We Got a Short One, Folks

Boog came down with some sort of stomach bug, so I’ve been up since about 2:30 this morning.  And now I think I may have caught it.  Oh, the joys of having a germ factory germ magnet toddler.  Now we both have fevers.  Boo.

On the dinner front, we’ve had some plain jane repeats the last two nights.  Still delicious, but they might not make for the most interesting blogging.

Last night we had the Cheeseburger Mac Attack.  Basically, macaroni and cheese, so it was a hit with the Boog and with me.  She ate her vegetables and ground turkey breast too, everything but the onions.  Success!

Tonight was Honey Dijon Chicken Nuggets and Sweet Potato Tots.  Had we been eating normal foods, these would also have been a hit.  Though, I realized tonight that the Sweet Potato Tots have added sugar.  Really?  That’s not necessary.  So, I was disappointed that I didn’t do a good label check on these and that they won’t be making an appearance back on our table.

I’ll leave you with my funny Boog story of the week.  Though, it was much funnier when I thought she was just saying she had a bellyache, before I woke up to a vomiting toddler in the wee hours this morning.

Getting into the car on the way home on Monday:

Boog: My belly hurts.  I don’t feel good. 

Me: Oh no, why does your belly hurt? 

Boog: <talking non-stop about something entirely unrelated> 

Fast-forward a few minutes and we’re almost home.

Me: Hey Boog, how is your belly feeling now?  Does it still feel bad?

Boog: <pulling up her shirt to show her belly> There’s poop in there.

Now I’m headed to bed in the hopes I can sleep this thing off.

Menu – Week of 10/8/12

Halloween decorations are in progress, and we have the crock-pot pork roast with apples to get in the mood for fall 🙂

MENU:

Monday: Mexican Stuffed Poblano Peppers 

Tuesday: Poppy Seed Pork with Apples and Rice

Wednesday: Cheeseburger Mac Attack 

Thursday: Chicken Tenders, Sweet Potato Fries, and Veggies

Friday: Mini Cheeseburger Pies

GROCERIES:

I have to buy:

• bell pepper
• pinto beans
• poblano peppers
• apples
• celery
• pork roast
• apple juice
• poppy seed dressing
• ground turkey breast (x2)
• milk
• eggs

I already have on hand:

• oil
• onions
• garlic
• rice
• canned tomatoes
• chili powder
• cumin
• cheese
• pasta
• ketchup
• frozen vegetables with cheese sauce
• Laughing Cow wedges
• chicken
• honey Dijon dressing
• corn flake crumbs
• sweet potato fries
• frozen vegetables
• Worcestershire sauce
• garlic
• Bisquick

PREP PLAN:

Sunday:

• Organize the RR cabinet
• Dice/cut onions for the week
• Dice celery for the pork
• Dice bell pepper for the stuffed peppers
• Cook rice for the stuffed peppers
• Assemble the stuffed peppers

Monday:

After work: Bake the stuffed peppers.

Tuesday:

Before work: Cut apples, sear pork roast and put everything into the crock pot for the pork dish.

After work:  Make 90 second rice in the microwave and serve.

Late night: Make the turkey mixture for the mac attack.

Wednesday:

After work: Cook the pasta, microwave the frozen veggies with cheese sauce and mix everything together.

Late night: Dice the chicken for the chicken tenders.

Thursday:

After work: Dip the chicken in honey Dijon, then corn flake crumbs.  Bake the chicken tenders and sweet potato fries and microwave some frozen vegetables.

Late night:  Cook ground turkey mixture for the cheeseburger pies.

Friday:

After work: Assemble and bake the mini cheeseburger pies.

Enjoy~

A Day of (FALL) Baking!

Hello Fall!  Well, it doesn’t really feel like fall here yet, but I’m still getting in the mood for when it does cool down.  Boog and I watched some Noodle and Doodle last night to get inspired for a project today.  We decided on these Pumpkin and Date Cookies.

We had a great time baking and now we have these awesome fall-inspired cookies to eat.  We used canned pumpkin for a shortcut (NOT pumpkin pie filling) and garbanzo bean flour and added 1 tsp baking soda.  We also used 1 cup of pitted dates that I chopped and 1 cup of dried cranberries, which worked out great.  If you decide to try them, the recipe as is makes a very “cake-y” cookie.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want them less “cake-y”, I would cut down on the flour.  Otherwise, these are delicious!  And Boog was really excited to be able to eat one of our cookies while we watched the same Puppet Show episode of Noodle and Doodle today.

