St. Patty’s Day lunch: Green Rainbow Wraps.

First of all, I’m not Irish. I’m pretty much everything else that’s really really white except Irish. Plus we don’t drink. So if you’re looking for green beer or corned beef, sorry — this is the wrong place to be. I do, however, like finding fun ways to make our St. Patrick’s Day meals a little greener. So stick around!

Here’s an easy lunch idea: Green Rainbow Wraps.

Here’s what I used. You can add or change your ingredients as you see fit. For example, I hate raw tomatoes, so you don’t see any of those in there. Lettuce? We were out, so none of that in there either. The more sandwich toppings you can think of (& that your kids will eat), the more colorful your pinwheels will be!

• Spinach tortillas
• Mayonnaise
• Chili or taco seasoning (I use this fabulous chili seasoning from W-S)
• Colby-Jack cheese (I used the deli slices, but I think shredded could work great too)
• Deli ham
• Deli chicken

1. Spread a tortilla with some mayo. Sprinkle it with some chili seasoning.
2. Lay out your cheese, meats, & whatever else floats your boat, leaving about 1-2 inches on the right & left sides.
3. Fold in the sides of your tortilla, then roll it from front to back.
4. Hold the wrap tight, then use a sharp knife to slice it into 3/4-inch slices to make pinwheels.
5. Serve with rainbow Terra chips.

Of course, The Munchkin just preferred to dismantle them & pull out the meat… That’s my girl!

Miracle stew.

 This stew, originally from Betty Crocker, then tweaked & handed down by my sister-in-law Lisa, then tweaked again by me, is delicious. It’s the kind of stew you eat with a fork. We love it.

But as great as it is, this stew isn’t the miracle. The miracle is what happened a couple months ago when I planned to make it for Sunday dinner.

We were having a couple people over, so I planned to make the stew with a little extra meat (they were guys who were coming, after all), some Rhodes rolls (Haven’t heard of them? Go to your freezer section & thank me later.), & oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert. You can make this stew in either the Crock Pot or on the stove, but we were in a hurry to get to church that morning, so I elected to go the stovetop route & start when we got home. Dinner was to be at 5:30. Our church ends at 1. The stew takes about 3 1/2 hours. No problem!

Problem. My husband had a meeting after church that went until well after 2. We live 20 minutes away from the church & only have 1 car, so I was sitting there in the foyer with a hungry & nap-overdue Munchkin, checking my watch every 12 seconds. Plus, the family that was supposed to have the missionaries over for dinner that night had to cancel at the last minute, so rather than force them to resort to ramen on the one night a week that they get a homecooked meal, I volunteered to pinch-hit. That made two more hungry male dinner guests around the table.

All afternoon I worried, stressed, & prayed. I don’t generally pray over my food apart from blessing it before we eat it, but that day I did. Please let it turn out okay even though I’m baking it at a higher temp & fudging the ingredient ratios. Please let it come out on time. Please let there be enough. I didn’t know how I was going to feed everyone, on time, with the ingredients I had purchased. But here’s the miracle: I did. Dinner was only about 15 minutes late, & we had the exact right amount of stew — everyone ate their fill, & there was only one bit of onion left. That’s the miracle.

So with a good Betty Crocker recipe and a whole lot of divine intervention, I fed 5 grown men, myself, & my Munchkin on this amazing stew. I can’t promise that miracles will occur when you make this, but here’s the recipe in case you want to give it a try. Definitely let me know if something miraculous does happen to you when you make it!

• 1 lb.+ (I usually use 1.5) stew beef, cubed
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• 1 bag baby carrots, or 1/2 lb. carrots, peeled & cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 can beef broth
• 1 can tomato sauce
• (1 can diced tomatoes, undrained — I don’t use this because we like it thick)
• scant 1/3 cup flour
• 1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. marjoram
• 1/4 tsp. pepper, or more to taste (we use more)
• 1 1/2 lbs. small red potatoes, quartered

1. Heat oven to 325.
2. Mix all ingredients except potatoes in a Dutch oven or other large oven-safe pot.
3. Cover & bake 2 hours; stir.
4. Stir in potatoes.
5. Cover & bake 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Crock Pot directions: Increase flour to 1/2 cup & decrease tomato sauce by half. Mix ingredients except beef (it helps to mix the liquid ingredients with the flour first so that you don’t get lumps) in bottom of slow cooker. Add beef on top. Cook on low 8-9 hours.

