I was looking for a recipe on my blog and came across this post from almost four years ago instead. It made me laugh out loud, literally! I have no recollection of that event, despite how clearly excited I was. Sadly his new-found taste for pasta didn’t last long. It sounds like a good meal though. Maybe I should try it again. :)
Eve requested spaghetti for dinner recently. In fact, she decided she remembered it is her favorite dinner and really, really wants it for her birthday. I decided maybe we should have it again and tonight was the night! Eve cooked the pasta and helped prepare the salad. It came out soooo good!
This makes me really happy.
My tofu balls came out perfect!!!
The obligatory dinner shot.
Eve practicing her slurping.
Doubles!
I don’t normally enjoy cooking dinner, but with Eve by my side it is much more fun. And when she eats the meal too it makes it all worth the effort!
The evening routine has been making me crazy lately. Alan works late, I feed the kids whatever they want (which is generally one of about three things: bagel, cereal, or toast and butter), and I make myself something healthy(ish). We all three read at the table and zone out. I finish my dinner then nag/bug/remind them to eat, stop reading, shower, etc. The whole thing makes me crazy! After a long time reading at the table I take away their books and they cry because they are still hungry. We fight. It’s awful.
In my perfect world we would all sit down together, eat a hot, healthy meal (that the magic dinner fairy has prepared), and engage in conversation together. In a perfect world.
So, at family meeting on Saturday I brought up the evening routine as a problem. We discussed solutions. Eve proposed not reading at the table, which Lex was very hesitant to agree too. We finally decided on no reading at breakfast or dinner because those are times we have a time-frame and schedule to adhere to (school or bedtime), but reading at snack or lunch was ok. Reading at the table when you’re not eating is fine too, of course. Lex agreed to try for a week. Last night we all ate pizza and garlic bread at the table and had a great conversation. In bed that night Lex told me that he really liked the conversation and it was a very nice dinner. This morning, Sunday, a day we’d usually read the paper at breakfast, Lex decided to eat quickly then read the comics afterwards, all on his own without me reminding him of the new rule. I made french toast, per Eve’s request, and we all sat together and again had a lovely conversation about the day. Lex ate toast and butter, but still joined us for the meal and conversation. No fussing about reading. It was great! Tonight Lex was at Lego League and Alan was at work, so Eve and I prepared a nice meal (lentil soup and fresh bread, again at her request) and set the table with candles and everything. When the boys got home we sat down together for a great meal. Lex had bread and yogurt. I would love to get him eating more variety, but for now I think the meals together again are awesome! I hope it continues without fuss. Maybe after a few weeks we can start working on trying new foods again.
I know this sounds like old news because food has always been an issue in this house, but lately it has really hit me that he is nine and a half years old and doesn’t eat warm food. His diet consists of about five “meals” and none what you would consider a proper meal. We rarely go out to eat because all he’ll eat is the bread and butter, or bagels at Panera Bread, and he can’t eat at friends’ houses or birthday parties. It is really limiting for him and seems to be getting worse, not better. I was hoping he would out-grow the pickiness, or at least gain some curiosity about food as he grew up, but nope, not so far. I’m hoping this can be a first step. At least removing the reading makes him more aware of what he’s eating (makes all of us more aware of what we are eating!) and maybe we can work that into expanding his diet a bit. Wish me luck!
Last week we went to visit a friend who had, in the past (2012), helped us make gingerbread houses. We don’t see her often and when I mentioned our plans to visit, Eve immediately asked if we would be making a gingerbread house. I told her no, just visiting, but the idea stuck and she insisted. Sooo…. behold the Halloween Haunted Gingerbread House!
Our Haunted Halloween House
The process took a few days. On the first day we made the dough.
Eve in the kitchen. I love it!
She doesn’t even need a chair, just a little stool. :)
Then we rolled it out, cut it, and baked it.
She was eager to help cut out the pieces and ended up doing most of them all by herself.
Here are all the pieces.
On Saturday we built the house! Sadly my royal icing was not strong enough and did not “set” quick enough, so, alas, we had an unstable house on our hands.
Off to a messy start already! I think I need to use a smaller icing tip next time.
While we waited for the walls to dry we decorated the trick-or-treaters and house accessories.
The roof is on. We decided to add an M&M border to the wet icing, on the assumption that it would dry quickly!
After a wall and roof panel fell twice I decided it was time to bring out the reinforcements!
The second collapse also gave us a chance to put the gingerbread people and ghost inside, which we had forgotten the first two times we put the roof on!
I stuck the house in the fridge for awhile and we all went out to play. You have to take a break from the sugar fumes sometimes and it was a beautiful day!
These look good enough to eat!
