Greetings all! I hope you're all adjusting to the time change. Did anyone else's kids fight bedtime yesterday, despite the "You know, it's actually an hour later than now" argument? And did anyone else not get their extra hour of sleep (my kids still woke up super early)? Anyway, how about a fresh start? Here are some fun ideas for your consideration in this week's Weekly Blueprint:
November 7: If you are suffering from sleep deprivation related to the time change (or hey, just sleep deprivation in general), treat yourself to a really delicious coffee.

November 8: Vote in your municipal election.

November 8: Talk turkeys with your toddler at the Mass Audubon's South Shore Sanctuaries.

November 10: Celebrate locally made goods at AHA! Night in New Bedford.

November 11: A super fun pick for ballet lovers: The Nutcracker Boston Ballet Day at the Boston Children's Museum.

November 11: Pay tribute. My peep Stacey at Boston Central has several Veteran's Day listings on the docket for Friday.

At your leisure: Set aside a bag and start filling it with items for local food drives.

At your leisure: Make this pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. YUM.

At your leisure: Schedule a date night.

At your leisure: Pick up a new book. This community-driven collection of recommendations offers more than enough fodder to get you started.

At your leisure: My upcoming trip to Camp Mighty served as the impetus to update my life list. Consider starting/editing yours as you look forward into the turn of the year.

At your leisure: Find creative inspiration. I recently joined Pinterest and I must say that I love it as a means of archiving awesome ideas and creative inspiration.

Image credit: Unicorn pops pinned via Etsy

Sometimes kids come up with the most brilliant ideas. I wanted to make pumpkin bread the other week (our oven finally got fixed so I've been on a bit of a baking bender) and Laurel suggested that we make a cream cheese frosting and call it cake. Brilliant. I doubled/adjusted slightly this pumpkin bread recipe from Michelle and added frosting (via a recipe in Baking Illustrated (really, anyone who likes to bake ought to own this tome). It was a huge hit. Here's the how-to:
Pumpkin Cake
(Michelle's recipe doubled, with some adjustments, as annotated below)

Ingredients

4 cups flour

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

4 eggs

1 can pumpkin (Original recipe calls for more pumpkin than one can once doubled, but I didn't want to use partial cans. If you want more pumpkin measure out 2 cups.)

2 cup granulated sugar

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 cup milk

1/2 cup oil

OPTIONAL: The original pumpkin bread recipe calls for chocolate chips; we omitted given that we were adding cream cheese frosting, but if you want to up the sweet factor, mix in 12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese

5 tablespoons butter, softened

1 tablespoon sour cream (or, um, instead add an extra tablespoon of cream cheese or butter)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1¼ cup (5 ounces) confectioner's sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg until well blended. Set aside.

2. Beat eggs, pumpkin, white and brown sugars, milk, and oil in large bowl with wire whisk until well blended. Add dry ingredients; stir just until moistened (do not overmix or batter will toughen). If using, stir in chocolate chips.

3. Pour mixture into a greased 9×13 inch cake pan. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Remove pan from oven and place on wire rack.

4. While cake is baking, make frosting by mixing above ingredients together until smooth. If you flip your cake out of the pan this recipe yields enough for a thin layer of frosting on the top and four sides. However, Laurel wanted to practice piping (plus I wanted to leave the cake in the pan so it was easier to store in the fridge) -- using a piping tip, the recipe was a bit short in covering the entire top of the cake. This was fine for us, but if you'd like generous frosting coverage, double the recipe.

Enjoy!

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Image credit: Leslie Graff; a cropped portion of the artwork below. Isn't Leslie's work delicious? I met Leslie for the first time at Pivot and fell. in. love. She's an incredibly talented artist and all around cool person. You can purchase her work as greeting cards, prints, or big awesome paintings.

I had a fantastic time experimenting more deeply (i.e., beyond the IKEA runs I've used the service for in the past) with TaskRabbit as the Boston spokeswoman for their Do More. Live More. Be More. campaign. I shared my mid-month recap a couple of weeks ago; below are my thoughts now that the campaign has come to a close. Also, read on for a discount code so you can give TaskRabbit a spin!

