I buy stuff at Target fairly frequently so I was pleased to see that they were expanding their grocery selection. When they sent me a $25 gift card to try out their new grocery department and blog about it, I figured it would make a good food post.

This recipe is one of my favorites, a green drink smoothie I make to pump my kids and myself full of vegetables. They’ll eagerly drink three handfuls of spinach when it’s pureed into this mixture but ask them to eat four leaves by themselves and they’ll act like their life is over.

Green Drink

2 heaping handfuls of fruit of your choosing
About one pound of fresh spinach
2 Cups fruit juice
1 Cup water

Throw your fruit in a blender. Stuff in as much spinach as you can. Pour your liquid over top. Blend until creamy and green.

I like to use at least one frozen fruit, my favorite being one banana and a huge handful of strawberries. For fruit juice, I just use whatever I have available. For this recipe I used frozen strawberries, a banana, a bag of spinach and Dole pineapple/peach/mango juice, all purchased with my gift card from the fresh grocery department of Target.

The dry goods selection is surprisingly good at Target, not to the level of a traditional grocery store, but decent and they have a good supply of basic produce if you’re not looking for anything fancy. They have meat, dairy and frozen foods now too. I found the prices to be really low on some things and high on others.

Tillamook cheese, for example, was $8.99 for a baby loaf, way more than I’m willing to pay. Their bagged spinach, however, cost less than I find it on sale at the grocery store.

Overall, I think it’s a convenient option if you’re going to Target anyway, but I wouldn’t make it my primary grocery source.

The school year started and my two oldest are both gone all day. I wasn’t happy to see them go. I felt sort of mad, like the school was kidnapping them or something. And then suddenly we had the house to ourselves, me and Wanda.

I had a church meeting. I put Wanda down for an early meltdown-induced nap. I made corn bread and thawed meat for our chili tonight. I baked bread and picked a few pounds of blueberries at a farm a few miles down the road and then I took Wanda for a walk. I played the songs I wanted on the stereo and nobody used the toilet and forgot to flush.

If the school’s going to kidnap my kids and educate them, at least I was able to distract myself with a surge of domestical energy. It was one of those days you just want to repeat over and over again.

My favorite part of the day was picking berries. Wanda and I wandered up and down the rows of fruit, each with our own bucket. She’d venture off and circle around to find me again, plopping berries into her mouth from the trees, the ground and my bucket. Unlike Little Sal, she never accidentally started following a mama bear around the field and she was not wearing overalls.

This is by far the best road sign between our house and Billings. It’s possibly the best road sign anywhere ever. Who wouldn’t pull over at an exit that promises an Anaconda Opportunity? No one. That’s who.

Today I’m offering some travel tips for road-tripping with kids over at Parenting.com. Come over and share some of yours.

Please take a moment and shed a tear for the thousands who gave their lives on our windshield as we drove accross the country these past two weeks.

“If your kids fully know that you’re completely unwilling to follow through on your threats, there’s no way they’ll trust you or do what you ask. I know this with my head but my heart and my laziness sometimes have a hard time laying down the smack. I give too many “chances” and then get frustrated when they whine and beg for ‘one more chance, just one more chance.’”

[Read more at Parenting.com]

I saw a woman in the line at the grocery store today who was a dead ringer for Dame Judy Dench. It made sense to me because Dame Judy seems to pop up in all kinds of places. But then I thought, “Why would an older woman with a British accent be required to play ‘woman buying avocadoes at Safeway’?” No, they could have gotten anybody for that role. Heck, I’ve played it before.

Judy Dench should be kept available for playing roles like: persnickety housekeeper, or snobby aristocrat, or hard-bitten head of British intelligence, or The Queen.

It’s time to break out the die cuts and vibrating-uvula-shaped punches because Wanda just had her first full-scale grocery store melt down and I’d like to capture this special moment properly.  [Read more at Parenting.com]

They’ll train us!!!??? This awesome sign appeared yesterday at a major intersection just outside of town. I saw the guy placing it there. I’d say mid-twenties, shortish, dark hair, possibly hispanic. I wasn’t paying too much attention to him. Then today when we drove by and actually read the sign, I wished I had.

Why do they want mixed martial arts fighters? What kind of training do they provide? How big of a piece of their action would I get if I signed up? I am over 21 and I do have a yellow belt in Kenpo Karate. I think I will call and see what their deal is, in honor of POTUS Day tomorrow.

When you’re writing a novel, there’s a blurry line between fiction and reality. I infuse my story with aspects of places and characters I have known. My heroine has characteristics I possess or wish I possessed.

Some of my best plotting comes while I work out. I have a playlist of songs on my Zune I’ve chosen to help get me in the right mood to write and I listen to it and get pumped up, brainstorming ideas and visualizing scenes I plan to incorporate in later chapters.

This week I was out walking with Wanda in the stroller when I noticed a man walking ahead of me wearing a backpack. He seemed out of place in our neighborhood and I felt a strange vibe coming from him. He was going the way we were going but he was walking slightly slower than me. He kept stealing glances behind him, keeping me on his radar. He was slowing down and I was gaining on him. Was he letting me gain on him?

In a psychotic fit of imagination, I thought, “If he tries to pull anything funny when I pass him, he will be so surprised by the beat-down I will give him.” In my mind, I planned out the fight scene and just how thoroughly I would shut him down.

I continued on my way, getting closer, still feeling a strange vibe that something was going to go down when I caught up to him, still imagining how I would triumph.

About 30 feet from him, I had the sudden realization that I was not a character in my book, that I was a very real 32-year-old woman with a baby in a stroller and almost zero martial arts training. This realization was disappointing. I turned down a side street to avoid the confrontation.

Yeah. Maybe plotting should only be done when walking in a controlled environment.

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Can anyone recommend a good Auto Body shop on the Eastside? I prefer something with a punny name.