twirl next door

the ghostest with the mostest

2011-10-24T07:13:00.002-04:00

These Halloween ghosts are pretty much the easiest cupcake you could ever make.

OOOOooooOOOOOooooOO!

You need vanilla frosted cupcakes, almond M&Ms, and chocolate chips.
Place the eyes and the mouth - you're done!
I used the Ghiradelli 60% cacao chocolate chips. Not only are they the most delicious of the supermarket chocolate chips, they are larger than most of the other chips and more mouth-sized.

Stopped by a curious neighborhood peacock on
the way to the neighborhood chili cookoff + cupcake feast.

bookbag: The Seven Silly Eaters

2011-09-21T06:30:00.000-04:00

And then there is the Family Favorite category of book. You know this one by it's well used corners. And the fact that we actually own (and use) a backup copy because I found it in the discard pile at the library and couldn't resist it, even though we already owned it. You also know it because it is one that is fun and fresh to read each time - even for the grownups. Which is saying something, considering how much we have read it to all 3 kids.

One of our Family Favorites is this one - Mary Ann Hoberman's The Seven Silly Eaters, beautifully illustrated by Marla Frazee.

Do you kind of love it already just based on the cover?

Long (poetic) story short - man and woman have baby, love baby, cater to baby's food preferences.

And the very particular preferences become a little less endearing each time a new kid is added to the family. I can relate.

Although this family ends up having SEVEN kids. I cannot relate.

(This is one of my favorite illustrations. Do you just love how she is trying to diaper on the floor? And that kid hanging on the doorknob reminds me of Kid2.)

I do truly adore the text of this book but my favorite part is the illustrations. Frazee captures all the lovely chaos of a family with young kids. Page to page, you see the story develop and you see the happy busy mess of the house get busy-er and happier. (I can relate.)

Without giving away the ending, the family manages to reach a glorious compromise. These pictures of the mom celebrating with her kids are some of my favorites of all time. I would hang them on my wall, I love them that much. And one of the best parts of the compromise? That cello that you see mom playing in the beginning of the book, and it is pushed aside in the middle... the cello comes back at the end. Love that!

waffly delicious

2011-09-19T13:42:00.000-04:00

Waffle (cut in quarters), pig container of maple syrup, broccoli,

strawberries with little doggie picks, ham flower. Drink: chocolate milk.

at the crack of lunch

2011-09-16T06:30:00.000-04:00

Photography experts, cover your delicate eyes. This picture isn't pretty. As it turns out, we're leaving the house early enough in the morning that getting a halfway decent shot of Kid1's lunch is pretty tricky. And it was a bit of a fail this morning.

Ham and cream cheese sandwich

on a hot dog bun, cheerios and cherry-lime fruit twists,

baby carrots, blueberries and raspberries,

bread & butter pickles. Drink: fruit punch.

This was a pretty well-loved lunch. My kids love sandwiches on hot dog buns - not sure if they are easier to eat or if it's just a fun change of pace, but it works so I don't question.

grand theory of preparing food for kids

2011-09-15T07:25:00.000-04:00

Mixed berry Greek yogurt, snap pea crisps, cucumber flowers,

chicken nuggets, mango. Drink: milk.

I thought Kid1 would be pretty psyched about this lunch but she ate only the snap pea crisps, cucumber, and mango. This supports my grand theory of preparing food for kids - when you reach the point where you are absolutely SURE they will love and devour a given food, it is then that they know to switch it up on you and completely ignore said food. Or foods, as the case may be. She may or may not have nibbled the breading off the chicken nuggets - they looked a little funky - but I was not in a state of mind to conduct a investigation into any unsolved chicken mysteries.

decadent fruit dip

2011-09-14T06:18:00.000-04:00

My dear friend Chris (fabulous acupuncturist, cook, wife, mom & friend) sent me a link to a paleo recipe for decadent fruit dip. This dip is very quick, easy, and I happened to have all the things on hand. That is the trifecta of getting me to try a recipe within days of sending it to me. Oh, and it's vegan and gluten-free - and did I mention very very tasty?

I did a couple of things differently than the listed recipe. First, I used frozen bananas. Not to be fancy but because that was what I had on hand. I think it made the dip thicker and a little more ice-creamish than it would have been otherwise. (Note to self: would this make a good ice cream? yes I think it would.) I also used the refrigerated coconut milk in a carton (because I didn't read the comments to see I was supposed to use canned). Probably the thickest and most decadent option would be good old full-fat canned coconut milk, but I was very happy with how it turned out. We have been loving the Silk brand coconut milk with added calcium - it has 50% more calcium than a glass of dairy milk. Yeah and yum!

We did the 1/2 chocolate and 1/2 vanilla suggestion and I thought it would be fun to combine them in the same bowl. (If you want to do this, just pour them in from opposite ends simultaneously.)

Anyway. I somewhat randomly served this dip with pretzels, carrots, and grapes. The kids dipped everything in it and finished the rest with a spoon.

bookbag: Spoon

2011-09-13T06:44:00.000-04:00

Get ready for cute.

There. Did that cover make you all mushy inside? SO cute. As are all of Amy Krause Rosenthal's kids' books, apparently. My sister-in-law sent Kid1 Little Pea way back when and since then I've kept an eye out for her books. Extreme cuteness levels. This one, Spoon, is no exception.

Aww. Hi, Spoon!

Mostly, Spoon is having a difficult moment as he checks out what his friends are up to and thinks some grass-is-greener type thoughts about what they get to do.

Then his wise mommy spoon helps him figure out the special things spoons do - which is actually a lot of stuff when you think about it. (At least at my house we are always running out of clean spoons - they must be doing something interesting!)

satay-ing alive

2011-09-12T07:06:00.000-04:00

TJ's satay (peanut) noodles, dried sweet baby pineapple, bowl of

Annie's bunny cookies, tomato bombs, strawberries,

cheddar cheese flower. Drink: milk.

A pretty quick-and-easy lunch - satay noodles are the Trader Joe's boxed kind (handy thing to have on hand - not the healthiest but quick and the kids love them, hot or cold). I sometimes stir in cubed tofu or baby shrimp but the cupboard a little bare the day I packed this lunch. The dried sweet baby pineapple is DELICIOUS - it's in the vacuum-sealed type bag (not clear) and really chewy and soft and good.

that's a wrap

2011-09-09T06:32:00.000-04:00

So, most of the time when I am packing lunches I don't have my kids around. Frankly, it is a little much to be listening to the commentary as I'm putting it together. This time not only was there commentary but there was extreme desperate begging for pieces of the little pinwheel wraps I made. I indulged them. Hopefully they will be as excited to eat it in their lunch as they were to eat it when I was trying to assemble it.

Cucumber spears, little chocolate-filled cookies from

the Asian market (name is escaping me right now - pink package),

plums and clementines, pinwheel sandwiches,

popcorn. Drink: milk.

These pinwheel sandwiches are tortillas spread with cream cheese and then layered with turkey and bread & butter pickles. Roll them up tightly and then slice horizontally into pinwheels.

bookbag: Bad Kitty

2011-09-08T10:30:00.000-04:00

Remember when I said that new(ish) alphabets really REALLY have to be something else in order to feel worthwhile and fresh and inventive?

I think I may have found the best alphabet book ever.

It's called Bad Kitty and is written and illustrated by Nick Bruel. And I don't even like cats (with a few exceptions).

I think the illustrations are funny and quirky, but I wasn't prepared for how good this book was going to be.

Basically, the family runs out of cat food and the cat flips out. Alphabetically. Four different times.

First they list all the non-cat-food type foods they could offer...(alphabetically)

Then they list all the different ways the cat flips out ... (also alphabetically)

I don't want to spoil the fun of this book, but rest assured that you will have two further iterations of the alphabet and a surplus of hilarity for the kiddos to enjoy. It's just funny. And this picture book is a bit of a segue into a Bad Kitty chapter book series, which has tons of pictures and funny bits too.

darn tootin' (no gluten)

2011-09-07T06:36:00.000-04:00

Proscuitto, goat cheese, and avocado on gluten-free bread (Udi's whole grain),

potato-lentil curls (Trader Joe's), cucumbers, tomato bombs,

strawberries. I also had a bottle of sparkling water.

A big thanks to those of you who have checked in to see why in the world I've stopped posting on a regular schedule. The short answer is that things have been busy... 3 in school right now means 3 different kid schedules and I'm a-juggling like crazy.

The longer answer is that I did get a definitive diagnosis of celiac disease which has led to some mixed feelings on my part. On one hand, it's what I thought was happening, so I am somewhat relieved/validated to have everything made official. On the other hand, whoa. Feels a little serious. It also means that my relationship with food is changing. Obviously this is necessary and totally for the better, but it's also a little strange. New rules. I'm still figuring them out. I might be figuring it all out for a while.

Still - very, very thankful. So glad that I happened across this answer to a host of physical and mental symptoms. THANKFUL that I am feeling better than I have in years. And thankful for the support of friends and family who can send me those "where are ya?" kinds of emails and keep me on track, in all kinds of ways.

This lunch was from a day last week where I went to Kid1's school to have lunch with her. We had a really good time, even though some rowdy kids necessitated the lights out/no talking rule to be in effect for a good 10 minutes. Luckily she is learning sign language at school this year so we were able to wing it. I'm hoping to be able to make lunch dates with her more of a regular thing.

why did the chicken cross the road?

2011-08-30T06:04:00.000-04:00

... to go to first grade, of course!

Sautéed chicken pieces, buttered whole grain white bread,
apple slices (dipped in OJ to prevent browning), watermelon cubes,
baby carrots. Drink: chocolate milk.

Leftovers from a dinner Jon cooked - lucky girl! Lucky all of us, actually as there are a ton of leftovers for everyone's lunch!

snack-man fever

2011-08-29T06:55:00.000-04:00

This is a fun little snack I made for Kid1 using a Babybel cheese (those red wax-wrapped ones), grape tomatoes, craisins, dried blueberries, and dried mangos. Obviously the possibilities are endless with this one. Maybe next time I'll go 30 Rock-style and include a bowl of cherries and some ghost meat.

Image of I will eat a bowl of cherries and some ghost meat in his honor

first day of school cupcakes

2011-08-26T06:57:00.001-04:00

My first grader had her first day of school yesterday!

Kid2 and Kid3 helped me with these. And when I say "help" I mean frosting and candy tasters.

I found the idea for the blackboard cupcakes from FamilyFun. I realized as I was making these that Kid1 doesn't even have a traditional blackboard in her classroom. There is a whiteboard and a SMART board. Oh well, it is certainly evocative of school memories for me even if it's not for her.

The apples are m&ms with a tiny dab of green frosting, and the "chalk" is a Good & Plenty. (Note: As it turns out, Kid2 is a Good & Plenty fan. He must have gotten that from his dad.)

I actually found this project really frustrating - I had a hard time writing on the little chalkboards/chocolate-covered graham crackers. In the samples on the Family Fun page people spell out all kinds of things. I was doing pretty well to fit a couple of letters or numbers on there. It might be time to acknowledge to myself that I kinda like this cake decorating thing and maybe I should invest in a set of tips instead of trying to wing it with icing in a baggie every time.

bookbag: Galoshes by Kit Allen

2011-08-18T06:23:00.000-04:00

This was one of those wonderful library finds. SOO glad Kid3 and I happened to be sitting near the "A" section of the board books in our library, so she could discover this series for us.

Kit Allen wrote and illustrated the most sweet, simple, and subtle (!) books about the four seasons. This one, Galoshes, is about spring. There is also Sweater (fall), Longjohns (winter), and Swimsuit (summer).

The cover. Do you love it already?
Two of the books feature a girl, and two have a boy.
All very subtle though - they are not overly gendered books.

There is just one word per page.

One garment gets added on each page, and then it's timefor a seasonally appropriate adventure.

Cute and cute.

Could you refuse to love a book that shows a LITTLE GIRL collecting
worms in a rainstorm? and not just collecting, but "saving." I love
these books more each time I read them.

The illustration of the steam just gets me in how perfect it is.

We have gotten a surprising amount of mileage out of these books. These books can be simple and straightforward, where you just read the given word on the page and move on - or you can spend time talking about the seasons, remembering similar experiences in your kid's life, and discussing how the little character might feel as she is going through her day. Kid3 (age two) is who you think would love them the most, and you would be right.But Kid1 and Kid2 will read them with her, and seem to really enjoy them too.

Each book ends with "sleep" as the last page - which, besides being "awww" inducing, makes them a good choice for just-before-bed wind-down time.

They are (another) out-of-print gem, but look for them in your library or used on Amazon.

bookbag: Eating the Alphabet

2011-08-17T07:00:00.001-04:00

I'm a little jaded about alphabet books - my thought is that if an author/illustrator is going to "go there" and become one of the thousands of alphabet books that exist, then they better be prepared to do so in a big way. Either with a unique theme, or great illustrations. Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert has both.

The colors are gorgeous and on that crisp white background
they just leap off the page.

Some letters are lucky and have multiple fruits and vegetables
listed - A has apricot, artichoke, avocado, apple, and asparagus.

I also appreciate the way Ehlert illustrates the fruit in
different ways - for example, the whole melon and also
the sliced melon. I think it's helpful for kids to see the way
they might find it in the store and also the way
they might find it on their plate.

My other I'm-a-little-jaded thing about alphabet books is that it irritates me when alphabet books slack off when depicting the X. I don't really want "an x-shaped banana" ... I want something that starts with X! Happily, there is no phoning-in of the X in this one - I will let you find it for yourself but it is definitely legit. (Although not in English - and that is OK with me and my overly persnickety alphabet standards.)

Note to vegetarians/vegans - no animal products are depicted in this book - it's a 100-percent plant kingdom situation.

bookbag: Bennett Cerf's Book of Riddles

2011-08-16T06:41:00.000-04:00

Q: What is a great choice for new readers - not too long, with lots of illustrations, and a decent vocabulary?

A: Joke books.

(I realize that isn't funny. That's okay - the jokes my kids make up aren't really very funny anyway. Especially Kid3's newest joke - are you ready? "Knock Knock - owl!" That's it. High on the cute, low on the funny.)

ANYway. Joke books are great for new readers. The jokes keep them motivated to keep reading. The nature of jokes - especially these jokes - is that you have to understand a word's dual meanings if you want to "get" it - so reading and telling jokes helps kids understand language in a more intuitive way. And this sweet and silly joke book, Bennett Cerf's Book of Riddles, with its charming illustrations by Roy McKie, is one I remember from my own childhood. Unfortunately, the nostalgia comes with a pricetag attached - right now on Amazon the cheapest (used) one of these is $17.50. But there are other Bennett Cerf books on there for a dollar or two.

A good example of the kinds of jokes this book has.

Even a joke you have heard maybe 500 times is so much cuter
when told by one of your kids.

And I had to show you this illustration because
of the cows looking askance at each other. I just
love it when animals look askance!

One of the things we loved about living in St. Louis was an extremely adorable Halloween tradition where the trick-or-treaters tell you jokes before you give them candy. Adorbs, folks. The jokes were similar to Kid3's knock-knock joke - low on the funny, high on the cute - and I expect some of them were getting their material from good old Bennett Cerf.

bookbag: Sea Turtles

2011-08-15T06:05:00.000-04:00

My very favorite author of children's nonfiction books is Gail Gibbons. Whenever we are at the library looking for books on the hot topic du jour and I see her name, I breathe a sigh of relief.

Why?

I think children's nonfiction is a tough genre. Some of the books are way over the heads of preschool/early elementary kids - and some books are way too simplified. Some were clearly published with a very utilitarian 70s/early 80s aesthetic and are just not too appealing.

Gail Gibbons' books are PERFECT. Beautiful illustrations, clear diagrams, the text is informative yet kid-friendly.

Matter-of-fact about the whole issue of predators yet
manages to keep the gore out (unlike some other books I know).

I never thought about the difference between sea turtles
and regular turtles, but here you go.

It's really just a coincidence that I picked Sea Turtles today - I could have chosen any one of the titles we have read and enjoyed over the years. Off the top of my head, I know we've all read and loved New Road!, The Honeymakers, The Milkmakers, Bats! (we own this one - we read it to Kid1 every single night for a few months there), Owls, Penguins and Ice Cream. So venture into the nonfiction section and go for whatever Gail Gibbons book you find there!

diy

2011-08-12T06:06:00.002-04:00

I am the first to admit that this idea is far from earth shattering.

But as much as I am someone who likes to let kids do stuff in the kitchen....

... and as much as I am someone who has been known to, on occasion, break out the cookie cutters and use them to cut out food...

for some reason (??) I had never thought of giving my kids all their lunch stuff and letting them go to town on it.