Menu – Week of 10/1/12

Welcome to October! I haven’t started pulling out the fall recipes yet, but I’m pretty excited about pumpkin festivals and Halloween this month!  Fall recipes will be sure to follow soon.

MENU:

Monday: Asian Chicken Quesadillas – (carryover from last week)

Tuesday: Chicken Broccoli Quinoa Casserole

Wednesday: Mini Chicken Pot Pies – I got so excited about this group of recipes, I almost instituted an all-muffin pan menu this week!

Thursday: Crustless Cheddar Broccoli Quiche from Rantings of an Amateur Chef

Friday: Make Your Own Pizza Night – I thought this would be fun to do with Boog.

GROCERIES:

I have to buy:

• Broccoli
• Onions
• Eggs
• Egg beaters
• Cottage cheese

I already have on hand:

• Snow peas
• Carrots
• Lettuce
• Chicken
• Shredded cheddar cheese
• Asian sesame dressing
• Tortillas
• Sesame oil
• Quinoa
• Chicken Broth
• Frozen mixed veggies
• Salt, pepper, thyme
• Bisquick
• Milk
• Oil
• Pizza crusts
• Pizza sauce
• Shredded Italian cheese
• Pepperoni and other pizza toppings (olives, mushrooms)

Low grocery bill this week for sure!

PREP PLAN:

Sunday:

• Organize the RR cabinet
• 
• Prep the peas for the quesadillas
• Dice chicken for the quesadillas, casserole, and pot pies
• Dice onions for the casserole, pot pies, quiche, and pizza
• Cook the chicken for the quesadillas and casserole
• Cook the quinoa for the casserole

Monday:

After work: Assemble and cook the quesadillas

Late night: Prep and bake the casserole.

Tuesday:

After work:  Re-heat the casserole with the help of Chef Mike.

Late night: Cook the chicken mixture for the pot pies.

Wednesday:

After work: Assemble the pot pies and bake.

Late night: Saute the onions and broccoli for the quiche.

Thursday:

After work: Assemble the quiche and bake.

Late night:  Chop a bell pepper and saute it with onions for the pizzas.

Friday:

After work: Make your own pizza night!

I was definitely missing my Boog when I wrote this yesterday, though she’s home now! In the meantime, I wanted to share this little discussion we had last weekend.  We were leaving Target:

Boog: Where we going now?

Me: Well, we have to go put gas in the car and then we’re headed home.

Boog: Gas?

Me: Yes, the car is hungry, so we have to go feed it some gas.

Boog: Yeah, the car needs to eat eggs.

I guess that’s why we’re having a quiche this week.  Everyone could use some eggs.

Enjoy~

I Heart Fruit Roll-ups

…but I discovered I don’t especially heart making them!

I took Monday off work.  The plan was to treat myself to a massage that I’ve had a voucher for since March, May?  Something like that.  But with Isaac spinning around trying to figure out what he wanted to do in the Gulf, I was afraid the daycare would be closed and cancelled the massage.

But, daycare was open, so I just had the day to myself.  After catching up on various things around the house, what to do, what to do…

Make homemade fruit leathers!  It’s been on my to-do list to try for months, and while it could be a fun project to do with the Boog, I wanted to try it out on my own first.

Back when I was first looking for recipes to do this, I swore I found one that didn’t require simmering the fruit puree on the stove top.  But, on Monday, I couldn’t find it and pretty much thought I made it up in my head.  Google “fruit leather recipe” and you’ll get tons of hits.  Just not the one that says, eh, skip the simmering of the puree.

[For the record, here’s the blog/recipe that I was thinking of.  Too bad I didn’t find it until Monday night.]

Anyhoo, the concept is a simple one.   Puree some fruit, add sweetener, lemon juice, spices, etc. to your taste.  Simmer.  Pour onto a lined baking sheet and wait.

I used frozen berries – a gorgeous mix of raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries, with some lemon juice and agave nectar.

So, here are the reasons I’m not fond of this process:

1. I simmered the fruit puree.  I wasn’t very focused and at some point smelled burning, which led me to frantically scrape the bottom of the pan trying to get the burnt stuff out of the pan, lest it taint my precious fruit roll-ups.

2. I wasn’t very focused and didn’t put the oven on the convect cycle.  I have an awesome oven that HAS the convect cycle.  But I failed to use it.  Again, note that I remembered this late Monday night.