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Here are the 6 general buckets I planned on working on at the beginning of the campaign:

Purging. Well, I still haven't gotten around to this one in a big way, partly because I haven't had a chance to go through my basement, and partly because I unloaded a bunch of Violet and Laurel's outgrown clothes at Isis and Family Swap Day when I was changing over their wardrobes for the season. I will keep this on my TaskRabbit to-do list because I still want to lighten our household load!

Pickups. I cannot say enough how fantastic TaskRabbit is for pickups, particularly since we are a one-car family and I almost never have the car during the weekdays. The service has proven handy for random pickups (e.g., drugstore, hardware store) as well as more specialized runs (e.g., birthday cakes, CSA). Last week I also experimented with using the service to pick me up at home and drop me off somewhere; it ended up being a little more expensive than a cab, but was definitely more pleasant!

Event planning. I haven't needed event planning help since Pivot (during which TaskRabbit was insanely helpful) but I'm planning a baby shower in early November and probably will use the service to help me take care of various things.

Household. As I mentioned in my mid-month post, almost all of Jon and my household to-do's cannot be outsourced. However, I was thrilled to be reminded by Rookie Moms Heather and Whitney (who participated in the same campaign as the Bay Area spokeswomen) about using TaskRabbit for yard work. I cannot believe I didn't think of this earlier! We don't have a huge yard, but weeding and general upkeep has completely fallen to the wayside since Violet arrived. I'm totally going to post to have someone take care of that! Probably in advance of the baby shower I'm hosting.

Travel. I haven't yet used TaskRabbit for travel errands but I have a couple of trips coming up and will probably use them last minute to help me square up on logistics. Or better yet, to deliver a few surprises to Jon and the girls while I'm away.

Virtual assistant. As I mentioned mid-month, outsourcing work matters is hard for me, but the other week I gave it a go and had a rabbit do some data entry and research for me. It was fantastic and I will totally do it again. I also like Heather and Whitney's idea of hiring a rabbit to distribute promotional postcards. Since I operate Boston Mamas on a shoestring I don't take out ads or anything like that. So this would be a fun "small budget" way to help get the word out about my site.

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Concluding thoughts:

This outsourcing experiment has been really fantastic, and I'm grateful to TaskRabbit for asking me to be a part of the campaign. It's also been great to see how far TaskRabbit has come. When I first tested out the service, I was a very happy customer, but since that time, they have added a lot of features to improve the interface. Some of my favorites:

No cash needs to change hands when rabbits need to be reimbursed for purchases. This was a concern back when I first used TaskRabbit for IKEA runs because understandably, not all rabbits were psyched about plunking down large sums on their credit card for someone they didn't know. Now, all purchase reimbursements are handled on the TaskRabbit system. (So, the rabbit still needs to pay the expense, but they will be guaranteed reimbursement because task assigner's billing information is stored securely on the site.)

You can now set up tasks to recur. This has been handy for our CSA pickup as it saves on reposting time. (You also can repost previous tasks individually and update details.)

You can hire favorite rabbits to take care of tasks. I love this feature as it allows me to give first dibs to my favorite rabbits. What can I say, I'm loyal.

Similar to a coffee punch card, you can earn a free task for every three completed tasks. Sweet!

In short, I think TaskRabbit is a fantastic service for anyone who needs help with, well, anything. As an entrepreneur and a mother of two, I've found it particularly helpful to both lighten my load so I can be a happier, more engaged parent/wife/person in general, and also because the reality is that as someone who runs multiple businesses, it's often more time and cost effective for me to outsource small, not that complicated projects during time where I can work on large billable projects for clients.

Finally, I wanted to note that every single rabbit I have met through TaskRabbit has been courteous, on time, and really nice. To date, they have delivered on what I have asked them to do in every instance. Rabbits to the rescue, indeed.

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So, want to give TaskRabbit a spin? Of course you do! Use code PAL2676 to receive $10 off your first task. Happy outsourcing!

