One Hook Wonder

A Cake And Damn, I'm Tired

What a crazy week it's been and will continue to be!  Last weekend was the family party for Short Pants followed by a trick-or-treating event, and last night was another party for Short Pants with our friends.  Normally I like to have the parties together as it's much less work, but the dates just didn't work out this year.  Tomorrow is The Mister's birthday, followed by my nephew's birthday party on Sunday, followed by my own birthday on Monday.  And oh yeah, isn't Halloween somewhere in there too?  *head spins*

Anyway, I wanted to show off Short Pants' birthday cake to you.  What I will NOT be showing you are the pirate cupcakes I made for the party yesterday.  I thought about posting them, but the idea of showing up on Cake Wrecks was too much for me. 

Back to the cake.  After looking around on the net for some inspiration (of course) I ended up making this:

The "sand" is brown sugar, and the treasure chest is made out of graham crackers and filled with sprinkles.  Short Pants loved it.  It might not be as perfect as a store-bought cake, but my boy knowing that his mama cared enough to make a special cake just for him makes up for the imperfections, I think:

Just in case you're wondering - no amount of caring made up for the pirate cupcakes.  It is clear that I should never be set loose with a frosting tip again.

Hand Picks An Apple

Like just about everyone else in the upper midwest, we went apple picking recently.  We went last year to our local u-pick farm and loaded up, but this year the plan was to really load up.  I think having a chest freezer might have gone to my head. 

 
 
 
 
 
 

We picked A LOT.  As in, over 100 pounds of apples.  Believe me, there were a whole lot of people giving us weird looks at the check out counter.

But behold the bounty *insert trumpets blaring*.  We put enough in the freezer for well over a dozen pies or crisps, plus I spent yesterday canning applesauce and apple butter for the first time:

 

In case this is all sounding a bit too Pollyanna-ish, I will be totally honest and admit that canning sucks monkey butt.  It involves many, many hours of standing on your feet in a hot kitchen while your small children rage at the gate blocking them out because it might just be important that they stay away from huge vats of boiling water. 

But it *does* produce yummy results. 

Painted Cookies - I Will Only Do It With A Toddler Again If I'm Drunk

There is nothing like writing out most of a post and having it get eaten - thanks Typepad!

Anyway, this is not a story about how I baked fall-themed cookies with my kids and they were perfect and then we took them to a homeless shelter because we are just wonderful, beautiful people inside where it counts.  Instead, this is more like the story of how I *really* wanted to hide in the closet and swill alcohol at 3 in the afternoon because I baked cookies with a 19-month-old in the room instead of just waiting till the next day while he was napping.  I knew I should have waited, but I was trying to be Perfect Mom, the woman who bakes cookies with her 2 kids even if it means holding the toddler the whole time and stirring the dough with her foot.

If you've never made painted cookies before they are super easy.  Just make regular old rolled sugar cookies, but before you put them in the oven, "paint" them with a combo of egg yolk and a few teaspoons of water.  Use food coloring to get the colors you like.  The weird dark green was actually supposed to be brown...oops:

As Pita Pocket has eaten both cat food and uncooked rice within the last week, I thought it prudent to keep the egg yolk paint away from him.  He got a paintbrush and a handful of dough to play with instead.  This was ok with him for about two minutes:

I gave him the sprinkles to shake in attempt to appease him.  Did you know that Pita Pocket can open the sprinkles?  No?  Either did I till that fateful afternoon.  Next came the phone, in a last ditch attempt at a bribe while I was putting one tray in the oven and holyshitwhyareyouclimbingonthecounter and fortheloveofallthatisholywillyoupleasejustsitstill?  And why yes, his shirt *is* funny in this context:

Eventually we managed to get all the cookies baked:

The Mister arrived home to this:

He wiped the flour off my face and told us our cookies were delicious.  Then he cleaned everything up.

I love that man.

More Deceptively Delicious

Yep, I'm still all into that being sneaky with food thing.  Last Sunday we made the pancakes for brunch, and they were YUM.  The recipe calls for a box of pancake mix, but we just added the sweet potato puree and cinnamon to our own from-scratch pancake recipe.  This is definately the way we'll be making pancakes from now on:

Short Pants thought it was very funny that there were vegetables in our pancakes!  I decided that I was *not* going to hide the fact from him that I was adding things to our food.  Oh, and that's a watermelon/blueberry/banana/kale smoothie, by the way.  Not as good as the Super Yum, but still pretty good. 