When Aunt Rosy arrived we decorated the gingerbread house and added the accessories.
Ta-da! I took away the glass in hopes that the roof would stay. We propped it up with some gingerbread trees. :)
In this picture you can see the gingerbread dog house, the dog (white with red spots), and the trick-or-treater dressed as a pencil. I love that costume idea! I told Eve she should be a pencil next year and she decided Lex could be an eraser to go with her. :)
A rickety old house needs a rickety old fence in the backyard.
Happy bakers! (Eve has her bunny ears under her chin and it looks like some weird neck scarf.)
The house was lovely, kind of, and I stuck it back in the fridge for a little more firming up. It stayed there all day Sunday while we were busy with the CHaD (another post on that will follow soon). This afternoon I cleared off the table (not a small feat!) and set up a nice Halloween display. The kids were super excited when they came home from school.
I tidied up the table and set up a nice Halloween display this afternoon before the kids got home. They were excited to see it all setup. (Notice the glass behind the house? It started sagging after all the decorations were one, so we figured the glass was a required structural support. Lex added some candy to the top to make it look better.)
Sadly, we got back from karate to discover this:
Oh no! It lasted for a few hours before it caved in. Not even a nice roof slide like the first few times, this was just a complete cave-in.
Eve did a dramatic cry for awhile and then moved on. We agreed it was now a super spooky fallen down Halloween house. There were two casualties of the roof collapse, but the kids were consoled when I promised they could have the casualties for snack tomorrow. I claimed the third causality, a ghosts, for myself!
The house might not be perfect, but we had tons of fun so I’m going to call it a success!! (and try my friend’s royal icing recipe next time!)
It was my day to bring snack for Lego League, so I made Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars from the latest edition of The Baking Sheet, a King Arthur Flour publication. (I tried to find a link to it, but I think this is the final edition before they switch to some other format, so I can’t find any useful links online. Oh well.)
The recipe looked tasty and easy and sure to please ten hungry kids. Turns out it’s fantastic! So tasty that I can’t stop nibbling. Fortunately there were a few left over for us to enjoy at home. :) If you want an easy, tasty treat, give this a shot!
Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars
(directly from King Arthur Flour, The Baking Sheet, Fall/Holiday 2014)
Dough:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups cream peanut butter
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Filling & Topping:
1 1/2 cups high-quality jam (I used a mix of store-bought blackberry jam and homemade triple berry jam. The color contrast between the bars and jelly part was great.)
1/2 cup salted peanuts, coarsely chopped
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9″x13″ pan, or line with parchment.
In a stand mixer cream the butter and brown sugar until well blended (about 2 minutes). With the mixer on low add the vanilla, eggs, and peanut butter; mix until well combined. Scrape the bowl a few times during mixing.
In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients with the mixer at low speed to the peanut butter mixture until just combined.
Spread half the dough into the prepared pan (an off set spatula or bowl scraper works well here). Spread the jam evenly over the dough. Drop small globs of the remaining dough over the jam. Sprinkle with the peanuts. Bake for 35 to 38 minutes until golden brown and set. Remove from the oven, cool, and cut into 1″ x 2″ bars.
Yield: 30 bars.
We took our first trip of the year to the apple orchard this week! I’d like to go back a few more times, but we have so many apples already!! We went with Elizabeth and Alistair and had a wonderful time. We ran through the corn maze, picked golden raspberries, apples, and blueberries.
When I say “we” I really mean “they” ran through the corn maze while Elizabeth and I moseyed behind, chatting and occasionally regrouping the kids. Alistair looks like he’s yelling his corn maze battle cry! (I wish I could harness his energy!)
Fortunately Lex took care of reading the clues so we weren’t lost in there forever!
Alistair says, “what’s the point of a corn maze if we can’t pick the corn?!”
Eve says, “well… if he picked corn …”
I say, “You’re not supposed to pick the corn! But… since you already did let me take a picture.” :)
Lex waving to the tractor driver hauling pumpkins.
Lex’s picking method was to fill all of his pockets as full as possible before coming back to the bags. I love his efficiency.
We broke a few rules that day. He’s so cute though! A little monkey in an apple tree.
This year we got a wagon. I learned my lesson from last year, hauling apples all the way down the hill.
While I paid for our goods, the kids decided to see how much the pumpkins weighed – altogether.
Eve helped bring the apples to the car. Strong girl!
Yesterday I made apple pie and triple berry jam. We had lots of black raspberries in the freezer from our back yard so I added those to the golden raspberries and blueberries we picked at the orchard. It came out great!
Wait, don’t cut it yet! I almost forgot to take a picture!
