on the internet but I didn't really think I would get the opportunity to actually make one myself. It turned out so cute. Miss P loved it so much she even asked to write about it in her journal. They played snowball fight, made snow angels, jumped in snow, and even crawled in snow. 😁

During the week we made some Valentine's Day themed crafts . I am including pictures below so I remember what we have done. 

See how I haven't mentioned gifts at all? There was so much that we did together as a family, Valentine's day was truly a gift this year. (Although Miri did get all of us our favorite treat.) I feel very blessed and grateful to my Father in Heaven because He has shown so much love to us. His name is LOVE. I thank Him for the beautiful gift of creativity. Like Him we can all be creative and should spend time creating and expressing our talents. I am also very grateful to my God for the beautiful snow. Just with one ingredient, snow, the kids had  plenty of hours of pure fun. What a blessing!! I hope you all felt loved on Valentine's day this year!

Warmly,

Juliana

Happy late birthday to me!!

Well, I had a birthday this month on the 3rd, and my husband had his on August 28th. The good thing about having our birthdays close to each other, is that we only make one party in between birthdays. This year we went out for dinner, and did something fun together. We didn't want any gifts, there wasn't anything that we really needed. However, I got a $10 gift card to Amazon from a friend of mine. Now, there is only that much you can buy with $10. However, when you have been a poor student for a long time, some of the attitudes come back. Let's say they come back most of the time. I wasn't sure if I wanted to get something for me, for Perla, or for the house. I narrowed it down and decided to get something for the kitchen. It wasn't a very hard decision considering that I am continuously trying new recipes and striving to prepare healthy meals.

This is my new toy, a spiralizer. I am not going to mention which brand I got, because I don't want to advertise any of them. I love my spiralizer!!! So far I have tried it on zucchini and carrots. I am excited to try it on other fruits and veggies. I am including in this post a short summary of two of the recipes we have had using our spiralizer.

My spiralizer!! *-*

Zoodles (Zucchini noodles)

My husband cooked the first dish we had using our Spiralizer (I think he was excited too about our new toy). He sauteed the zucchini noodles in olive oil, garlic, and walnuts. The sauce is a marinara sauce, and we topped it with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Second dish is Zucchini noodles with a avocado sauce and grilled chicken, The avocado sauce was 2 avocados, 2 clove garlic, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper blended in a food processor. Yummy!

I hope you enjoyed this post! 

Have a wonderful rest of the week!

Warmly,

Juliana

Fall, thank you for the Squash-es :)

I never thought I would like fall as much as I do this year. I decided to take advantage and experiment with the fall squashes. And to my surprise, we have loved them.

For the recipes I am sharing with you today, I have experimented with butternut squash. Some friends of ours gave us some from their garden.

Yumm fresh butternut squash!! I had to do some research on the recipes because I wasn't familiar with this vegetable.

I am happy to say that our whole family likes this vegetable and we will eat it weekly. My next post will probably be with recipes made with another fall squash. Anyway, I will leave it for later. I hope you enjoy the recipes and let me know what is your favorite butternut squash recipe so I can try it out!

Baked Butternut Squash with Honey-balsamic Glazed Salmon

The recipe how to bake butternut squash can be found here.

Vegetarian Butternut Squash Chili

I never follow a recipe to make chili but here is a recipe close to the one I made. (I omitted the chard. The topping is homemade sour cream and cheddar cheese).

Butternut Squash bread

Oh this was soo good!! The recipe is for gluten free bread, mine was not, I used whole wheat flour instead of oat flour. The recipe can be found here.

The bread tasted really good with some honey on top. Yum yum!!

Thank you for stopping by!

Warmly,

Juliana

Enchiladas made healthier

For those of you who are really into Mexican food , and for those of you who aren't into it, you will want to try this recipe. BECAUSE it is so good that even my 17 months old baby girl loved it. I am trying to get rid of most of the carbs in my diet, and since most enchilada recipes are made with tortillas, we haven't had enchiladas very often until this moment. This recipe uses zucchini boats instead of tortillas. How cool is that??!! Also, you can make this recipe meatless if you want and be creative with it by adding beans, corn etc. I love food that I can indulge in (a little bit) and don't regret it later.


Chicken Enchilada Stuffed Zucchini Boats
To view the full recipe click here.

This is going in the oven.

This is coming out of the oven. I loved the juice in the bottom! Yum!

We ate them with homemade refried beans.

Thanks for stopping by and let me know what you think!

Warmly,

Juliana

Chickpea and vegetable curry with quinoa

I hope everyone is doing well!

Today I want to share with you the first Indian/ Southeastern Asian recipe ever cooked in our home. I don't really like Southeastern Asian food. I think the flavor of their food is really strong and I like simple flavors in my food. Anyway, my husband loves Indian food, so I thought to give it a try, at least just for him. After trying this rather simple recipe, I was hooked. I couldn't stop smelling at the sauce and I was texting my husband pictures and telling him how good this sauce smelled. Needless to say he loved it too.

So, here you go! The recipe was taken from the link here.

Chickpea and vegetable curry with quinoa

Ingredients

• 1 can coconut milk (13.5 fl oz or 400 mL)
• 1 can chick peas (15 oz)
• 2 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon red curry paste
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon or more brown sugar
• 1 quarter lemon squeezed or more
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon basil
• 1 bunch spinach, cleaned (I didn't have any spinach when I made this recipe. We rarely are without spinach, but this happen to be that day.)
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 2 cups sliced mushrooms
• salt to taste
• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups water

Instructions

1. Heat coconut milk in a large pan until it boils and reduce heat to simmer. Add next 7 ingredients to the coconut milk: chickpeas, red curry paste, tomato paste, brown sugar, lemon juice, chili powder, basil. Mix everything together until even consistency.
2. Add spinach, chopped green onions and sliced mushrooms to the coconut milk mixture, bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until mushrooms are cooked, stirring occasionally. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. In a separate pan, combine 2 cups of water and 1 cup of quinoa. Bring to boil, reduce heat to simmer and cook until all liquid is absorbed and quinoa is cooked and fluffy.
Note: If you like your curry a bit runny, add a little bit of water in the end to reach the desired consistency. If reheating the next day, you will likely have to add a touch of water to the curry as it will thicken overnight in the refrigerator.
4. To serve, place a scoop of quinoa into the middle of each plate. Top with chickpea curry.

Sorry for the quality of the pictures, they don't do justice to the food. This recipe was a bomb. Let me know if you try it. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Warmly,

Juliana