And I am sure it is no surprise to anyone that they LOOOOVED doing this. I thought the fruits and vegetables I had on hand might be a little tough to work with so I just cut them up normal-style and they had them on the side.

I thought it was cute that Kid3 used both sides of her cookie cutter... she got both flower AND circle shapes that way.

Fun and fun!

la la la la ... lemon

2011-08-11T06:38:00.000-04:00

subtitled: the easiest frozen dessert ever.

Lemon lovers only need apply.

This lemon-buttermilk sorbet is transcendental. I know the buttermilk may seem a little quirky but it adds a delicious tang that perfectly complements the lemon flavor. It is super, super, super easy to make but allow yourself a little time to let the mixture go in your freezer after coming out of the ice cream maker. It's a little soft otherwise.

This is a fantastic project for kids to help with. They literally can do every step in making the base. Mine aren't ready to try to pour it into the machine but maybe in a few years they will be. That way I can just relax and let them sorbet for me!

Lemon-Buttermilk Sorbet
adapted from epicurious

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
4 cups buttermilk

In a large Tupperware container (or bowl that you plan to cover with plastic wrap), stir together the lemon juice and sugar. Add the buttermilk and stir until sugar dissolves. Chill for 10-12 hours. Process mixture in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions. When it comes out of the ice cream maker it will be VERY soft. Too soft. Put it in the freezer overnight in a lidded container.

P.S. epicurious suggests grated lemon peel and I politely decline. I don't like the chewy texture it adds.

P.P.S. We served this with Kid3's owl cake and it was a pretty fab combo.

owl cake (the recipes)

2011-08-10T06:58:00.001-04:00

As promised, here are the recipes from Kid3's Owl Cake. The cake is gluten-free and I was happily surprised that that fact was absolutely undetectable. I would have never guessed it was gluten-free = success!!

White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting (for owl body)
adapted from the Cake Mix Doctor

6 ounces white chocolate chips, melted (see Note)
6 ounces of block-style cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, at room temperature
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

Note: To melt white chocolate chips, place in a microwave-safe bowl and heat for 30 minute intervals, stirring in between. It took 1 1/2 minutes in my microwave for my white chocolate to melt. It should look very smooth when you stir it after it is completely melted.

Place the cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until combined, about 30 seconds. Stop the machine and add the melted white chocolate, and blend on low speed until just combined, about 1 minute. Add the powdered sugar and blend on low speed until the sugar is incorporated. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat until the frosting is fluffy, 1 minute or more.

Chocolate Frosting
(for sides of cake and owl wings)

1 stick of butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until combined, about 30 seconds. Stop the machine and add the cocoa powder, and blend on low speed until just combined, about 1 minute. Add the powdered sugar and blend on low speed until the sugar is incorporated. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat until the frosting is fluffy, 1 minute or more.

Gluten Free Yellow Cake
adapted from The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free

Vegetable oil for spraying the pans
1 package (15oz) yellow gluten-free cake mix (I used Betty Crocker)
1/4 cup (half of a 3.4 oz package) of vanilla instant pudding mix
3/4 cup milk
1 stick of butter
3 large eggs
raspberry jam for filling the cake

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray the pans.
Place cake mix, pudding mix, milk, butter, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. With a wooden spoon, stir together until the ingredients are incorporated. Stir (or beat with an electric mixer on low) for another minute. Divide the batter between the prepared cake pans.
Bake the cake layers until they are golden brown and the tops bounce back when you press them with your finger. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for 5 minutes. Invert the cake pan (you can loosen the edges with a knife if you need to), and then flip again so the cake is cooling rightside-up. Let the layers cool completely (about 20 minutes) before spreading with jam and stacking.

guess whooooo is turning two?

2011-08-09T06:49:00.001-04:00

My sweet baby turns two today!!

I honored her love of all things owl by making an owl cake. A Google Images search yielded many possibilities but this sweet cake posted on Flickr was the winner for the inspiration cake. I just loved its slightly 70s aesthetic, and the pineapple ring eyes were just so cute.

This cake is gluten-free, has two kinds of frosting, and plenty of owlish charm. I used cherries for the eyes, a pecan for the beak, and sliced almonds for ~~ambience~~ feathers. Will post recipes tomorrow. Happy birthday, Kid3!!!

funky monkey waffles

2011-08-08T06:42:00.000-04:00

These waffles are universally adored. We adapted this recipe from the Banana-Chocolate Chip Pancake recipe from a Weight Watchers cookbook that we read back in 2001. The pancakes are excellent too, but my kids are nuts about waffles so that is the way we make them most often. Kids wake up and come downstairs making deep sniffing noises and asking if it could possibly be.... A WAFFLE DAY?!?!

Yep, it's a waffle day, all right.
Otherwise known as "your lucky day."

Banana-Chocolate Chip Waffles

adapted from Weight Watchers: Make it in Minutes
Ingredients
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 ripe bananas, mashed well
1 cup milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the mashed bananas, milk, egg, and vanilla. Stir the flour into the combined wet ingredients until smooth. Gently fold in the mini chocolate chips. Let the batter stand for 15 minutes. (Preheat your waffle iron.)
2. Make your waffles according to the directions for your waffle maker. We use a little over 1/4 cup of waffle batter per waffle. You can also make these as pancakes if you prefer!

They are pretty sweet on their own but no one
around here is likely to turn down a dish of
maple syrup on the side.

We are big fans of syrup on the side. How do you handle syrup in your house? Dip on the side? Go hog wild and drizzle it everywhere? Shield your children from the knowledge that syrup exists?

muffin meals

2011-08-05T06:04:00.000-04:00

I have seen this idea of a muffin tin meal - basically turning an empty muffin tin into a very large scale bento box - seemingly everywhere and tried it myself for the first time this week:

First row: veggie corndog, ketchup, tomato slices, green pepper flowers.
Second row: bread & butter pickles, raisin medley, pirate's booty, blackberries.
Third row: jasmine rice, hummus, carrots, and s'more goldfish crackers.

My first thought making it was that it really seemed like a lot of food. I think it was fun for Kid3 to mess around and explore what was in the different sections. She pretty much ignored the rice but nibbled a little of everything else. She usually does not eat much at lunchtime but ate a fair amount (for whatever reason) this day.

I think it would be fun to do this with a 6-cup muffin tin for snacktime - 12 cups was a little overhwhelming. I could see doing the 12-cup again and making a grazing tray for a day when we are just hanging out.

book+cook: Ling & Ting's Dumplings

2011-08-04T06:17:00.001-04:00

In Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same!, a couple of the stories center around dumplings, both making and eating. Our kids (like most kids I think) love potstickers. I thought it would be fun to make them just like Ling and Ting do! (Well, Ling and Ting make their own dough for the wrappers... we're just going to fill up the store-bought ones.)

We measured the filling out for the kids and let them fold the dumplings over. I think that if you have a careful child you could probably have them do the step where they measure out the filling. It was our first time doing this and we had 3 kids helping at once so we kept it simple. Where "simple" means "dumpling-making frenzy."

Kid2 moistening the edges of the dumpling (won ton) wrapper.

Folding the dumpling over. Give the edges a good pinch.

We used Nasoya brand won ton wraps because that is what they had at my Target. Lots of grocery stores (including Target) keep them in the refrigerated section of the produce department.
Ling & Ting's Dumplings

1/2 pound ground pork
1/2 medium head cabbage, finely chopped
1 green onion, finely chopped
2 water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
Package of won ton wrappers
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Crumble the pork into a skillet over medium heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until cooked through and browned.
In a medium bowl, combine the pork, cabbage, green onion, water chestnuts and garlic salt. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator 6 hours or overnight.
Fill a small bowl with water. Separate about six won ton wrappers on your work surface. Place about 1 tablespoon of filling on each wrapper. Dip your fingers in the water bowl, then moisten the outer edge of the won ton wrapper. Fold over in a triangular shape, pinching edges together. Repeat, using all of the pork filling.
Heat the vegetable oil over medium heat. Add the dumplings, 5-6 at a time. Flip to brown on each side.

If your kids like to dip, you can combine soy sauce and rice vinegar to make a dipping sauce... add chili oil for the adventurous eaters!

bookbag: Ling and Ting - Not Exactly the Same!

2011-08-02T07:43:00.007-04:00

I would guess that it is really difficult to write an early reader book that has some complexity and depth to it. I haven't ever tried it myself, but I can imagine that it would be a challenge to meet kids right where they are in terms of using words and language that are not frustrating yet with a plot and characters that have enough to them to keep things interesting.

Grace Lin's Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same is one of those books that is perfect for early readers AND has interesting stories. It's also really sweet.

In this book, Ling and Ting are identical twins who are struggling a bit with always being told that they are exactly the same.

An incident during a trip to the barber leads to them having slightly different haircuts, which is nice for the reader to be able to tell them apart.

They have lots of sweet little adventures together. They make dumplings, they do magic tricks, they go to the library. The stories are related, so that makes it a nice introduction to the concept of chapter books.

And as an incredible bonus, there are nice little lessons about cooperation and sticking together. It's hard not to love this one!

kissing hand sandwich

2011-08-01T06:20:00.000-04:00

The first day of school is happening in a few short weeks - I can't believe how quickly the summer has flown by. I am going to miss Kid1 a lot when the school year starts. Even though I will miss having the time with her, I know she will have a great year in first grade. But I anticipate that the first few days (weeks?) might be a little hard on both of us.

Audrey Penn's The Kissing Hand is one of those books that is recommended to parents of kids starting preschool or elementary school. My friend Rachel recommended it to me before Kid1 started preschool. It is a sweet story of a little raccoon who is apprehensive about starting school and being away from his mom. She puts a kiss in his hand and lets him know that even though she is not with him, the kiss will stay in his hand the entire day. (Cue the tears.... for moms anyway.)

The funny thing about this book is that we don't read it very often at all. BUT there are many days throughout the year where the kids will ask for a kiss in their hand before they go off to school.

Soooo, I was pretty excited last summer when I found this heart in hand cookie cutter. We call it a kissing-hand sandwich and they tend to make appearances when their lunch needs a little more love in it. The day I made this sandwich we only had white bread, but in the past I've made the sandwich with a slice of white on one side and wheat on the other. Then I pop the heart out and flip it over, and place it back in the hand, so you can see the contrast of the shapes a bit more. Either way it is something that they really love - the kids at your house might love it too.

Kissing hand sandwich (ham), cucumber clouds,
Rainier cherries (pitted with our cherry gun),
freeze-dried mango pieces. Drink: Honest Kids
Berry Good Lemonade.

swirl next door

2011-07-29T06:42:00.000-04:00

Brownies. Raspberry cheesecake. Swirled.

Um, yes. They were goooooood.

Raspberry cheesecake swirl brownies.

So I'm officially gluten-free these days. My kids are fine with gluten and I don't see any modifications happening there - so there won't be real drastic changes to the blog. But for cooking and baking projects that I plan to consume, gluten will not be making an appearance.

The gluten-free baking thing is a little intimidating to me personally. I'm not used to buying xanthan gum and 3 different kinds of flour to make one recipe. So to be able to enjoy the fun of baking and remain gluten-free, for now I am taking some very tiny itty bitty gluten-free steps by using The Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free as my guide. Because it uses gluten-free mixes as the base for everything. And, well, that's where I am right now.

(Note: Keep reading even if you aren't gluten-free, because you can make these amazing brownies with normal brownie mix too. Gluten on you crazy diamond!)

I found the cream cheese brownie mix in the book and added the raspberry and did some other things that I thought would make the swirls come out prettier. Details below!

Raspberry Cheesecake Swirl Brownies
adapted from the Cake Mix Doctor Bakes Gluten-Free

For the raspberry cheesecake filling - all ingredients should be at room temperature
6 oz cream cheese (the kind that comes in a block)
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 large egg
1/4 raspberry jam (either seedless or strained to remove seeds)

For brownies
1 16-oz package of gluten-free brownie mix (or regular brownie mix) - I used Trader Joe's
1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used olive oil which is a little strange but we were out of canola. You couldn't taste it in the brownies. Thanks to Aislinn for the phone reassurance/missing-ingredient helpline.)
2 large eggs
1/2 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

You need: 350 degree oven, ungreased 8x8 brownie pan, a mixer (hand or stand).

Cheesecake filling: combine all the cream cheese ingredients in a bowl, beat with the mixer until smooth.
Brownies: stir together the brownie mix, oil, and eggs until everything is mixed together. How does it look? Incredibly dry or okay? If it looks incredibly dry (like mine did) add 1/4 cup of water and stir well.
Assembly: spread 2/3 of the brownie mixture in your ungreased brownie pan, spreading it out smoothly with the spatula. Spread the cheesecake layer on top. Dot the remaining brownie mix on top. Use a dinner knife to swirl the cheesecake layer with the brownie dots on top. Don't overdo it. Scatter the chocolate chips on top.
Bake for 40-45 minutes. Brownies will be lightly browned around the edges and the center will be set.

These were actually best later in the day, after being refrigerated. They were good the next day, too. Who knows, maybe they would have been best on the third day but our brownies did not last that long.

The Cake Mix Doctor's version says you can sub in nondairy cream cheese if you are so inclined.

book bag: The Children Who Smelled a Rat

2011-07-28T06:51:00.000-04:00

The other day some family friends came over to hang out with the kids and I found myself with four entire hours to do whatever I wanted with.

So I went to the library.

Not for the whole four hours. But for a decent portion of it. It was heavenly!

After doing all my lovely grownup-section browsing, I looked around in juvenile fiction to see some of the choices that were a little off the beaten path, and happened upon this gem of a book by Allan Ahlberg (he wrote the Jolly Postman and a bunch of others): The Children Who Smelled a Rat.

Cute cover, huh? You can see why I picked it up. But the cover is nothing compared to how adorable the inside is.
The layout is different on pretty much every page. Colorful illustrations everywhere, meandering text, and some funny little jokes that cracked Kid1 up like nobody's business. Can you see in the bottom right hand corner that there is a picture dictionary? One of the pictures is of a yummy dessert. There is a footnote that says, "Actually, there are no yummy desserts in this story, but we thought you'd like to see one all the same."

Don't you love the drawings here?

I read some reviews on Amazon and one of the reviewers (only one - it is almost all 5-star reviews) was very upset about the main plot of the book, which does have to do with the teacher being locked in the basement by (spoiler alert) her sister. But - the treatment of the subject is silly and absurd, it never feels dangerous or scary. As I told Jon, it's "peril for beginners."

There are also subplots involving a baby in a runaway shopping cart, a bird who uses hypnosis to her advantage, mom/taxi driver. (Literally, a taxi driver. I thought it was going to be a "Mom's Taxi" kind of thing and rolled my eyes initially, but no. She's a taxi driver.)

This is book 4 in the series. I haven't read the others but we have the first one, The Man Who Wore All His Clothes on request.

Me: Kid1, what would you say to a kid who wanted to know about this book?

Kid1: I would say it's very funny. And it's so funny because this little baby Gary - he was very funny. Gary was a very funny baby. And baby Gary was always growing all the time. There were two twins, one was a girl and one was a boy. They were both each other's evil twins. Horace Gaskitt, the cat, had lots of friends. I liked the part about the yummy desserts. The bird is very funny. She told the cat to put newspaper in the bottom of her cage and then she read it. And then she flew to the cat's head and told the cat "Phone for a pizza!"

fruit salad ice pops

2011-07-27T06:29:00.002-04:00

It's been hot enough that we broke out the Zoku again. (Well, we've been having so much fun with it that we might have broken it out even if we hadn't been having 100-degree days. But. Still.)

The cucumber-mint pops from last week were such a raging success that I started thinking about other kinds of fruit that we could freeze and would be tasty - and also get a little more fruit into Kids1,2&3.

We came up with these... fruit salad ice pops!

We used thinly sliced kiwi and strawberries, but you could use pretty much any fruit that your kids might like. Grapes? Pineapple? Watermelon? Mango? I think the key is to slice the fruit very thinly, so you get the flavor and the texture without biting into a huge chunk of frozen fruit.

We used lemonade for the base but you could use any juice you have on hand, of course.

They were a runaway hit.

Gratuitous baby foot picture. Can't believe she's
going to be 2 in a couple of weeks.

ch-ch-ch chalk

2011-07-26T06:30:00.002-04:00

Unofficial soundtrack to this blog entry is "I Chalk" by Justin Roberts.

I don't know why, but even though my kids adore sidewalk chalk, I had never thought to empty it out into a different container. It just never occurred to me - I wish it had because I have spent way too much time trying to squeeze the chalk back into the little box/bucket it comes in. I am also not sure why chalk seems to expand and never fit in its original container quite right again. Any thoughts on that?

