Easy Peasy Mac and Cheesy

I was going to call this "easy as box mac and cheese".....but I over think things....I'm not sure if it really is as easy as box...It takes about the same amount of time as the box mac and cheese.However, instead of waiting around for the water to boil and the noodles to cook you need to be grating cheese. So really it's only "takes the same amount of time as box mac and cheese", not quite the same ring to it.....

I told you I over think things.

It worked out well though, because I got to use rhyming words. I like rhyming words, they make me giggle.


Anyhoo, this is the only mac and cheese my kids will eat, and I have to thank my friend Stefanie for giving me the idea. She served something very similar for Easter one year and when she told me how simple it was (1lb noodles, 1lb cheese, butter, garlic salt, and pepper) I had to try it out. Of course I added a 16oz bag of frozen organic veggies, and sometimes I add other things*.

What you need:

1lb dried noodles
4 cups of shredded cheese (shred mine while I'm waiting for the water to boil)
16oz frozen organic veggies of any kind. (I have used broccoli, peas, mixed veggies, and even a bag of stir fry veggies.)
3tbs butter
garlic salt and pepper to taste

Here's the tricky part. Depending on the type of noodles you use and the type of veggies you use your cooking times/when you add the veggies will vary. I am calculating this for the cook times on the organic penne I bought, and the pea/carrot/corn mixture I bought. Please do your own math to adjust for different types of noodles and veggies. The penne had a 12 minute cook time and the veggies had a 6 minute cook time, so I just dumped the veggies in half way through. Twelve minutes might be too long for regular elbow macaroni noodles.

Boil the water and shred the cheese.

Add the noodles and cook for six minutes.

Add the veggies and boil for six more minutes.

Drain and return to pot.

Add the butter one tbs at a time and stir in the cheese a little at a time so it melts and doesn't turn into one big clump o' cheese.

Add garlic salt and pepper to taste.


My kids love this. I've even given it to their veggie hating friends with success. My kids won't eat box mac and cheese, so when I'm tired this is a great go to meal. It's easy, fast, cheap, and I usually have everything on hand. Make sure to use garlic salt instead of plain old salt, I believe that's what gives it flavor and turns it from noodles and melted cheese into a real dish.



*Variations include "chili mac", where I stir in leftover chili after I add the cheese, and "baked bean mac"....you get the picture.

Mommy Tip Monday: Fun Food, and Questions

When I look at bento boxes and the other fun lunches that my friends make for their children I get inspired. I don't know that the inspiration will ever lead me to as awesome of a creation as the ones they make, but it is there none the less. It often results in a smidge more effort on my part put into the little ones lunches.

When my daughter was younger, she could not be tricked or persuaded into eating. All my attempts were fruitless (haha get it, we are talking about food). She was a 42 year old New York City food critic trapped in a non verbal 23 month old body. Her looks said it all...."will not touch it, do not like it, don't even think I believe that pancake is supposed to be Mickey Mouse....because I'm not fooled". The look was often followed by a grunt and a tossing of food....sigh. Now that she is older I believe there is a direct correlation between the amount of food she eats and how cute/cool it is. So even if this method has not worked on your little one in the past, I encourage you to try try again.

I made this for her as a play on one of her favorite shows, Blues Clues. In one of the episodes Steve and Blue are shape searchers. I thought it would be fun to look for shapes in our lunch. Circle olives, circle pizzas, triangle cheese, square pretzels. Ohhhh and what's that I see over there.....
A clue!!! A clue!!!! What....you don't see it...that is clearly a paw print made of blueberries in a blue berry yogurt smoothie...aaah ok, now you get it. Good. My daughter was quite delighted to have a shape searchers lunch.

The smoothie is simply vanilla yogurt, blue berries, and lemon juice. It was thick enough to plop five blueberries on top and give it enough of a paw print shape that the kids were very excited to find it. I may have made some subtle subliminal suggestions to aid them ....."Oh look, a clue!"

Along these same lines, we also took a shape searchers walk. I let my four year old take her camera on the walk so we could take pictures of all the shapes we found. Also a blast....and also (if not food related) health related, because it got us out of the house and moving.

Do fun shapes encourage your kids to eat more? Any flops? What has worked to make your kids excited about food?

