Flip!

Pancake-Flipper Extraordinaire...

and Daddy's helper :)

Christmas Cookie Time

Once a year, at Christmas, we go all-out with our cookie decorating! Mommy & whatever kids are home help me roll the sugar cookie dough & cut out our cookie shapes. After we bake them, Mommy makes special Royal Icing and colors them & puts the icings into piping bags.

This year, it was Reese, Daddy, Grammie, & I that did the cookie decorating & we had great fun. It was the first time Grammie had decorated cookies...can you believe it?

Reese chose the blue icing which had a small tip & it was kind of hard to squeeze out...

Here, Reese is working on Sant's special cookie...

The finished cookie was a tad...red....and Santa was very thankful Reese made such a special cookie with lots of icing & sprinkles of every variety!
We set a special table for Santa with his cookies & a plate full of carrots for the reindeer...

Time To Make The Brownies

Last weekend Reese asked if I would make brownies, but I didn't have any brownie boxed mix left, so we checked the pantry and did have ingredients to make them from scratch...

Not sure what's up with the smile, but I'll take what I can get!

So we put everything together, and Reese kept saying over and over again how glad he was that we had "scratch" to make the brownies with today!
In the end, he decided he didn't like them. They were very cocoa-y and not so chocolate-y. I will happily buy the boxed brownie mix in the future...way easier!

Time To Dye The Eggs...

Finally!

This year Reese wanted to help dye the Easter eggs!

Usually, he's not interested at all.

Just not a "crafty" type kiddo.

But for whatever reason, he wanted to

Do.It.All.By.Himself

this year!

He always makes me laugh...

he is so meticulous about things...

When I bought the egg dye kits, I don't know WHAT I was thinking.

I bought two kits.

One was a cute kit with smiley face stickers.

The other?

A kit that included GLITTER to shake your dyed eggs in.

I mean, who doesn't want glitter in the refrigerator,

and all over food they're about to eat?

Luckily, I was able to talk Reese out of the glitter pack and

we went with the smiley faces instead.

Which turned out darn cute!

Betcha' Didn't Know....

I betcha' didn't know that I think the Brownie Edge Pan is the greatest invention EVER (well, aside from the lightbulb, Diet Dr. Pepper, & the car seat...)

I only REALLY like the corners of the brownies, and the Edge Pan has 10 corners. Mmmmmm....

And when you're picking your way through a curvy brownie pan, it doesn't feel at all like you've eaten an entire box of brownie mix yourself in one day. I'm just sayin'....

Get one. You need it. Trust me.

Gingerbread Houses

This was the third year in a row that Reese had asked for one of those gingerbread house kits. Meh, I thought. If we're going to make a gingerbread house, we're doing it old school. Graham Crackers. Gooey icing. Tons of candies. Fighting as it falls fifty times into a gooey lump.

I figured, a kit? How lame!

Let me just say one word. Wrong!

I caved in a bought the $9.99 kit at WalMart when I was shopping one morning without Reese. I figured I'd surprise him with something he really wanted!

The kit contained pre-pressed/baked gingerbread parts for the house along with a man, woman, & tree shape. Plus a tube of icing & bags of various candies. There's no way I could have purchased all these parts for under $10.

And it came with the most nifty idea ever...a tray with little reservoirs to put icing into...it holds up your walls of the house so they don't fall!

The "icing" isn't really tasty icing. It's heavy on the corn starch, which makes for some great gingerbread house glue, but not so good for eating. The candies, however, were tasty!

Reese was really cracking me up with his design plan. His gingerbread house needed to look exactly like the one pictured on the box. Including the pattern of colored candies, the placement of certain types of sweets, & the number and order of colors of buttons on the gingerbread man!

I kept trying to encourage him to make his gingerbread house any way he wants. It doesn't have to look like the picture on the box at all! But he was steadfast in his design choices, so I began to look at it in a different light. This was some good work in visual skills and memory skills! Using the house on the box as a model, Reese picked the candies that matched, the colors that matched, & placed them the same way. If it wasn't the most creative house from his brain, it was at least a good opportunity to practice some visual skills! :)

These lovely things kept rolling all over the floor....

Luckily, Zoe the Wonder Dog thought manna was raining from Heaven and happily crunch-crunch-crunched her way around the table as we decorated...

Reese loved his finished product, and Mommy thought the gingerbread house kit was pure genius. Nothing fell. Nothing dripped. It was a very easy, fun craft project!

**And for what it's worth, the gingerbread cookie recipe tastes good. Reese has eaten the chimney, the Gingerbread Man's head, & the corner of the roof!

Gifts To Make: Chocolate Lollipops

Chocolate Lollipops

Check out this fun project! Reese & I made these chocolate lollipops as a test-run for some Christmas gifts for our CoOp friends. You could use chocolate molds if you had them, but we had fun making our free-form circles.