Anyway, after a lovely $1.48 spent at Goodwill I came home with this:

We have a covered porch so we can keep it out and it has led to more spontaneous chalk activity than I remember from summers past.

Another thing we learned from a recent storm where we had not returned our basket to its covered location - wet chalk actually write much more smoothly than dry chalk! And drawing on wet concrete (not in puddles - but wet surface) makes it all work better, too. You'll burn through more chalk that way, but that is what the dollar store is for, right?

Beyond drawing, this year our driveway has seen some very involved and complex hopscotch layouts and "roads" for bikes to follow.

Are your kids chalk lovers? Have you tried the wet chalk thing before?

hot enough for ya?

2011-07-25T06:49:00.002-04:00

It's been hot enough for everyone around here. In fact, Sunday set an all-time record for the Triangle area as we got our fifth 100-degree day in a row. In a row!

We've been taking it fairly easy around these parts, which for us means lots of outdoor play in the morning and sprinklers and pool for the other times of day we've been out. We've been hanging out indoors more than is our usual, but it's been kind of fun. Sort of the equivalent of being snowed in, but heat-waved-in instead. We've had plenty of time for reading, board games, and art projects. Of course we skipped the hot chocolate. But after the deliciousness of last week's watermelon-lime aqua fresca, we decided to try another recipe, this time Smitten Kitchen's melon aqua fresca.

Honeydew you want to go back inside where
it's air conditioned?

This recipe came together pretty differently from last week's. I think it is because of the direction to strain the fruit out. This recipe also called for sparkling water, which was a nice twist on the classic aqua fresca. We used honeydew. Refreshing and light, perfect for when it's hotter than a billy goat in a pepper patch. Viva la aqua fresca!

lemon-glazed blueberry muffins

2011-07-22T06:58:00.002-04:00

This is my go-to blueberry muffin recipe, which is absolutely bursting with blueberries. You actually mash up a small about of blueberries to add moisture and flavor throughout the muffin. These are adapted from the original with the lemon additions - you can leave all the lemon stuff out if you are not a lemon fan -- top them with turbinado sugar just before baking if you are not going to glaze and sugar after. We made these for friends going on a little road trip to the beach. Lucky ducks!

Adapted from Best American Recipes 2002-2003.

Muffin ingredients
1/2 cup butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups large fresh blueberries

Lemon glaze
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

To make the lemon glaze, combine the sugar and lemon juice in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until the glaze reduces to about 1/4 cup.

Lemon sugar
To make lemon sugar, combine 1 teaspoon of grated lemon rind (yellow part only) with 1/4 cup of sugar.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, beating after each addition.

In a second bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar mixture alternately with the milk and lemon juice.

Mash 1/2 cup of the blueberries, and then stir in by hand. Add the remaining whole berries and stir in gently by hand.

Use muffin liners or spray your muffin pan; fill about 2/3 full.

Bake at 375°F for 18-20 minutes. Cool in pan.

Working with one cooled muffin at a time, brush on lemon glaze, then immediately top with lemon sugar.

book bag: press here

2011-07-21T06:19:00.003-04:00

At the risk of being annoying instead of intriguing, I suggest you go to the library immediately and pick up Press Here by Hervé Tullet for your kids. (Or maybe buy it. I think it would be a fun one to own.) I don't want to show the inside because I think that would spoil the magic and fun of this particular book - which my husband noted is more like an app than a book - all I will say is: as I read this book to my kids at the library, they were laughing and giggling and we were quickly surrounded by a veritable crowd of small kids who in turn went on to check out every available copy. It is a really, really fun book to read, and Kid1 has read it again and again to Kid2 and Kid3 since we've had it at home. I guess I should amend my first statement to suggest that you make sure your library has it in stock (or request it) before you head down there. So much fun!!!

summer on a stick

2011-07-20T06:30:00.002-04:00

We are so lucky to have wonderful friends like Jackie and Dan who gave us the incredibly cool Zoku Quick Pop Maker.

We are lucky, too, to have kind neighbors who grow in their garden delicious (and gigantic!) cucumbers and share them with us so freely.

And, I am lucky (and now you are lucky too) to have this recipe for cucumber-mint paletas. What are paletas? Paletas = Mexican ice pops. I realize I am having a mini-theme going with I watermelon-lime aqua fresca yesterday and Mexican ice pops today. But really it's more of a summer theme. A Mexican-inspired summer theme. I'm just going with it.

This recipe from so many years ago I don't even know where it came from. And I am not finding it on the Google, so heaven knows what that is all about. But I do know that these popsicles are truly awesome. They completely taste like summer - and while the taste is sophisticated they are loved by adults AND kids.

And did I mention it is one of the easiest-to-make and freshest-tasting frozen treats ever?

The ingredients, simple and summery.

Check out those gigantic cucumbers. I only needed two for this recipe - Big Papa in the back and Baby Bear in the middle. (My kids ate the more medium-size one with a sprinkling of garlic salt - their second favorite way to eat cucumbers. The first way is the ice pop way, of course.) The mint is from our herb garden.

Cucumber-mint paletas
You need something to make ice pops with - a Zoku works great but molds from the store (or even Dixie cups) work great too.

Ingredients
3 cups of peeled, seeded cucumber chunks
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup of fresh mint leaves

Take all of your ingredients, throw them all in a blender and whirl until smooth. My blender made everything very smooth - some tiny mint flecks were the only non-liquefied identifiable things in there. If you find yourself with actual chunks left after blending you will want to strain them out. When everything is smooth just go ahead and freeze according to your manufacturer directions. Or pour it in little dixie cups. Summer doesn't judge.

This recipe filled up 9 Zoku molds with a little left over.

Oh, and if you do have a Zoku, and you are super lucky and also have the Quick Pop Tools you can use the little wand to place thin cucumber slices on the sides of your ice pops. I think you could also use tweezers. I used Persian cucumbers for the cute little slices. I thought they would just be decorative but they added a nice little chewy cucumber-y texture to the ice pop and were definitely enjoyed.

One of my favorite moments was when Kid1 started eating hers - I hadn't mentioned that they had mint in them, because mint is somewhat of a controversial ingredient in my household (among the kids). Kid1 was happily nibbling away and said, "you know, this has a minty taste." Yeah, go Kid1 palate, go!

You can see that a cucumber slice was eaten while there was still
sweet ice pop on there - that is kinda awesome.

It made me laugh when I realized Kid2 was kind of avoiding
his cucumber slices but he did end up eating them in the end.

living la aqua fresca

2011-07-19T06:18:00.005-04:00

Watermelon-lime aqua fresca.

Except for a three-year stint in San Francisco, I spent my first 29 years in Southern California. It's given me a slightly skewed perspective on some things. A fair number of things, actually. And one of those things is the unreasonable expectation that amazing, authentic Mexican food will be around almost every corner.

Now that I've lived in St. Louis and North Carolina, I have come to realize... good Mexican food is around very few corners. As in, around not many corners at all. But I've come to peace with that (for the most part) and occasionally do try to recreate those tastes and flavors on my own.

A long way of saying this: I have a giant watermelon, I have a blender, I have a hankering for a watermelon aqua fresca.

(In case you haven't had aquas frescas before, they are fruit blended with water, sometimes with sugar or additions like lime juice. They are often ladled out of giant glass jars and are out of this world with some good -- or even bad! -- Mexican food.)

I used a Cooking Light recipe as my inspiration. They put mint in theirs, so give it a try if that sounds good to you.

Watermelon-Lime Aqua Fresca
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon of grated lime rind
1 tablespoon of grated lemon rind

12 cups of cubed, seeded watermelon (buy the seedless kind and don't worry about the white seeds - they'll blend up just fine)
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
5 tablespoons lemon juice

Make a simple syrup: combine the water and sugar in a small saucepan, bring to a boil. Cook, stirring frequently, until the sugar dissolves.
Infuse the syrup with citrus rind: Remove from heat. Stir in the lemon rind and lime rind. Let stand for 20 minutes, and then strain through a mesh sieve over a bowl. Discard the rind.
Be a mixologist: You are going to do three rounds of blending to make this recipe. So for each round, place 4 cups of cubed watermelon in the blender and combine with 1/3 of the recipe of simple syrup you made. (Which in my case ended up being about 1/2 cup per batch.) Process until the liquid is smooth with no chunks. When you finish each batch, pour into a large pitcher. Stir in the lime and lemon juice. Refrigerate or serve over ice.

Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow.

The reviews:
Kid2 - It's a party in my tummy!!
Kid3 - No comment, drank 1 1/2 glasses.
Kid1 - I am not sure. I both like it and do not like it. (Texture issues I am thinking - it's a little foamy.)

"I carried a watermelon."
- Baby, Dirty Dancing

if you're feeling lo (mein)

2011-07-18T06:39:00.001-04:00

Chicken lo mein and carrots, dried seaweed, pink lemonade,
yogurt squeezer (Trader Joe's carries these now!), and blueberries.

The lo mein is leftover from a Pei Wei visit, which Kid1 says is her favorite restaurant. I wish I had a recipe for it though, so if you have one please hook me up. The dried seaweed is available in lots of places and is a love-or-hate situation. My kids love it. There is the famous story (in our family) of Kid1 coming to breakfast when she was about 3 years old. Jon asked her, "Would you like a cream cheese sandwich?" and she said, "A SEAWEED SANDWICH?!?!?!?! YES PLEASE!!!" Anyway, our kids like it plain (as pictured!) and apparently are open to it as a breakfast food. We also use it as a wrapper for sticky rice. This is the seasoned variety which you can get at Trader Joe's, Costco, or Korean markets.

no-bake fire truck graham crackers

2011-07-15T06:47:00.000-04:00

Children definitely teach us a lot. Sometimes those big philosophical-type life lessons. Sometimes, less with the philosophical, more with the giant-trucks-with-sirens-are-super-awesome! It is definitely Kid2 who has introduced me to the many wonders that emergency vehicles hold. This is the kid who will rattle off his list of future careers in one big breath:

Policeofficerfirefighterparamedicparkrangerconstructionworker

Sometimes he adds "acrobat" to this list.

These are jobs he is planning to hold simultaneously, in case you were wondering about that. He is also planning for children - four boys and a girl. Dream big for the future!

Until then, eat fire truck graham crackers.

To make them you need:

Graham crackers
Strawberry cream cheese
pretzel rods
"Dots" candy for sirens
chocolate frosting
Pulled-apart Oreo cookies

Spread the graham crackers with the strawberry cream cheese.
Put on the Oreos wheels.
Pipe on the chocolate frosting windows.
Stick on your Dots candies.
Make your pretzel ladders: use the long pieces for the long parts of the ladders, and use small broken pretzel pieces for the rungs.
Make siren noises as desired. WoooOOoooooOO!! (Repeat #6 if needed.)

because it all tastes better with ketchup

2011-07-14T06:40:00.000-04:00

Diced meatless corn dog (both large compartments),
honeydew melon balls, ketchup, cucumber and
red bell pepper, vegan banana-chocolate chip cookies.

Another picnic-at-the-pool lunch. Kid3 loves her diced meatless corndogs! Of course, they require ketchup for dipping now that she is dip-enabled. It turns out that Kid3 thinks that the melon also tastes better with ketchup. Kind of icky to me but I'm letting her have at it. This is 1/2 of one of the vegan banana-chocolate chips cookies that are a major hit in our household.

Emily's cupcakes

2011-07-13T07:03:00.000-04:00

I made these little cupcakes with sweet Emily in mind, who is my friend Michelle's daughter and who also happens to be severely allergic to dairy.

The cake recipe is from the back of the Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa box: Hershey's "Especially Dark" Chocolate Cake, subbing a non-dairy milk for the cow milk.

I also adapted Sprinkles' recipe for Strawberry frosting to make vegan frosting:

1/2 cup whole strawberries
1 cup vegan spread, such as Earth Balance
4 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Put the strawberries in the bowl of a small food processor and process until pureed. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together butter and salt on medium speed until light and fluffy. Reduce mixer speed and slowly add confectioners' sugar; beat until well combined. Add vanilla and 6 tablespoons strawberry puree (save any remaining strawberry puree for another use) and mix until just blended.

I topped these with little white nonpareils - so this cupcake is not only dairy-free but has no artificial flavors or colors. Pretty sweet, right? Just like Emily!

turkey lurkey

2011-07-12T07:43:00.002-04:00

Cucumbers, turkey sandwich, pineapple, yogurt
squeezer, trail mix. Drink: chocolate milk.

A couple of things about this lunch - we didn't have any sliced bread so I put the turkey on a hot dog bun. Kid1 LOVED this. The cucumbers have a tiny sprinkling of garlic salt on them - all my kids will eat bowls of cucumbers this way. The trail mix has goldfish crackers, craisins, and rice Chex.

when the moon hits your eye

2011-07-11T06:50:00.000-04:00

Every so often we do a Family Movie Night (note the capital letters - it is an extremely official designation) and we usually have pizza. Sometimes storebought, sometimes homemade. This was the first time we decided to give kid-made a try.

We used Bobolis for the sake of convenience. FYI, they have whole-wheat Boboli now! (I hadn't bought them for a very long time.)

The kids were super excited about having their own pizzeria. (They use that word often... not sure where they got it. Maybe Curious George? Anyway, it's cute.)

I assembled my kids' favorite toppings: jack cheese,
pepperoni,black olives and pineapple.

Kid1 getting saucy.

Kid2 showing some restraint with his toppings - I was
sure it was going to be wall-to-wall pepperoni.

Kid1 showing less restraint with her mountain-o'-pineapple,
cheese and black olives.

Ready for transfer to the oven.

That's amore.

Definitely no pictures of the kids enjoying these - we were in the thick of some serious Mulan watching after all.

book bag: Surprising Sharks

2011-07-08T06:47:00.002-04:00

Because we can't get enough of predators around here, the fact that we ended up with a book called "Surprising Sharks" (Nicola Davies and James Croft) is probably "surprising" to absolutely no one. Weirdly enough, I really like sharks. I think they are kind of freaky but really cool.

This book pretty much had me from the endpapers. I love endpapers when they are illustrated or unusual in some way. Total bonus when the front and back endpapers are different. These illustrations compare the different sizes of sharks. Do you see that tiny smudge above the giant Whale Shark? That is the Dwarf Lantern Shark, which is only six inches long. How cute!

In the less-cute (but still cutely illustrated) department is this page, which explains that Sand Tiger Sharks give birth to two live young. "Which is all that's left after those two have eaten the other six babies in their mother's belly." (!) Hmm, I am guessing that this book doesn't get a whole lot of play in the Sand Tiger Shark mommy groups of the world.

One of the great strengths of "Surprising Sharks" is that it has a ton of information that is presented very well. The illustrations are fun, bright and colorful AND the information is very detailed too. Often there is a trade off between those qualities so it is nice to see a book that has it all. I felt like I learned a lot about sharks by reading this book. For instance, did you know that due to the position of a shark's eyes they can usually see behind them almost as well as they can see in front of them? And did you know that sharks have gel-filled pits in their nose that can sense electricity... you know, as in the stuff that is used by the nervous system to transmit messages? Um, freaky and cool. Like I said!

this lunch was brought to you by the letter P

2011-07-07T06:36:00.002-04:00

I didn't plan to do a P-inspired lunch but once I had a few ingredients in there that started with P I decided to go with it.

Parmesan-sprinkled pasta, popcorn, chocolate milk (sadly,
I did not have any P beverages - too bad we don't have any fruit
punch), peaches and persian cucumbers (with puppy picks), and peanuts.

you say sweet potato, I say sweet potato fries

2011-07-06T06:39:00.003-04:00

We made these for the 4th of July. My kids love sweet potatoes in pretty much any format but sweet potato fries are a runaway hit. This recipe makes soft fries - not very crisp ones - but as a soft fry aficionado, I am okay with that.

You need:
5 sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into fry shapes - about 1/2-inch thick
olive oil
salt and pepper
450-degree oven
greased baking sheet(s)

In a large bowl, combine the sliced sweet potatoes with the olive oil to coat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. In a single layer, spread out the sweet potatoes on the greased baking sheet. Bake them 20-25 minutes, turning occasionally.

peachberry crisp

2011-07-05T06:05:00.002-04:00

Crisps. Cobblers. Buckles. Brown Betty? Not even sure if "Brown Betty" belongs in that list but all of those words describe the homey, fruity, delicious desserts that I associate with summertime and delicious ice cream toppings. I served this with the homemade fig ice cream and thought it was a match made in heaven.

This dessert was pretty much a total hit with the grownups and a hit with 3 out of 5 kids. This recipe is vegan & gluten-free version, but you can be as meaty and gluteny as you wanna be - just look for the starred ingredients and feel free to substitute all-purpose flour for the almond/coconut flour mix and use butter instead of the Earth Balance.

