Letter Biscuits!

This morning, we decided to practice our letters with our breakfast!  We made letter biscuits!  After we made the biscuit dough (we used this recipe from Kitchen Simplicity), werolled it out and used cookie cutters to cut some letters.  These might be the yummiest letters we have practiced with!

Look at all those yummy letters!

Taking the first bite (and not happy about the camera)!

 What yummy ways do you practice letters?

Homegrown Salad

Our tomatoes are starting to ripen in our garden!  I love biting into a tomato that is still warm from the sun.  It doesn't get much fresher than that!

Since we are getting more tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden, I wanted to make a simple salad that Little Guy could help with.  So we made a cucumber salad.  However, this is not just any cucumber salad, it is a star shaped cucumber salad!

Tomatoes, fresh from the garden.

Working hard to punch out stars!

Little Guy worked hard on stars (and he only ate about 1/4 of them)!

Look at the cute little stars!

Cucumbers are ready.

Stir it together.

Yummy!

We added a little bit of Italian dressing and some Parmesan cheese when we were ready to eat!  What a fun way to eat some vegetables!

What have you made with your homegrown produce?

Our garden...an update

Remember way back in June when we planted our vegetable garden?  Here's an update to how it looks now!

Our garden!

Daddy made the tomato cages out of PVC pipes.  We didn't get the cages in until kinda late, so that is why a couple of the tomato plants never got very tall.

What we have harvested so far:

• several cucumbers
• 2 big tomatoes
• a dozen-ish cherry tomatoes
• a handful of yellow pear tomatoes
• 2 jalapenos
• 2 orange snack peppers

Our first cucumber!

Our peppers, a cucumber, and a few tomatoes that made it into the house.

We have a lot of green tomatoes on the plants still, so I hope that warm weather holds out until they ripen!

Little Guy has loved helping to pick things from the garden, especially the cherry tomatoes.  When we pick them, we can usually get a small handful at a time.  Little Guy has been loving this so much that the tomatoes usually don't make it into the house...he's eaten them all before we get inside! 

Our sunflower plants finally bloomed! Remember way back in May when Little Guy and I started these plants out as seeds?  They have just grown and grown, and now are taller than all of our other plants and me! 

Our sunflower.

How is your garden?

4 Easy Ingredients for Airplane Snack Mix

One way for Little Guy to help us get ready for our first trip was to make "Airplane Snack Mix."  Really, there is nothing overly special about this snack mix, except that we made it just for our trip.  Little Guy loves to help stir things in the kitchen, so this was a fun activity for him.

The ingredients for our snack mix were:

• Honey Nut Cheerios
• Goldfish (the colorful ones, to make eating more fun!)
• pretzel sticks
• chocolate chips

 

 I measured poured some of each into a measuring cup for Little Guy to pour into the big bowl and stir. 

 When he was all done stirring, he used the measuring cup to pour some into 3 bags: 1 for Mommy, 1 for Daddy, and 1 for Little Guy.

When we ate our Airplane Snack Mix, Little Guy didn't remember there were chocolate chips in it, as they had all fallen to the bottom.  Once he discovered them, he started to dig through the snack mix to find them!

What snack mixes have you made lately?

Ginger snaps

Yesterday Little Guy and I made gingersnaps.  These are not a cookie that I typically bake.  I used a mix to make the dough (after the sale price and a coupon it was free!), then Little Guy and I set to work.  Since he is used to playing with playdough, I thought this would be a fun cookie for us to make.  We had to roll the dough into little balls and then smoosh them with the bottom of a glass.

I can make a snake with the dough!

This dough is fun!

Working hard to smoosh the dough balls!

I want to do more!

 

Mmmm...gingersnaps.

Of course, when the cookies were done baking, we had to sample them.  This was Little Guy's first gingersnap.  I think he liked them!

I like this cookie!

More, please!

What have you made lately!

