Lauren on Living

A Lifestyle Blog about Simplifying Healthy Living

Recipe: Avocado Pie

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UPDATE: We adopted a plant based diet in September 2013 so, while this was definitely yummy, it no longer reflects the food we eat. IMG_6595

I know, I know, avocado pie sounds dreadful, but trust me on this, it’s actually quite nice and super easy to make.  You can even name it something else and leave people guessing as to what your secret ingredient is.  It’s reminiscent of a key lime pie and has always been a crowd-pleaser whenever I’ve made it (except for that one time when I added eggs and baked it, don’t do that) you can make it a bit healthier by leaving the cream cheese out, but be warned, the pie won’t maintain it’s form as well.  Try it and let me know what you think.

Ingredients:

Crust:

1 ready made cracker crust, graham cracker or short bread (you could make your own, but I generally go for the quicker route)

Filling:

2 medium ripe hass avocados – scoop out and chop up the flesh

1 8-ounce package cream cheese (room temperature)

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

3 limes -juiced

1 lemon – juiced

Pinch of salt

Garnish (optional):

Heavy whipping cream

Sugar – to taste

Directions:

In a large bowl mix together the avocado and cream cheese until smooth, using an electric mixer.  Mix in the condensed milk, lime juice, lemon juice and salt until creamy.  Try to keep the avocado lumps to a minimum.  Scoop into the pie crusts and chill in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or over night.

Put the heavy whipping cream and desired amount of sugar in a separate bowl and beat until fluffy and soft peaks form.

Garnish the pie with the whipped cream and serve.  Enjoy!

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For Your Reading Pleasure // How to Talk to Little Girls

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Lisa Bloom

We live in a world full of gender stereotypes.  Even before our children are born, the way they are meant to fit into and experience the world is dictated for them.  Little girls are ‘pretty princesses’ and little boys are ‘big and strong.’  Girls get inundated with pink, while boys get blue.  Girls get dolls, and boys get trucks.  It goes on and on.  This article by Lisa Bloom touches on one half of an issue that has been weighing heavily on my mind.

I’m extremely sensitive to gender stereotypes, primarily in how they affect the station of women in society.  I wholeheartedly agree with the point that Bloom is making.  We need to engage the minds’ of our girls and stop putting so much focus on the superficial.  However, I also believe that it’s important for little girls to hear that they are beautiful, especially since we live in a society that is constantly telling them that they will never be pretty enough.  So how do we strike this balance?  How do we instill in our daughters the truth of their beauty without making it the focal point of their lives?  Women are often lead to believe that they can be either beautiful or smart, but almost never both.  How can we break down these notions?

I mentioned earlier that this article only touches on one half of the issue at hand, and I said that because it fails to touch on how we talk to little boys.  This to me is crucial.  Not only will the battle for true equality never be won unless men are advocating for it just as fiercely as women are, but we are also sending our boys many messages about their own roles and the roles of their sisters in this world.  When we tell a little boy that he runs like a girl, we are really telling him that girls are ‘less than’.  When we tell our sons that big boys don’t cry, we’re really telling him that emotions are not a part of being a man.  The messages we send to boys are just as dangerous and insidious as the ones we are sending to girls, maybe even more so, since this is still a male dominated society.

The answer lies, in part, in actively engaging our children in discourse about the world around them and the messages that society is sending them.  We can’t shield them from the world or prevent them from being bombarded by these messages or even stop them from absorbing our own flaws.  What we can do is teach them to process all the information around them and to think about what they are taking in rather than mindlessly letting these things penetrate their consciousness.  I can ask my son what he thinks about when the phrase, ‘you blank like a girl’, is used, and we can discuss its intricacies and the effect they have on the people that hear them.  If I’m ever blessed with a daughter, I can sit down with her to talk about self worth and the idea of beauty and how it isn’t really what society wants us to believe it is.  I can also accept Lisa Bloom’s challenge to leave the superficial out when talking to little girls I meet, but I also leave you with a challenge of my own:  Let’s try to elevate the conversation with any children we meet, not just girls.  When we meet little boys, lets talk to them about something other than their Spider-man pajamas or their train collection.  Instead let us engage our children in a higher level of discourse and by doing so empower the next generation to bring about lasting change to the benefit of society and the world.

