Back Up Plans

So today I was supposed to make red beans and polenta, but we had a VERY long day and we were all starving, so we moved our Wednesday Breakfast For Dinner idea to tonight. We made some awesome homemade pancakes, from a recipe at Deep South Dish, a website I am coming to LOVE! The only change I have ever made to her pancake recipe (which is nearly as easy and foolproof as Bisquick pancakes) it to use curdled milk (milk with some white vinegar or lemon added to it) instead of buttermilk. I never have any buttermilk on hand so I just curdle some and it adds the necessary acidity and tang to the dish.

I am making the red beans tonight since we have already eaten and now I can just let them simmer until bedtime. If I can summon up the energy I might go get the polenta started as well and then just make fried polenta tomorrow with the cooled squares.

We rounded out our breakfast for dinner with milk and juice to drink and fresh fruit; we had our choices of strawberries, pears, apples or green grapes.

Today we went to the American History Museum, but we got a late start and then we needed to meet a friend at noon, so all we managed to see was Julia Child's kitchen, the dresses of the First Ladies and a children's exhibit about the nature of the inventing process called Spark Lab. We spent the rest of our time after lunch at the National Museum of Natural History. There we saw the famous dinosaur exhibit and their latest exhibit called Ocean Portal! It was very interesting and they had a neat part of the exhibit that blended art and science, called the Hyperbolic Crochet where using the traditional crochet form, hyperbolic geometry and some unconventional materials (crocheting plastic bags anyone?) they create a gorgeous model of an ocean reef. Today must have been our lucky day too, because the docent at the coral reef exhibit informed us that the Butterfly Pavilion was free today, you just had to get your free time stamped tickets to get inside. We saw dozens of varieties of strange and beautiful butterflies in the lovely display, all flying around and sampling the fruit and the flowers. I think the girl's favorite part of the day though was going to the Discovery Center. Definitely another full day of activity. Looking forward to going BACK to the American History museum tomorrow to see all the other exhibits we missed today.