Summer Vacation and Fava Beans

Apart from Thursday and Friday being reserved for math training, my summer vacation has started! I took most of the day off on Friday and realized how difficult it is for me to get back into the "being at home" Maddy. I took a nap and just hung out at the house all day. I'm sure I'll clean the house eventually, but I'm soaking up the not having to do anything-ness while I still can.

I'm excited to cook good, healthy food, and I'm excited to spend lots of time with Elisabeth. This should be a pretty good summer (despite having a difficult time with allergies)

So on to pictures:

Remember those 2.5lbs of fava beans we got in our CSA box on Tuesday? Well, I finally got around to making something with them today. I had 3 recipe suggestions to use with them. 1. was to eat them like edamame...we decided we could do that any time, so we went for a Mediterranean dish, and a favas with lemon and yogurt.



Here's when I was shelling them. The pod was unlike anything I've experienced before...it was fuzzy inside. These beans were giant! It reminded me of the giant level on Super Mario Bros. The farm suggested scoring the surface of the pod so that popping them out of their skin would be easier.

I had to blanch them for 3 minutes then put them in ice water.


This is what they looked like with their shell off. They tasted similar to peas/lima beans
h


This was the fava beans with lemon and yogurt. It has sauteed garlic, onions and fava beans. Then the "dressing" was lemon juice, oil, salt and yogurt. Drew really enjoyed it and he thought it was similar to having a baked potato. I felt it was missing something and wasn't overly impressed.


This was the "Mediterranean" dish - it was fava beans, garlic, onions fresh parsley and tomato sauce...I just added rice so we'd have something else to eat. The recipe said to use diced tomatoes, but I didn't have any, so I used some pasta sauce. If we were to do this again, I would probably wait and use tomatoes because like all pasta sauce, everything tastes like the sauce.

If I were to do that one again, besides the tomatoes rather than pasta sauce, I might cut up the beans, or even toss it with some spaghetti. Elisabeth liked it though!

l
She's getting pretty good with a spoon! I found out that the delicious champagne mangoes stick well to those spoons- she can flail her arms and it still says stuck until it gets in her mouth! Impressive!

STRAWBERRIES!!! She ate both of those strawberries! I was impressed!


Daddy showing baby how it's done...


We've been working on just having binkies at nap times. I had left the room to do whatever I was doing and it got quiet. I went in her room to check to see why it had gotten quiet. She had gone to her crib, taken TWO pacifiers out + her blankie and somehow managed to get to the other side of the room. Doesn't she look guilty!? hahahahaha Love her!