Sugar cookies

When I was growing up, making sugar cookies was part of our holiday traditions. My mom would make the dough, we would help cut out lots of shapes with all our fancy cookie cutters, then the decorating would begin. We would have sprinkles, icing, and candy and would make lovely cookies.  I look back on this as an importation part of the holidays and a way to stay connected with my family.

This is a tradition I definitely want to keep up with my family.  So I made some dough, and Little Guy and I set to work.  This year, Little Guy and I only made cookies, no decorating.  Next year I hope to give frosting a try!

I am a good dough-roller!

This is so fun!

I can use the cookie cutters, too!

Whole wheat pancakes with sweet potato puree

So I have written previously about how I like to pack Little Guy's food with goodness. I have made Veggie Muffins several times (last time I made a double batch so they would last longer) and Broccoli Bites (I put chicken in some of these to add a little extra protein. I am also going to try making a small batch with cauliflower instead).

I wanted to make pancakes that were really nutritious too. Pancakes are super easy for us in the morning for Little Guy, since we are trying to get out of the house to get to school.  I can make a batch of these over the weekend, then freeze them and thaw enough for breakfast that morning.

Whole Wheat Pancakes with Sweet Potato Puree

 This recipe makes about 36 silver dollar sized pancakes.

 1 cup whole wheat flour

1 Tbs brown sugar

 2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup sweet potato puree

1 cup milk

 2 Tbs oil

1. Combine the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Make a well in the center, set aside. Combine the sweet potato puree, milk, and oil. Add sweet potato mixture to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened. Add additional milk to thin out batter, making it pancake consistancy, if necessary.

2. Pour desired amount of batter onto hot greased skillet. To make silver dollar sized pancakes, pour about 1/8 cup batter per pancake. Turn over when batter bubbles on top. Cook 1-2 minutes on second side.

Here is the pancake batter.

Look at those yummy pancakes!

Mmmmm, mommy! These are good!

Fall activities

Yesterday we did two fun fall activities. First, we made a fall snack mix. Then we raked and played with leaves.

We made snack mix for Little Guy's teachers at school. I thought it would be a fun treat for them right before Thanksgiving and it was something that Little Guy could easily help with. I got the idea from this website, found on Pinterest.  In our snack mix we included:

• Corn Chex
• Cheese crackers
• Crunch'N'Munch
• Pretzels
• Reece's Pieces
• Candy corn
• Chocolate chips

I would pour an item into a measuring cup, then Little Guy would dump it into the big bowl. After we added all the ingredients, we mixed it all up with our hands. Little Guy really liked helping to scoop the mix into jars! We made enough mix to even give daddy his own jar!

I love scooping! Franklin the Turtle is helping me!

Don't these jars look pretty!

Later in the afternoon, we went into the front yard.  We only have 2 smallish trees in the yard, but they sure put out a bunch of leaves!  So mommy started to rake, and Little Guy roamed the yard.  He played with his little pumpkin from Halloween for a little while, and even helped mommy with the leaves a few times.  He would get big handfuls and try to put them in the bags.

Here are some leaves, Mommy! Where is the bag?

This is a lot of leaves!

Help me out of the leaves!

It was much harder to rake while keeping a 17 month old entertained!  What fall activities are you up to?

Food

I am trying to make lots of food for Little Guy to eat. He is really a great eater, but I am also strategic in the order I feed him. Veggies get served first, then other foods except bread. Sometimes I hold cheese back too, because he loves to eat bread and cheese and will pick them out of the other things. Recently this recipe for broccoli bites was shared with me. I made these up and Little Guy seems to like them! I think they will be great for taking to school.

I tried another new recipe yesterday.  This was for Veggie Muffins. I figure if I can get Little Guy to eat a few extra veggies, its worth the try. Who knows, maybe even Daddy will like them!

Here they are, fresh out of the oven!

I made shallow muffins, so they would be just the right size for Little Guy.
And the verdict is...

Mmmmm!

He liked them!