In my ongoing quest to find protein-rich vegetarian meals for kids, I picked up a package of Harmony Valley vegetarian hamburger mix at Whole Foods and knocked together a batch of vegetarian chili yesterday for a gathering with friends. Though I've always found the make-vegetarian-food-look-like-meat thing a little odd, now I get it. Especially when you need help transitioning someone from non-vegetarian to vegetarian eating. This chili was a huge hit -- Laurel loved it and the grown up guests were clamoring too. Here's the how-to:
Ingredients:

1 package Harmony Valley vegetarian hamburger mix

Olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 large can (28 ounce) diced tomato

1 can black beans

1 can pinto beans

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 small zucchini, cubed pieces

2 ears of corn, steamed and kernels shaved off

Shredded cheese + tortilla chips (optional)

1. Prepare Harmony Valley mix per instructions (so easy...just add water and let stand for 15 minutes). In a large pot, heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Add onion and stir for a few minutes. Add the prepared Harmony Valley mix and stir, breaking up chunks.

2. To keep the mix from sticking, add canned tomatoes, black beans, and pinto beans -- including the liquid from the beans. Stir in the chili powder, cumin, and salt. (After all the ingredients are added, taste and adjust. I went mild on the spices because Laurel doesn't like things too spicy.)

3. Toss in the bell pepper, zucchini, and corn. Obviously, you can sub in whatever veggies you want but this collection made for a nice color contrast. Stir until ingredients are blended and veggies are heated through. Then turn off the heat to avoid overcooking the veggies (I like veggies to still have crunch to them). Serve chili with shredded cheese and tortilla chips if you like.

And that's it! Super easy, loaded with protein and fiber, and kids will enjoy too. Yay!

Image credit: Harmony Valley. They have lots of recipes if you need inspiration, but basically, use the vegetarian hamburger mix as you would ground meat. I will definitely be using this again for vegetarian tacos and lasagna.

It's been two weeks since I embarked on the Do More. Live More. Be More. challenge. I'm curious about whether you have shared a promise for the campaign -- it's a reflective task that's easy and enters you to win cool prizes (I mean, really, who doesn't dig cool prizes?). Anyway, I wanted to report in about how my challenge is going. The six buckets I wrote about experimenting with were: purging, pickups, event planning, household, travel, and virtual assistant.
Purging. This is a tough one, I haven't gotten to it yet. I ended up dropping off one bag of baby clothes to Isis (for Room to Grow) since I was going there anyway but I otherwise haven't done any major purging, primarily because I need to set aside time to drag out what needs to be purged. Perhaps I need to hire a rabbit to help me with that!

Pickups. TaskRabbit has been a huge help here. We're still a one-car family (though admittedly, this is becoming more challenging, particularly as it relates to transporting Laurel and her friends around) and most days of the week I do not have the car. I have used TaskRabbit to help me get items at the hardware store, pick up a birthday cake, and track down copies of Parents magazine (I'm in the October issue!). All of these things are super helpful (the birthday cake pickup saved me yesterday!) but one thing that has made a huge difference is hiring a rabbit to do our CSA pickup. We knew from the start that the timing of the pickup is not great for our schedule but we're committed to our CSA. Having someone take care of the pickup for us (Bev, you rock!) has been fantastic, allowing our family to have a lovely and relaxed transition into evening and dinner. So nice.

Event planning. The preparation for Pivot has been insane. It was awesomely helpful to have a rabbit help stuff my Posh Peacock goodie bag contributions and the Boston TaskRabbit team is amazing and offered to help out with many Pivot tasks that were going to be hard for our little co-hosting team to coordinate (e.g., transporting goodie bags, picking up refreshments), as well as helping us with a rabbit for check in at the event. So if you need help with event planning, hire some rabbits to help you rock your party!

Household. Jon and I have a lot of to-do's here but unfortunately almost all of them cannot be outsourced. With the exception that I'm considering hiring someone to fix the paint job I did on our front door (whoops).

Travel. I definitely have some needs here but travel planning has been on the back burner while I close out some major client deadlines and events.

Virtual assistant. As I predicted, this is the hardest bucket for me. I just don't know where to start and what to outsource. I need to think about this some more because I really could use some help!

That's where I'm at! What am I missing? What would you love to outsource? And don't forget to go share a promise!

