Homemade Pita Chips

I always seem to have baggies of leftover pita bread at the bottom of my fridge.  I get Trader Joe's pack of 8 Whole Wheat pitas, which are nice and soft and perfect for egg salad, but then they get a little hard after a few days and I tend to ignore them.   Now, the chickens will practically stab each other's eyes for a nibble of some leftover pita, but it feels a little wasteful so I turned to the interwebs to see what I could morph them into.  The answer?  Pita chips (...mind-blowing, I know.  Stick with me).  The thing with making homemade pita chips is that they are SO STINKING EASY and more delicious than bagged pita chips.  Every time I make these I slap my forehead and think, oh my gosh these are so good and why do I not make these all the time??  

Homemade Pita Chips

2-4 pitas, cut into wedges
olive oil
Trader Joe's Garlic Salt*

*Unlike the usual powdered garlic salt, this is a grinder of sea salt, garlic, onion, and parsley.  Saves you from having to season with salt and garlic separately, and is delicious on, oh I don't know, everything.

Preheat oven to 375.  Cut pitas into wedges (about 8 pieces per pita), brush with olive oil, sprinkle with garlic salt, and bake on baking sheet or pizza stone for 13-15 minutes.  


While they are delicious alone, these are perfect for dips and in soups.  They also tend to fill you up and spruce up whatever you've thrown together for dinner.  Like, 'we were going to just have broccoli soup for dinner, which is a side dish.  But now that I've added these homemade pita chips, it's a Meal.'  Bam.

Couponing Wannabe

I am such a couponing wannabe.  I've watched Extreme Couponing with my jaw on the floor ($600 of groceries for less than $10?!) and I've read blogs where moms talk about how they use coupons to save hundreds of dollars per year on their families' grocery bill.  Who doesn't like to save money?  Sign me up, I say.  Why haven't I gotten into this sooner?

Well, Sara, because to be a successful couponer you need to be 1) disciplined 2) organized and 3) good at Excel, and I am none of those.  For the ultimate grand supreme couponers, sifting through coupon mail-outs and plotting each purchase is practically a part-time job.  And, well, I have a part-time job.  But it's not the end!  There is help.  And it comes in the form of Totally Target.  

This wonderful website spells things out for the organizationally-challenged among us.  It tells you when things are on sale and provides the links (when applicable) to each item.  Like today, it tells you how to get free Lindt candy bars.  Or a one-year subscription to Elle magazine for $4.50 with the promo code "totallytarget" (Isn't that what a single magazine would cost?  I'm sold).  

My other can't-live-without coupon fave is Coupon Sherpa, the Best App in the History of the World.  Because it saves you actual money.  If you are an outlet mall junkie like me (Banana Republic Factory Store, anyone??), you need to download this right now.  Stores like Kohl's, Gap Outlet, Carter's, Hobby Lobby, and countless others almost always have some sort of 10-30% off coupon on any given day.  They're always adding new stores, and a lot of the coupons can be used online as well.

I'll admit that most of my coupons are for "wants" rather than "needs" (I'm still waiting for broccoli coupons), so using coupons does not really make or break our family's grocery budget.  But I really feel like I'm Sticking it To the Man when I whip out my Coupon Sherpa and save $0.18 on that piece of felt at JoAnn Fabrics.  It turns out that you CAN use coupons while also not turning into a person who hides toilet paper under your kid's bed.  No spreadsheet required.  

3 Ingredient Pancakes

I love me some breakfast food.  When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I think about is what I'm going to have for breakfast.  Since I'm not much of a snacker it's got to hold me over until lunch.  And some mornings, the Kashi just doesn't cut it in the delicious department.  So I started tinkering with pancake recipes and settled on this as my weekday go-to:

3 Ingredient Pancakes

1 banana

2 eggs

1/4 cup oatmeal

optional but encouraged:

*splash vanilla

*dash cinnamon

(*the addition of which would technically make these 5 ingredient pancakes, but just.  go with it.)

Combine all ingredients in the blender and puree until smooth. Pour onto greased griddle on medium-low (careful!  they'll burn at any higher temp) until bubbles form.  Flip and cook about 1-2 minutes more or to desired doneness.  Serve with peanut butter (a banana's best friend) and/or syrup.

I make these abouuuut every other day.  No joke.  They are that good.  And super healthy unless you are like me and go overboard on the melted peanut butter syrup.  This makes enough for about 5-6 smallish pancakes, and you can easily double/triple the recipe and freeze the rest for a week's worth of breakfasts.  Also a good way to use up overripe bananas!  Nom.

6 Month Update

Ohhh to have a 6-month old.  

I'd heard from a couple parents that the 6-month mark really starts the golden age of babyhood, and so far it has proven to be 100% true.  (Warning:  Super mushy baby love post, just so you know what you're in for.)  