What you'll need:

*Milk Chocolate melting chips
*Lollipop sticks
*Plastic bags for wrapping
*Squeeze bottle or Ziplock baggie
*Sprinkles

---

What To Do:

*Line a few cookie sheets with tin foil.

*Follow instructions for melting chocolate pieces. We put ours in a ziplock baggie, closing the bag almost completely, leaving about 1 inch open at the top. Making sure the baggie is standing upright, we microwaved the chocolate at 30 second intervals on 50% power until completely melted.

*Either pour chocolate into squeeze bottle (probably easier for little hands to control) or cut 1/4 inch off corner of your Ziplock baggie.

*Lay a lollipop stick on top of the tin foil and make a circle with your melted chocolate. We found it easiest to make a circle outline first & then let little hands fill in the circle with chocolate. As you're filling in the circle, twist the lollipop stick around to keep it held in place once the chocolate hardens.








*Before your chocolate cools, sprinkle your decorations on top of the lollipops.





*Refrigerate until hardened. Using candy wrap, secure each chocolate pop into a wrapper & close with ribbons.

Who Loves Freecycle??

Last week on Freecycle, someone was giving away "2 Huge Pumpkins"... Turns out they were really huge pumpkins! We weighed them, and they came in at 35lbs and 28lbs. Wowza!

We can't get enough of roasted pumpkin seeds in our house, so Reese & I pulled out all the seeds from the pumpkins and had well over 5 cups. If I were a bit more ambitious, I would have cooked down all that pumpkin, but instead Jeff threw them in the woods behind our house for the critters to eat.

You just never know what you'll find on Freecycle!

Breakfast For A Crowd: Ham & Eggs On Croissant

Ham & Eggs On Croissant

Treat your guests on Thanksgiving morning to a yummy breakfast dish with this easy, quick recipe! My casserole is simple enough for teenagers to tackle on their own, and fun enough to involve little ones as well.

Ingredients:
1 can (8oz) refrigerated crescent rolls
1 pkg (about 8 oz) cubed ham
6 eggs
1/2 cup skim milk
1/2 tsp pepper
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

*Heat oven to 350 degrees. Unroll dough in 13x9 in baking dish. Pinch seams together so there are no holes in the dough.

*Sprinkle ham cubes on top of dough.
*In a bowl, beat eggs, milk, & pepper until well blended.

*Pour egg mixture over ham.

*Sprinkle cheddar & mozzarella cheeses over the top.

*Bake for 30 minutes or until center is set. Let cool for 5 minutes before slicing into squares.

Breakfast for a crowd, made for relatively cheap, & filling enough to hold everyone for a few hours until you can get the turkey to the table!

Take Me On A Tour: Great Harvest Bread Company

We're lucky to be surrounded by creative Mamas who invite us along for their adventures! Tuesday, Mrs. Renee set up a tour of the Great Harvest Bread Company & we tagged along to check it out. Our CoOp group went last year, but we were out of town and missed the tour, so I was excited to finally check it out!

Great Harvest is a small bakery & store front, but it's a passion of the owners, Craig & Shelley. In college, a bakery opened next door to Shelley's dorm and she dreamed of owning her own bakery some day. She & her husband have done a great job with Great Harvest!!

Our first stop was the store front, where we had a quick discussion about being "in" the working bakery! Things are hot & to be safe, everyone walked through with their hands behind their backs.

We went all the way to the back, into the milling room. Great Harvest grinds all their own wheat, and we learned the different stages of the process...from wheat to wheat berries to flour to bread!

Mr. Craig comes to work six days a week at 4am to grind the wheat daily!

After grinding the wheat, it is quite hot at about 150 degrees. If left to sit, it would cook itself. So they use these large copper tubes to mash around the huge tub of freshly ground flour. The heat from the flour goes into the copper tubing, allowing the flour to cool quickly.

From the milling room, we went to the mixing room! The mixer looked just like our stand mixer at home, except SUPER sized! By the time the dough is mixed in the huge bowl, it weighs as much as 3 children. Good thing the bowl is on wheels...

I had a proud Mama moment in here. When asked about yeast & what it does, Reese piped up "It makes bubbles in the dough." That's right baby! All our attempts at making bread taught you something more than just the fact that yo' mama can't make bread!

One of the ingredients in the Great Harvest breads is honey. In a bee's lifetime, it will make just 1/4 teaspoon of honey total. So to get this HUGE barrel of honey, it took the lifetime work of 500,000 bees. Holy cow. Thank you, bees!

The dough goes from the mixing room to the kneading tables. The Kneading Lady puts out about 100-150 loaves a day...all kneaded by hand. I bet she never has a jar lid that's stuck, because she's got to have some amazing hand/arm muscles!

The oven was across from the kneading table & was truly a work of art. Here, you see children on the left, floor-to-ceiling oven on the right. It measures 12x12x12. There are 8 "shelves" that move around the center pole like a ferris wheel.

I see some yummy cranberry loaves baking!