Image credit: Rawich / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Today, Sarah shares a soup recipe to satisfy the whole family:

The eternal struggle to find a meal for dinner is one of the banes of the mom’s existence. For millennia, we’ve been combining this and substituting that to discover the holy grail of a single dish that will fill hungry bellies, fuel growing bodies, tempt picky taste buds, and soothe savage budgets, all while being prepared with a minimum of fuss, prep, and time. Oh, yeah, and the same goes for tomorrow. And the day after that.
Recently, however, I think I may have nailed it. I’ve made this recipe before, but it went so smoothly from fridge to chopping block to pot to table to tummies I was positively a-tingle.

You can substitute the veggies that your kids will eat, or veggie broth and firm tofu if you’re not carnivores, or whole wheat soba or spaghetti for the won-tons, but this has been a hit with my whole family (including my ravenous husband) every time for about a year now. And four servings plus at least three of leftovers cost $12 or so. It’s a must-share recipe.

With apologies to those of authentic Asian descent, I present:

Chinese Chicken-Vegetable Soup
Serves 4 plus leftovers
~25 minutes prep and cooking time

2 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

1 medium white or yellow onion, diced

½ red bell pepper, diced fine (optional)

2 boxes chicken stock (32 oz. each)

2 cloves garlic, whole, peeled

1 2” chunk ginger root

¼ c low-sodium soy sauce

2 tablespoons rice-wine vinegar

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil (or to taste)

2 boneless chicken breasts, in 1” cubes (or one package firm tofu, drained and cubed)

1 large or about 12 baby carrots, sliced

2 cups white button or other mushrooms, sliced

2 scallions, sliced on the bias

3 heads baby bok choy, chopped or 2 cups broccoli florets (frozen is fine)

1 bag Trader Joe’s chicken cilantro mini won-tons (or ½ lb whole wheat spaghetti, broken in half and cooked according to package directions…this also could serve as a way to use up pasta leftovers)

1. Heat oil in a 6-8 quart stock pot. Add onion (and red pepper, if using) over medium heat 3-5 minutes or until translucent and tender. Add chicken stock, garlic cloves, ginger root, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil, and simmer 5 minutes. Add diced chicken breast and simmer LOW about 3-5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. (If substituting tofu, add at the end.)

Add carrots, mushrooms, scallions, and bok choy or broccoli and simmer 3 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Add won-tons (or pre-cooked spaghetti noodles) and simmer 1-2 minutes. Add salt to taste. Pick out the ginger and the garlic. Serve in large bowls with spoons and chopsticks – my kids love the practice, and it helps them eat more slowly.

Tons of veggies, great flavor, fun to eat, easy on the wallet… this will definitely be appearing once a week at my house! Enjoy!

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Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Probably not unlike many of you, at any given moment, I'm overwhelmed by errands. In addition to the length of my laundry list, I'm short on hours, and also wheels, given that we're a one car family and Jon has the car most weekdays. So I was thrilled to discover the excellence of RUNmyERRAND, a local errand service that recently saved my sanity (and advanced the awesomeness of my office). Read on for more about my experience with RME, as well as to learn how to be one of three winners to receive RUNmyERRAND credits (entry closes January 18):

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UPDATE: RUNmyERRAND is has rebranded and is now known as Task Rabbit.

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RUNmyERRAND is a fee-free online service that connects those overwhelmed by errands with people who want to run them. Simply sign up and purchase credits; these credits are the currency with which runners are paid and reimbursed for goods or services paid for during the errand (alternately you can reimburse for goods or services via cash on delivery). Post your errand details, including how much you are willing to pay for the errand (I recommend looking at the active errand roster to get a sense of going rates for various errands), and an alert is sent to the RME network. Then sit back and wait for runners to contact you about fulfilling the errand. Note that all runners must fill out an application then undergo a phone interview and background check in order to become a part of the runner community. Also, the RME site offers a rating and comments system -- for both runners and errand delegators -- to keep folks accountable.

So here's how RUNmyERRAND saved my sanity. I have been in desperate need of an office overhaul (like, really desperate...I'll be posting the horrendous before pictures once my office is finished). Around Christmas (naturally, the best time to take on new projects...), I decided to do something about it and narrowed in on some desks from IKEA. However, we were just back from Christmas travel and were about to turn around a couple of days later for New Year's travel. The last thing I wanted to do was drive down to IKEA and fight the crowds. And actually, we have a little car so not only would I have to drive and fight the crowds, I'd also have to rent a van or large Zipcar. I just couldn't bear doing any of this. So I figured, okay, I'll pay the exorbitant shipping, but lo, the IKEA desks I wanted were only available in store.

