We tried a blackberry salmon recipe out of the Clean Eating magazine a few nights ago and it was a big hit. The only alteration I made was to cook the fish in the sauce and serve it hot. The magazine has you cook the fish separate with just salt and pepper and then serve it cold over arugala with the sauce poured over it. Since Jon's not a fan of fish or cold foods I thought it might be asking a bit much to do both at once. He really liked it done this way though and even went back for seconds. It was good and super simple.

I'm also posting a delish little dish I discovered on the side of a cookie box yesterday. It's a lemon-ginger dessert and it's loaded with all kinds of unhealthyness, but it's fast, delicious, and cheap which was exactly what I was looking for to feed the 40+ people at The Gathering Place meeting today. It is good and I say it doesn't hurt to have junk food once in a while.

Speaking of The Gathering Place....we had an Elvis impersonator there today and he was great! Everyone LOVED him. We have a load of pictures, but I'll only post a couple of them. I'm also posting some pictures from last weekend when we went to the Moody Gardens Aquarium Pyramid and a sandcastle competition out in Galveston. The aquarium is cool. There's a tunnel you can walk through with the fish & sharks and turtles swimming all around you. We had a lot of fun that day. There were so many cool sandcastles! I think I posted all the pictures on facebook, but here are a few of my favorites. (The one with the golden bucket in front of it won the competition.)

For the recipes and pictures.....

Turkey Burgers with Mango Salsa

So I'm sitting on the couch nursing Timothy today and listening to and watching the other 3 boys play with each other. They're pretending to be superheros with bow and arrows (this may stem from watching Veggie Tales: Lord of the Beans the other day-it's on netflix if you have that) and saving the animals and princesses. They told me they had 100 million each of cows, goats, horses, pigs and chickens to save. When I said that that was a lot of animals and how were they going to save them Ethan said "With daddy milk." ('Mommy milk' is what Timothy drinks when I nurse him.) Curious as to what that was I asked where daddy milk came from. "From the store" he said as though the answer was obvious. Silly me.

It's amazing what kids can make into a game. Take Ryans' recent diaper rash for instance. Ryan's had this terrible rash so-with not a little apprehension-I let him wander about the apartment yesterday without any diaper as per the pediatricians' recommendation. Christopher and Ethan (who may be the only two boys alive under the age of 7 who don't like running around naked) soon started running away from Ryan any time he got close to them screaming "Gross! He's naked! Run away!" Ryan, of course, thought this was hilarious and started chasing them around the apartment laughing. After about ten minutes my desire not to clean up a pee soaked carpet-or worse-outweighed my desire to help his little tushie so I grabbed him before he headed down the hall to get his brothers and put a diaper on him. Moments later Christopher and Ethan came back out into the livingroom and Christopher says in his most mournful voice "But Mommy, we were playing Gross Boy! Now we can't play." Once again mommy ruins a perfectly good game.=)

Okay now for the recipe. Jon and I have made a bet. We took measurements and weighed in and whoever meets their weightloss/measurement goal first gets $50. We only have 16 weeks to get there so we're both trying to make changes in diet and exercise more. I think Jon has an advantage because he has to take not one but 2 PE classes at the college this summer so he will have 5 hours a week of exercise whether he feels motivated or not. My friend Becca said that maybe it's me that has the advantage because I'm breastfeeding and according to the Institute of Medicine that means I'm burning 650 just sitting on the couch feeding Timothy every day. I guess we'll see.

Anyway, I've been trying some new recipes from a magazine I swiped from my OB's office. It's called Clean Eating and it's all about eating things as close to their natural state as possible. It has loads of information, tips and recipes. If the recipes we test are good I'm subscribing. Anyway, yesterday we tried Turkey burgers with fresh mango salsa. It was REALLY good. Yes, I altered the recipe, but not much. I added an egg and some breadcrumbs to the burger mix to make it hold together better and make it moist and I made my own mango salsa instead of buying some of the brand they recommended in the produce section. Even so, it took less than 30 min start to finish. So for the recipe...