So go read this.

For Your Viewing Pleasure // Embarrassed

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This beautiful spoken word by Hollie McNish, really hit home for me.  For the most part I have chosen to breastfeed sans nursing cover because I hate how this society has deemed that the only acceptable role for breasts is a sexual one.  Women dancing around topless and completely exposed in a Justin Timberlake music video: totally fine, but a mother feeding her child in public: shameful and disgusting.

This must change.  I’m all for modesty.  In fact I believe modesty is empowering, but with that said, I do not believe a mother breastfeeding her child is in any way immodest.  Breasts are meant to feed babies.  This is their primary purpose and function.  What’s truly disgusting is twisting them into something so over-sexualized that they basically reduce a woman to the summation of her parts.

Am I totally comfortable nursing Asher in public?  No, not at all, far from it.  But it comes down to the principle for me.  I want to take a stand.  My heart aches every time I hear a story of a mother being shamed for nursing, or asked to leave or to cover up.  I feel like it shouldn’t be something we need to think twice about, or worry about or debate.  So I choose to nurse my son without a cover with the hopes that one day this will become a none issue.  Breast is best after all.

Sleep Training // Part 2

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It’s happened.  It has finally happened.  I night weaned Asher and he now sleeps through the night (for the most part).

I was waiting until Asher turned six months old and started solid foods to see if he would sleep through the night on his own, and well, that kind of happened but he still needed a bit of a nudge.  At his 6 month check up, his pediatrician reiterated what I already knew and told me that he didn’t need to eat during the night.  However right around this time we had a lot going on, with a bunch of house guests, a wedding, a massive growth spurt and general chaos, so I decided to wait until all the craziness died down to night wean, which was really  good, because the aforementioned growth spurt hit which had him waking up every 2 hours during the night demanding to be fed. right. NOW.

So on Monday, June 24th, I told Raf that tonight was the night.  I was going cold turkey.  I wasn’t going to nurse Asher and he was probably going to be quite upset about it so we should brace ourselves for the sleep loss ahead.

We went about his bedtime routine as normal: bath, bottle, prayers, stories, song and bed by 7pm, but this time I told him that I wasn’t going to nurse him during the night and that it was ‘sleep sleep’ time and that he could nurse again in the morning.   He didn’t wake up (well, he did, but it wasn’t a real wake up and he put himself back to sleep before I had even fully awoken).  The next morning I was amazed when he woke up at 7am, but I told Raf that this was probably just a fluke and that it was likely just the tale end of his growth spurt so we shouldn’t get too comfortable because surely tonight we would witness his dissatisfaction.  Well, Tuesday night the same thing happened.  He slept through the night, with only the briefest of wake ups.  12 hours.  I couldn’t believe it and was now cautiously optimistic.  Maybe, just maybe, he had figured this whole thing out.  My little boy, so easy, so happy, so agreeable.  Of course he would sleep through the night with little else from me than just explaining to him how things would go down.  My sweet angel.

Wednesday night  he SCREAMED for over an hour between 3am and 5am.  He wasn’t crying, he was screaming.  He was MAD.  I went in when he first woke up and patted him and told him it was ‘sleep sleep’ time and that I loved him and that everything was okay, then I left.  I went back in every 20 minutes after that until he fell asleep.  I think it was 3 more times.  I felt terrible.  It was awful to listen to him screaming like that and thrashing his tiny body about in his crib, but the previous 2 nights had proven to me that he in fact did not need to nurse.  So I kept my head down and pushed on through.  The next morning he awoke at around 7am and was all smiles and babbles, which definitely helped eased the heart ache I was feeling.

Thursday night I was prepared for a repeat of the night before but instead he legitimately slept through the night without even a peep.

Friday night he woke up screaming around 2am. So I went in and did the whole thing: pat, kiss, sooth but as soon as I left he stuck his thumb in his mouth, rolled over and went to sleep.