Enter RUNmyERRAND. I decided to give it a try after checking out the site and seeing some other IKEA runs in their active errand roster (and notably, the IKEA runs I saw listed cost less than IKEA shipping). Admittedly, though, I was a little nervous; I'm a bit of a control freak. Was this really going to work? Would the runner pick up the right desks and all the various components that go with it?

However, seeing as I wasn't going to rent a van and head to IKEA myself, I decided to have a little faith. I signed up, posted my errand, and literally within 10 minutes received responses from a couple of runners. Though the first runner didn't yet have a rating (turns out we were each others very first errand), I got a good vibe off his profile picture and decided to go for it. We exchanged a few emails to clarify details and later that day, my very courteous and friendly runner delivered two IKEA desks to my house. All the pieces were there and the desks were in perfect condition when I cracked open the boxes. Utterly convenient. Utterly awesome.

My office is still a work in process but it's already looking pretty spectacular with my two new studio desks set up. As a freelancer, I live and breathe the phrase "time is money." Outsourcing onerous (in my mind) errands that are no big deal to someone else while supporting the local economy? Totally worth it.

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THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winners Leslie, Marianne, and Dylan!
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Now, want to be one of three winners to receive RUNmyERRAND credits? Here's how:

Visit the RUNmyERRAND errand ideas page, then email contests@bostonmamas.com (with 'RUNmyERRAND' in the subject), and name an errand idea you'd love some help with.

One entry permitted per person; local residents welcome to enter.

Entry period closes at midnight EST, Monday, January 18, 2010.

*Three lucky winners (drawn using Random.org) will receive 26 errand credits.

Without fail, every time we visit with our wonderful friends Anne and Michael, we pick up lovely hosting ideas. And this New Year’s Eve we learned about raclette, a dish/serving method that’s wonderfully communal and conversation inspiring. It’s also perfect for people like me who like to sample a little bit of everything at dinner, and it presents elegantly while being super simple to prepare.
European in origin, the modern way to serve raclette is via a tabletop grill, such as the Swissmar raclette grill that our friends own (their model is oval; the one shown here apparently is a newer version of the same). The set comes with eight little pans (and matching little spatulas) that fit under the griddle; the downward heat melts cheese and the topside serves to cook food directly. Simply melt cheese in the pan and pour it over nibbles on your plate, or assemble a little collection of nibbles in your pan and top with cheese to melt.

Anne and Michael made such a pretty presentation. The raclette grill sat in the middle of the table and on either side were plates of mixed cheese (raclette and gruyère) and platters and little dishes of food (boiled potatoes, chorizo, sausage, apple, ham, broccoli, mushrooms, cornichons, sauerkraut, and onions). The beauty of this serving method is that you can present any variety of items (because really, anything tastes great with cheese melted over the top) and guests can pick and choose what suits them in the moment. It’s a great way to use up random food in your fridge!

Though ours was a gathering of good friends, Anne and Michael said that raclette has proven great for gatherings where the guests don’t know one another as well. The communal eating creates a relaxed environment and serves as an instant point of conversation.

Normally I shy away from extra appliances, but this raclette grill totally is on my wish list.

I don’t typically post about contests on other sites, but I wanted to share this Simplify My Life campaign from Mom Bloggers Club because: a) it’s pretty sweet; b) anyone tuned in here over the holidays knows I'm all about simplifying; and c) I evaluated the product being given away so I know first hand how fantastic it is. In a nutshell, MBC & HP are giving away the super slick HP Studio Tord Boontje Mini 110 netbook. Actually, six of them. Simply blog about how the Mini 110 could simplify your life; the three most creative blog entries will win a Mini 110, plus three randomly drawn readers who comment in on these Simplify My Life posts will receive a Mini 110 (so, if you don't blog, read and comment in!). Be sure to check out the entry rules, and for details on usability and performance, read my evaluation.