Black Bean and Avocado Tacos

This is another cold taco filling. It is very simple, and I encourage you to play around with the ingredients to suit your own tastes. It's still really hot outside here, so these were a refreshing break from warm food. I would write more, but I think my brain has already left for the weekend. Hope you are all having a great Friday.

2 cups black beans
1 washed peeled and diced avocado
2 tbs chopped cilantro leaves (or to taste)
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vinegar (apple cider)
1 tsp oil
1/4 tsp ground cumin
1/2 cup shredded cheese or "cheese"
1/2 diced onion (optional)
1 clove pressed garlic
salt, pepper, and hot sauce* to taste

Mix everything together in a big bowl and spoon into taco shells. Add extra taco fixins as desired. The hubster and I thought these were great plain. The filling tasted even better the next day.





*My personal belief is that you can never have too much hot sauce....unless it's in your eye. Then pretty much any amount is no good. Hot sauce haters may leave it out of this recipe if they so desire. :)

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

I don't think my daughter sleeps at night.....I think she lies in wait. The slightest post 3am sound will have her springing to feet and ready to start the day, complete with list of requests of things she would like to do do today (color a picture, eat some yogurt, ride a llama??). She does not get this from me. I roll out of bed and crawl to the kitchen where my automatic coffee maker has (hopefully) brewed me a cup of industrial strength coffee. In the event that the coffee pot has not begun it's daily duty I press the button, grab a mug, and lie on the floor in the kitchen groaning and mumbling to myself.

All that to say that today I am having a friends toddler over and I wanted to get my morning routine in before they got here. So I woke up at 5:30. I got in a devotional, one load of laundry, and 20 minutes of yoga before my daughter awoke and began to tell me her list....chocolate milk? Blues Clues? Play outside?....No, No, and maybe after bubby wakes up. I'd like to tell you what all this has to do with rhubarb Pie, but I can't....You see I started writing this at 6 this morning...that was two cups of coffee, three loads of laundry, 20 make and freeze veggie burgers, one craft and story time, and seven hours of babysitting ago.....I'm kind of lost as to where I was going with this...so who wants a vague outline on how to make this delectable dessert eh?

I use Alton Browns pie crust recipe, but I use all butter....instead of butter and lard....I can almost hear my father shouting all the way over in California "What's wrong with lard? Nothing, you were raised on it. I was raised on it, and your grandparents were raised on it too". If you can hear him just ignore him, replace the lard with butter. No offense taken I hope Gramma and Pop.

Instead of a pie tin, I put this into a greased 8x8 casserole dish.

Then I stir together 3 cups chopped rhubarb (make very sure that you don't get any leaves in there), 2 cup sliced strawberries, 1 cup of sugar, the juice of one lemon, and 6 tbs flour. This goes on top of the pie crust.

On top of that I mix up this strueselly stuff...about 2 tbs flour, mixed well into 4 tbs brown sugar, and I cut butter into it until it gets all crumbly looking. This is sprinkled on top. Cover with foil and it goes into the oven for about 50 minutes. Check it at 30 minutes though, I have been using frozen rhubarb, which I'm sure increases the cooking time. It will be bubbly and oozy and smell delicious.

You are supposed to let a pie cool.....that is the hardest part about making a pie, in my humble opinion. You can eat this straight away if you would like, I won't tell. :)

I made this for my husbands birthday. We also ordered takeaway from a Turkish restaurant. I thought you all might enjoy some pictures of our meal.

These were filled with cheese and fresh herbs, they came with a tangy yogurt sauce not unlike raita. I will try to recreate it soon.

I ordered a couple of appetizers as they had no vegetarian main course....this was their fried vegetable dish. It had a nice mild flavor, and lots of eggplant and onion. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
This was an eggplant relish of sorts, it was very tangy and salty. I mixed it with the veggies and stuffed it all into a pita.

Vegetarian Sushi Filling

The video card on our desktop is down, so no pictures today. But it got me thinking about what I could write about that I don't have pictures for. Sushi is a summer staple in our house. I used to make fancy sauces for it as well, but now with little man's soy allergies less so. There are many reasons for eating vegetarian sushi, pregnancy, allergies, avoiding unsustainable fishes. Whatever your reasons you need not be limited (although it's still tasty) to cucumber and carrot matchsticks.

Here are a few of my favorite sushi fillings, mix and match them as you like.

