Experimenting with Cooking
I’ve always enjoyed baking. I’m comfortable with recipes, measurements and directions. I’ve built my confidence up enough over the years to even experiment a bit with changing recipes to make them my own. This enjoyment has never transferred into cooking for me. All the great cooks in my life are the types that just wing it; they don’t need to use recipes. That intimidates me; I’m a recipe gal.

I also think I like baking so much because it doesn’t seem like a chore. When you bake something it is usually a treat. People savor it and the item usually last longer than one meal, unlike dinner. You have to prepare dinner every single night, usually slaving over it for at least an hour and then when you finally sit down to eat it’s all over in less time than it took to prepare. There is one exception, dinner parties. I don’t mind cooking for a crowd. Somehow it is more rewarding, not so mundane.

My husband has always done the majority of cooking in our house. He is a fantastic cook! He is amazing at just throwing some stuff into a pan and poof: perfection! I wish I had his ability to cook. He seems to enjoy cooking even when it’s only for the two of us. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself in order to justify not contributing my fair share to dinnertime.

To my husband’s sheer delight, I’ve recently challenged myself to take on 50% of the meal preparation. This is a BIG deal. I want to succeed. I want to enjoy cooking for my family. I’m attempting to set myself up for success by seeking out new recipes to try, experimenting with making them my own and blogging about it by sharing recipes with you regularly. So far so good, I bought myself a slow cooker and was referred to A Year of Slow Cooking by a friend on twitter (Tatiana from It was a Very Good Year). It is a fabulous blog full of delicious crock-pot recipes. I’ve also been experimenting with creating my own crock-pot recipes–today I’d like to share one with you.

Chorizo Black Bean Soup

250g Mild Spanish-Style Chorizo chopped
2 -540 ml cans Black Beans drained and rinsed
4 cups low sodium chicken broth
½ a large brown onion
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
½ - 398ml can crushed pineapple
2 cups salsa
1 ½ tsp cumin
½ tsp coriander
½ tsp chili powder

Using a 4-quart crock-pot, place beans at the bottom. Mix the rest of the ingredients except the chicken broth together and place in the crock-pot. Pour in the chicken broth. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Once cooked, use a hand blender (like a Braun) to thicken the broth. I didn’t blend it too much, just enough to thicken the broth but still leave lots of chunks.

You can serve as is, with garlic bread or we found sourdough to be a great pairing. Or serve with garnishes such as shredded cheese, avocado slices or sour cream.

Hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we have.

~Sarah

Labels: Chorizo Black Bean Soup, Cooking, Recipe, Sarah

Share ¶ Comments

It's Your Turn Contest
Now that you’ve met the team and you know where the idea came from, we thought we’d give you some information about our plans. You can expect to find blog posts on topics such as recipes, personal stories, parent education, news of interest, becoming more eco-friendly, party themes/games, ways to build community and of course information about the website.

We also want to start a dialogue with you about your communities and how the site can play a role in strengthening them. One of our main goals is to create a culture of connectivity and to build capacity in Canadian communities, so we feel it is important to get you involved in the development process.

Help us develop community solutions that can result in a positive change for you and your “village”. To encourage your participation we have a small incentive...a prize give-away! A gorgeous bracelet and choker set by Emilie Kaplun Designs.
The bracelet and choker are made with frosted glass, czech crystals and swarovski crystals on sterling silver chain. Look for contest details at the end of this post.

More Than a Village builds on the African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child”. The idea for More Than a Village sprang from our understanding that there exists a great need to find an alternative to traditional childcare, which can be expensive, inconvenient and difficult to access.

The initial idea was that More Than A Village would be a forum, where parents could meet other parents and could “share care” of their children. Sharing childcare allows for work flexibility. Potentially, parent’s that meet on More Than A Village, could each work part-time and care for each other’s children part-time. This way neither family would have to pay child care costs. This is just one example of how childcare could be shared but there are a multitude of options available to parents. They decide amongst themselves what works best.

It quickly became obvious that this on-line forum could be so much more than a meeting place to organize shared care. The concept of More Than a Village grew from a forum to a complete support system, where friends can be made, communities can be formed and/or strengthened, and the stresses of parenthood can be eased with the help of other members and some useful on-line tools.

Key Features of More Than A Village website:

A Meeting Place
Parents can join the network and, through profile searches, direct messaging, group forums, and message boards, meet other parents in their neighbourhood/city.

Scheduler and Messaging Function
The calendar and scheduling function provides parents with a valuable service long after they have built up their social network. They can utilize the website to schedule play-dates with each other, co-ordinate their efforts to share care, exchange information and organize car-pooling to share the responsibilities of driving children to their common activities.

