I like to make stir fries for a quick weeknight dinner. I can have everything chopped up and ready to go, and then it only takes 15 minutes to cook the dinner together when I get home from running the kids back and forth to lessons. Sweet and Sour Pork is a classic, and a favorite with my children.
I like to cook food from all different cultures, because it is fun to try new things. I don’t get to travel much, but at least I can experience food from all over the world. This weekend I wanted to make a dish with pierogies. Pierogies are an eastern European dumpling that is stuffed with mashed potato filling, and I had a box sitting in my freezer just waiting to be used. So when I was asked to create a meal with Hillshire Farm Gourmet Creations Sausage I thought it would be perfect to combine with the pierogies, because sausage and mashed potatoes are a great combination.
I love apple pie, and fall seems like the best time to make it. I found this recipe in the The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion
cookbook, and decided I had to try it. It uses rum and cider in the apple pie filling, which intrigued me. It was delicious, and the small amount of rum enhanced the taste. I modified the recipe a little to cut the amount of sugar in the recipe and increase the cinnamon. I think most apple pie recipes use too much sugar, apples are so naturally sweet already they just don’t need much extra. I use very little sugar in my apple pies, and no one has ever complained they aren’t sweet enough.
We had a flock of wild turkeys in our yard four mornings in a row last week. Unfortunately I am not very good at sneaking up on wild birds, and they always heard me coming and retreated into the woods. These are the best pictures I got.
Anyone who has kids knows the toys seem to multiply overnight. Fighting to keep toys organized, neat and tidy is a constant battle that all parents deal with. There are some ways to help though, and here are my ideas.
I like delictica squash because of its size – It is the perfect size to for two people. Since it is small it is much easier to cut than a large squash like butternut, and it doesn’t take as long to cook either. I usually just pierce it with a knife, microwave it for 10 minutes and serve. But this weekend I made it a little fancier by adding apples and cinnamon and baking it, and the result was delicious.
Playing outside with the family is always fun. It is great to get fresh air, be active and just have fun as a family. This Saturday, September 24th, families are encouraged to participate in Worldwide Day of Play and to turn off their TV and go outside to play. There are so many ways you can enjoy the outdoors with your family, and here are some of my family’s favorites.
I got some frozen fruit bars to review yesterday, and they came packed in dry ice. So of course we had to have fun doing some science experiments with the dry ice!
I’ve used the Philadelphia Cooking Creme a few times lately to make quick recipes. It is perfect for those nights I don’t feel like cooking, because it is a quick and easy sauce. It isn’t a gourmet meal, but it is quick and better than take out. Plus I usually use the cooking creme as part of a pasta dish, and my kids love pasta so I know they will eat it. This is a recipe for Cajun Chicken Pasta I threw together last week. I always have cooked chicken in the freezer, so that is what I used in this dish. But if you don’t have cooked chicken just add it to the frying pan before the veggies.
My son has been involved in Boy Scouts of America for years, first as a Cub Scout and now as a Boy Scout. Scouting is lots of fun, and is my son’s favorite after school activity. I don’t always attend the meetings, but I went last week because it was a Court of Honor. The boys in the troop all received the merit badges and rank advancements that they had earned over the summer. It was inspiring to see all the activities and projects that the boys had accomplished. My son was proud to have earned 6 merit badges between meetings and summer camp.
Right now the big event the boys are planning is the “Coffee Can Campout”. They are camping next weekend and are supposed to figure out how to pack everything they will need (except a sleeping bag) in a coffee can. This is not my idea of a fun weekend, but the Scouts are very excited by it. My son’s troop does a great job of letting the boys do the planning and organizing. I am always surprised and pleased to see how the boys step up and take charge when they are given the chance.
Today is National Guacamole Day! I love avocados and guacamole, they are amazingly delicious. With football season started it is a great time to serve guacamole and chips as a half time snack, or serve tacos and burritos as an easy meal. One of my favorite ways to have guacamole is with eggs and cheese, so I made a Guacamole Cheese Omelet for breakfast today, and have included the recipe below.
After six weeks and I don’t even want to know how much money our boat is fixed! Just in time for summer to be over and the weather to turn cold. But we should get a few weeks of boating before the season is over, and last weekend we went fishing and actually caught some fish – very, very tiny fish.
Do you have a picky eater? Trying to get children to eat something they don’t like is difficult. As a parent I have always refused to stoop to the strategy that would probably be most effective – bribery. I never wanted to make dessert a reward for eating dinner, so I tried other, more subtle, (and therefore ineffective) methods of appeasing picky eaters.
Unfortunately, it turns out my children have a sixth sense which warns them when I am trying to get something by them. Books have been written on how to disguise food to make it more appealing to children, but those tactics never worked for me. I tried adding minced kale to my spaghetti sauce, but no one believed it was parsley. And every time I added protein powder to smoothies they rejected the resulting drink.
All the experts say if kids help shop for and prepare a meal they will eat it. Well not my kids. They are perfectly happy to dirty every pan in the kitchen making something they have no intention of eating. Making a mess is fun, eating healthy food is not.
 Chicken Spiedies |
A few weeks ago we visited Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. Earlier this year my husband read an article about the Seaport and since he loves ships he wanted to visit. I am not as interested in historic ships as he is, but I wanted to go someplace new and different on vacation, and since it is near the ocean the kids were game for it. So we planned a trip to Connecticut, to visit the Seaport and go to the beach. We discovered that Mystic Seaport is huge, much too big to see in one day. It has an enormous collection of sailing ships and boats, and a re-created 19th century seafaring village. There are over 60 original historic buildings and hundreds of ships.
I have a lot of eggplant from my garden this year. I only planted one plant, but it is producing like crazy. It is kind of odd, since the green pepper plants right next to it are doing nothing. So I’ve been searching for eggplant recipes. I like this Eggplant Parmesan recipe because it doesn’t involve frying the eggplant, which defeats the health benefits of eating vegetables in the first place. By not frying the eggplant and using just a little cheese this makes a great, nutritious side dish. I made this with my white eggplant and heirloom tomatoes, but I’m sure it would be great with purple eggplant and regular tomatoes too.
Earlier this month my 15 year old daughter Eleanor was lucky enough to be selected as a delegate to the International Year of Youth Culmination Celebration at the United Nations. She was thrilled to be picked to go to this conference, and excited to visit New York City. Although she was born in New York state and has lived here her whole life, she had never been to New York City before.
ImagineToys.com sent me a set of Citiblocs for my 12 year old son to review. At first I was a little dubious, after all my son outgrew most blocks sets years ago. But these aren’t your square nursery blocks with the alphabet on them. Citiblocs are wooden construction blocks that are engineered so each piece is exactly the same shape and size.