Devin's Art Gallery

She has been so much into drawing, painting, coloring, cutting out shapes and all other artsy stuff in the last 6 months or so. She constantly asks me to draw something and I am so not good at it. But at least I can color with her for hours; that I can do and that is about all when comes to arts :). I think we need some arts and crafts classes soon.

100% Kissable

Baby Love. LOVE, LOVE babies! And especially this one.

The smelly fruit Durian

Durians at the Asian Market

Daiva and I smelling the fruit.
See, the seeds on the side? They are edible if you roast/boil them.

Finally I got to try fresh Durian fruit. It looked cool. The spikes were sharp and you already could smell the fruit without even opening it yet. Once we opened the smell was strong, some people would say kind of stinky :) The fruit meat was sweet but strange flavor. After eating a little bit I could not eat more. My taste buds were so not used to such a strange flavor, consistency and smell. I friezed up most of the fruit. I heard they make great smoothies. The fruit comes from Indonesia and you could find them in Asian Markets. I highly recommend to try it just for such a uniqueness of it. Thanks Daiva for my Christmas present!

Lithuanian Sauerkraut

Using food processor to shred the cabbage. We make a mess but have fun!

Putting shreded cabage in HARSCH stone fermentation pot

We got half of it full.

5 days later we are eating it

The recipe:

4 heads of hard winter cabbage

4 carrots

1 apple

A handfull of fresh cranberries

A spoonful of fennel seeds

Salt to taste

Shred the cabbage and carrots, apple with the food processor. I alternate a couple of blades: half of it make it with one that makes long stripes and half of it that makes short ones. Mix it all with fennel seeds, cranberries and salt. Than you need to press it all untill you get some juice. If you do not get enough juice add some water. Put some cabbage leaves on the top and add the stone weight that comes with the pot. The water(cabagge juice) has to go above the weighting stones-very important!! Close pot with the lid and pour some water in the groove. Leave pot in your kitchen and listen for bubbling sound. Your sauerkrout will be ready in about 5 days. Take it all out, put in glass jars and keep in the refrigirator for a long time if you want. We eaty it pretty quickly..

Raw Cranberry Jelly

If you live in Southern California you know that is hard to find fresh cranberries here (not a right climate to grow them here). I tried buying it online but because the berries are pretty heavy it is costly to ship them. But every year around Thanksgiving Trader Joe's gets pretty good fresh cranberries. I like juicing them with pineapple or apples or making raw cranberry jelly. Here is the most simple recipe to make it. I like simple, quick and healthy recipes.
24 ounces of fresh cranberries
1 to 2 sweet apples
1/2 cup of water
honey to taste
Blend it all with Vitamix or your blender and pour it in the jar. It can sty in the refrigerator for days. I like to put it on the toast. Toast with cream cheese and cranberry jelly goes nicely with it too.

Devin's Hanukkah Celebration 2009

This is the second year Devin got to celebrate Hanukkah with our friend. She came home all happy and chatty.. that she is looking forward to the next year Hanukkah celebration. Ok, Roberta, the tradition has been created :)

Gold Nugget Squash Soup

Gold Nugget Squash

During the winter season I use a lot of squash. I had this squash(Gold Nugget is a winter squash) in my kitchen for the last 4 months sitting on the top of the refrigerator and having no time to get to it (It looked kind of pretty too:). I thought it might be bad by now, but once we open it up it was perfectly fine to use it! Tonight we baked it and made the soup out of it. I tried putting some cinnamon, ground cloves, raw apple puree, brown sugar and yogurt in the soup, but at the end the best taste was when I added nothing to it. I used Vita Mix to make the puree.
Topped it with goat yogurt.

Gold Nugget Squash Soup


The Seeds-let me know if anybody needs any.

This squash beat all the other squashes I ever ate! Even my favorite acorn squash...It was so delicious!! Highly recommend to try it!

What do you think about this?

This is that Devin did yesterday: we were getting ready to go out and while I was talking to grandmother she took my car keys, unlocked the car, turn on the engine, sit in her carseat and put her seatbelts on.

Church

Mariners Church

We took Thomas to the church for the first time. He did great, but on the other hand his big sisiter got bored and just wanted to run around.

I know my mom would love to see this picture with all of us in the church.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We did not stay home like we thought we were going to do. We went to see the family and it was fun. Devin had a blast! Got to take the first family photo.

Boths grandmothers.

Cousins-what an age difference..

Cousins.

With auntie.

Our House Remodal-The Manager

We finished remodaling the outside of our house. Devin did a good job supervising everything.

It was so funny: she would take her chair and go sit outside and look at the man working for a longest time. She would talk to them and ask questions. She made a lot of new buddies and learned some spanish words. Than she would go back inside the house and ask me to make her burrito for lunch.

BIG Bear

Devin with Grandpa and Big Bear 08.06. Was easy to take that pic..

Devin with Grandpa and Big Bear in 11.09. She did not wanted to take that pic at all. I had to bribe her quite a bit..

McDaniels

All three McDaniel men.

Love this photo.

Family in Town

With greatgrandmother and Nancy and Hello Kitty of course. Oops, forgat Devin's baby!

Long Beach Aquarium

New Pics of Thomas

He is a calm boy..

I love this outfit! Thanks Missy!

When I was getting ready to take a picture of Thomas, Devin decided that I should take a picture of her baby too! She is all about babies now. She calls herself mommy.

Halloween

I see that I do about one post every year... Again, I am thinking about improving in that department..

Here is a picture of Devin's halloween costume. She was a snowhite as you can see and went trick or treeting with her friend who was a snowhite too. Two walking around snowhites looked adorable! That day Devin and Luke went to halloween store to see if she could pick some other costume, something more like a character but they came back with the snowhite shoes and tiara. She was so sure whe wanted to be a snowhite!

Welcome our Baby Boy Thomas

Thomas and his bigger sister Devin. She already loves her brother! And her all babies..