And that was that.   He now sleeps through the night.  Of course, in the past week he has been trying really hard to learn to crawl so there have been several nights when I wake up in the wee hours of the morning to the sounds of him cooing and grunting in his crib as he attempts forward motion.  I just go in, put him on his back and tell him it’s time to sleep and he goes right back to sleep.  It is amazing.

I’m not sure if it’s because of the night weaning, or because he’s started solids, or simply because of the summer heat, but he seems to want to nurse 1 or 2 more times during the day.  I’m not complaining, I get to gaze down into these hazel gray eyes. There isn’t a sweeter view in the whole world.

photo (20)If you’re interested in reading about how we trained Asher to fall asleep on his own, check out: Sleep Training // Part 1.

Anvari Chronicles // Evan & Rachel’s Wedding

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Don’t my guys look so dashing in their bow ties!  Seriously, swoon!  The craziness has died down quite a bit.  Evan and Rachel got married and it was a beautiful ceremony and such a fun wedding.  I cried my eyes out.  Literally, I was a mess.  I couldn’t be prouder of the man my younger brother has become.  I am just so happy that he has found someone who truly appreciates him for all the special qualities that he processes, and not to mention that I think Rachel is wonderful!  They are quite a pair and look how beautiful they are!

NtCrbmIRiR1YcfRN7ngCwuJxw7o12-SgVns7CHKcTKUPhoto credit: Uncle Paul Tubito

A Tribute to My Dad on Father’s Day

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Becoming a mom has made me so deeply thankful for my own parents.  They are rock stars in my book.  I wrote them a letter a few months ago, letting them know how I feel and I share part of it with you all now, to honor the amazing man that is my father and in the hopes of inspiring you to do the same for your own Dads.

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Dear Dad,

While I myself will never be a father, becoming a parent has given me a new found appreciation for you as my dad. You were faced with sacrificing for us in a very different way than mom.  You had to sacrifice time with us in order to provide for us and to support us financially.  I know now what a burden that must have been for you.  I know, I for one never once thanked you for that sacrifice. I know there were times when money must have been tight and you could have easily taken up a job in the private sector or opened up your own practice, but instead you chose to instill in us the value of service.  This is something that I am deeply grateful for. Not only were you being of service and doing something you enjoyed but you also came home on your lunch breaks just to be with us. I know a lot of people who can say they never really saw their fathers growing up because of how busy they were and I am so thankful that I am not one of those people.  You played an active role in our childhoods.  It also fell to you to be the main disciplinarian in the family, which I’m sure is something you must have hated. Thank you for raising us to be responsible and accountable for our actions.  You may have had to be the enforcer but you were also able to make us laugh in a way no one else could.  I’m the first to admit that I’m a daddy’s girl. I love that I share many of your traits and it made me so happy when grandpa used to tell me that I was the most like you.  Our similarities also meant that I wasn’t always the easiest person for you to deal with and I want to tell you how thankful I am to you for walking the line between allowing me to be me while also giving me boundaries and for raising me to the best version of myself.  You are the best Dad I could ever ask for.  I feel so blessed to be your daughter.  I can’t thank you enough for all the life lessons you have taught me and for all the sacrifices you made and still make for us.  I will always need you.  You are my rock.

I am now and always will be, a Daddy’s girl.  I love you.

Happy Father’s Day!

Anvari Chronicles // Maine, June 2013

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Asher and I spent a lovely week in Maine with my parents, as well as my brother, sister in-law and niece.  It was absolutely wonderful and I’ve been trying to convince Rafaan to move to a quaint ocean town ever since.  Things have been a bit crazy around these parts, with the approaching nuptials of my younger brother, so I will be back in full force sometime next week, but until then enjoy these photos.

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A Picture for Your Sunday // 5

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IMG_6282Eliot, Maine is one of my top favorite places.  The sea air is intoxicating and I just love this quaint New England town so!  Asher and I are loving spending time with my parents.  I caught this little guy running around the yard of my cousin’s house, who also happens to own Mottahedeh, which is a fine china company, and I believe they made the beautiful item in the bottom left.  Check it out here.