I had to get a picture of this timer! All the knobs & dials...oh wow! Mr. Craig uses the black & red dials for the breads, and the green & yellow dials are for the bakers making sweets.

At the end of our tour, we got to taste some samples!!!

You can't beat a slice of freshly baked wheat bread....

But who could just stop at a slice of bread? Reese picked a pumpkin-chocolate chip muffin out of the case & dug in...boy was it tasty!

Great Harvest Bread Company is truly a labor of love & well worth a visit!

Election Day!

We started the morning with:

Flag Pancakes

Presidential Scrambled Cheesy Eggs

Let's just hope the results tonight make us as happy as this breakfast did!

I Have A Weapon In My Pantry...

No, it's not a gun. Don't worry, T. :)




You see, my sweet boy refuses to drink milk. When he was about 22 months old, we went on a trip to Cancun. Mommy bought some "milk" from room service, and it was NOT what we expected. It was fresh, but definitely not the American milk Reese was accustomed to. Ever since that trip, he has flat out refused to drink milk.




Every now & then, he'll ask for hot chocolate, but a "cup of milk" is never consumed at our home. So what's a mom to do?




Well, I put milk in anything I can find...I make his Malt-O-Meal with all milk instead of water. I add cheese slices with extra calcium into his Mac&Cheese. He takes calcium vitamins. He loves mashed potatoes, and when Jeff watched Unwrapped on Food Network and found that instant potatoes were 100% real potatoes, just dried, I keep instant potatoes on had and make them with lots of milk. But I've always felt it just wasn't enough...




A light bulb went off one day. I had some instant milk in the pantry that I needed for a bread recipe. And I got to thinking....why can't I just sprinkle this stuff into his dishes? And it's worked like a charm.




Where do I sneak in the powdered milk? Let's see...



*Mix in a BIG helping into Mac&Cheese. Add some extra-calcium cheese slices, pureed carrots & more milk and you've got a really healthy option! It has a creamier texture but tastes exactly the same.




*Instant mashed potatoes...another BIG helping. It does not change the flavor at all (maybe makes it a tad sweeter?) and Reese will gobble this down. None the wiser!




*On PB&J sandwiches, I sprinkle some on the peanut butter part. I thought the texture might crunch a little, but he's never said a word. And he is very picky about textures.




*Spaghetti sauce. No change in texture or taste!




*Casseroles like King Ranch Chicken & Baked Ziti...I throw it in with the sauce mixture & nobody knows any different!




*Pancakes, mix a big scoop in with the batter. It makes the batter a little thicker, but just add a bit more liquid (I use milk!) and you can't tell it's there.




*Ketchup...yes ketchup! I sprinkled a little on, mixed and mixed. There were still a few visible pieces of milk, which Reese wasn't sure about. I told him it was a bit of the cornbread from his corndog that I had dipped in, and he didn't bat an eye after that.




*Any muffins...didn't change the end result.




*Grilled cheese sandwich. Sprinkle on the cheese before you melt it.

*Meatloaf. Throw a little in with the mix before you bake it.




I think you get the idea. Things like sandwiches & ketchup get just a little (maybe 1/4 tsp at most), but dishes like mashed potatoes & pancake batter get a big scoop (about 1/4 cup). With the Carnation Instant Milk, 1/3 cup powder is equal to an 8 oz glass of milk. I know the sprinkles here & there aren't much, but anything I can do adds up in the end!



Between his vitamins, things that are already fortified, & the Instant Milk added to things, I feel like we're covering our bases pretty well now.

I was explaining my new found weapon to Jeff the other day, and he said "Oh yea. Bodybuilders have done that for years. Great way to get extra protein." Guess I didn't really come up with anything new :)

It's Pumpkin Time....Already?

Thanks to my wonderfully thoughtful & sentimental neighbor, T, we received three awesome big pumpkins at CoOp last week. I mean, do you know anyone who orders a truckload of 100 pumpkins simply to share with friends & neighbors...just because it's Fall and she loves Fall? That T, she's one awesome cookie....

Anyway...Reese wanted to carve a pumpkin right away, even though I explained that it would definitely not last until Halloween if we carved it now. "No, Mommy, I'd like to carve one today!" I'd been craving some pumpkin seeds since Wednesday anyway, so I couldn't argue too hard!

Reese wanted a scary face, so Daddy drew one big, bad, mad pumpkin face....Yes, dear child, wave that pumpkin saw high in the air!

Still clutching the pumpkin saw...Reese & Mommy carve the pumpkin together!

Some pumpkin carving faces....

I was trying to get a good "Say Cheese!" photo of Reese with the pumpkin.
Attempt #1:

Attempt #2:
Attempt #3: (We're getting closer!)
Attempt #4: (I give up)
After our carving, Reese helped mix butter, sugar, & pumpkin pie spices with the seeds. We popped them in the oven for about an hour, & YUMMO!