We also made some of the chocolate chip cookies the other night for dessert.  No white sugar, and there's jen-yoo-wine chickpeas in them thar cookies:

Short Pants didn't want to try any (he's funny about cookies sometimes - and I'm not complaining!) but The Mister, Pita Pocket, and I all really liked them.  The walnuts and oats in them disguise the texture of the chickpeas very nicely.   

I'm going to try out a few more recipes this weekend while Bean is here.  I can't wait to see if she likes them or not. 

Deceptively Delicious Cookies

A quick trip to the library last night found me Deceptively Delicious, which I couldn't wait to bring home and leaf through.  Sneaking veggies into food definately appeals to my devious nature.  So far it looks good enough that I'm going to order a copy of my own.  The Mister (totally cookiehound) thought we should try out the oatmeal raisin cookies as our first recipe - big surprise there!  These particular cookies called for 1/2 cup zucchini puree along with 1/2 cup banana puree:

  

They turned out very yummy and moist - The Mister thought they tasted like banana bread cookies:

 

Pita Pocket and I liked them as well.  Short Pants decided not to try any, which didn't really surprise us.  Most of the time when we bake cookies (even regular old chocolate chip) he ends up not eating them.  I'm eager to try some of the "main dish" meals in this one.  We don't have any trouble getting Short Pants to eat zucchini bread or banana muffins, etc., so I'm interested to see what he's going to think of noodles that have a sweet potato puree mixed in!  He looked through the book with me and picked out several items that he'd like to try - one was "pink pancakes" which are made with beet puree.  Should definately be interesting, to say the least!

Everybody's Doing It

Haven't you noticed that green smoothies are all the rage?  I'd kinda/sorta/not really thought about them before, but Short Pants' recent morph into Picky Child has gotten me pondering how I can sneak some extra nutrition into him.  And let's face it, it's time for The Mister and I to stop being Fake Healthy (the kind of healthy where you hike a lot and eat granola but still have enough Pepsi in your veins to kill a hippo) and start being Real Healthy.  Seeing HappyFoody's Green Smoothie Challenge was the kick in the pants we needed.  We haven't done quite as well so far with the "no white sugar and no soda" part of it, but we are kicking ass on the smoothie part.  They really *are* yummy!  Here's some of the kinds we've made so far:

  

Recipe:  Frozen bananas, frozen blueberries, water, a bit of apple juice, and baby spinach

Verdict:  Ho-hum (adults thought it was ok, Short Pants wouldn't drink it, Pita Pocket didn't seem to care that much for it)

 

(not pictured)

Recipe:  Frozen bananas, tin of pineapple + juice, orange juice, water, and kale

Verdict:  Yum!  (all 4 of us liked it)

 

Recipe:  Strawberry yogurt, wheat germ, flax seed meal, frozen bananas, frozen mixed fruit (strawberries, mango, peaches), water, and baby spinach

Verdict:  Super Yum!! (this is everyone's fave)

I think that one's our keeper, though we'll keep experimenting.  I add more greens after blending it down a bit:

 

If you have any smoothie recipes, please do share.  Also, tips on being sneaky with a suddenly picky eater are welcome too!  We haven't called any attention to it, as we don't want it to become a battle, but man...it's a bummer to see your former super-eater suddenly declaring that he "hates" almost everything he used to love!  Our philosophy is that if we only keep healthy food in the home, then he'll eat ok whether he knows it or not!

Making And Baking (Or, Holy Shit I'm Exhausted!)

This week has been incredibly fast and full.  Each night I've gone to bed more than grateful to feel my pillow beneath me, and I know the kiddos (or at least the littlest ones) have been as well.  We've gone swimming almost every day, run errands, gardened, and found out that Bean and Boba really like to play Uno.  With all this excitement going on, the TV has been off, which has been wonderful.  The Mister and I stopped turning on the TV for the most part several weeks ago, and I was kind of worried that Bean and Boba would immediately turn it back on as soon as they returned home.  Happily this hasn't been the case.  I'd like to think that all of the fun activities we've been doing have been the reason for this, but as a realist I have to admit that us not having cable (unlike their Dad) probably has something to do with it as well!