3. I’m not very patient, especially when it comes to something as delicious as fruit leather.  So dehydrating the fruit puree in the oven was sort of like slow torture.  That led me to constantly pulling it out and messing with it, thus delaying even further my ability to enjoy the fruit leather.  Vicious cycle.

4. Spreading the puree out evenly was really difficult.  It’s hard to describe the consistency of the puree (though, maybe it was due to bullet #1 and it wasn’t the consistency it was supposed to be).  Because of that, parts of my delicious fruit leather were, shall we say, tough, a little like jerky…

5. I’m a fruit roll-up piggy.  I think I could sit down and eat an entire box of the pre-made ones.  So, when I got my final product, it was hard to save any for Boog or Husband to try.  Which was disappointing.  I felt like after baking for 6 hours, I should have a LOT of fruit roll-ups.   Hmmm.  Maybe I’m just greedy.

6. I tried to get “cute”.  I don’t do “cute” very well.  This is a known issue, as demonstrated here.  My good friend got me these awesome letter silicone baking sheets.  There were tons of ideas on the box, one of which is for ice cubes, which would work great for things like Purple Oatmeal.  But I thought, wow, I’m going to be so cool, I’m going to make thick fruit leather LETTERS!  I probably should have gotten the basics down before trying to get “cute”.  And see bullet #3, which also provided complications.  Well, here’s how that went.

^^ Not meant as a threat 🙂

Sorry Erin – don’t freak out, I wasn’t spelling your name out in blood or creepy letters on purposes.  🙂 Maybe I have an idea for Halloween!

7. Cutting them into roll-ups is not a strong suit of mine either, but here were my best attempts.

Pretend the scotch tape is pretty ribbon or something.

By the end of the day, I was swearing off making these ever again, because, fruit roll-ups are cheap.  But never say never.  I’m sure someday Boog and I can make them together (she LOVED eating them) and we’ll have a great time.

I just don’t make things fancy, like most of the Google results I found.  But, I’m okay with that.  We all enjoyed some fruit leathers, and they were just as delicious in their imperfection.

PB&J FP?

Since I saved so much time yesterday with the Turkey and we’re having leftovers tonight, I made a fruit pizza, peanut butter and jelly style, as a late “birthday cake”.  Boog and I had so much fun making Daddy’s birthday cookie.  She kept trying to eat the cookie mix powder instead of mixing the ingredients together.  At one point I turned around and she had used the tablespoon to scoop some powder and was eating it.  Yikes 🙂

Her favorite part was getting to “smoosh” the cookie dough into a circle.  Or maybe licking the beaters…

We loosely followed this Kraft recipe, except we used peanut butter cookie mix for the “crust”, and I blended the apricot all-fruit spread into the cream cheese mixture.

PB&J goodness topped with kiwi, mandarin orange, blueberries, and banana

Yummy!

Happy Birthday to Boog’s Daddy

Today is Husband’s birthday.  With my mother-in-law in town, we were fortunate enough, and eternally grateful, to have a free babysitter!  Hooray!

And we had a gift card for Bonefish Grill from our realtor when we closed on our house last year!  Excellent!  Date night on the cheapish 🙂

I fully intended to take pictures of all of the wonderful grub, but I was enjoying myself and forgot.  So, here are some of my leftovers, and you can use your imagination 🙂

Here is Lily’s Chicken and a bit of my vegetable sides left over.  I was a good girl and ate most of my vegetables, leaving my delicious goat cheese covered chicken for lunch tomorrow.  Not pictured – the Bang Bang Shrimp, Birthday Boy’s Gulf Grouper, the corn chowder, or the amazing Watermelon Martini.  Oooh, fancy.

I’m stuffed.

Mac Attack and Adventures in Rice Krispies

I made the Cheeseburger Mac Attack for dinner on Saturday and it was a hit, as always…I mean, it’s macaroni and cheese really, so of course my kid loves it.  She ate the pasta, turkey, and broccoli, but no carrots or cauliflower.  Green food, check!

The real fun on Saturday was making Rice Krispie Treats.  We were in the store last week and Boog saw some pre-made ones in the bakery that she wanted to eat.  So, I promised her we could make our own over the weekend.

We had a great time, though I think more marshmallows ended up in her mouth than in the bowl.  She doesn’t get “real” desserts like baked goods very often, so this was especially a treat.  In fact, when my husband came in the house while we were making them, Boog exclaimed that it was her birthday.  I guess cake and ice cream back in February really made an impression?