Peachberry Crisp
5 cups of peeled, sliced fresh peaches
2 cups of fresh blueberries
2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
2 tablespoons of coconut flour*

1 cup of oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 cup coconut flour*
1/8 cup almond flour*
1/4 cup Earth Balance*
1/4 cup shredded coconut

Oven 375 degrees

Combine fruit in 2-quart square baking dish. Stir in the granulated sugar and 2 tablespoons of coconut flour.
For the topping, put in your food processor: oats, brown sugar, coconut flour, and almond flour. Pulse until combined. Add the Earth Balance (or butter) and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the coconut. Sprinkle topping over filling.
Bake in 375-degree oven for 30-35 minutes or until fruit is tender and the topping is golden. If desired, serve with fig ice cream.

gettin' figgy with it

2011-07-01T07:30:00.009-04:00

Figs - not something that was on my radar at all as a kid, except in the occasional Fig Newton cookie. The first time I had fresh figs though, I was pretty much bowled over in a where-have-you-been-all-my-life type way.

But.

The only thing better than fresh figs from a store are fresh figs not from a store:

Incredibly delicious, incredibly ripe backyard figs.

Well, to be honest, the only thing even better than your average backyard beauty figs would be being given them by your lovely friend Heather - who is generous and hilarious, and a stellar person in general. But I will allow that not everyone is lucky enough to have a Heather.

Ripe? check. Delectable? check.

But if you are lucky enough to get your hands on some ripe, delectable fresh figs - and after you've eaten a bellyful straight-up and unadorned - then please, please, turn them into... ice cream.

But not just any ice cream. This ice cream:

It's vegan. It's gluten-free. It's DELICIOUS.

My recipe is adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, which was blogged about on Vanilla Garlic. I changed a few things, so I'll detail that below. The one thing I do not get is how the Vanilla Garlic guy got his ice cream to turn out pink?? I wish mine were pink too, but it's inarguably fig-colored so I can't be too upset about that.

Cooking the figs.

Fig Ice Cream
adapted from David Lebovitz

You need:
20 figs
1/2 cup of water
zest of one lemon
3/4 cup of sugar
1 cup of non-dairy creamer (I used the soy creamer from Trader Joe's, which is vegan and gluten-free.)
1 teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice

Also: a food processor or blender, a large non-reactive saucepan, an ice cream maker.

Cut the hard stems off the figs, then cut into eight pieces.
Put the figs in the saucepan and cook over medium heat (covered) for 8-10 minutes or until figs are tender.
Remove the lid and add the sugar. Continue to cook until the figs reach a jamlike consistency. I mashed up the figs and that helped to speed things along.
Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.
Put the fix mixture in a food processor and blend until smooth. In a tupperware or other fridge-friendly container, stir the fix mixture with the creamer and lemon juice.
Place the mixture in the fridge for 6 hours or overnight.
When you are ready to make the ice cream, follow the manufacturer directions for your ice cream maker. If you want to eat it right away (no judgment) it will be good but have a consistency more like soft-serve. If you put the ice cream back in the freezer it will be a firmer texture. Either way, incredible.

So delicious - so summery! The ice cream is very sweet with lots of figlicious flavor.

If you find yourself in need of some fig-related reading while you are eating this amazing ice cream, then I wholeheartedly recommend the 52 Figs blog, which chronicles a woman's quest to work her way through a list of different experiences she'd always wanted to have put aside for one reason or another. The blog is brave and funny, and something that I think a lot of us can relate to. It has poetry, signature cocktails, rapelling, motorcycle sidecars, horseback riding, and sunrises in Paris. It would go perfectly with a bowl of this ice cream.

We all scream for ice cream.

cuckoo for coco

2011-06-30T06:52:00.000-04:00

Coconut pancakes (gluten-free)

Another pancake recipe! Can you tell that we are pancake fans in this house? This recipe, from a blog called Nourishing Days, appealed to me for a few reasons:

They are coconut pancakes.
They are pancakes made from coconut.
They are gluten free.
They taste like coconut.
Dude. Coconut.

I really like coconut.

We cooked them in coconut oil and used coconut milk instead of cow milk. The only flour they use is coconut flour - which I hadn't used before. I got the Bob's Red Mill kind. It is high in fiber and low in digestible carbs. It is also a good source of protein! I didn't know what to expect but it is very fine and powdery. Flourlike, some people might say.

This is a good recipe. The pancakes were tasty. Their texture was very, very fluffy. Now, fluffy pancakes can be a good thing. But I have to say that these pancakes approached extremes in fluffiness. I think I'll make them again and maybe add 1/2 cup of shredded coconut. I think that chewiness would make them a little more ... that is to say... a little less... fluffy. But they were good! Especially with blackberries from the farmers' market!

mo' bunny mo' macaroni

2011-06-29T06:51:00.000-04:00

Bunny mac & cheese and pinto beans, blintz, milk,
watermelon flowers and carrot sticks.

Just another simple lunch for a trip to the pool. Sometimes people ask me how I keep things warm - like mac & cheese. I don't, actually. My kids love it cold or at room temp. The blintz is one of the dairy-free frozen ones from Trader Joe's (thawed). My kids love those things. The watermelon flowers have seeds for centers. It had been a very long time since I had purchased a seeded watermelon and if I remember to read grocery signs a little more closely it will probably be a long time until I buy another. Tasty, but labor-intensive.

if I ever opened my own banana stand...

2011-06-28T06:08:00.001-04:00

...I would probably sell these cookies there.

p.s. we're vegan!

These are very good and come together incredibly quickly. Also, they use that one ripe banana sitting on your counter PERFECTLY. (The age-old quandary: when you don't have enough banana for banana bread yet you don't want to put another one in that bag of bananas you keep in the freezer. Am I projecting here? Are you saying that's not really a quandary, much less an age-old one?)

Anyway, the recipe comes from the pretty amazing Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, which is an excellent resource. It has lots and lots of cookie recipes - drop cookies, bar cookies, sandwich cookies. Some are simple, some call for more unusual/challenging ingredients (agar agar flakes, anyone?). This is one of the simple recipes.

Banana Everything Cookies
adapted from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar

1 very ripe banana
1/3 cup canola oil
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups oats (like Quaker Oats. The book calls for quick-cooking but I used regular ones.)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips
Milk (non-dairy if you want to keep things vegan - I used rice milk) - 1/2 cup or so although you may not need it.

350 degree oven.

In a big bowl, mash up the banana. Mash in the oil, sugar, and vanilla.
Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix until moistened.
Stir in oatmeal, walnuts and chocolate chips.
Take a moment to note the wetness/dryness of what you have going on here. I made these cookies a year ago and they were okay but wow. Dry. Much, MUCH vegan milk required to wash down those suckers. This time I trusted myself and put in a little milk at the end (stirring well to incorporate) and they were DELICIOUS. You want them squooshy moist but not liquidy/soaking wet. Add a little milk at a time to get the right texture.
Roll the cookies into balls - ping-pong sized balls is about right. They are not going to spread much on you so flatten them a little if you like cookies that are more cookie-shaped and less ping-pong-ball shaped.
Bake for 12 minutes or until golden brown. Milk (vegan or not) entirely optional!

pb&j farm-to-table edition

2011-06-27T06:30:00.003-04:00

When you put together homemade peanut butter and homemade jam, there is a bit of an elephant in the room. Not a suave and subtle elephant. Not a petite and dainty one, either. An elephant who pretty much stomps over, elephant-slaps me with her trunk, and demands that I whip up some homemade bread.

I thought about getting all Little Red Hen on you and grinding my own wheat but I didn't. It was still pretty good bread. (I used this recipe.)

Then you take your sandwich and you eat it, you eat it.

It was good - but you know what? The overall effect of this combination was too sweet. I think it's the peanut butter's fault - maybe that extra smidge of added honey?? Anyway, there may be some future tinkering but for now the Little Red Hen can win this battle and I'll put my harvesting, boiling, pureeing, shelling, grinding, and spreading tools aside.

Good DAY, Madame Elephant!

Good day.

found a peanut

2011-06-24T06:58:00.004-04:00

Back in May when I made strawberry jam, I mentioned to Jon that I thought it would be fun to make my own peanut butter to go along with it, too. In my head I was imagining something along the lines of that grind-your-own peanut butter you can get at Whole Foods - you know, I'd take some peanuts that had already been shelled and throw them in my trusty food processor.

But then Jon reminded me that he had a trip to Virginia coming up - a driving trip. A driving trip in which he would be passing numerous peanut farm stands and would be able to procure for me the real. deal.

I was excited. How excited? Well, I just about went nuts! (Sorry, I'll stop now with that kind of thing. Couldn't help it.)

Last week my farm-fresh peanuts were purchased from Gurganus Peanuts and delivered by a very cute ~~delivery boy~~ husband and shortly thereafter I set to work.

My first task was finding recipes for roasting the nuts and turning them into peanut butter. I found this one from Alton Brown which had instructions for both. Check!

Empty bag of peanuts - two pounds, raw
(not roasted), in-shell.

After being coated with oil and salt, the peanuts are spread out on cookie sheets and ready to go into the oven. I was struck by how many different shades of tan/beige/greige are happening with these peanuts - really interesting and pretty.

Then, they came out of the oven and looked pretty much the same (sameness not pictured). And then the shelling began.

It takes a LOT of peanuts to make a couple of cups of shelled peanuts. I lucked out (in many, many ways - peanut shell labor is just one) by having my friend Allegra in town. We sat at the kitchen table and chatted and shelled nuts for ... oh... probably an hour. AN HOUR. Like I said, I lucked out having my dear friend there, but that is a lot of labor for peanut butter, isn't it? We also enlisted any errant children (and there were six of them) who wandered in with the job of shelling nuts. Which also, in a fairly cause-and-effect scenario, led to children swiping nuts. But all in all, it worked out fine.

We made lots of shells.

Nuts with honey, salt, and oil - ready to go for a whirl.

At this point I will pause to mention a few things:

I didn't have peanut oil so I used canola for both roasting and the peanut butter itself.
I read on Alton Brown's recipe that you aren't supposed to use Virginia peanuts because they are not as naturally oily as Spanish peanuts. Obviously, I was working with Virginia peanuts. I started to anticipate a dry, oil-deficient mess.
I panicked a little.

Panic is not quite the right word. But when I hit my food processor button and it seemed not to be approaching creamy at the rapid pace I thought it should, I added a little more oil. Looking back on it now, I think I just needed to be a little more patient. It takes a lot for a little food processor (even a very beloved one) to do the work of grinding up those little nuts. So, like I said, I added more oil and a smidge more honey. I don't think that was needed. It may have contributed to making my peanut butter a little on the thin side.

But.

You know what?

Toot toot, peanut butter.

IT WAS SO SUPER DELICIOUS. We all (all 10 of us if you are interested in the math) couldn't stop eating it. It was a little sweet, a little salty, and most of all - totally peanut buttery. You could just taste the flavor of the roasted peanuts and man, was it amazing. Wait a minute, am I spreading it on a little thick now? (Okay, okay, I'll stop.) But seriously. This was incredibly good peanut butter. The experience of roasting, shelling, and grinding was fascinating and made me think a lot about how much work goes into our humble/noble good old PB&J. And really, the peanut butter? Totally ruled.

If your kids (or you!) would like to learn a little about factory-made peanut butter, then check out this vintage Sesame Street video with an extremely catchy little peanut song written and sung by Joe Raposo.

bookbag: Predators

2011-06-23T06:29:00.002-04:00

I bet you can guess that this was a pick from our very own Kid2. When I saw the cover of Predators I simultaneously winced (because c'mon... PREDATORS = sort of scary and yucky) and did a little internal happy dance because I knew how happy Kid2 would be to pore over the pages with me.

It's hard to tell in this photo but the cover is sort of three-dimensional and super glossy - the tongue looks sort of foil-y and the overall effect is - shimmery. glisteny. scary. toothy. A total Kid2 book.

Let's open 'er up, shall we?

Um yeah. So that was the title page. Anaconda meets baby tapir. Fascinating yet ... ugh.

Look how amazing the artwork is here. The pictures depict predator chains, so for example the eagle eats the snake who eats a mouse. One idea this book puts forth very well is the idea that lots of animals are predators. When we hear "predators" we might immediately think of the top of the food chain: sharks, eagles, giant anacondas with elastic connectors in their jaw so they can open up huge to swallow sweet little unassuming baby tapirs. (For example. Can you tell I'm a little scarred from the title page still?)

Anyway, I thought this was a great graphic depiction of a food-chain situation. It also occurred to me that you could lift the artwork directly and make an awesome van mural. Maybe throw in a coupla hot Viking babes and you'd be golden.

Did I mention Kid3 was reading this with us? Due largely to her siblings, she has a rich and varied literary realm although occasionally a few things pop up that I'm slightly shocked her little not-quite-two-year-old-self is being exposed to. Anyway, I said something about the above picture along the lines of, "The musk oxen are protecting their baby from the wolves." And Kid3 pipes up saying agitatedly, "Me a baby!!! Me a baby!!" and sort of making her little faux crying sounds which are her way of saying, "I am sad." So that was a little sad. I emphasized that the oxen were PROTECTING the baby and then we quickly turned the page.

Uhh, awesome. You again. Have I mentioned I have a fondness
for tapirs? Although apparently I am not quite as fond of them
as your average anaconda might be.

I just thought this spread was totally, totally cool. It's all about how fast predators can go. Answer: FAST! Peregrine falcons can go faster than 200 miles an hour when they are dive-bombing. Um hello that rules. And the sailfish goes 68mph swimming in the water. (I mean, obviously swimming in the water. But that is so fast!!)

Um, ack.

It just makes me so happy that they included carnivorous plants. Of course they are predators too but I don't know if that would have ever occurred to me! What a cool book. Thanks, Kid2.

Houston, we are dip-enabled

2011-06-22T06:11:00.000-04:00

As much as I have wanted dipping to be successful for Kid3, she has mostly turned up her cute little nose at the idea. Until today.

Strawberries and blackberries, jack cheese flowers,
multigrain Joe's Os, cucumber, sesame sticks, diced ham.
Also: hummus.

Kid3 has decided that she loves hummus! Love that. She is the first of my kids to like it. I am hoping it lasts. Weirdly enough she was also totally enjoying dipping her food into my own lunch's dip option which that day was a soy sauce/wasabi combo. She grimaced a bit when she got the wasabi but kept on dipping. Of course after seeing her little floating bits of food hanging out in my soy sauce, my own love affair with dipping was temporarily put on hold, but I am willing to take one for the team for the greater good of dipping.

She ate ALL of her cucumbers and hummus and nibbled on everything else.

Oh, and in case you are wondering - I used a tiny piece of cucumber peel to make the center of my cheese flower. (Cut out with a flower cookie cutter.) Kid3 is very much into flowers right now.

toy story alien cupcakes

2011-06-21T06:17:00.000-04:00

The claw is our master.

These are from Kid2's birthday, which was several months ago, but I thought I'd post them because they are so cute and so easy.

I got the idea from Family Fun but altered it a bit.

For these, you need green frosted cupcakes, mentos, black frosting, green Twizzlers cut into thirds, and green Jelly Belly jellybeans. (The original recipe calls for candy I couldn't track down, so I used Twizzlers and Jelly Bellys. If you are able to find green apple sour belts and sour straws, more power to you and feel free to use them.)

I used a straw (a plastic straw, not a sour straw) to poke a hole in the aliens' foreheads so I could stick in the Twizzler antennae easily. After that, you just add the eyes and ears, piping on the pupils and mouths with the black frosting.

Done and done!

Yes, that is a Christmas platter. Everyone knows
that aliens and Christmas go together.

don't go chasing butterflies (when you could just eat them instead)

2011-06-20T06:58:00.004-04:00

Made a summer-themed lunch for Kid3. There are truly an amazing amount of butterflies in North Carolina - gigantic, colorful ones that seem to hang out all summer long.

The wings are quartered pieces of cinnamon-raisin bread, spread with cream cheese and topped with some jellybeans
Turkey-roll-up for the body, apple slices for the antennae.
Blackberry flower.

if you like it then you should have put a rubber band on it

2011-06-17T06:25:00.001-04:00

Peanut butter and apple slices. So good. So healthy. So not-portable. You have the potential disaster of a little dish of peanut butter combined with the total yuckiness of apple slices that start turning brown about one millisecond after they are exposed to air. It's a snacktastrophe waiting to happen.

However. I have a solution. A solution that corrects about 89% of the portability-of-peanut-butter-&-apples problem.

