Grits in the City - Fitness. Family. Food.

Hope you enjoy all these as much as I do!

backyard sunshine and grid iron waffle shop

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It’s been a long 4.5 months. 4.5 months of the kids having no contact with other kids (aside from Q yelling across the driveway to the little girl who lives next door). It’s been hard on them. So hard. Some days Q is able to vocalize it. Mostly just to say “I’m frustrated” but not to say why. Sometimes he tells me he’s scared of Coronavirus. I listen, hug him and tell him I understand. I don’t tell him back that it scares me, too.

This weekend, we did something new to see if it would help and we let Q play with his cousin. We’ve been keeping ourselves so locked in that it was a pretty big deal. Yesterday, they played together for a few hours and watched TV for a bit. Today, we went over to their new house and picked up breakfast and then the kids played in a little pool in the backyard.

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midnight cheese danish

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Perhaps 9pm isn’t the best time to start making a recipe that involves yeast. Or maybe having a quiet kitchen and the first pick of a warm cookie sheet full of fresh cheese danish makes it the perfect time.

I’d been meaning to make my mom’s homemade cheese danish recipe for a long time. It’s not fully hers – she found it somewhere, where the recipe was listed as Czechoslovakian Kolachy. The label alone confirmed it didn’t originate in our North Alabama kitchen. But it was hers in that for many years it was our Christmas morning breakfast. She would make cinnamon rolls on Christmas Eve and wake up early on Christmas Day to make these. 

I love the recipe itself, as I can hear her talking through some of the parts. Sharing, below, unaltered.  

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quarantine baking: all systems go

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I had kept my time in the kitchen baking pretty much in check, limited to occasional pancakes or waffles on the weekend — with my recent peanut butter bread being an outlier.

Until now.

We’ve officially reached the point in our time stuck inside that I’ve caved and broken into my limited stash of yeast and my what feels like a lifetime supply of flour from Costco to bake my way through my feelings. I held off as long as I could since I knew once I started, I might not be able to start!

I haven’t truly made bread I think ever, so I was curious to try out this recipe for no-knead focaccia from Bon Appétit. The recipe promised it was super easy, but I was skeptical. Surely I’d find something to mess up. And oh, I of course did. But it was so forgiving that it didn’t even matter. I also learned that anything with yeast is a bit like a mini-science experiment for a small child. Showing Q the way the bread continued to progress throughout the day was fascinating for him and made him felt like he helping to make the bread, too.

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7 lessons from 21+ active weeks on peloton

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Quarantine has been super rough over here. We have been fortunate in so many basic ways — we have a roof over our head, a household with two incomes and we are healthy. But beyond that, it’s been rough in every other way. Most days, I haven’t had much to say at the end of the day, which is why I haven’t been posting here, or much over here on Instagram. One of the few things that has helped to keep me sane is one that I fought for so long to embrace.

I’ll admit it. Exercise hasn’t been a big priority for me since becoming a mom. I have always claimed it to be one and tried to do as much as I could to workout here and there, but deep down I’ve known it really wasn’t. I knew it should be, like those vegetables we keep fighting the good fight with our kids on. Nothing I tried made it become a real regular part of my life.

Until now.

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peanut butter bread

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I know from how impossible bread and yeast is to come by these days that I’m not the only one who finds the kitchen therapeutic through this pandemic. I’ve been hoarding the three lone yeast packets we have like crazy but thanks to an accidental massive 25 pound of flour order from Costco, I’m still full speed ahead on the baking.

First up was this simple peanut butter bread I read about that has proved to be a quarantine fave from Reddit. The other plus on this one is no eggs! Pretty simple on the ingredient front and the flavor is quite good. It’s on the lower side on sugars making for a slightly sweet bread that’s perfect for anything from breakfast to dessert to snack.

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national zoo and bbq

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With everything going on, I haven’t had the focus to write here but working now to pick that up however I can. So here we are. I’ve had this post in the works for a while so I guess you could say it’s a bit of a lovely trip down memory lane of our last family trip of sorts.

While most people think of Black Friday for shopping, we have a several year tradition of a different sort. It involves getting out of the house and an activity of some sort to keep Q entertained. And now L, too. This year’s winner? A trip to the National Zoo!

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peloton ride #150? check!

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in late January, I took my hundredth Peloton ride. My husband tackled naptime solo with our two kids so I could clip-in in real-time with Ally Love’s Sundays with Love. I ride in our basement, which isn’t the most beautiful of backdrops. I bought all kinds of “100” decorations and hung them from our low ceiling. Definitely helped to brighten it up for the occasion. Two of my fellow NYC new mom group members joined with me – one cross-country in Cali also taking her hundredth and another from NYC. I also had some of the amazing ladies from our Pelo – Bachelor Nation Facebook group join in as well, passing high fives all around.

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winter ONEderland birthday party

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When I started looking at first birthday ideas, Winter ONEderland was a standout to me. It was logical for L’s big first birthday party. I learned pretty quickly though it was more challenging when it came to decorations. So many first birthday party ideas are very boy / girl or more summertime themed. Pulling this one off required a bit of planning. I’m sharing where I found all our things in case you’re interested in planning one, too!

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melted snowman cookies

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I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do to decorate our house for L’s recent first birthday party. Well, aside from these super cute snowman cookies. I saw them in Instagram. I saw them all over Pinterest. So these were pretty much all I was planning on when I decided to commit to a theme and send out the invites.

I’ll be sharing more about how we pulled together her recent soirée but wanted to start with these since they’re so easy for how cute they turn out. I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe you can find here.

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4 indoor family activities for winter

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Winter has always made me a bit stir crazy, something that has only gotten worse since having kids. There are so many things that we do during nice weather that all the sudden is off-limits during these cold months — and their underlying energy to go, go, go? It goes nowhere, leaving us in need of something engaging to keep them occupied.

Luckily there are several things you can do when time outside is not in the cards (on those days you don’t want to, or perhaps don’t have the option to, leave the house). Below are some activities to stash and pull out, as needed, to help get you through those rough months. And, before you know it, playground time will be back in the mix.

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