Happy Palm Sunday!

Today starts one of my favorite weeks of the year--the week before Easter. While I love Christmas, the focus on the Atonement and the Resurrection make Easter more spiritually significant to me.  We ended the day with some unpleasant moments, yes, (thanks to H and thanks to my inability to deal with anything child-related after 8pm), but, more importantly, we also ended with a little devotional. We read about Christ's Triumphant Entry, watched the Bible video about it, and made edible tombs.

Most of Palm Sunday we spent in un-spiritual things, but fun family togetherness anyway. We worked diligently on our entries for The Frost Family and Friends Peep Diorama Contest.  Sweetie won it 2 years ago with her "Peeps Just Dance 2".  This year, H and I decided to do "The Tale of Peepter Rabbit" while Mister and Sweetie combined their efforts into "The Wizard of Peep."  It was fun to see them work together on it. Sweetie is quite confident that they will win.  We will see, as last year, the winner used real fire (in the Hunger Peeps entry).

 And we ate well, today, almost managing to finish off 2 racks of ribs all by ourselves.  I'm trying to do at least one meatless meal a week.  This week it was my friend Suzanne's Parmesan Quinoa:
1 T. olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup quinoa ( I usually add in Harvest Blend (from Trader Joes) combination of quinoa, couscous, chickpeas...I love the texture)
2 1/4 cups veggie stock or broth (I use my chicken broth if I don't have veggie on hand)
2 cups zucchini, chopped
2 or 3 carrots, peeled and shredded
1/2 cup mushrooms, thinly sliced
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper
1/4 c. grated Parmesan cheese
(Sometimes I chop up fresh spinach and throw that in too)

In large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until soft, about 4 min. Add the garlic and quinoa and cook for about 1 min, stirring occasionally.

Add in the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the quinoa is almost tender, about 12 min. The mixture will be brothy. Stir in the the veggies and simmer about 2 minutes longer. Stir in the parmesan and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

I liked it, J thought it was "pretty good,"  H (our resident vegetarian) hated it, and the other 2 just tolerated it.  Yet they devour the ribs. Clearly, I am not making much headway in the trying to "eat meat sparingly" (or more sparingly) thing. And, I couldn't decide whether to laugh or be totally disgusted when I came downstairs from nursing Hazel to find Sweetie at the table shirtless because not getting bbq sauce on your shirt is clearly more important than wearing a shirt.

 Little Zelly (as her grandpa calls her) was not impressed with the carnivores at the table:

 And speaking of Little Zelly, she's now crying when she should be sleeping, so this is the end of the blog post. I'm very much behind on blogging lately. I will try to catch up this week.