Veggie latkes.

We’re supposed to eat at least 5 servings of fruits & veggies a day. Everyone knows that. But do you really know exactly how many servings you’re actually getting? I thought I was doing pretty well until I actually started going to the effort of tallying them.

Let’s just say we’re working a lot harder at that now.

Enter the veggie latke, or “Little Vegetable Fritter,” as my Williams-Sonoma Cooking for Baby cookbook calls them. But they’re too flat be be fritters in my opinion. That’s why I’ve renamed them latkes (I almost said “re-christened,” but that would have been horribly, tastelessly ironic).

I’ve raved about Cooking for Baby before, & recently decided to revisit it for some more lunch ideas. I love that the toddler food is sophisticated enough that I’ll eat it! This particular recipe is great to involve your little ones in making. The blend of veggies is flavorful, but not so much so that your picky eater will thumb his nose at it (especially if he likes 1 of the 2 vegetables), & we all know that a little fat helps make healthy things a lot more appetizing. Here’s the recipe, with a couple tweaks I made just for simplicity’s sake.

• 1 medium sweet potato
• 1 large zucchini
• 2 Tbsp. cornstarch*
• 1 cup minus 2 Tbsp. flour*
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• salt & pepper
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 Tbsp. (may need a little more) canola oil
• sour cream or mustard for dipping, optional

* The recipe calls for 1 cup corn flour, but I don’t have that, nor do I foresee myself having that in the near future. So I just put 2 Tbsp. cornstarch in a cup measure & filled it the rest of the way with all-purpose flour. It worked just fine.

1. Preheat oven to 250. (This step is optional; it’s for keeping the fritters warm between batches. But The Munchkin’s food needs to be cooled before she eats it anyway, so I dispensed with this.)
2. Peel & grate sweet potato. Grate zucchini, leaving skin on. You will have about 1 cup of each. (Wrap grated vegetables in a clean kitchen towel or paper towels & gently squeeze to extract as much liquid as possible.) Transfer to medium mixing bowl. (That one step is in parentheses because I didn’t do it. I just had The Munchkin put it straight into the bowl as I grated. She was happy to do it, it saved me a step & lots of paper towels, & the fritters weren’t too squishy or anything.)
3. In a small bowl, combine cornstarch, flour, & baking powder. Season with salt & pepper.
4. Add egg to veggies. Then add flour mixture & stir until just combined.
5. In a large frying pan over medium to medium-high heat, heat oil. Scoop out heaping tablespoonfuls of batter, form into balls with wet hands, & flatten into cakes.
6. Cook in batches, turning once, until brown & crisp, 2-3 minutes each. Use a slotted spoon to lift cakes out of pan, allow oil to drip back into the pan, & then transfer to paper towels to drain.
7. Place on baking sheet in 250-degree oven to keep warm until all fritters are made. Repeat steps 5-7 for all of batter.
8. Serve with sour cream or mustard for dipping, or just by themselves!

Tips for traveling with a toddler.

We just got back from a quick weekend jaunt to Washington, D.C. My husband had some interviews, we caught up with some good friends, & we enjoyed sightseeing around the Capitol. It was a blast! So I thought I’d share some must-have items for traveling with small kids.

Item 1: Her own bedding & a white noise machine (if you use one at home). We’ve been traveling this way since our first family trip when The Munchkin was 6 weeks old. The more the hotel room smells, feels, & sounds like home, the better they’ll sleep. This bedding is from IKEA.

Item 2: A place to sleep. This one was tricky for us this time. We had always used her pack-n-play, but she’s long since outgrown it. We needed someplace she wouldn’t fall out of, since she still sleeps in a crib, but that she could actually fit into. I asked friends & family members for advice, & everyone had a different solution that had worked for them, so your solution may be different from what we ended up going with. Our original thought was to put some thick blankets on the floor & hem her into a corner by moving some furniture around, but then my brilliant husband got the brilliant idea to just turn the sofa around to face the wall. The Munchkin never climbed out, & she slept better than she does here at home! I wonder if they would’ve missed that couch if I’d snuck it down the hall & strapped it to the top of the car when we checked out…

Item 3: Portable DVD player. Great for long car rides or flights… & for times when you’re trying to get ready in a hurry in the hotel room & the hotel doesn’t have Disney or PBS. (Seriously? How could an Embassy Suites not have PBS? It’s a travesty. But we survived, as you can see.) We have a bottom-of-the-line one — the brand is COBY written in the SONY font, & I’m not even kidding — that my husband got for free with his Westlaw research points, & it works great, so you don’t need to spend a ton for your sanity.