I introduce to you -- the MAGIC APPLE:

They are still about 11% messy. Which is actually a decent
number when peanut butter is involved.

These are very, very easy to make - just core the apple, spread the insides of the slices with peanut butter, then reassemble and put a rubber band around it.

Speaking of rubber bands, we have a lot of them hanging around our house due to the fact that our mail carrier puts a rubber band around the mail every single day. Does anyone else find that a little unusual? I also find it unusual that he never wears a postal uniform. (never!) Is that even allowed?

Also. If you are wondering why they are "magic apples" that is because my kids were a little confused about the rubber band and I needed some quick help from the marketing department aka my brain and "magic apples" is what happened under pressure. Magic apples! With peanut butter inside! Hearts and smiley faces and peanut-butter-filled apples aplenty for everyone!!

easy peasy lemon squeezy

2011-06-16T06:31:00.004-04:00

Life gave us lemonade.

Kid1 and Kid2 each had a friend over yesterday. Let me go on the record saying that my kids have excellent taste in friends. Seriously, you could not find nicer kids anywhere. We had lunch, and then enjoyed a disco dance party, block city-making, original works of art. Then we needed a quietish little activity to do downstairs while Kid3 enjoyed her afternoon nap.

Life had given us... well, it had given us lemons. The literal kind, not the figurative kind. So we took our literal lemons and we made lemonade. Literal lemonade. Which is usually the best kind.

We only have one juicer (standard by-hand type juicer) so I popped over to my neighbor's house where we completely lucked out into borrowing her totally awesome vintage electric juicer. I didn't realize she had the electric kind but it was extremely efficient at removing the last bit of juice from each lemon half. It also made a fun whirring sound.

We determined which kids were going to start with the machine-powered juicer and which were going to start with the muscle-powered juicer. (Then we switched halfway through so each kid got to try both kinds.)

Kid1 rocking the hand juicer.

Our friend Mason demonstrates the electric juicer. (Take note of
his ultra fashionable handcuff-worn-as-bracelet.)

We measured our lemon juice. (I threw in a brief
discussion about math and fractions although I am not sure
it was greatly appreciated.)

Then we mixed it together with the sugar syrup and water.

On the side porch, enjoying the fruit (juice) of our labor.

This was a really simple yet fun activity to do with the kids. Hearing their comments during juicing was priceless. They were genuinely excited about making something themselves that they thought was delicious. It was also instant gratification for them, unlike a baking project would be. Sitting on the porch with our tall lemonades was pretty fun too. A great afternoon with great kids - hard to ask for more than that.

To make easy peasy lemon squeezy lemonade for yourself, you just stir together the following:

1 1/2 cups of lemon juice
Sugar syrup (Made from 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water. Boil the water until the sugar is dissolved. Cool completely before you stir into the lemonade.)
Additional 7 cups of water.

Optional but recommended: cute and nice people to drink it with. Add disco music to taste.

the great cornholio

2011-06-15T06:25:00.000-04:00

Meatless corndog wrapped in foil with a little bowl of ketchup,
lentil-potato curls, lemonade juice pouch,
honeydew melon balls and grapes, cucumbers.

The big kids have swim lessons this week and next, so we've been staying for a while after to play in the pools and the sprayground they have there. Lots of fun. It's been important to have a lunch at the ready for my hungry little swimmers.

I removed the corndog's stick so it would fit in the lunch box. Made me stop and appreciate just how many things fit fine as-is, without modifications! The corndog is a meatless (soy) dog from Trader Joe's. The lentil-potato curls are also from TJ's and are gluten-free.

when life gives you cherries, shoot them with your gun

2011-06-14T06:24:00.001-04:00

Summer is here, and cherries are on sale. I bought a big bag of them recently and was also in great need of a project for Kid2.

And then I remembered my secret weapon:

It's not really a weapon - it's a cherry pitter. To be exact, it is the OXO Good Grips Cherry Pitter that Aislinn gave us when she visited last summer. It's not the cheapest cherry pitter out there, but it is sturdy and probably a good investment, especially if you have a small person helping you. Kid2 is 4 1/2 and was thrilled at the prospect of using the cherry ~~pitter~~ GUN.

He had to squeeze pretty hard to get it to work.

Success! You can see the pit starting to go through the
chute and also the spray of cherry juice that was contained by
the splashguard. Nicely done, OXO.

Kid3 was happy to have the job of twisting off the cherry stems.

Che-err-rrry baby, can you come out tonight?

This was a highly satisfying job for Kid2. He really played up the gun aspect of the cherry pitter, complete with sound effects. He needed some supervision and help with centering the cherry, but as for the squeezing (and sound effects) he achieved professional-level results.

He also achieved a nice bowl of cherries that he and his sister could have for a snack.

Sometimes life really is a bowl of cherries. And if your cherries have pits, then by all means blast them to heck with your amazing super duper awesome cherry gun.

invasion of the macaroni-haired lunch people

2011-06-13T06:21:00.000-04:00

Firmly in the sometimes-it's-good-to-keep-them-guessing department, we have:

Macaroni hair, canadian bacon faces, various fruit for
facial features and body, carrot stick legs.

book bag: Jenny and the Cat Club

2011-06-10T06:40:00.002-04:00

If you are looking for a very sweet and gentle yet funny and quirky chapter book for your kids then I have something you might be interested in:

Jenny and the Cat Club by Esther Averill

First of all, could you love the illustrations any more? They are so simple and done entirely with black, red, and yellow (and usually only with one or two colors on a page). There are plenty of illustrations throughout which is so nice when the transition to chapter books is happening.

The premise is that there is a cat named Jenny Linsky who lives with a sea captain (retired) who encourages her to go out to the courtyard to get to know the other cats in the neighborhood - the cat club that meets regularly. Just to give you an idea of how awesome this book is, I will list the names of the cats in the Cat Club:

Concertina
Romulus
Remus
Junior
Arabella
Antonio
Butterfly
The Duke
Macaroni
Sinbad
Solomon

The stories were published in the 1940s and are charmingly vintage without feeling dated or irrelevant. This is Jenny's friend, Pickles, who asks her, "What's doing?" He is a fire cat who works at the fire station. (And fights fires. I don't mean to give too much away.)

Did I mention that Jenny wears a scarf that the sea captain knitted
for her? Which makes me love this book even more. Knitting sea captains!

Pickles is a good friend.

Anyway, this book is absolutely adorable and fun for adults to read as well as kids. Kid1 actually asked me to read this book again right after we had finished it. (This happens sometimes with picture books but not with chapter books, usually.) We already have the other stories on request at the library.

Oh, and in case you are wondering if you have to be a cat person to appreciate these - definitely not. I don't even think you need to be an animal person necessarily. They are just that good.

the canapéd crusader

2011-06-09T06:27:00.003-04:00

Here is Kid1's lunch, complete with canapés and retro charm:

Greek yogurt, oyster crackers, lunch-on-a-stick kebabs,
juice pouch, nectarines and blueberries, baby carrots.

By the way, I could have scooped yogurt into the lunch box itself but we just happened to have these small yogurts handy. The taller and more rounded yogurt containers (the "classical" yogurt container shape, if you will) do not fit in these lunch boxes, fyi.

These little animal picks are so cute, riding in their
nectarine boats on a blueberry sea of happiness and love...
ok, I'll stop now.

lunch on a stick

2011-06-08T06:43:00.003-04:00

So, Jon and I are officially the last two people in the universe to get hooked on Mad Men, and I am guessing it is not totally unrelated that this is the week I came up with this little retro lunch-on-a-stick concept:

-I mean, basically, they're canapés right? I'm serving
my kid canapés for lunch. I promise I'll draw the line
before we break out the martini juice boxes.

Anyway, these are easy and fun. As with many easy and fun ideas, they are very flexible to what you have on hand. I used toothpicks but you could also do bamboo skewers. If you have meat that isn't already deli-sliced, you could make it into chunks. You could put other vegetables on there if your kids will go for it - I think pickles, olives and/or cherry tomatoes would work nicely, and lettuce could also be successful if you use pieces with the rib attached.

Obviously, use your judgment as to your kid's abilities to handle potential dangers stemming from the use of sharp toothpicks. I think these could be fun for kids to make themselves. Wish I'd thought of that back when Kid1's math class was learning about patterns and she was dreaming about A-B-A-B and A-B-B-A-B-B every night.

That's A-B-A-C-A-B-A to you, bub.

For these, I used deli ham, jack cheese, red bell pepper, and sliced bread.

I cut the deli ham in ribbons and did that kind of accordion-fold type thing on it, then skewered it. Kind of pretty that way. Cubed the bread and cheese and diced the bell pepper.

I'm hoping this will be a nice addition to Kid1's lunch tomorrow. Kid2 was present when I made these and served as the royal food taster. He gave thumbs up aplenty to both concept and execution.

"If we leave this lunch alone much longer, it's
likely to take over Europe." -- Roger Sterling on Mad Men

a million little pieces

2011-06-07T06:37:00.000-04:00

With some seriously hot weather and some kids clamoring for a super-fun kitchen project, we were in need of something easy that was not going to add any additional heat to the house.

We found what we needed in this sprinkle-licious little project. All you need are strawberries, sprinkles, and one of those little tubs of microwavable dipping chocolate the grocery store seems to always have somewhere in the produce section.

Obviously, just the chocolate would have worked - or another kind of sprinkle - but these multicolored little ball sprinkles are my fave:

A little hypnotic, aren't they?

You will note there are no pictures of the actual making of the strawberries. 3 kids + warm chocolate + big container of multicolored sprinkles = me needing my two hands free!

Wash your strawberries and dry them thoroughly with paper towels.
Put your sprinkles in a smallish dish.
Microwave your tub-o-chocolate for 30 seconds, and then stir. (You may need to repeat this step another 1-2 times. Be sure to stir because you know how chocolate does that weird thing where it looks solid after a turn in the microwave but the minute you stir it, it turns into its true melty self.)
Dip your strawberry in the chocolate, allowing the excess to swirl back off into the tub.
Roll your strawberry around in the sprinkles. You can go for a "restrained" look or a "party like it's someone else who will have to have to sweep all those little sprinkles off the floor later" look. (We went for the latter.)

Anyway. As I hinted at in #5 you may have a few sprinkles rolling around after your kids bite into these, but it was really just a few that made it to the floor - and I have convinced myself that they are a festive addition to our otherwise-boring floors.

Pour some sprinkles on me.
(well. "Dip me in some sprinkles" doesn't really
have the same ring to it, does it?)

when a bowl of tabouleh is more than a bowl of tabouleh

2011-06-06T06:08:00.003-04:00

When we moved away from St. Louis (which had been our home for six years) I knew that I was going to miss many things: our house where we had brought all 3 babies home, the baseball (go Cards!), the arch, the zoo (incredible! and free!), the summer afternoons where the high school marching band would march through our neighborhood performing at top volume (I am serious, it was truly a wonderful thing about living there - like a parade by your house every day!), the gigantic community pool.

You know - yeah. I do miss those things. Sometimes.

But of course what I miss most is the people we left behind.

Many of these people I miss are in a book club that is very dear to my heart, my second-Thursday-of-the-month, rain-or-shine, amazing group of women that I was so lucky to be a part of for so long. I miss them all so much! And am thrilled to have had a quick visit last weekend with one of them as she passes through town on her way to beachier destinations.

Anyway. The first time I made this recipe, it was for a book club gathering. For each meeting I hosted after that one, this recipe was requested. It has fennel, which, if you haven't used it before, might seem a little off-putting at first. But its texture and flavor is perfectly at home in this salad, which shines equally in both winter and summer.

Comin' atcha - the stuff memories are made of.

Things change. I'm in a new place. New friends. New books. GREAT new book clubs. (I'm in two, lucky me!) I'm happy with my life here. But sometimes a bowl of tabouleh is more than a bowl of tabouleh... you know?

P.S. This time I made it with quinoa instead of bulgur. Just a nod to the whole "things change" thing, plus I think I like it better this way.

Here it is, adapted from Best American Recipes 2002-2003 (recipe on epicurious)

1 cup quinoa
1 cup fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt
1 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
1/3 cup chopped fresh mint
2 English cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch dice
Freshly ground black pepper
1 large fennel bulb
1/3 cup toasted pine nuts

Cook the quinoa. (I like to use my rice cooker - use a 2:1 water:quinoa recipe and it cooks up perfectly.) Place the cooked quinoa in a large bowl.
In a (separate) small bowl, whisk together 1 cup lemon juice, the olive oil, garlic, and 1 teaspoon salt; drizzle this dressing over the quinoa. Layer on the parsley, dill, mint, and cucumbers. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper over the top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 24 hours or up to 48 hours.
Bring the salad to room temperature.
Meanwhile, cut the fennel bulb in half from top to bottom. Cut the halves into paper-thin slices crosswise. Add the fennel and pine nuts to the salad and toss. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste and serve.

Fun quinoa fact: quinoa is related to the tumbleweed.

our little corner of the world

2011-06-03T06:46:00.001-04:00

So far, so good with our little herb garden growing on our side porch. I've had big gardening ambitions in the past but this year finally acknowledged that while my heart may daydream about fruits, veggies, flowers and roaming chickens a small herb garden is pretty much where we are in terms of managing things. It's been helpful to have our little herbs in their current location, which is covered yet sunny, and also in a location I walk past about a million times each day.

It also helps to have Kid2 perpetually at the ready to:

a) mess around in the dirt.
b) water zealously.
c) harvest.
d) pretend to be a farmer.
e) all of the above.

Not sure if I will ever completely get over Kid2's love of dirt and love of messing around with things. It's so different from my temperament. It's so lovely, too, to be able to key into some serious quality time with him any time dirt is introduced. He just loves it.

Another thing that's nice for me is to have these plant stands that belonged to my mom. They got a fresh coat of paint this year and I've been happy to have them around. My mom loved to garden and would have loved to know that her grandchildren do too.

I think the size of the mint has tripled in the last
week. It's raining mint!

Our mint (two varieties), vietnamese cilantro, aloe vera,
parsley, oregano, rosemary, basil and dill. Sadly, our
North American cilantro didn't take so
we may need a do-over.

Learning the fine line between pulling enough but not too much.

Real farmers don't wear shoes.

The harvest.

taste the rainbow

2011-06-02T06:23:00.001-04:00

It has been H O -double-hockey-sticks- T ... HOT the last few days. (Well, don't hold me to the double-hockey-sticks part because that would technically spell "HOLLT." The hockey sticks are just for emphasis.) HOT. When it is this level of hot, a refreshing fruit salad is just the ticket. I wanted one to have with dinner, though, and wanted it not to be overly sweet. And here we have the perfect solution:

Taste the rainbow.

I cannot believe how good this fruit salad is. It's light, it's fresh, it's somehow sweet and savory, it's got a tiny little smidgen of spiciness to it - it is perfection in a bowl. Or in a jar, if that's what you've put it in. Or a glass. Or a tanker truck. Seriously - this salad is amazing.

Rainbow salad
adapted from Epicurious.com
2 cups diced fresh pineapple
2 cups honeydew melon (either in balls or cubes but use a melon baller if you have one because that is more fun)
1 cup diced mango
1 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons minced red bell pepper
1 tablespoon thinly sliced cilantro
1 tablespoon thinly sliced mint
1 tablespoon minced crystallized ginger

Combine it all. Freak out about how good it is.

The ginger flavor just sort of melts in and is pretty much what makes this salad great. Please don't skip it. In the reviews on epicurious someone mentioned that the salad gets pretty juicy (true) and that you could drain the juice to use in a mimosa. I guess that would be pretty delicious but it's also delicious just to have that juiciness as part of the salad. So be judicious in your de-juiciness.

The red bell pepper was really nice also. It's minced pretty fine so it's not a dominating flavor but so nice when it does happen into whatever spoonful you are enjoying.

I think this would be a good match for lots of savory things. We had it with Trader Joe's mahi-mahi burgers, tortillas, and sliced cucumbers.

So much better than eeeples and beneeneis.

in which we review our weekend through the lens of a green lunch box

2011-06-01T06:19:00.001-04:00

This lunch, while seemingly a total hodge podge, is actually a snapshot of our long weekend - the pancakes are from Monday morning, the energy bars are from Sunday afternoon, the sugar snap peas were from a Saturday morning visit to the farmers' market, the salmon was grilled as part of our Monday night dinner. This is what happens when you squeeze an entire weekend into one lunch box:

Pancakes with strawberry jam, pb&j energy bar, strawberry smoothie,
sugar snap peas, blueberries, salmon.

