​It’s near January. And I’m expecting my third son any day now. Nursing and postpartum recovery await me, so this New Year is not about getting my best body nor any sort of diet.
 
Let’s be honest. We’ve all been there, done that, and it’s a bit uninspiring.
 
But what I am interested in is how food can bring relief to my tired, postpartum body while nourishing my new child and the rest of my family. There are foods that heal, and we needn’t be intimidated by lack of money, time, or ability.
 
And whether you’re expecting a baby soon or just curious how food can help balance hormones and elevate your mood after the sugar-infused season we just celebrated, Eugene’s newest specialty grocery store is here to help! Be sure to enter the $50 Whole Foods gift card giveaway too!

​Their produce department often offers $5 off coupons...and, well, it’s just so pretty. 

​Look for their private Whole Foods or 365 label on all sorts of products – Whole Foods has these high quality products manufactured by reputable companies so they can offer them at a lower price. 

​And the Eugene store is designed in a way where it’s also just a fun place to hang out when downtown – think family date with slices of wood-burned oven pizza in their eating area, happy hour at their bar offering local brews, 

​or trying out one of the local businesses housed within Whole Foods: Ellenos Real Greek Yogurt offering fresh yogurt and smoothies (it’s ridiculously good), or a cup of Wandering Goat coffee. 

​When you visit, you’ll also find that there are very well educated team members available to answer your questions and make recommendations based on your interests or needs.

​Currently, Heng Ou’s book, The Essential Art of Nourishing the New Mother motivates me. Ou highlights some of those “trendy” foods we’ve been hearing about, such as bone broth and turmeric, that have been nourishing people for centuries but are currently new again to us westerners.

Listed below are a few of Ou’s favorite pantry items, all of which can be affordably found
​at Whole Foods. Click on links for detailed recipes, inspired by Ou.
​

• Adzuki beans – add to a Mother’s Bowl or soup/stew. They are small (good for picky eaters with texture issues) and the easiest bean to digest.
• Bulk grains and unsweetened dried fruit – combine to make Coconut Dried Fruit Granola.
• Black sesame seeds – add to smoothies or sprinkle in savory or sweet dishes for extra crunch. This ingredient is age defying, offers lactation support for nursing moms, and has B vitamins and iron.
• Goji berries – infuse these to make a nutrient rich hot tea or an iced tea you can sip on all day.

More Whole Foods tips:​

• Check out their weekly sales flyer
• ​The Whole Deal coupon book is available in store
• Download the Whole Foods digital coupon app
• Kids 12 & under can enjoy a free piece of fruit every time they are in the store (fruit is located at the Customer Service Desk).
• The Eugene store offers a private upstairs space that can be reserved for social groups, businesses, boards, etc…for free. The space has been used for mom's coffee dates (they have a baby gate), mom’s night out, and wine & cheese tasting events.
• They are committed to the community! Since opening in September 2016, they have donated over $23,000 to the Eugene/Springfield community through their 5% days.
  
  

Coming up at Whole Foods in Eugene:

• January 6-8, 25% off ALL supplements...some supplements will already be offered at promo price so will actually be 50% off when combined with the sale.
• January 14, Health & Wellness Fair from 10am-2pm – various vendors will be sampling their products, healthy recipe ideas, and Eugene Yoga will be running a couple free yoga classes in the private space upstairs.
• January 21, Barre3 free pop-up class and wellness education from 10:30am-1pm.
• February 11, Free Valentine’s day craft for kids, from 12-2pm.
• February 16, A Registered Dietician from PeaceHealth will be hosting a free educational class on maternal health, from 6pm-7pm.

 
And…Whole Foods Eugene is giving away a $50 gift card to a GoMomGo Reader! So awesome!

To enter:
Comment on this post with what you love about Whole Foods (if you've been there) or what interests you in Whole Foods if you haven't been yet.
You can also enter on our Facebook page & share for more entries.
Giveaway winner will be announced on Sunday, January 1, 2017 at noon. Happy New Year, right?

Hooray!

News flash: It's September! I feel like this grants me full license to turn my oven back on after giving it a nice long summer vacation. I miss baking during the hot months and am super excited to get back into the swing of things like muffins, cookies, and other things I find on Pinterest and then attempt and ruin. 

However, today is NOT about the various recipes I have uncovered from the depths of the interwebs that have turned out to be less than spectacular. Today is about one of my family's all time favorite breakfast treats. It's a meal that involves cinnamon, jam, and turning on the oven. It calls for steel cut oats (They're easy to find! Don't be afraid!) And best of all, it can be prepped at night, baked the next morning, and one 9 x13 dish serves my family of four for at least two breakfasts. So...hooray for not having to use your brain in the morning. Here we go!