Item 4: Stroller. In case anyone was wondering, the Maclaren Triumph does just as well on the streets & Metros of D.C. as it does on the streets & subways of New York. But any stroller will do as long as you can lug it around.

Item 5: Disposable bibs & eating utensils. I’ve always got one of these bibs in the diaper bag in case we decide to stop somewhere for lunch or something, but I packed a ton for our trip. There’s nothing grosser than having to pack around a sticky, soggy bib after a meal. These disposable ones by Pampers (Babies R Us makes them too, but I don’t like them quite as much) are cheap & make post-meal cleanup SO much happier. As for utensils, often restaurants don’t have kid-sized forks or spoons, so we bring a Take-&-Toss one or ask for plastic. Now, whether or not she uses it is another matter entirely…

Item 6: Stuff to do & great people to do it with. Even if the purpose of your trip is more grown-up (like my husband’s job interviews), your kid will be much happier if you find ways to make it fun for her too. We got to spend the morning before we left seeing the sights as a family. It was a real treat!

Of course, a giant elephant doesn’t hurt either…

What are your must-haves for traveling with your kids?

Feeding your little bookworm.

So your child’s gotten her “taste” for reading… Now what?

How about using reading to introduce her to new foods?

I grew up with Paddington Bear & his marmalade. I’ll never forget the first time I tried marmalade. After all, if Paddington could live on it, it must be good! Well, it wasn’t. (I’ve since developed a taste for it.) But because of Paddington, I was so excited to give it a try!

The same went for The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe. I was in a British shop near our house once growing up when I saw it: Cadbury Turkish Delight. Oh how I begged my parents to buy me some! Again, I’d grown up hearing about it & just had to try it. Let’s just say I couldn’t understand what Edmund saw in that stuff.

(Rereading these anecdotes, I realize I’m not really proving my point very well. & I’m making myself out to be the pickiest eater ever.)

My point is that I was introduced to these foods through the books I read, & those books made me want to expand my culinary horizons.

Even if your book isn’t talking about marmalade or Turkish Delight, it’s easy to come up with foods for your little bookworm. Some book series have even come up with corresponding cookbooks, like Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes, which includes things like Bruce Bogtrotter’s chocolate cake from Matilda & Mr. Twit’s edible beard from The Twits. (We had this one growing up, so that’s why I remember them.) The Boxcar Children series & Little Women have cookbooks, & on a library search I found no fewer than three different Winnie the Pooh cookbooks.

But almost any book can become a menu if you use your imagination. We bought dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets because The Munchkin likes her dinosaur books so much, & to this day they’re still one of like 3 ways she’ll eat chicken without negotiating. We also use cookie cutters a lot: like “princess sandwiches” in the shape of tiaras.

If you’re reading a book about another culture, make a meal from that country. Like try some Chinese food for Tikki Tikki Tembo, crepes for The Little Prince, or pelmeni & borscht for Baba Yaga.

So put on your thinking caps, break out the cookie cutters & cookbooks, & get creative in the kitchen with your little bookworm!

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!

To you we raise our (Disney Princess) glasses of Yink Pink Ink Drink. Happy birthday!

(I ran across a lot of complex smoothie-like recipes online for the Yink Pink Ink Drink; I just added a drop of red food coloring to her almond milk. You could also mix in some strawberry Nesquik if you’re into that sort of thing.)

To honor Dr. Seuss’ birthday & NEA Read Across America Day, we plan to read some Dr. Seuss books, do some nifty Cat in the Hat coloring pages, & because — let’s face it — I’m feeling pretty crummy, I’ll probably introduce The Munchkin to an episode or two of the new PBSKids show The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, which is playing in a 2-hour marathon in the morning on PBS. Apparently Martin Short voices the Cat! That’s enough to make me want to check it out.

Once again, happy birthday, Theodore Seuss Geisel!

What are you doing to wish Dr. Seuss a happy birthday today?

Hop on over to Obseussed to see our Green Eggs & Ham omelettes & Cat in the Hat pancakes, as well as dozens of other Seusstastic ideas!

Developing a taste for reading.