I think the miscellaneous nature of the lunch might have thrown Kid1 a little - either that or she was just distracted by the pancakes. She barely noticed the salmon, which (we were informed on Monday night) is her all-time favorite food. Oh well - we'll conquer those Omega 3 fatty acids a different day.

pb&j energy bar edition

2011-05-31T06:15:00.003-04:00

My kids like Larabars so when I came across this fruit-and-nut energy bar recipe I thought I would try them out. The original recipe is for apple-pecan bars but that probably wouldn't be my kids' favorite. The important part of the recipe is the magical formula, which is:

1/3 pitted dates + 1/3 other dried fruit + 1/3 cup nuts

And you can use pretty much whatever strikes your fancy.

My fancy was peanuts, craisins, and the requisite pitted dates... pb&j energy bars!

Mine were a little crumbly. You really need to press the hell out of them to get them in a bar format. But they were SO good - all 3 kids loved them and gobbled up every last bit of their crumbly goodness.

I think there are lots of combinations that would be really tasty - how about...

dried cherries + cashews + dates
dried apricots + almonds + dates
dried mango + macadamia + dates (+ coconut?)

I think you could also + mini chocolate chips to any of these to make them sweeter and more dessert-like. If you wanted. but they are definitely sweet and delicious on their own.

Here are the step-by-step directions. You need a food processor fitted with the steel blade.

Grind up the nuts, and then remove them and put them in a separate bowl for the time being.
Grind up your dates and the other dried fruit of your choosing.
Put the nuts back in the bowl with the ground-up dried fruit, and blend the whole thing for a while. You want it to hold together when you squeeze it.
You can mold it into six individual bars or you can make one big bar and cut it up later. I pressed mine into the bottom of a plastic-wrap-lined loaf pan and then sliced it up after it had been in the fridge for a few hours.

artie chokes three for a dollar

2011-05-30T06:12:00.003-04:00

Do you have any never-say-no things? For my awesome friend Laura, it's never-say-no to ice cream from ice cream trucks and lemonade from lemonade stands.

I might add those to my list.

As of right now my kid-related never-say-no can be summed up thusly:

books, reading of.
toenails, painting of.
vegetables, purchasing of.

I just can't say no to a kid request for vegetables. Which worked out well the other day when I was with Kid3, who was having an uncharacteristically difficult grocery shopping experience. By "difficult" I mean that this trip was riddled with tears, needing to walk instead of riding in the cart, surreptitiously yet confidently tossing items into the cart that as a rule I don't like to purchase (scones, expensive cookies, freeze-dried strawberries), more tears, insisting on carrying around a single banana while perusing the store, coming very close to successfully depositing said banana into a trash can, followed by a crescendo of epic tears and shrieking. At which time I put my figurative and literal foot down and said, "we are not going to throw away that banana!" (basically on the verge of my very own tears and shrieking) at which time a helpful employee came out of the woodwork and began plying Kid3 with free cookies.

The lesson in all of this is - if you know your mother, and at the tender age of 21 months I believe Kid3 has me pegged - you can definitely dash over to the vegetable department and grab a clamshell container of four artichokes and hurl them into the cart and I will say "okay."

Got that everyone? Bananas in the trash? No. Artichokes in the shopping cart? Fine by me. Free cookies, a dubious consequence to epic tantrum? Well. Okay.

"The artichoke was really happy because
we ate it. The End." - a vegetable biography by Kid1

Artichoke prep

Wash them.
Cut off the top inch of your artichoke. I found that a serrated knife worked best.
Some of the tips are sorta pointy, just cut the pointy bits off with your kitchen scissors.

Artichoke cooking
Add artichokes to water over medium-heat, boil water, simmer artichokes for 25-30 minutes or until you can easily remove a leaf. Remove with tongs and place upside-down on paper towels to drain.

Butter sauce
Melt 1/4 cup butter with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. You can chop up some oregano or thyme to put in there if you like - or have herbs in the butter during the melting to add flavor, then remove them if you don't want green stuff messing with your buttery meltyness.

The Verdict
These were very good. The kids tried them - Kid1 liked the tender inner leaves, Kid2 tried a few and moved on to his macaroni and cheese instead, Kid3 had some diced artichoke heart and then called it a day. No one hated their artichoke. And on some days that is what we call a raging success.

C'mon feel the melty.

everybody was tofu fighting

2011-05-27T05:59:00.002-04:00

Well, no one was fighting. That is the best part of this recipe! It is so easy to make into the kid-pleasing deconstructed version as you are making the adult spicy version. Just separate out some tofu before you broil it (or you can give them some of each - my kids prefer tofu soft), some carrots and cashews, the mushrooms before you add in the sauce, and of course some rice - and you are pretty much there.

No-fight tofu, kid version

One of the standout things about this recipe is the texture the tofu gets when you broil it - it becomes chewy and kind of lovely. Definitely keep an eye on the broiler the first time you do this recipe so you can figure out how long it should be in there. You are going for golden-brown and not blackened char.

Yet another great thing about this recipe is that you can do the following ahead of time:

broil the tofu
set up your rice cooker to be ready at dinnertime
chop your carrots and ginger
prepare the sauce

Oh and one more thing? You can double it - it freezes well and leftovers are excellent.

No-fight tofu, spicy style

No-fight tofu
3 cups warm, cooked brown rice
1 (14-ounce) package water-packed firm tofu, drained and cut into 1-inch pieces
Cooking spray
1/2 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth (or you can use veggie broth to make it vegetarian)
1 tablespoon sambal oelek (ground fresh chile paste)
1 tablespoon less-sodium soy sauce
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons black bean garlic sauce
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (8-ounce) package presliced mushrooms
1/2 cup matchstick-cut carrots
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, diced into small pieces
1/4 cup cashews, chopped

Preheat broiler.
Arrange tofu in a single layer on a foil-lined jelly-roll pan coated with cooking spray; broil 12-14 minutes or until golden.
While tofu cooks, combine broth and next 4 ingredients (through black bean sauce), stirring with a whisk; set aside.
Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add salt and mushrooms; sauté 4 minutes or until mushrooms begin to release liquid, stirring occasionally. Stir in carrots and ginger; cook 1 minute. Add broth mixture; cook 30 seconds or until sauce begins to thicken. Remove from heat; stir in tofu and onions. Serve over rice; sprinkle with cashews.

adapted from Szechuan-Style Tofu with Peanuts by Cooking Light

strawberry fields forever

2011-05-26T06:27:00.000-04:00

pb&j buns (with strawberry jam), shrimp, strawberry
smoothie, strawberries, carrots.

I just realized that Kid1 got strawberries three ways today: stawberry berries,strawberry jam, and strawberry smoothie. Oh well, I don't think she will complain about it!

The shrimp are left over from the other night when I made the shrimp-wheat berry salad AGAIN. Jon, Kid3, and I can't get enough of it! Kids1 and 2 prefer their shrimp on the side, unadorned, which is fine = more wheat berry deliciousness for me.

pb&j "wrapped in an an enigma wrapped in a vest" edition

2011-05-25T06:25:00.002-04:00

My love for Trader Joe's crescent rolls is one I've shared before, and today they are back to special-guest-star in our Seven Ways with PB&J series - this time we've got peanut butter and jelly wrapped in a crescent roll. Why? Because we can!

And actually, for the record, it isn't just peanut butter we're dealing with here.

Yes, I am mixing it up on you.

I found this Almond, Peanut & Cashew Butter at Target, of all places. My, isn't the world a different place than what it was even four or five years ago?

Okay, enough reflecting, let's start wrapping.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Separate out your crescent rolls. You can spread them out on a cutting board or another flat surface. I tried to stretch them out a bit. If the dough tears you can just seal it up again. Drop a little peanut butter and jelly on each triangle.

I probably should have used a little less filling.
Roll them up, wide part of the triangle first. If you kind of stretch the dough out as you are rolling you can tuck all the pb&j goodness inside. Do your best to seal all the seams -- at the very least, be sure to seal the seams that will be resting on the cookie sheet.
Bake for 12-14 minutes. Then they'll look like this on the outside:

Nothing to see here, move along, just your ordinary
everyday crescent roll.

Hold the phone.

These are really tasty, and almost dessert-like. I think I'd probably suggest going with a non-almond nut butter. You know how almond butter is a little grainy and sometimes that is nice, and sometimes it isn't amazing? It was actually really good but I think a creamier pb would be even better.

free printable bookplates (had to share)

2011-05-24T06:00:00.000-04:00

I was looking around for a printable bookplate to put in the book Kid1is donating to her kindergarten classroom and came across a wonderful site called My Home Library, which has scads of free printable bookplates illustrated by various famous illustrators. I've always thought bookplates were really fun and kind of old-timey. This site has lots and lots of really amazing ones. I think they'd be wonderful to include with a gifted book. I specifically thought of my friend Rachel who always includes the sweetest little notes on labels with books she gives as gifts. I also think a stack of them would be a nice gift for a teacher or friend. I hope you have fun exploring the site. The layout was a little odd to me at first but keep digging to find them all (there are links to the small/medium/large plates, and also a link on the right that will lead you to the color plates and the new arrivals). They are free for non-commercial use.

I linked each picture to its correspoding printable plate on the My Home Library site. In the caption I linked the illustrator's name to their Amazon search results where I could. I am definitely planning to check out the work of these talented artists, especially The Great Dog Bottom Swap (illustrated by Mei Matsuoka). How much do you think Kid2 would love THAT one?

Anyway, here are some of my faves. I may have gone a little hogwild but still feel as though I am leaving some out because they are SO MANY great ones to choose from!

A magical fairy tale illustration by Martin Ursell.

I also love the bean rating scale - color in the beans

to show how much you liked the book.

We chose this Mei Matsuoka bookplate for the donated copy of

Slow Loris - I think it's kind of perfect, don't you?

I love this one by Polly Dunbar for so many reasons.

The black-and-white ones tended to speak to me a little more

but the color ones, like this one by Valerie Greeley, are

absolutely gorgeous.

How sweet are the parent & child orcas by Rio Rossellini.

The ever-fabulous Quentin Blake will always, to me, be strongly
associated with Roald Dahl books, a giant plus in this household.
Notice the little frog rating scale, so adorable.

Not sure what kind of adventures this mouse is up to, but

I would love to know. By James Mayhew

I truly love this beautiful fox with a foxglove rating system.

Very clever! Ian Penney

if you like piña koalas

2011-05-23T06:15:00.000-04:00

My sweet Kid1 turned six over the weekend. She is almost done with kindergarten - her teacher even told the class that they are officially "junior first graders" and they need to start acting like first graders. (Kid1 told me this PROUDLY. Kid1's teacher probably didn't realize that all 24 of her kindergartners' parents probably had mild panicky moments after hearing this pronouncement. First grade?!? I didn't think we had to think about that for a few months!)

Kiddo is growing up.

She has had a wonderful year in kindergarten. It has been so interesting to see how much she has matured, how much she has learned, how much she adores school. She lucked out and got a wonderful teacher who I think is pretty much a perfect match for Kid1's personality. About a month ago the entire class did animal research projects, where each kid got to pick an animal (cuteness) and then they researched it (more cuteness) and created an animal mask, a painting depicting their animal in its habitat, and tiny little illustrated research reports (overwhelming cuteness).

And, speaking of overwhelming cuteness - the animal Kid1 picked to research was the KOALA.

Kid1 loved this project. Loved. Loved, as in - checked out additional books from the library for us to read later at home. Making further notes in her notebook as we were reading these books together:

KOALAS ARE NOT BEARS! (She seemed to find this a little shocking.) THEY DO NOT SWET! (sweat - it's true) THEY ARE NOT SOSHUL! (social, also apparently true.)

So, not surprisingly, when I asked her what kind of decorated cake she would like for her birthday she asked for koala cupcakes. I said "absolutely" and then ran off to my friend Google Images Search and found some super cute koala cupcakes at blempgorf, which I used as my inspiration. (It's a pretty neat blog to browse through also - loved all the amazing quilts!)

Anyway, here is my take on the blempgorf koalas:

yes I like piña koalas and getting caught in the rain

The best part (to me, anyway) is that they really are piña koalas. Well, half of them are, anyway - even though I am wary of feeding coconut to children, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make one batch of coconut-pineapple cake. The other batch was chocolate. Super-easy, from the all-natural cake mix at Trader Joe's and very amusing (like I said - to me, anyway).

To make pineapple-coconut cupcakes
You could probably use any vanilla cake mix, but I recommend the one from Trader Joe's.

Instead of water, use pineapple juice.
After mixing your eggs, pineapple juice, melted butter, and cake mix together, fold in 1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut and 1/2 cup crushed pineapple, drained.
Bake 20-25 minutes.

The frosting was Bakerella Easy Butttercream. If you are like M'Lynn and can't even begin to think about how you make gray frosting, I will tell you the secret: black food coloring. Outrageous, isn't it? I used the Wilton black food coloring paste. I also used coconut milk instead of regular milk to thin the frosting.

To get your koala on
You need: gray frosting, small amount of white frosting, small amount of black frosting, mini chocolate chips, almond m&ms, necco wafers. You are going to need to be able to pipe/squeeze the frosting in some manner - either by using a decorating bag or a ziploc baggie with a corner cut off.

Spread your cupcake with koala-gray frosting.
Put the necco wafers in earlike locations. Pipe gray frosting around the edge of the necco wafer.
Place your almond m&m with the narrow side at the top.
Make eyes with the white frosting. Add a mini chocolate chip with the point side pressing down into the frosting.
Pipe on little koala mouths.

Quick little fyi on the necco wafers. I had heard of them, and seen them here and there, but never tried them. I was very surprised to find out that they both really tasty and are all natural! They are colored with beet juice and cocoa powder and stuff like that. They also have an interesting if slightly bizarre history to them. (From their website: In 1913, explorer Donald MacMillan took NECCO Wafers® on his Arctic explorations, using them for nutrition and as rewards for Eskimo children.)

Um, okay. Not sure I can recommend them on either the "nutrition" front or the "reward-for-Eskimo-children" front .... but... like I said... they are pretty tasty.

And they make very attractive koala ears.

I hope you like jamming too

2011-05-20T06:35:00.002-04:00

After our strawberry-picking extravaganza earlier in the week, we found ourselves with a whole lot of strawberries.

Let's make jam!

Stewing in your own juices: not always a bad thing.

Have you made jam before? All my previous jam experience involved pectin and what seemed like a ton of time standing over the stove and various boiling liquids. I wasn't really into that this time around so I ~~talked to my friend Ina Garten~~ googled until I found a strawberry jam recipe from the Barefoot Contessa that contains only the following ingredients: strawberries, sugar, lemon juice. Hey, I have all those things in my kitchen! Love recipes like that!

So this is what you need:

1 lemon, juiced and zested (I followed my no-zesting policy but feel free to zest if you like)
2 pints of strawberries, hulled
2 cups of sugar

First, combine the sugar and juice (and zest, if you must) in a large pot. Cook over low heat until the sugar dissolves.

At first it will look grainy like this. If you are like me you might
feel apprehensive/suspicious about whether said "dissolving" will
actually occur, but have faith because in a couple minutes it
will start to look all melty. (Meltyness not pictured.)

Now, add your strawberries.

Strawberries - soon they will be bursting with happiness.

Heat your berry-sugar-juice mixture over medium heat, stirring frequently. After not too long the strawberries will start to release their juice and look like this:

Strawberry stew.

The whole thing will boil slowly. If it starts bubbling up, just turn the heat down a bit. You will also likely see foam on the top, which you can just skim off with a metal spoon. You can smash up the berries as they simmer - they won't put up too much resistance after they've been heating up for a while.

After about 20-25 minutes you can do a series of fun tests to see if your jam is done. Ina, bless her heart, keeps a plate in the freezer for this purpose. Just plop some jam on the plate and if it gels up you are good to go. I did not plan ahead so I swiftly found myself at the website for the National Center for Home Food Preservation (which you didn't know existed, did you? This is serious business, folks!!). Anyway, their page explains the spoon test, which I thought seemed easier. Their simple diagrams are worth checking out, but basically, jam that is in the early stages of setting up (aka "not ready") will drip of a spoon, where jam that is ready with come off in a sheet. Pretty cool. Seemed to work.

See?

Better than a jam band.

The above jam-making and photo shoot were done during Kid3's naptime, while Kid1 was at school. Which meant I was observed by the keen and watchful eyes of Kid2 and his friend, the Rescue Hero, who was interested in participating in the photo shoot.

You have the right to remain delicious.

All in a day's work, ~~jam~~ ma'am.

Our afternoon snack was bread and jam, which no doubt would have made Frances proud.

And a good time was jammed by all.

big salad, big name

2011-05-19T06:12:00.006-04:00

As I have mentioned before, I am a big fan of the big salad. Especially in warmer weather. And especially when kids are around - big salads are usually easy to prep ahead. And also, if your kids don't like things mixed together, it is so easy to keep the items separate. You can give your kids the deconstructed version and then just mix the grown-up salad separately.