Spicy Thai cashews from Trader Joes

Green onion

Avocado

Tempura fried tofu

Tempura fried jalapeno peppers

Hot peppers of any sort

Tempura fried veggies

Cucumbers that have been marinated in rice vinegar

Spicy cucumber salad (diced cucumbers mixed with a dressing of yogurt, cayenne, rice vinegar and a smidgen of sugar....I will post a recipe for this later, you can also add diced jalapeno to this)

Cream cheese

Cream cheese mixed with wasabi

Cream cheese mixed with Thai sweet chili sauce

Lemon pepper tofu

Lemon pepper asparagus

Marinated tofu (in a mixture of teryaki sauce garlic and cayenne)

Spicy nuts (either cashews or macadamia) Nuts that have been chopped and mixed with salt and chili oil....yum!

Veggies! Of course of any sort, matchstick, marinated, grilled, fried, whatever you like...then mix them with any of the other above ingredients.

Some of my favorite combinations....

Fried tofu, jalapeno, cream cheese

wasabi cream cheese, green onion, avocado

cream cheese, green onion

avocado, jalapeno

Marinated tofu, grilled bell peppers

Garlic Ginger Grilled Zucchini Roll-ups

I would recommend this to a zucchini hater. I myself used to be a zucchini hater, but this recipe helped me change my mind. What I hated was the taste of raw zucchini, something about it totally grossed me out as a kid. Now that I have learned how zucchini caramelizes on the grill, and how well it works in veggie pancakes, I've been won over. If you are super zucchiniaphobic, you might want to start out by trying them in veggie pancakes and working your way up to these.

I made two types, one with feta for us adults, and one with cheddar for the kids. I'm not going to recommend the cheddar ones, the kids were ok with them.....but they don't know how wonderful feta is. However, because I didn't think to take pictures of the process until I had already rolled all of the feta ones, you will get pictures of the less tasty cheddar version. You can also add diced roma tomatoes, and chopped fresh herbs to the filling with very tasty results.

You will need one recipe garlic ginger butter , zucchini, and feta cheese. It's that simple!

Melt the garlic ginger butter.

Wash off the zucchini and chop off both ends. Slice it thinly lengthwise and brush it with the garlic ginger butter. Throw it on the grill until it has these little liney thingies, and is pliable...see picture below....
Line those babies up and sprinkle feta, diced tomatoes and whatnot over the top half of the zucchini.
Roll them up and serve immediately! Here's what the kids version looked like....
I served these along side manicotti. I found 1/2 of a box of manicotti noodles in my cupboard, and though I didn't have all the ingredients I normally use I improvised.....and it was a hit. My daughter raved that she loved "circle shaped spaghetti".....do you want to know what I did? I replaced the mozzarella with cheddar...not a huge leap, and I replaced the ricotta with.....beans....white beans.....and it was delicious. My husband said he liked it better than regular manicotti. All you do is drain and rinse one can of white beans, and throw it in the food processor. I added one clove of pressed garlic and seasoned it as I would ricotta (salt, pepper, oregano, and a dash of nutmeg). It was a little thinner than normal manicotti filling, but it was pretty tasty. I didn't get any good pictures (again I wasn't thinking) but I got a picture...which is about all you really expect from me by now isn't it? That's the game, set the bar low.;)

I made this dish out of mostly pantry and staples so I'm labeling it a pantry meal......because I can, because it's my blog. :)

Mommy Tip Monday: What your little ones should NOT be eating

I had a lot of plans for today. None of them involved a teething little man waking up at 5:30 and permanently attaching himself to my hip....but here I am. So here is the extremely abbreviated version of my blog.


Most of you probably know that it isn't safe to feed your children honey under the age of one, but did you know that maple and corn syrup fall into that category? This link will tell you more about why that is, and lists other foods that can be dangerous for your little one.


Here is a list of the top ten edible choking hazards for kids. Not included on the list, but also worthy of note are dried fruits, marshmallows, gummy candies, nut butters, stringy foods, whole olives, and melted cheese. Popcorn is especially dangerous, and there are so many other choices for healthy snacks, it's not worth the risk.



Other foods that you should avoid are sprouts, and obviously undercooked meats and eggs.

This is by no means a complete list, and foods to avoid/how long to avoid them can vary from child to child based on family history of allergies, among other things. So check with your pediatrician if you have any concerns.

Have a great Monday.