After The Awesomest Week Ever last week, my body has decided to rebel. So since I’m under the weather, I’m going to wait to share my Paper Bag Princess craft until I have more energy, & instead share with you some thoughts that have been jumbling around my head lately.

Munchkin at 4 months

We feel fortunate that The Munchkin developed a “taste” (har, har) for books quite early in life. Some parents, however, are not so lucky.

For those parents, I thought I’d offer a few ideas to help kids get excited about reading.

1. Start early. We bought cloth books & books with large photographic pictures & few words for her to look at, & pointed to & explained the words to her as a baby. We also started bedtime storytime before she could even sit up on her own. The visual & auditory stimulation, as well as the comforting sensation of cuddling while reading, created a positive association. She still jumps into our laps to read. I think this is why the NEA established Read Across America Day (don’t forget, it’s tomorrow!) — to associate reading time with bonding time.

 

2. Find their interests. If your child loves trucks, get books about trucks. Kids are born to love to learn, but sometimes we have to meet them on their terms. I love penguins, so before she was even born, The Munchkin had lots of penguin-related reading material. 
3. Even books based on movies are still books. The point is to get them excited about reading, right? So if they love a certain movie or TV show, find spinoff books of that show! The Munchkin is kind of obsessed with Elmo. Lucky for us, the Target Dollar Spot almost always has cheap Sesame Street books. While they’re not as intellectually stimulating as, say, the encyclopedia, she loves when we read them, & that’s what matters. The same applies to older kids. When I was in late elementary & early middle school, I read a lot of Star Wars fan fiction books. It’s not great writing by any means, but I was reading! You can also turn it the other direction: so many movies are out now (like the Chronicles of Narnia series) that are based on great books. If your child loved the movie, offer to read the book with him!
4. Keep it fresh. Kids can get bored of reading the same books over & over. The library is an amazing place — take advantage of it! Many libraries have children’s sections with comfy chairs, puzzles, & even storytime. Look up your local library to see what resources they have to offer, & then make it a weekly trip! The Munchkin loves picking out 2 new books every time we go, & we appreciate the new material too!
   

   The NY Public Library has the original Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals

5. Make it a positive experience. As I mentioned in #1, reading time has positive associations, so The Munchkin loves it. But for some kids who may struggle with learning disabilities or trouble reading, reading time isn’t fun, but frustrating. Positive encouragement, learning games, & finding reading material they’re interested in can help reading time be fun again.
6. For older kids, when in doubt, bribery does work. When I was in middle school, my grandma offered to pay $20 to each grandkid who finished a certain book by the end of the summer. I was the youngest to participate & the first to finish. Bribery (or “incentivizing,” if that makes you feel better) works!

How have you helped your kids develop a “taste” for reading?

Dr. Seuss breakfast.

This Wednesday is Dr. Seuss’ birthday! Did you know that? It’s also Read Across America Day. “On March 2, the National Education Association calls for every child to be reading in the company of a caring adult” (their website). This week I hope to bring you a few ways to get your kids excited about reading.

How about we start with the most important meal of the day?

Let’s have some Green Eggs & Ham (& cheese & sauteed onions) omelettes with some Cat in the Hat Pancakes!

We just made our usual weekend breakfast (or “brinner,” or in this case, “brunch”) the same way as always, except I added 4 drops of green food coloring to our 2-egg omelettes (The Munchkin’s 1-egg omelette got 3 drops), & my husband, the Pancake Master, made the white pancakes (including a slightly larger “brim”) & then added “lots” of red food coloring to the pancake batter for the last couple batches. Easy & fun!

The Munchkin was so excited to pull the books out for me to photograph. I didn’t take as much time as usual to set up the shot because we were hungry & the BYU-SDSU game was starting. Priorities, people!

BYU games aside, though, we do make time for reading every day. The Munchkin loves her books, & we love reliving some of the stories we grew up with (like those Dr. Seuss books — I had forgotten exactly how little of One Fish Two Fish really was about fish), as well as enjoying new ones (my parents brought Who’s in the Loo? back from London a couple years ago — it’s a riot!). It’s a great learning, cuddling, & bonding experience for all of us.

What’s your favorite thing about reading with your kids?

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MY chocolate-chip cookies.

I had been planning to post this for TidyMom’s I’m Lovin’ It Fridays, & then when I saw that the Make & Takes Saturday Spotlight this week was cookies, I thought, “It was meant to be!” UPDATE: I was also invited to Sweet Tooth Fridays at Alli-n-Son!