As I have not mentioned before (on the blog anyway), I am also a big fan of wheat berries. Are these a thing that everyone knows about and likes now? I am not sure. They aren't much easier to find than they were almost six years ago, when my wonderful (and vegan!) sister-in-law Sabra introduced them to me. Love the wheat berries. As Sabra said before I tried them the first time, "They're kinda intense." They are kinda intense! But in a good way! Firm, nutty, and kind of chewy and whole-grainy - and well. Lovely.

So, when I came across the Weight Watchers recipe for Wheat Berry and Shrimp Salad with Thai Vinaigrette, I thought two things: One, that is way too long for a recipe name - I think I got lost somewhere in the middle. And two, I would like to make this mouthful of a recipe title into an actual, literal, mouthful. Mouthfuls. And here it is:

Bowl me over.

Everyone loved this. Everyone! The kids loved the wheat berries AND the radishes! They also had mango on the side which is always a hit. Big salad with a big name, I am looking forward to making you again.

This recipe is adapted from the Weight Watchers version.

3/4 cup of wheat berries
1 lb. of frozen cooked shrimp, thawed (I had jumbo ones so I cut them into thirds. You want them about the same size as your cucumber chunks.)
6 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons of fish sauce
2 tablespoons of sugar (WW suggests brown sugar, which we seem to be out of, so I used white sugar)
3 mini persian cucumbers, halved lengthwise and sliced into moons
6 medium radishes, very thinly sliced
1/4 cup basil leaves, chopped
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
2 tablespoons of mint, chopped

Cook your wheat berries. If you have a rice cooker, you can put them in the rice cooker with 1.5 cups of water. Let them soak for an hour, then run your rice cooker. If you do not have a rice cooker, go buy one. (J/K. You can put them in a saucepan, cover them with 3 inches of water, bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cover, reduce heat, simmer until tender, about 50 minutes.)
Drain the wheat berries and let them come to room temperature.
In a separate bowl, whisk together lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar until sugar dissolves. Set aside.
Mix together all your salad ingredients, then toss with the dressing to coat. You can cover and refrigerate for 3 days.

Big salad, you make my heart sing.

what I learned from strawberry picking with my children

2011-05-18T05:55:00.000-04:00

I had an absolutely lovely time strawberry picking with my children today. I am not afraid to tell you that fruit picking excursions have not, in the past, always been trouble-free. Some of that probably had to do with where we lived in St. Louis versus where the fruit picking tended to be (about an hour away). But now that we are in North Carolina there is a whole new world of local fruit-picking opportunities. In fact, there are three strawberry fields that I know of that are within 15 minutes of our house. (That I know of! There are probably even more that I don't know about.)

Berry delicious.

But anyway. Even though the fruit-picking we've done in the past hasn't always been worry-free, I've always liked doing it. I think it's so fun for kids (okay. and adults) to see the fruit growing, pick it, and then enjoy it together. Plus, nothing beats the taste of picked-moments-ago fruit. Seriously.

But today was a hands-down lovely day, the weather was nice, the kids were nicer, the berries are pretty dang nice too. Here are our pictures from today and my thoughts to go along with them. It was a lovely day.

Into each life, some rain must fall, so wear the right shoes.
(Extra points to those who can rock their big sister's
outgrown pink crocs.)

Into each life, there are afternoons of sun and blue
skies, so don't let the thought of rain scare you off from
your adventures.

When in doubt, look at what your loved ones are doing and give it a try.
(Kid3 observed me taking the above picture of Kid1 holding strawberries.
When I looked over at her she was picking individual berries out of her bucket,
gleefully shouting "cheese!" and dropping them back in the bucket again.
I was laughing too hard to keep the picture in focus.)

Appreciate what your unique view adds to any situation.

Sometimes you just gotta go for it.

You don't have to be the biggest one to get the most.

You might not have the most.
But it's okay to be happy with what you have.

Things can be hard. Things get easier. Today they are almost 6,
almost 4 1/2, and 21 months. Last year strawberry picking
was fun, but stressful. This year it was all fun. Even the trip to
the porta-potties was fun because they said it was the same way
construction workers go potty. (porta-potties not pictured, thankfully.)

Remember to look around and appreciate the beauty that
surrounds you every day. We drive by this strawberry field
almost every day. I see my kids every day. Stop. Breathe it all in.

birthday traditions

2011-05-17T12:36:00.008-04:00

Kid1's birthday is this coming Saturday - I can hardly believe that she will be SIX years old! This seems like a particularly grown-up age to me. Five felt major but I was mostly wrapped up in my going-to-kindergarten anxiety/excitement. Now she's already got a year of kindergarten (almost) behind her and she's ready to be a "grader." (She calls the 1st-5th graders at her school "graders" - isn't that cute?)

This is the first year we are not doing a party for her - at her request. She told us she would rather take a family trip to the beach, so that is what we are doing. There is something, too, that seems sort of grown-up about this request. Due to soccer and a bunch of other commitments, we are going to do a day trip - which means throwing the kids super early in the car - and we'll see how that goes, too. We will be meeting Amy and her family at the beach, and planning a birthday dinner out with our next-door-neighbor friends.

She'll also get a few presents from us, of course. I had the funniest conversation with Kid2 about Kid1's present:

Me: What do you think you would like to get Kid1 for her birthday?

Kid2: (thinking)... hmm ... a gun?

(Note that Kid2 is a 4-year-old boy)

Me: Do you think that is something that Kid1 would like? Or does a gun sound like something
more along the lines of what you [Kid2] would like?

Kid2: I guess something that I would like. Kid1 likes penguins.

Me: (excited! he gets it!) Yeah, she does!

Kid2: I know! I know!!!! How about a penguin gun?

Sigh.

Anyway, although his original vision was probably more along the lines of this YouTube clip, I found one of those "liquidator" type squirt gun toys (it's more plungerlike than gunlike) and it has a PENGUIN on the top of it so that seemed as close as we were going to get.

Kid3, when asked, said she would like to give Kid1 a "hairbow" which is what Kid3 calls all barrettes and hair clips/doodads. Pretty cute, especially because now Kid3 asks Kid1 to put in her hair clip every morning.

The change this year away from a big party has made me think more about birthday traditions that are important to my family. Amy recently recommended Intentional Family: Simple Rituals to Strengthen Family Ties to me. I haven't read it yet, but the idea of it has me thinking. Do you have any birthday traditions that are important in your family?

One of the sweetest birthday traditions I know is for the birthday child to select a book to donate to his or her teacher. Kid1 went to a preschool that encouraged this tradition and I have to say I really love it. The process of picking out the book is a big one. This year she chose Slow Loris, which we don't own ourselves but have checked out from the library a lot. Much to surprise, a quick check on Amazon revealed it to be OUT OF PRINT. Instead of shelling out $117 for a new one we ordered a used one and have our fingers crossed for it to show up in decent shape. It is a GREAT book. I'm afraid to give too much away but about a loris who is much more than what he seems. There may or may not be a depiction of a meerkat wearing a fez. There. I've said enough.

PS in an intriguing uncle-niece parallel, my brother posted this video on Facebook today: Three-toed sloth crossing the road. Perhaps there is an as yet undiscovered gene for "slow/cute, affinity for."

baby got bento

2011-05-16T19:10:00.000-04:00

Still loving the Dr. Sears Nibble Tray for Kid3. I usually use it when we are on-the-go but the other day I was ~~without a clean baby dish in the house~~ in the mood to experiment and decided to fill 'er up at home.

Linguine, plum, mozzarella cubes,
snap peas, tomato bombs, breakfast sausage.

The added bonus of happening to use this little tray was that Kid3 wasn't very hungry so I popped the handy lid on it, put it in the fridge, and just like that, lunch magically turned into her after-nap snack. Nice!

so beautiful orzo what

2011-05-13T06:46:00.001-04:00

(Title being an obscure tribute to Paul Simon's "So Beautiful Or So What", seriously, what a good song that is.)

Watching calories around here so I pulled out my oft-used, really-good Weight Watchers Simply Delicious cookbook. This really is a good cookbook - lots of choices here, nothing too complex, everything under 8 points (about 400 calories). Good stuff.

I whipped up this ham-orzo salad that I remembered as being pretty good and thought maybe the kids would like it.

They didn't like it.

I think it was the too-much-stuff-mixed-together problem. But you know what, that's okay, I liked it! I am usually not a big pasta fan but this is more rice-ish than pasta-ish so it is my kind of thing. A nice thing to have on hand as the weather gets warmer. And if your kids don't like it, you have your lunch figured out for the whole week!

Ingredients
1 cup orzo
2 cups fresh sugar snap peas
1/2 lean ham, cut into 1/2" chunks
1 cup grape tomatoes, cut in half
3 tablespoons grated parmesan (note: grated, not shredded - the kind in the green can is what they are looking for here. Trader Joe's now makes a green-can parm/romano combo which is what I used)
3 tablespoons chopped parsley (whoops, just realized I forgot to include that)
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Cook the orzo. During the last 5 minutes of cooking, add the sugar snap peas. Drain and transfer to a large bowl.
2. Add everything else and stir it up.

fancy water

2011-05-12T06:39:00.002-04:00

I was inspired by many things on my recent trip to Santa Fe. Firstest and absolutely foremostest was seeing and reconnecting with my dear bff Aislinn. I am totally convinced that we could have a wonderful time anywhere we happened to find ourselves. However. It was icing on the proverbial cake that the place we visited was itself incredible and inspiring. (It was also pretty much icing on the literal cake a couple times but that is another post.)

One of the things I thoroughly enjoyed in Santa Fe was the plethora of what I like to call fancy water. It seemed that every time we turned around there was a giant dispenser of water with things floating in it. Not bad floating things. Good floating things - like lemons, limes, mint, cucumber. Sometimes they were all mixed up in the same water. Sometimes there were separate, adjacent dispensers that had different floating things, like one cucumber-only and one citrus only. (Ten Thousand Waves, I am looking at you.) I loved them all. Seriously. I had no idea how flavorful and complex water could be until I had fancy water. Seriously.

So when I walked into Costco the other day and saw the 3-gallon beverage dispensers, I couldn't help but stop and imagine how great it would be to have one of those... so I could make my OWN fancy water!!

How great, you ask?

About this great:

We have been using and loving it for the last week or so. ALL of us are drinking way more water. I think having it out in plain sight is a helpful reminder to hydrate. And it's pretty. And did I mention delicious? So far my favorite is lemon-lime-cucumber. Do you like fancy water? Do you think you are more likely to drink or eat things that are in plain view?

little bunny food food

2011-05-11T20:33:00.000-04:00

Cookies, hardboiled egg bunny, pig container with salt,
popcorn, milk, strawberries and cucumbers.

The cookies are Newtons Fruit Thins. (The link is just so you can see what the package looks like - they are available in regular old stores and are about 1/2 the current listed price on Amazon.) Yesterday morning our dear friend Amy introduced them to Kid2 and Kid3. They both loooooooved them. Amy sweetly sent a little bag of cookies for Kid1 to enjoy later. In between bites as she gobbled them up, she said, "Oh Mommy, please get the recipe for these cookies from Miss Amy!" So I am sharing the secret recipe with y'all...

Go to the store. If possible, go in the late afternoon with three overtired kids.
Select package. There are a few different varieties.
If anyone cries/yells/runs wildly through the aisles/starts to have a major freakout at any point during the trip, casually wonder aloud if the cookies should be put back on the shelf.
Purchase.
The end.

They are a decent option for a grocery-store-aisle cookie in terms of ingredients (they do include dodgy palm oil but other than that are pretty straightforward). They are kinda biscuity. Sweet, but not too sweet. Well liked. Wholesome. Kind of like my husband.

Moving on....

The bunny-egg was made using the bunny version of these molds. We have the bunny/bear combo and also the heart/star.

Here are the steps if you'd like to mold a hardboiled egg.

Follow this method for boiling the eggs.
After the 10 minutes have passed, take a hot egg out of the water (careful not to burn yourself!) and put the egg under cool water. You want to cool it just enough to get the peel off. It's best to put the egg in the mold when it is still pretty hot.
Put the hot, peeled egg in the mold and latch. Put it in the fridge and unmold it an hour or so later.

I've read some things online that recommend using extra-large eggs - okay. I'm not sure if we just have extremely powerful chickens in this part of the world or what, but extra-large was way too much eggage for my molds. Large seems to be just right. You may need to experiment a bit to see what works.

bistro feast-O

2011-05-11T07:30:00.002-04:00

Tomato bombs, chicken sandwich on french bread
with raspberry-balsamic vinaigrette, pretzels,

Honest Kids juice pouch, blackberries and plums, carrots.

I made my kid a chicken sandwich on french bread with raspberry-balsamic vinaigrette and she LOVED it!!

The raspberry-balsamic dressing is made from equal parts olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then I added some of the raspberry-lime syrup I made last week. (I didn't think to measure the quantity of the syrup - sorry! More than a splash but less than a glop.) It was awesome! Not overpoweringly raspberry-flavored, but it made the whole thing more complex... and sweeter. Yum, good. I wish the picture had turned out better. I didn't notice that glare until after the lunch had already been sent to school.

Only other thing to note about this one is that I was told in no uncertain terms that Kid1 no longer likes plums. Weird, huh? She used to love them. I didn't think they were something that people didn't like. But I guess they are.

cheeseburger in paradise

2011-05-10T07:20:00.000-04:00

1/2 of a cheeseburger on a hot dog bun,
strawberries, Honest Kids juice pouch, green beans,
roasted potatoes.

Some may call me a maverick for putting a cheeseburger on a hot dog bun. I would instead call myself "low on bunlike options" and "one who thinks a bun in any format would be received better than a slice of bread or a handful of cheerios, which were my other options that I came up with." So a hamburger on a hot dog bun it is! I also had to smile because for some reason, in my elementary school cafeteria they would always put this on the menu when they were serving hot dog buns:

WIENER ON A HOT DOG BUN

Funny to a grade schooler in so many ways.

Wiener
Why call it a wiener on a hot dog bun? Why not say a wiener bun? Or for that matter, why not say bun without any modifiers?
Wiener

So, consider it an homage to the child nutrition services at Garden Grove Unified School District. There it is. A cheeseburger on a hot dog bun.

a small, succulent victory

2011-05-09T07:10:00.001-04:00

I sometimes have a bit of a habit of buying something with "a lot of potential" at a thrift store or garage sale and then "sticking it in the garage and ignoring it" and later, feeling annoyed with myself and "swearing not to do that again." Rinse, repeat.

I was immediately taken by some sweet little teacups I found last weekend at a thrift store in Santa Fe. I happily scooped them up and showed them to my friend, and even as I did a little voice in the back of my head asked if this was going to be another stick-in-the-garage situation. I thought for a minute. I said to that little voice, "You think I'm going to buy these and then ignore them? Well, maybe I am. Maybe I would just put it on that endless to-do list and never get around to doing this little project that wouldn't cost much but would make me very happy."

Then again, maybe I won't.

Not only did I transport them back home with no breakage, today I bought sweet little succulents to plant in them. I love how they look! Succulents are so weird and cool, aren't they? I think they are kind of alien looking. I remember from my childhood in Southern California that I had neighbors who would grow them outside until they got kind of giant and unwieldy. I like my baby ones, though!

In fact, the name of this one is "Baby's Toes" - tell me
that's not alien and freaky! But kinda adorable too.

If you're thinking of tackling a similar project, be sure to put some rocks in the bottoms of the cups for drainage.

Striking a bit of a bonsai-style pose.

pb&j pancake lunch

2011-05-06T07:05:00.001-04:00

Peanut butter pancakes, bacon (looking a little overdone
in the picture but it wasn't - maybe that's the free range realness
of it all), water bottle, tiny pig bottle containing
raspberry-lime syrup, yogurt squeezer, tomato bombs.

pb & j pancake edition!

2011-05-05T07:09:00.003-04:00

I, for one, am completely sure that we're all going to be super psyched when the Internet comes out with Smell-o-Vision. Well, except for when our Facebook friends feel compelled to post "success" photos of their young ones' potty training attempts, that is. Anyhow, I anticipate there will be moments in the future where we might look back on certain photos and think, "Dang, if only they had Smell-o-Vision back then!"

This, my friends, is one of those photos:

Smells good.
You'll just have to take my word for it.

Imagine all the pancake yum-smells combined with (!!!!) all your favorite peanut-butter-cookie smells. Ahhhhhh. Pancake heaven.

Not to mention:

Oh no she din't.