Information sharing
Finding the best sales, great family-friendly restaurants, excellent pre-schools and the like can be a difficult task. Talking to other families in your area can be invaluable. A message board on the site will allow members to post topics, ask questions, and contribute to conversations so that everyone can share their experiences and knowledge.

Calendar of events
Fun weekends start with great ideas. More Than A Village have an events section where organizers can post their events on the site, giving members a choice of functions to attend. It will also allow parents to create their own events and invite people in their network to attend.

Shared Care
Raising a family is not only time-consuming it is expensive. Our website will serve as a place to meet other families who are looking to share childcare. Once families have met and become comfortable with each other they can choose to share childcare and avoid daycare costs.

Keeping families in the know
Our resources section will contain articles, research, blog entries and product reviews. This section will keep parents/guardians posted on new developments or news that affects them and their families.

Links section
Parents can use our links section as a jumping off point to access other useful resources

The site is currently under development with an expected launch date of February 2010.

Now it’s your turn. We want to hear from you! Please join the conversation by commenting below;
We want to hear about your communities; what are your community’s needs, challenges and assets? What do you like about our plan and how do you see the site benefitting your family? What other information or services could More Than A Village offer you that would make your life easier?

CONTEST RULES

• This contest is open to Canadian Residents Only!
• Contest runs October 28th, 2009 To November 11th, 2009
• Contest ends 6pm, est on November 11, 2009.
• All valid entries will go into an automatic number generator.
• Winner will be announced on November 12th, 2009 on our blog, if the winner has not responded within 48 hours another winner will be chosen.


CONTEST DETAILS

Mandatory Entry:

1) Go to the Emilie Kaplun Designs check out the Gallery section and let us know what your favorite item is by commenting on this blog post.
AND
2) Also in your comment on this blog answer one, or all, of our questions in this blog post.

Bonus Entries: (leave a separate comment for each entry)

3) Tweet about this contest. You can receive 1 entry PER day as long as you tweet about this once per day. Comment and let us know your twitter id and that you tweeted about #morethanavillage
4) Subscribe to our feed (or let us know if you already do).
5) Follow us on Twitter (@MoreThanVillage) or let us know if you already do.
6) Become a fan of More Than A Village on Facebook or let us know if you already are. (just write on our wall that you want to be entered)

See official contest rules for more details.

Labels: contest, Emilie Kaplun Designs, giveaway, it's your turn, prize, website

Share ¶ Comments

Ideas for Halloween Fun
Well it’s that time of year again. Halloween!! I have to say Halloween is 100% my favourite holiday. When I was a teacher I loved Halloween even more because kids get so into it and it’s so much fun to be a part of that.

From my teaching days and my own annual Halloween parties I have gathered quite a list of activities so I thought I’d share some ideas that you can use either this year or in the future.

1. Halloween/Fall Scavenger Hunt Ideas (this is for parents and kids to do together)
- Okay here are just a few ideas to get you rolling if you ever want to do a Halloween/ Fall themed scavenger hunt. Some items to collect (by finding, buying, renting or borrowing): a blood-red drink, a feather, a pine cone, Fall leaves: one orange, one yellow, one red (they just have to be mostly those colours), a cross, garlic, a dead flower. You get the idea.
- You can also have picture/video challenges: get a picture of the following: an adult in a costume, obliging stranger that you’ve wrapped in TP as a mummy, a black cat, walking like a zombie in a public place, getting a group of people (two or more) to give their best witch’s cackle.

2. Wink Murder
- Everyone closes their eyes and one person is tapped on the shoulder assigning them “wink murderer” status. The game then begins with everyone milling around the room making eye contact with each other. The “murderer” winks at people and if someone receives a wink they must die an elaborate death (give props to those who get creative with their death scene). In order to stop the murderer someone must declare that they know who the murderer is and have someone back up their assertion. If they are right the game ends and a new murderer is picked. If they are wrong the person who made the declaration is out of the game and the game continues. Keep track of how many people each murderer kills and the murderer with the best record wins. Sick I know. But hey, it’s Halloween!

3. Ghosts in the graveyard
- Basically this is hide and seek with a twist. The seeker is looking for people but the people who are hiding want to be found. When the seeker is near them they jump out and try to scare the bejesus out of them. Each found person then joins the seeker in the search for the remaining “ghosts”. This is best done at night using both your yard and the inside of the house (with most lights turned off).

4. Blindfolded House of Horrors
- I played this game when I was in Elementary school and I loved it! This game does take a bit of prep though. You have a room that is very dark (maybe with a black light) and a long table with bowls of items along it. The bowls are filled with items that feel disgusting. Noodles with sauce could be witches intestines, Olives or peeled grapes in a slimy solution could be goblin’s eyeballs, a boiled cabbage could be Frankenstein’s brain…get creative! Each person that goes into the House of Horrors is blindfolded and guided through the room stopping at each bowl, sticking their hand in and feeling whatever gross object is in the bowl. You can have them guess what it might be or you can tell them a scary story to go along with it.