I was a music major in college. More specifically, I was a French horn performance major. Not a composition major. Why should you care? Because I can’t write to save my life. Sure, I can personalize & interpret composers’ instructions to make my performances my own, & even wrote a few formulaic cadenzi & Theory assignment chorales, but I can’t pull music out of thin air like my more-talented classmates.

Again, you’re asking why you should care. Because, while I’ve “improv’d” on other people’s recipes & hopefully improved them a little, I’m still just a performer, not a composer. I only have one recipe I can call my own.

Here it is.

I’ve gone back & fiddled with ingredients & amounts time & again, solicited critiques from tasters & even from the ridiculously gifted Lindsey Johnson of Cafe Johnsonia, & I feel like it’s finally right. For now, anyway. I mean, hey, Mahler wrote at least 6 versions of his first symphony.

These cookies are thick, ooey-gooey out of the oven, & even once they’re cooled they maintain that soft center with just the right amount of crunch on the outside.

So here’s what you need to make 3 dozen cookies:

• Stand mixer
• Cookie dough scoop (mine has a silicone bottom that leaves a cute little “dimple” in the top of my cookies)
• 1 cup original shortening
• 1/2 cup butter flavor shortening (for that buttery flavor without the flattening effect that real butter can produce… but you can just use all original flavor if you want)
• 1 3/4 cups packed brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4 cups flour (this may vary depending on how dry the air is; see below)
• half a 12-oz. bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cream together shortenings & sugars in stand mixer.
3. Beat in eggs & vanilla, but don’t overmix.
4. Add soda & salt, then gradually add flour, stopping in the middle to scrape sides of bowl. If the air is dry, slowly add the last cup of flour. Stop adding & mixing when the dough starts coming together in one mass. The dough below is a little too dry; the heater had been going 24 hours a day. So use this as a cautionary example: stop just before it gets crumbly like this. If you do get to this point, the cookies will still taste fabulous; they just won’t be quite as soft on Day 2. Assuming they last that long.
5. Lock the mixer head & slowly add the chocolate chips with the mixer on low. Don’t overmix or you’ll pulverize your chips. You could remove the bowl & fold them in by hand, but my tendonitis (I told you I was a musician) says NO to that, thankyouverymuch!
6. Scoop the dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake 8-9 minutes or until just golden brown. Let cool on the cookie sheet 1 minute.

Look at that ooey-gooey goodness! This is my favorite way to enjoy them: straight out of the oven.

With a glass of milk, of course.

3 easy meals, 1 grocery list: Chicken Stuffing Bake.

After last night’s insanity-induced interruption, here is the last installment of “3 easy meals, 1 grocery list.”

In case you missed them, the list is here, as is recipe #1, Baked Pesto Chicken. Recipe #2, Pesto Chicken Pasta with Carrots, is here.

Today’s recipe came from Kraft’s Food & Family magazine, years ago, when they used to send it out for free. Then they wised up, started charging for it, & I stopped getting it. I’ve tried looking on the website for the original recipe, but can’t find the exact one, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that I’m citing my sources correctly. They call it STOVE TOP Classic One-Dish Chicken Bake with Vegetables.

I’m all about one-dish meals. Fewer dishes, less effort, less time. Like yesterday’s recipe, this has all 4 food groups, so I don’t need to slave over a veggie side! Win-win!

NOTE: This recipe serves 6 & makes for great leftovers. However, I adjust the amounts (especially of the stuffing) a little because a) there are only 3 of us & b) I used 1/2 cup of the stuffing on Tuesday. So I usually just make this in a smaller baking dish with the remaining stuffing, 1 cup water, 1 lb. chicken, & around 12 oz. veggies.

1. Thaw 1 1/2 lbs. chicken breasts & a 16-oz. pkg. frozen mixed veggies.
2. Preheat oven to 400. Add 1 2/3 cups hot water to 1 box stuffing mix; stir just until moistened. Set aside.
3. Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces & lay in bottom of 3-qt. or 9×13 baking dish.
4. In medium-sized bowl, mix 1 can cream of chicken soup, 1/3 cup sour cream, & 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella with thawed veggies.
5. Spread veggie mixture over chicken.
6. Top with prepared stuffing.
7. Bake 30 min. or until chicken is done through.

That’s it! I hope you liked “3 easy meals, 1 grocery list.” If you give any of the recipes a try, please post comments! I’d love to hear what you thought!