Baked Oatmeal 
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
You're going to need two bowls - one big and one medium. 

Let's start with the big bowl. This is going to be all dry ingredients, and it doesn't matter what order you add them. Just throw them in.  
- 2 1/2 cups regular rolled (old fashioned) oats   * I used quick cooking oats once because that's all I had, and it really didn't turn out as nicely. The consistency was rather soupy and my four year old was not a fan. So sub at your own risk! - 1/2 cup steel cut oats (you can find these in the bulk section at Winco)- 2 tsp baking powder- 1/2 tsp salt- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Stir that up.

Here we go for the medium bowl. Again, order doesn't matter. 
- 2 cups milk- 1 beaten egg- 1/3 cup applesauce- 1/4 cup brown sugar- 1/4 cup honey- 1/2 cup oil (I like to use coconut oil)    * A note on the coconut oil - it doesn't matter if your oil is solid. It will melt in the oven. It will make the mixture look really weird and gloppy right now, but it will be okay. Trust me. 
Now take the bowl of wet ingredients and add it to the bowl of dry ingredients. Stir it up.

It will look really wet and unappetizing. You'll think you've done something wrong. Don't panic! The oats will soak up all that liquid. And if your oil is solid, it will melt.

Grease a 9 x 13 pan.

Pour in the glop!

Bake it for 20 minutes.
Pull it out and add in:
- 2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries  * If you're using frozen berries, there's no need to defrost them or anything.

Stick it back in the oven and bake it for another 20 minutes. 
By the end, it should look pretty set as well as nice and brown. 
When it's done, pull it out and let it sit for a few minutes so it can make your whole house smell delicious. 
Now comes an important detail: when it's time to eat, you MUST put the following two additions on the top of your oatmeal: 
- strawberry jam- plain yogurt (I think Greek is best)

The jam and the yogurt make it unbelievably sweet and creamy and just plain fantastic. Not everyone thinks so (like my big kid) so just dish everyone up a bowl and then put the yogurt and jam out on the table so that each person can help themselves. 

Store leftovers in the fridge. They heat up really nicely in the microwave the next day. Or after bedtime as a treat. I won't tell. 

I realize that the way I type recipes isn't super cook friendly. I ramble waaaay too much. So here is a picture of the actual recipe, in a 100% guaranteed easy to read fashion:

Nice, right? Super professional and classy.

Three more thoughts:

• You can substitute any fruit in for the strawberries. I've done frozen peaches as well as blueberries (both fresh and frozen) and those are both great. I want to try frozen cherries next, and I think I'll add in some vanilla and some almonds. Yum!
• Like I said earlier, you can make this at night after you put your kiddos down. Then throw it in the fridge and all you have to do in the morning is throw it in the oven. However, if you want little hands to help, this is an excellent kid friendly prep recipe.
• If you do make it the night before you bake it, you'll only need to bake it for the first 20 minutes. The oats will soak up a lot of the moisture during the night. So pull it out after about 10 min of baking, add the fruit, and then finish it up with another 10 or 12 minutes. 

One last thing!
Here are two articles that I have found to be extremely helpful in thinking through what I want our family mealtime to look like. For a while there when my son was about three, mealtimes were the most stressful time of the day. It was a battle every. single. time. And it sometimes still is! But these two articles (plus lots of great advice from more experienced parents) really helped me be intentional about  nailing down what works for our family. Will these articles be applicable to every family? No way. But you might find them interesting. 

This one is on kids serving themselves - so instead of me putting oatmeal in a bowl and then topping it with jam and yogurt, and then giving it to my kiddo, I put all three things on the table and let him put his own food in his bowl. We've been letting my four year old serve himself since he was about two, and I think it really is awesome.

Is your kid as resistant to trying new foods as mine is? I hope not. It is a FIGHT. And it's so weird - he would try ANYTHING that we put in front of him, and usually enjoy it and eat more - until he turned about 3.5. Then it was abruptly all over. Now he takes one look at something new and flat out refuses to taste it, often throwing in an insulting jab at how gross it looks. It is beyond frustrating. So then we tried doing a "Sam I am" bite (from Dr Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham) - he had to take one bite of everything new and then if he didn't like it he didn't have to eat it. But soon even that became a struggle. Arguing over one simple bite (which never resulted in him enjoying the food and requesting more) became the focus of our meals. But this article advocates a "you don't have to eat it" approach. We've been doing this for about six months now, and I'm not kidding - it is awesome. This article is totally worth the read. 