5. Pumpkins and Ghosts
- This is a great outdoor game to burn off some energy from all that candy. This is similar to tag except the players are divided into two groups, pumpkins and ghosts. Select a couple “taggers”. The taggers are witches who are able to freeze everyone they touch. When the pumpkins are tagged they have to duck down on the ground and freeze. When ghosts are tagged they have to freeze standing up with their legs spread wide apart and their arms out to their sides (like a jumping jack position). Ghosts can release pumpkins from their spell by “flying” over the pumpkins (i.e. leap frogging over their backs). Pumpkins can release Ghosts by crawling through their legs. This is why you need more than one witch to do the tagging.

6. Musical Pumpkins
- Just like musical chairs except using cardboard or construction paper cut-outs of pumpkins. Play some Halloween-ish music like Thriller or the Monster Mash.

7. Pin the nose on the Jack O’ Lantern
- An oldie but a goodie. Kids never get sick of this. Just make a huge construction paper Jack O’Lantern and just stick tape to the back of a paper nose.

8. Here are a few ideas for Halloween relays:
- Blind Ghosts: Throw a sheet over the kids’ heads and have them run to the other side of the yard following the sound of a teammates voice that is walking in front of them but can’t touch them or lead them. Each team member must be the blind ghost and the first team to go through all their members wins.
- Toss the beanbag in the pumpkin (hollow out a bunch of large pumpkins and have a large hole at the top – can be used for a pumpkin carving competition later). One point for each beanbag they get in the pumpkin.
- Bobbing for apples relay. Have a few buckets with apples in them and each team bobs for apples at the same time. They stand in a line and bob for apples one right after the other. First team that empties their bucket of apples wins.
- Costume relay: Divide each team into two and have them on opposite sides of the yard. Use any old costumes around (adult sized is best) and put one costume in a pile before each team. The first team member has to put on the costume, run to the other side, take off the costume and give it to their teammate who does the same thing. The first team to go through all their team members is the winner.


These are just a few ideas to get to you started and you can alter them to suit the age range of the kids. For example, wink murder might have to be blink murder since it is difficult for young kids to wink. Or maybe it could be “Goblin spell” where the goblin sticks out their tongue instead of winking and instead of being killed they act completely crazy before lying on the floor stiff as a board, “frozen” by the spell. Just use your imagination and I guarantee that both you and the kids will have a ghoulishly, creepy, fantastic time!

~Laura

Labels: activites, games, Halloween, ideas, Laura, relays, scavenger hunt

Share ¶ Comments

The Team - Part 2
In our last post you met Sarah, who came up with the great idea for More Than a Village, and now I guess it’s my turn to introduce myself. I’m Laura, Sarah’s friend, business partner and fellow blogger.

So I guess you should know a few key things about me straight out the gate. I am a travel addict, former teacher, amateur but ardent sociologist, wannabe writer, die-hard karaoke fan, and a woman fast approaching the “now or never” line for having a family.

My husband and I recently moved back to our hometown in an attempt to “settle down” and do what most couples our age tend to do; buy a house, start a family, get a dog…that sort of thing.  So far so good (we’ve got the house part sorted) but staying in one place has never been my strong suit.

I have always been looking for a way to make a difference and I usually imagined traipsing off to far-flung locales to dig irrigation ditches and build schools MacGyver-style (you know, with a few planks of wood, some string and a paperclip). However, when my dear friend, Sarah, told me about her incredible idea to help families connect and share childcare, I realized that this was my chance to do something really useful, and in my own backyard, no less.

I don’t even have kids yet and I already have a million questions. Questions that I’m hoping I will find answers to in our More Than a Village community. Questions like: What are the challenges of adopting and having biological children? How does having a baby change your relationship with your partner? Does everyone get saggy breasts after having children or is that just a vicious rumour? What in god’s name is a mucus plug? Okay, forget I asked that last one. I’m not ready to know.

This is just a small sample of the questions I have swirling around my mind and I’m really excited that our “little” project is going to be a place where I can figure this stuff out. I’ll be able to talk to people who have gone through it all and, when I have kids, I can find like-minded moms and dads in my area and we can help each other.

Until the day that the website is up and running and I have a bun in the oven and/or an adopted baby on the way, I have this blog. So I’m going to continue to pepper you guys with questions and eventually I’ll have some answers, though I have a sneaking suspicion there will always be more where that came from.