Now, the story would end, except I thought I would try to get cute with the leftover marshmallows.  I thought, aww, let’s make the leftover marshmallows red and form a heart on top of the treats… how cute.  Yeah, not so much.  For the record, red food coloring on mini marshmallows turns into something a lot like cotton balls or bits of gauze splattered with blood.  Oops – not really what I was going for.

Have I mentioned that I’m not so crafty?  Every now and then I get bitten by the creative bug and think I am, but it usually turns out as some monstrosity like this.  This is coming from the same person that made a zucchini smash cake for her first birthday and frosted it with red icing.  What was I thinking?  By the end of it, she looked like some savage zombie baby and the cake looked like roadkill.

Lest you think I jest:

At least it tasted good.  Sigh. And at some point, she’ll think my crafty creative misfires are funny, right?

Until then, I just added some blue food coloring to the marshmallows and we called it a patriotic pan of Rice Krispies Treats! <whispers> that’s a heart, by the way

The Words Every Mom Wants to Hear

My daughter and I had a a rough night last night…Both still not feeling 100%, both short on patience, and both stubborn as all get out.  There was a lot of screeching and yelling and crying–and she seemed upset too  ;-)–but there were a few high points that were wonderful.  But I guess that’s parenting in a nutshell, right?

There’s something about being sick that makes the thought of salad absolutely revolting.  I’m not sure why, because really, I can’t smell anything right now, so half of my ability to taste is pretty much gone.  But, by the time I got home from the pharmacy last night, after seeing the doctor and waiting forever to get prescriptions filled, there was no way I was going to cut up a bunch of raw vegetables and then, worse yet, eat them, yech.

So, when I got home, I decided to put the lemon garlic chicken over a frozen rice and veggie mix instead, specifically, Birds Eye Brown & Wild Rice with Broccoli and Carrots.  I also cooked the onions and peppers that were for the salad in with the chicken, to provide a little more character.  While I was at, I cooked some extras to put in the Corn & Bean Pockets for Tuesday.Now, again enter the fact that I have no sense of smell at this point.  I didn’t think it was very good.  I’ve made this chicken before – it’s normally wonderful and tangy from the lemon and I thought for sure that I got the marinade ratios wrong and that the whole thing was just bland and awful.  I later found out from my husband that it was wonderful, and he detests bland foods.  DARN YOU SNOT!

Anyway, the magic moment came when my daughter, upon seeing my plate says, in a most serious voice, “Mommy, I WANT BROCCOLI.”  Oh, how my heart sang and my mouth smiled.  I couldn’t bring myself to tell her there was plenty of broccoli on her own plate, just behind the chicken – I just handed over the goods and she happily ate every bit of the broccoli, as well as some rice and chicken.  She even said, “I eeeat it.  I like it!” Sigh.  Finally, a moment of triumph in a seemingly never-ending string of recent defeats.

Later that night, in between screaming fits, she kept up the magical words when she asked to listen to Bob Marley.  She asked for him by name.  Yes, we had a Punky Reggae Party in my house last night. At some point during that, she also turned to me and said, “Hey Mommy, you’re beautiful.”   It’s a thing we do a lot, but whenever she whips it out from nowhere, it melts my heart, every time.

What words do your little ones say that help break up the bad days?

Bubbles and Miranda Rights

One of the challenges of being a mom is trying to get your kid to eat vegetables. Well, I recently got a new tool in the arsenal.  I was giving my curious and imaginative 2 year-old daughter a bath.  Sadly, all of the bubbles had gone away, so she asked me, “Mommy, where did the bubbles go?”

Me: I don’t know, where do you think they went?

Daughter: I dunno…they go home?

Me: Yes, that’s it, they all went home.

Daughter: Yeah, they go home, go home eat.

Me: Oh yeah?  What do you think the bubbles eat?

Daughter: Bubbles eat green beans.  Yeah.

Now, I latched on to this and we talk about the bubbles eating green beans EVERY night in the bathtub.  In fact tonight, I even got her to say that SHE eats green beans too (which I’m positive hasn’t happened since she ate pureed food).   I almost feel bad, like someone should have read this poor kid her Miranda rights.  Does she not know that what she says can and WILL be used against her at a dinner table in her near future?  Because you’d better believe that the next time we have green beans, I’ll be whipping out the argument…”But the bubbles eat the green beans?  And we looove bubbles, right?”

I’ll let you know how it goes!