Please please pretty please let me know if you try this oatmeal! I promise you will get rave reviews from your people about how fabulously tasty it is. Hooray!

Happy (Kitchen) Adventuring!

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Megan Defferding is the mom to two super fun boys who love to find great stuff to do all around Lane County! Check out her blog series, Happy Adventuring, weekly on GoMomGo.

Well, true to form, the Oregon weather has proved to be a fickle friend once again. This week is forecasted to be rainy all the way through, so we better put away our swim suits and sunscreen and start pondering how many games of UNO we can play before our eyeballs fall out of our heads in boredom. 

So besides UNO, what does one do with small children when you are home and not wanting to spend a ton of money? I mean, we love open gyms and such as much as the next family, but contrary to my preschooler's belief, we can't just go to the bank and get "tons and tons of monies for free." 

Well, one of our go-to activities is baking. Now, I realize that baking isn't exactly free, nor is it entirely wise for the waistline. However. I have strong arguments in favor of you making these cookies pronto. 
1. They will make your house smell so good. Like a factory with little elven cookie makers bustling around.
2. You can use up those brown bananas that are sitting on your counter (don't deny it).
3. Baking is great language, math, and fine motor practice for your little helpers. 
4. This recipe makes a TON of cookies - I get 56 - so they're fun to share. Like Pete the Cat says, "sharing is cool." 
4. Because you get to eat them at the end. End of story.

Banana Bread Cookies
(Don't like banana bread? I promise you'll like these cookies anyway.)

In a large bowl, cream together: 

1 cup butter, softened (that's two sticks)
1 cup packed brown sugar

When that's mixed together, go ahead and add:

1 cup mashed ripe banana (about 2 bananas - please don't measure this. Just mash them up.)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Okay so that gross looking stuff in the tupperware? That's what bananas look like after they've been in the fridge or freezer. If they're in your fruit basket and are looking pretty sorry, either peel them and put them in the fridge for a day or so, or else peel them, chop them into bite size pieces, and throw them into the freezer. Once they're frozen they're easy to pull out to bake with, and also great for smoothies!

Mix again. Then add: 

2 1/2 cups flour 
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt 

Yes. Keep mixing. Now, some people are fancy and mix the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl before adding them to the wet stuff. That's great, if you like to wash lots of dishes. Me? I'm lazy, and just add the dry stuff right in. No problemo. 

Last but not least! Throw in:

1 cup chopped walnuts 
2 cups oatmeal (I prefer quick)
2 cups chocolate chips

Mix those puppies right up. Its taken you like 10 minutes so far, amiright? So worth it. And if you're tricky you have only dirtied a few things, so you win the smart cook award. 

Okay, time to bake. If you have some, use parchment paper on your cookie sheets. This stuff is miraculous because you don't have to grease the cookie sheet, the cookies will slide right off, and then you get to throw away the paper when you're done. (Also, it leaves your cookie sheets so clean that you don't have to wash them afterwards. I won't tell.) Oh, and you can reuse that parchment paper - this is good because it's sort of expensive. 

Plop the dough down in about tablespoon-ful size lumps. Using a scoop is so handy for this. Go ahead and put the cookies pretty close together on the sheet. They won't rise or spread much. 

Bake at 375 for 9 or 10 minutes. If you like your baked goods on the well done end of things, go ahead and leave em in for a few minutes longer. 

Be sure to eat them warm, because oh my word. You'll be glad you did. 

Also, if you want to be crazy, you can freeze some cookies and then have an easy snack to pull out and make happy tummies. You can freeze the cookies after you bake them, which is easy. Just put them in a ziplock bag and toss em in. Or, you can put the cookie sheet in the freezer before you bake it, but after you've plopped the dough down. Freeze them like this for a few hours, and then you'll have little raw cookies. Take them off the sheet and throw them in a ziplock bag. Don't forget to write the baking directions on the bag. Then one day you'll be wishing for a treat because your littles are behaving like wild things, and you'll remember that you can have fresh cookies in just a few minutes, thanks to your excellent planning skills. Please don't feel the need to share the cookies with your wild things. Give them carrot sticks or something. 

Happy Adventuring! 

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Megan Defferding is the mom to two super fun boys who love to find great stuff to do all around Lane County! Check out her blog series, Happy Adventuring, weekly on GoMomGo.