Another year, another trip to the doctor’s office. Fortunately another easy-peasy trip for us. The biggest inconvenience was a cranky Lex. Eve was happy and healthy, of course. She’s now 57lbs (77th percentile) and 50″ (83rd percentile). Growing right up! I didn’t get a picture at the doctor’s office because doctor visits just aren’t that cute any more. Shhh, don’t tell.
I asked the doctor about the lump on her ear. I think I posted about it a few years ago, but I can’t find it for a link now so you’ll just have to trust me. :) The doctor said it doesn’t look dangerous at all. She said sometimes “growing and changing” bumps on children are just growing and changing because the child is doing the same. She said growing and changes things on grown-ups are more concerning. She agreed that a visit to a dermatologist would be prudent anyway though, even if just to put my mind at ease. She gave us a referral and maybe I’ll hear back from a specialist before 2015! Fortunately it’s no emergency.
She certainly has no trouble with her ego!
The one thing the doctor stressed, again, like she always does, is healthy eating. I always feel guilty when my kids list all of zero things in response to her question about healthy eating. She asks, “What vegetables do you like?” and they says “Umm….” Silence. She then asks if we’ve seen the MyPlate.gov thing and then proceeds to tell them about the importance of healthy foods. I say “Yes, I’ve said it all before. They know. They just chose not to.”
Tonight Eve chose to. Yay! I was having edamame for dinner and she asked to try some. She decided it was ok, not amazing, but not awful (rave review!) and then asked for some more. Eventually she asked me to take a picture to show daddy. :) Maybe it was proof that she once ate something green. I have a guilt complex about their diets (and my own too!) so it always makes me happy when they are willing to try something new! Yay Eve! Here’s to a new year of healthy eating! (or at least one meal)
Edamame is yummy!
Yesterday Eve was browsing through her fairy cookbook and decided to make some cookies. Her first choice, pink pinwheel cookies, didn’t work out because we didn’t have the right ingredients (much to my surprise we were out of powdered sugar!). After much deliberation she finally settled on pink sparkly heart cookies.
Eve did all of the work on these cookies. Measuring, mixing, etc.
When the cookie dough was chilling in the fridge she went down to the basement and never came back, so she finished them this morning.
She rolled out the dough and kept say “Oh, this is such hard work!”
She cut out big hearts and little hearts, then got bored of the rolling/cutting process and started just making shapes with her hands.
The directions said to brush with egg whites then sprinkle with sugar. She thought that process took too long so she asked why you can’t just go from egg white to sugar to cookie. I said “go for it!” She tried one (top left corner) and said, “Oh, they kinda get all messy when you do that.” Then she went back to the original way.
The first step of the recipe said to mix red food coloring with granulated sugar to make it pink. She decided she wanted purple, so she added red and blue food coloring. It ended up being a red/blue/purple combo.
Into the oven they go. Like I said, she did everything!
I was right near by for the “into the oven” process, but a little more involved with the “out of the oven” process so no pics of that. She helped though. She wore oven mitts and held one side of the tray. :)
Not quite what the picture showed, but all Eve.
Her favorite part! :)
To use up chocolate and peanut butter filling from last weekend’s birthday cake, I decided to make some dark chocolate cookie sandwiches. Fortunately we have a party to attend tomorrow, so I don’t have to eat these all myself! If it’s possible to die from pure deliciousness, you’re looking at it!
Then, for good measure, a strawberry rhubarb cobbler, with ingredients fresh from the farm!
We will be jettin’ out of here on Valentine’s Day, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate anyway. The kids finished their class Valentine’s Day cards today. We are going to bring them in on Wednesday and their teachers have promised to distribute them. My guys are eager to return to a bunch of Valentine’s Day cards waiting for them after vacation. :)
This afternoon we made cookies.
Someone’s had enough chocolate already!
They were giving each other silly kisses. I tried to get a picture, but instead got this weird shot. :)
Fun with sugar. Eve had the job of rolling the dough balls in sugar. It took much longer than necessary, but she enjoyed the sensory experience.
While Eve played in the sugar, Lex got the first shot at putting the hearts on the cookies. These are definitely fun to make! (that table in the background sums up my life! Messy, colorful, healthy, sweets, kids!)
Cookies!
Eve got a turn at the hearts too. I could NOT get a picture of her with a non-talking mouth! :)
I have been wanting to make these cookies for awhile now. Holding off until it’s actually close to the sweet holiday. They are peanut butter blossoms (with the unholiest of deliciousness – Jif peanut butter!) with Dove and Hershey hearts instead of the usual Kisses. So YUMMY! We will be delivering these to various friends over the next few days, while saving a few for ourselves, of course!