Oh yes I totally did.

In keeping with the Seven Ways with PB&J theme, I offer you this raspberry-lime syrup (this is the "J" part) that RULED so much. It was the rulingest. It was Kid3 at the tender age of 21months trying to wheedle an entire glass of that "yummy juice." It was Kid1 and Kid2 pointing out areas where their pancakes needed "just a little bit more syrup." It was really, really good.

Unfortunately, red syrup on pancakes (even super-delicious syrup and super-good-smelling pancakes) is beyond my food photography skills. All of my pictures of pancake + raspberry syrup basically look like what you might expect if a horde of hungry vampires walked into their local iHOP, i.e., bloodbath with pancake carnage. And we're missing the Smell-o-Vision functionality anyway, dagnabbit! So we'll forego the pictures of them together. But trust me, in their togetherness they were really good and very reminiscent of an old-school pb&j if you are into that kind of thing.

Avoiding simulated pancake peril.

Peanut Butter Pancakes (adapted from this recipe from Sunny Anderson/Food Network.)
1 cup of flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter (I used the natural kind and stirred like heck)
2 tablespoons oil
Nonstick cooking spray

Preheat your pan over medium heat.
In a big bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. Slowly stir in egg, milk, peanut butter, and oil. You may want to add a little milk if the batter seems to be on the thick side. Let mixture sit 5 minutes.
Spray the pan with nonstick cooking spray, then pour about 1/4 cup of batter per pancake on the griddle. Flip 'em when they are done on one side.

Raspberry-lime syrup (adapted from this recipe from the New York Times)
2 cups of raspberries
2 tablespoons of sugar plus 1 1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 teaspoon fresh lime juice

You'll also need a sieve/mesh strainer.

If you are extremely low on sugar, run real quick next door to your incredibly sweet neighbors and ask to borrow about a cup and a half of it. You'll need it later. (That's what I did, anyhow.)
Combine berries, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 cup of water in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring almost constantly, until berries break down and get juicy/soupy. That's about 4 minutes of heating and stirring.
Add 1 1/2 cups cold water and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Use a spoon to skim off the raspberry foam crud that forms ont he top. Cook for 15 minutes.
~~Strain into bowl through cheesecloth-lined strainer~~ figure pressing the fruit through the sieve is good enough for disco. Return the liquid to the pan and add 1 1/2 cups sugar. Stir until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Store in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator for up to 3 weeks.

Yield: About 2 1/2 cups.

nacho mama's nachos

2011-05-04T07:14:00.001-04:00

In the we'll-see-how-this-goes-over category, we have cold, deconstructed nachos! They're not your mama's nachos! (If your mama ever made nachos, that is. Mine did, actually.) Anyhow, I figure if Lunchables pulls off something kinda similar, why can't I?

Trader Joe's Super Seeded Tortilla Chips*, bowl of
refried beans, Jon's simple cabbage slaw, chocolate milk,
clementine sections, tomato bombs, and shredded Monterey Jack.

* In case you were wondering what makes them "super seeded" the chips contain an astonishing variety of seeds: flax, chia, hemp, poppy, and caraway. I will also reassure you that my children (and I) did not notice and/or comment on their seediness. They are pretty tasty.

So, like I said, we'll see how this one flies. Kid1 loves beans and I'm thinking she can dip her chips in them. I am guessing she will eat the shredded cheese on its own and not participate in any faux nachofication, but I'll check with her and update with her report. The cabbage slaw is all Jon. I believe he said that he puts a little olive oil, salt and pepper in it and that is all. I will also explain-a-brag that he cut all that cabbage with a knife, not a food processor. I do not share his amazing knife skills. Kid1 loved it at dinner so we'll see how it holds up for lunch.

home on the ranch

2011-05-03T06:20:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, I made Hidden Valley Ranch dip for an Easter party for Kid2's preschool class. The kids went absolutely crazy with happiness when I made it, and it was included in lunches and for snacks for a few days there.

Then I read the label on the packet that I had used. Then I felt a little icky. Here are the Hidden Valley Ranch dip ingredients:

Maltodextrin, salt, monosodium glutamate, dried onion, dried garlic, spices, modified food starch, less than 2% of: buttermilk, calcium stearate, natural flavor (soy).

It's mostly additives and MSG, from what I can tell. Now, it may be asking a lot to hope that food that comes from a packet would be on anyone's "superfood" list, it doesn't seem like it is too much to ask that the ingredients on said packet be a little closer to resembling actual... food. Right? We'd all just like a little more food in our food, please.

Then I remembered, DUH, we have a PENZEYS in my town now!!! And if you are lucky, you have a Penzeys near you too (if not, you can order online. I learned about this amazing, fabulous store when I lived in St. Louis. Going to one of the stores is such a treat. They smell absolutely delicious and the jars of spices are so pretty and the ingredients in them are vibrantly and richly colored. Really. These aren't your grocery store's spices. And they have their own version of Buttermilk Ranch!

Penzeys Spices: when you want to
put food in your food.

And here is the ingredient list:
salt, bell peppers, garlic, onion, sugar, black pepper, parsley, thyme, basil.

I can live with that. I can live with that in a happily-and-deliciously-ever-after kind of way.

Anyway, following the precept that added-ranch-flavor makes everything more amazing (to kid palates anyway), I came up with the following:

Ranch-tastic Deviled Eggs
Ingredients:
7 hardboiled eggs (cooled and peeled)
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon mustard (ideally, Grey Poupon)
1 teaspoon Penzeys Buttermilk Ranch
Penzeys Smoky 4/S Seasoned Salt, for sprinkling

Cut the eggs in half lengthwise, plopping the hard egg yolks into a bowl of their own.
Using a fork, mash the egg yolks together with the sour cream, mustard, and Penzeys Buttermilk Ranch.
Taste the yolks to confirm that the correct level of ranchiness has been achieved.
Fill the egg white boats with yolk. Sprinkle with the Penzeys Smoky 4/s Seasoned Salt.

pigs and the blankets that love them

2011-05-02T06:32:00.002-04:00

Three mini pigs-in-blankets, honeydew melon balls
with giraffe pick, red bell pepper slices, goldfish,
water bottle.

pattycake, pattycake

2011-04-29T06:20:00.001-04:00

Lemon-ricotta hotcakes, Cheerios, scrambled

eggs, blueberries, chocolate milk.

3 out of 4 components of the lunch came together easily for me (not counting the drink, that is pretty much a no-brainer): pancakes, eggs, blueberries. I thought about what to add next and then realized that the pancakes pretty much have to count as a protein since they are made almost entirely of egg and cheese. So I added in the Cheerios. It looks a little heavy on the carbs but I don't think it is.

what's happenin', hotcakes?

2011-04-28T06:46:00.002-04:00

Inspired by my husband's inadvertently higher-protein french toast of a few weeks ago (aka "double custard"), I started thinking of intentional ways of upping the protein count for pancakes. I had heard of ricotta pancakes before - I think I'd actually passed them over on brunch menus in favor of less ricotta-y pastures - and decided to go with one of the first search recipes that was returned, originally published in the Boston Globe and apparently are adapted from the Four Seasons Hotel Boston. Well, good. Glad I am not serving my family lowbrow pancakes

Ricotta, let's talk about it. It is such an unyieldingly bland and sort of grainy texture on its own but in these pancakes it was out of this world! Combined with the egg whites, the texture of the pancakes was incredibly light and fluffy. These pancakes are basically egg and ricotta held together by a small amount of flour (1/2 cup! for the whole recipe!).

Ingredients
6 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1/2 cup flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
grated zest of 2 lemons
juice from one of the lemons (if thy aren't juicy lemons then use the juice from both lemons)
You also need blueberries. You must serve them with blueberries!

In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks, ricotta cheese, and butter.
In a small bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, salt, and lemon rind. Stir the flour mixture into the ricotta mixture just until blended; the batter will be thick.
In an electric mixer, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Gently fold the whites into the batter. (It's better to leave some white streaks rather than overmix the batter.) My note: use a stand mixture for sure. You want them super duper fluffy so they don't get really flat when you stir them into the pancake batter.
Heat a stove-top griddle or large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Ladle the batter onto the hot pan to form 4-inch rounds. Cook until the bottoms are golden. Turn and cook again until the bottoms are golden.

Notes
I like to use an egg separator but that's because I'm uncoordinated. It's good to separate them right out of the fridge and then let the eggs sit at room temp for about 30 before you separate them. If you are buying an egg separator, make sure you get one with a handle coming off of it so you can rest the whole thing on top of a glass or a bowl because sometimes the egg yolk takes a while to wiggle free from its egg white slime.

I broke my own rule about zesting and chopping for this recipe. I usually zest for no one (as I mentioned when I made my gran-Oprah) but I wanted to go extra lemony with these. I also added lemon juice (and a little more sugar to counteract the acidity) which was not in the original recipe.

Making these was not quite as easy as their ricotta-free brethren. The inordinate fluffiness and egginess made it almost like cooking little cakes of egg. I hope I am not discouraging you from making them. They are worth making even though they don't always behave. I usually make pancakes very small anyway but even 2 tablespoons would have been way too big for me to flip successfully. I used about a tablespoon of batter per pancake. As you drop the batter on the griddle start patting it around in a circle (pattycake! finally I know what that means!). Then get ready to flip. These brown up quickly. After you flip them, pat them down again so they stay thin and your insides cook nicely. Wow they are good. I wish I were eating them again.

Well, not the same ones. You know what I mean.

One more note. I hope everyone has these tiny little drips of pancake batter in the griddle as they make their pancakes. (Again, it might be an issue with my lack of coordination here.)

If you do have these, then PLEASE call them "baby pancakes" and give them to your kids to eat on the sides of their plate along with the big normal size pancakes. My mom used to do that for me. We are talking one of my favorite childhood memories here, people. Scoff not at the power of baby pancakes.

I'll have to say I love you with a giant bowl of tabouleh

2011-04-27T13:00:00.013-04:00

After (almost) 11 years of marriage, here are a few things I have figured out.

It is good to do nice things for your partner.
Sometimes you may do things that YOU think are super-duper nice because they are a pain in the --- and require a whole lot of effort. Maybe there is one particular annoying task that you dread because you know it takes forever to complete, Say, for instance, matching 1000 men's socks that SHOULD be easy to match up, since they are all black yet they have weird patterns and textures on them, or different stripes on the toe, or are slightly different sizes/faded shades of black. These are not necessarily the things that will make your partner feel loved/adored, even though YOU are aware (some might say a little overly aware) of the super-duper nice thing you are doing.
Sometimes there are things that aren't really that much effort but your partner will go completely crazy with happiness every time you do them.
For MY partner this thing - that isn't too difficult to do yet he will go absolutely crazy with happiness? For him, that thing is a bowl of tabouleh. Preferably a giant bowl of tabouleh.

Giant bowl of tabouleh.

Tabouleh extreme close-up.

Giant salads are awesome! And they are super awesome if you are dining with young kids because it is very easy to portion out a parallel meal that has the same components but not all mixed up in an intimidating fashion.

Baby Tabouleh, deconstructed, in Dr. Sears Nibble Tray.
The actual tabouleh is on the left with a little
shred of turkey on the side. We've also got
grape tomatoes, kalamata olives, feta,
cucumbers and roasted red pepper.

Kid2 tablouleh (with turkey roll-up and cheesey chips),
both deconstructed and a small bowl of the actual salad.

This was a complete and total runaway hit. I used 1/2 cup of olives in the salad and Kid2 and Kid3 ate the rest of the ENTIRE JAR OF OLIVES. Kid3 kept squealing "MMM!!!" and clapping her hands with joy every time she ate some olive, cucumber, feta, or roasted red pepper. I just realized I didn't give Kid2 any of the roasted red pepper. Oh well, he didn't seem to notice.

This recipe is basically tabouleh mixed up with baby spinach. It's light and tasty - perfect for summer or weather that feels like summer even though it's technically spring.

Do you have a hard time finding bulgur at the grocery store? Or do you live on the West Coast? Just kidding, I am sure there are stores that have it in an easy-to-find kind of way, but I have not encountered that very often outside of the Pacific Time Zone. Whole Foods usually has it in the bulk bins for a very good price.

Spinach and Tabouleh salad w/ feta and olives

Ingredients
1 cup bulgur + 1 1/2 cups of boiling water.

for dressing:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (I am changing my tune on zesting, slowly but surely. I think it is maybe worth the effort sometimes.)
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt + 1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 pint grape tomatoes, cut in half
1 cup baby persian cucumbers, cut in circles and then halved
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives, halved
1 roasted red pepper, cut in big chunks
6 oz of feta cheese (the kind from the block has a better texture than the pre-crumbled kind)
6 ounces baby spinach

Place the bulgur in a large bowl, then add the boiling water. Cover and let stand for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a small bowl you'll make the dressing. Whisk together olive oil, lemon zest (don't cheat! add the lemon zest!), lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Test your bulgur - it should be soft. Stir in the dressing.
Throw all your chopped up vegetables in the bowl that has your bulgur. Crumble up your feta and throw that in there too. Toss gently to combine, add salt and pepper if it needs some more.
Walk into the sunset with your partner, or just walk off into the sunset by yourself because WOW that was a good salad.

This recipe was adapted from the Best American Recipes 2004-2005, which was adapted from a recipe that originally ran in Redbook magazine. Who knew that Redbook even had recipes?!

to market, to market

2011-04-26T07:14:00.002-04:00

This is a lunch made almost entirely from things we bought at the farmers' market.

Coon Rock Farm kielbasa, strawberries from DJ's Berry Patch,
lettuce from Ben's Produce, asparagus from Redbud Farm, baguette
from La Farm, goat cheese from Hillsborough Cheese Co.

The only thing that was not local was the balsamic vinegar, which Jon made into a nice reduction until it was thick and sticky and absolutely delicious.

So I'll pause for a moment to ask if anyone read that word "reduction" and felt sorta scared inside. Anyone?

I was recently reading an article titled The Top 10 Terms to Avoid in Recipes and guess what was on there? REDUCTION. I thought - hmm, really? Is it that the term is uncommon and intimidating? Am I not quivering inside solely because my husband/knight in shining armor/scientist-in-residence is unafraid of reducing liquids because he sees it as simple chemistry? Because (and this is me speaking as a non-scientist, even going so far to say I am speaking as someone who has a difficult time typing the words "simple" and "chemistry" next to each other) the technique is not difficult and you can do a lot with it. Besides, our kids go nuts over a good balsamic reduction so maybe yours will too!

(Note, this is not a slam on the blog or the person who wrote the article - I thought it was a pretty interesting site, actually, if you are interested at all in food writing.)

Start with a decent balsamic vinegar. It shouldn't have any coloring agents or additives. Trader Joe's brand is great for our purposes. I wouldn't go crazy with that 100-year-old balsamic vinegar. You know, the one that costs $439 for 2.4 ounces? Yeah, I'm sure that's lurking in the back of your cabinet somewhere.
Put maybe 1/2 cup's worth in a heavy saucepan over low-medium heat. You want a very gentle simmer to happen here. Low and slow is your mantra.
When it has reduced by about 50% (or slightly less, maybe 45%) take the pan off the heat and put the reduction in another bowl. It will thicken as it cools, so keep that in mind.

One small thing - balsamic vapor (steam? balsamic steam?) can be sort of - pungent - so don't go putting your face right over it when it is super hot. It doesn't make your kitchen smell bad or anything but it's sort of an intense experience for your eyes to have hot balsamic wafting up at them. Avoid that. Do let me know what you (and kids, if applicable) think, though!!

eggsactly like lots of other lunches being made today

2011-04-25T14:12:00.003-04:00

Day after Easter, OF COURSE Kid1's lunch has hardboiled eggs in it!

Trader Joe's version of wheat thins, pig container
with salt in it, two pre-sliced hardboiled eggs,
strawberries, tomato bombs, water.

I don't know the details of the deal that Jon made with the kids but apparently they somehow agreed that due to the high levels of candy consumption yesterday, there would be no candy eating today OR tomorrow. Like I said, I'm not sure of the backstory behind that particular deal but I'm all for it. It really was a lot of candy yesterday. I'm hoping Kid1 enjoys her eggs today. Hardboiled eggs can be a little hit-or-miss with her, but I'm hoping that their Easter associations will give them a little extra cachet.

bunnycakes gallery

2011-04-25T14:06:00.005-04:00

Just had to share this super awesome picture of bunnycakes created by my friend Andrea.

Don't you love them? I love how she added in the green grass cupcakes for variety. Also, see if you can spot David Bowie Bunny with one blue eye and one green.

I'd love to see pictures of other bunnycake creations, so if you've made them and have a picture available, please let me know!