Newborns are sweet and cuddly and wonderful in their own way, but it's SO much fun to see what makes her laugh and start to see her little personality coming through.  Is there anything better than having your little one squeal with excitement simply because you walked into the room?  

 

Not sure what I did to deserve this little snowflake.  People are always telling me, "enjoy this time.  It goes by so fast."  So if you come to my house during the day, you'll probably see the evidence of me trying to do just that (dishes in the sink.  Laundry in the bedroom.  Clutter in the bathroom).  Because the days are long but the years are short, and I want to savor every precious minute with her while she still thinks her parents are the Coolest, Funniest People on Earth.

 And did I mention the gloriousness of chubby baby CHEEKS?  (OK I'm done.  But sometimes I just can't handle it.)

We love you, sweet pea.  Happy 6 months.

You can raise backyard chickens. Yes, YOU.

Let's talk chickins.  

 

I said chickens, Dino.  

That's better.  Hey ladies.

Early in our marriage, hubs and I both had a dream of someday raising chickens, but we (mistakenly) thought we needed a big yard, warm weather, and lots of free time to care for them.  So we put our chicken dream on the back burner.  It wasn't until I heard this story on NPR about the rise of backyard chickens that I started to realize that we could make our chicken dream a reality.  I believe it was in this interview that the author said, 

"If you can care for a cat, you can raise chickens."

Hmm.   

Now let's get this out there right now:  I am a child of the suburbs.  Before the chicks, the closest would I get to agriculture was if my husband dragged me to Fleet Farm, and even then I would hide in the aisle with the giant gummy worms and circus peanuts.  Farming is not in my nature.  But after seeing them in Normal People's homes and doing a little more research, raising chickens started to seem less intimidating.  We could do this.  Now, over a year later, we can't imagine not being able to walk out our porch and grab fresh eggs every morning.  Eventually we'd like to have 10 chickens.  Maybe a goat.  Maybe two.  A cow.  (A cow?  Who are we?)  

Now to the biggest questions we get asked, in case you're considering getting chickens yourself (do it, do it!):

1)  Isn't it a lot of work?

Nope!  It only takes a few minutes per day to grab their eggs, make sure they have water and food, and toss them whatever kitchen scraps you need to get rid of.  You can even go out of town and leave them to their own egg-laying devices, and chances are they will be just fine.  Some days we just peek at them from the kitchen window, and if they aren't holding up a sign that says, "need food"  we just wave and finish our omelets. 

Dominating a leftover pita pocket.

  2)  Don't they make a lot of noise?  What if the neighbors complain?  

Once upon a time we bought three hens from our local hatchery.  Their names were Ginny, Hermione, and Mrs. Weasley.  They were the best of friends, until Mrs. Weasley developed a deep voice and put on a lot of weight and started to wake us up at 5 am.  Turns out that Mrs. Weasley was actually a Mr. Weasley, so back he went.  The end.  It's true that roosters will crow at the crack of dawn, which is why our chicken license (oh yes, we have a chicken license) limits us to no more than 3 non-roosters, who may squawk a little bit but for the most part don't make a peep.  We haven't had anyone complain, and we live within very close proximity to our neighbors.  

One of these birds is not like the others

3)  Aren't they dirty?  I don't want to have to clean up after them.

Neither do I.  Which is why my husband built an awesome chicken tractor that we can move to different spots in the yard.  The great part is that the chicken poop fertilizes the grass and gets washed away in the rain = minimal clean-up.  The most we do is brush off the poop from the laying boxes, about once every few weeks.  

4) How many eggs do you get?

Our chickens lay about 1-2 eggs per day in peak laying season.  And since they are fresh and naturally coated with an antimicrobial layer, they last a lot longer than the [sanitized, bleached] eggs you buy from the supermarket. 

5) What do you do with them in the winter?

Our chickadees are tough little ladies who laugh in the face of sub-zero temps.  But we struggled with this thought, too.  Would their little beaks freeze?  Would their feeties get frostbitten in the snow??  Then we came to our senses and reminded ourselves that chickens have been living outside for thousands of years.  Like, without the help of humans.  We made sure that their coop protected them from the snow and wind and had plenty of insulation in the nesting box.  The biggest hassle was probably making sure their water didn't freeze (hubs put a heat lamp under it, which stayed on all day).  But other than that, they had their down feathers to keep them nice and warm, and they did just fine.


6) What kind of chickens do you have?  How did you know what kind to get?

It pretty much like this - "hey coworker, what kind of chickens do you have?  Ok sweet.  I'll take three of those."  We have Buff Orpingtons, which I kind of view as the yellow lab of the chicken world.  Friendly, easy temperaments, winter-hardy, good layers.  Next we'd like to branch out to more interesting-looking breeds, like Silkies, because, well just look at them.

Chickens or muppets?  Want.

Basically, they are awesome creatures who will enrich your lives and make you appreciate where your food comes from.  And they will eat your leftovers.  Win-win.