~Laura

Labels: Laura, The Team

Share ¶ Comments

The Team - Part 1
As I mentioned in our last post, over the next few weeks we are going to celebrate the launch of our blog by having some give-aways! We’ve got some fabulous gifts from our advertisers, including a gorgeous bracelet and choker set from Emilie Kaplun Designs, so stay tuned. We’ll also tell you more about what you can expect from More Than A Village. One of the main reasons we wanted to start blogging was to get your input on the site, so please join in the conversation and help shape the site.

Today we thought we’d start introducing our team. So, without further ado;

I’m Sarah and I’m a multi-tasker.  Actually, I may have a tendency to take on more than I can handle. I am currently (I mean right this second) writing my bio, making baby food, washing cloth diapers, sterilizing my breast pump after pumping 3 oz, listening to my husband, Darren, complain about Fantasy Football, tweeting and facebooking. Thankfully my 8-month-old son Parker is napping right now.

I am also a Social Work student completing my final practicum at Maple Ridge Family Education and Support Centre (YAY, I graduate in June!), an entrepreneur endeavoring to build a social networking site for parents, an amateur artist (this falls to the side way too often) and now a blogger.

I am dedicated to greening my life, building meaningful relationships and bettering myself and our world in any way I can. To me this means striving towards a more eco-friendly life style. I am usually pretty good with the recycling, and reusing part but I’m having a hard time reducing my consumption. I’m a bit of a closet shopaholic, shhh don’t tell my husband! It also means creating and/or participating in alternative ways of living and encouraging others to do the same. I firmly believe that we need to establish alternatives to truly make a change possible thus my desire to work on this project.

We recently moved to the suburbs of Vancouver BC from the city so that my husband would have a shorter commute to work and have more time to spend with the family. We are still adjusting to our new life in the ‘burbs. My husband and I enjoy the outdoors (walking, hiking, camping, etc.), traveling, reading, music and connecting with friends. We are currently adjusting to incorporating a baby into these activities. For some of our pastimes, that has been relatively easy and for others, like traveling, we are still pondering how to make it work.




Anyways, the diapers are ready to be hung to dry, the timer on the oven just went and Parker just woke up from his nap, so I’ve got to run. I’d love to hear from you, especially if you have any tips for me on greening my life, not spreading myself so thin or incorporating a baby into traveling. Share ¶ Comments

The Idea
I don’t know about you but the thought of having to go back to work and leave my little guy with some stranger totally guts me. I’ve been dreading this day since before he was born. So much so, I vowed to find some alternative to the situation. This is the story of how More Than a Village came to be.

My dream was to not spend any of my hard earned money on childcare and be able to spend more time with my son. In my prenatal class I met, Michelle, who had the same dream and we began to talk about ‘sharing-care’. She’d watch my little one while I worked a couple days a week and I’d watch her little one while she did the same. Allowing us both to help our families financially while avoiding high childcare costs and spending more time with our babies. It was the perfect solution! Until, my family relocated and my 15 minute drive to Michelle became an hour. Our plans for ‘shared-care’ no longer seemed feasible.

With our move, not only did I lose my plan to ‘share-care’, but I also lost my mommy network. Although we weren’t moving that far away, just from city to suburb, the traffic could make the commute long and stressful, especially for new first time mums. I knew I wouldn’t see these gals and their babes as often as I’d like and would need to find a new mommy network. However, I had no money to join mommy groups and no real idea how to go about finding mums any other way. You see my original mommy network was basically all the mums from my prenatal class and a few from my prenatal yoga class. So now what?

The idea to create an on-line meeting space for parents happened after I was explaining my new predicament to my good friend Laura. She thought my idea to ‘share-care’ was amazing and expressed how she could really see this idea taking off, especially with the lack of affordable childcare spaces in our country.  As we talked about it we both started to get excited about the possibility of making it happen and in doing so not only helping ourselves but other parents.

Now after many months of planning, researching, writing, searching for investors and the right web designer, our web site is in development.  That alone feels like a HUGE success. But alas, there is much more work to be done before the site will be ready to launch.

More Than A Village is a social networking site for parents. It will feature a nationwide data base of members which you will have the ability to search, for other parents in your neighbourhood via your postal code. Our hope is that you will connect with other families in your area, make new friends, and when you feel comfortable enough start supporting each other in your parenting journeys. Maybe you will find someone to share –care with, or car pool with, or have play dates with or at the very least recognize in your neighbourhood. After all More Than A Village is all about building stronger communities and the first step is to meet your neighbours.

In the following weeks we are going to celebrate the launch of our blog by having some give-aways, so stay tuned. We’ll also introduce our team and tell you more about what you can expect from More Than A Village.

Thanks for stopping by. We’d love to hear your thoughts on our idea. Is it something that excites you? Would you use such a site? Share ¶ Comments