One of the fun things we did this week was making stepping stones.  Let me be honest and admit that I originally bought the stepping stone kits to make over Spring Break a year ago at least - it could have even been the year before!  Bean and Short Pants really loved doing these; Boba was nice enough to go along with it (let's face it, making stepping stones when you're a 14-year-old boy is not a thrilling time).  At any rate it was fun:

 

 

Bean and I also made homemade peanut butter cups together.  They are GOOD:

 

 

You can find the super-easy recipe here.  I would have taken a picture of the carrot cake that Short Pants and I made too, but it was eaten far too fast to be photographed.

I haven't found any time the last few days to craft, but I did find time today to try out a new sandwich loaf recipe:

  

I'm anxious to hear what the kids think of it.  I'd love to stop spending money on bread for sandwiches!

Short Pants and I only did Montessori lessons one day this week, but I'll share some pics from it tomorrow evening.  Tomorrow morning and afternoon will find us picnicing and swimming at a nearby lake with our playgroup. 

Summer Solstice

Since we were too busy on summer solstice to actually celebrate summer solstice, we did a very subdued celebration yesterday.  We changed our nature tray to reflect the new season:

 

I did a very simple one, as I know that Short Pants will quickly fill it up with all his summer booty.  There are flowers and lavender from our yard, as well as shells and rocks from Fake Beach, along with some shells that we collected on vacation years ago.  Oh, and don't forget the handy-dandy bug magnifier from Chick-Fil-A holding two dead moths and a bee.  We found the goose feather when we went swimming yesterday afternoon.

We also tried out a new cookie recipe - lavender cookies!  You can find the recipe here.  Short Pants thought it was very cool that we were eating the lavender from our garden.  The cookies were actually very good - light and a tiny bit buttery lemony.  But they were also weird, like the smell and taste didn't match.  As The Mister put it, it's odd to be eating cookie but smelling bath product!

  

I also changed out the seasonal books in the book basket located in the play nook:

 

Short Pants was very excited to see the new selections:

 

Tomorrow I'll be showing you some upcoming projects I plan on doing for Totally Selfish Crafting.  Boo-yah!

Again With The Mmm

Whenever Pita Pocket spies something he'd like to eat or drink, he says, "Mmm..."  It's quite adorable, I assure you.  However, when he wants to nurse, he screeches like a baby dinosaur and throws himself backwards across my lap.  Not quite as adorable.

We've had all kinds of yummies going on here lately.  Over the weekend I tried out this fantastic hummus recipe from The Toby Show.  Good stuff, I tell ya.  Even more fantastic was the homemade pita bread we ate it with (can you tell I'm a bread lovah?).  The recipe is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day:

 

It baked up soooo yummy:

I used the rest of the dough to make some pecan caramel sticky rolls:

 

You are a FOOL, I tell you, a FOOL if you don't buy that Artisan Bread book:

 

We've also been eating loads of peas fresh from the garden.  We've had a great crop so far this year:

 

I also made some granola, which was my very first attempt at the stuff.  Yeah, I feel really stupid for ever buying the super expensive bags of it from the grocery now.  So easy, and soooo good on yogurt (and yes, I do know my ABCs, thankyouverymuch):

Mmm Jam

I will never go back to store-bought!  I was kind of intimidated by the idea of making jam for the very first time, but what else was I going to do with all of those strawberries that we picked?  To my surprise and great pleasure, making jam is very simple and something that you can learn to do from just the instructions included in the pectin.    Short Pants had a grand time mashing the strawberries for me:

 

The lots of boiling water portion took place after he went to bed:

 

We ended up with 24 jars of this yummy stuff:

 

And of course all that jam making led to scone baking the next day, complete with Pita Pocket appearing with a fork to scoop flour off of the counter with:

 

  

Since then we've gone pretty much nuts with the jam eating. The Mister happened to comment the other day that with our current rate of consumption being 1 jar a week we wouldn't have enough to last till next strawberry season.  So guess who brought home 2 more boxes of jelly jars today?

Oh, no.  Not me.  Definately not.