Actually … it feels more like summer.

Every year it surprises me how we seem to go straight from winter into summer.  What happened to spring?

Anyway, here we are in sprummer (summing?).  There are so many wonderful things about the the change in the weather.  We were finally able to get the garden planted.  We have been able to have “no car days” again.  :)  The grass is green.  And flowers are popping up everywhere.  Especially these lovely “yellow flowers” that cover our backyard:

Now some of you might call those “yellow flowers” dandelions, but in our house, they’re flowers.  :)  And as you can see we have a lot of them.  My daughter picked this beautiful bouquet for me and didn’t even make a dent in our lovely carpet of yellow flowers.  Sure, we could take steps to get rid of the dandelions in the backyard, but why would we want to do that.  There are so many fun things to do with dandelions in all their forms.  Who doesn’t love to make wishes on dandelions?  And lest you think our whole yard is an eyesore, we do control the weeds (in an environmentally responsible way) in the front yard.  We do live in the suburbs, so that’s to keep the neighbors happy.  :)

Besides enjoying the dandelions, it has been so nice to have the windows open and enjoy the fresh air.  My only problem with this weather is that I REALLY hate cooking in it.  Who wants to stand in front of a hot stove when it’s 80 degrees in the house?  Let alone turn on the oven!  During the warm months we definitely stick to quick stovetop dinners.  And I do my baking first thing in the morning!

So here’s a super-fast dinner you can make in the time it takes to cook pasta:

don’t listen to the towel – pies are for cold weather

Pasta with Broccoli

16 oz. whole wheat penne

1 bunch broccoli, chopped into bite-sized florets (save stalks for broccoli slaw)

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

1 tsp ground thyme

salt, pepper to taste

Optional: mozzarella or parmesan to grate over the top

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  While waiting for the water, melt butter in olive oil in a large skillet and saute the onion and garlic over medium heat until lightly browned, about 10 minutes.  Sprinkle with thyme and saute for one more minute.  Stir in broccoli.

Meanwhile, add pasta to the water and cook according to package directions.

Add about a 1/2 cup of the pasta water to the skillet and cook until the broccoli is bright green and crisp-tender.  Season with salt and pepper.

Drain your pasta and toss with the broccoli mixture.  Top with cheese and serve warm.

* This dish is also great with some toasted walnuts tossed in. *

Add some fresh veggies or a salad and you have a healthy dinner that doesn’t have you breaking a sweat!

It is finally starting to warm up around here and I am loving this warm weather!  The only drawback is that I do not want to turn on my oven.  That’s a problem when you’re trying to make all of your own food!

What to do when you want a healthy snack?  No-bake power bars!  These are perfect for before/after run snacks.

I’ve been making the peanut butter cookie clif bars from the power-hungry blog.  (pictured above) These are a great pre-workout snack.  Just enough protein and sugar to keep you going.  But the problem is that I really wanted a snack that I could send to school with the kids, too.  I don’t have time to be making TWO different snack options!

So, I’ve been experimenting with homemade Lara Bars.  Lara Bars are a great option if you need a quick snack.  Check the ingredient list – some varieties only have two ingredients!  Usually just dates and nuts.  AND I’ve discovered that wheat germ works in place of the nuts!

(ignoring the poor photography, these really are yummy!)

Chocolate Coconut Cookie Bars

Dates (I used 2 10 oz pkgs. which made about 10 bars)

Raw, Untoasted Wheat Germ (about a cup)

Coconut, 1/2 cup

Cocoa, 5-8 tbsp depending on how dark you want your chocolate

Vanilla Extract, 2 tsp.

Chocolate chips (optional)

Add dates to your food processor and pulse until crumbly.  Add about a half cup of wheat germ and remaining ingredients (except for the chocolate chips).  Pulse until combined.  Continue to add wheat germ until you have a mixture that you are able to smoosh together into bars.  If you add too much, the bars will be too dry to stick together; not enough and they’ll be too sticky.  This really depends on your dates, some brands seem to be drier than others.  I like Dole brand.

Once you have the desired consistency, add the chocolate chips and pulse once to combine.

Smoosh mixture into bars.  I use a square of wax paper so that I don’t get my hands sticky.

Enjoy!  Great energy bar for kids!  No sugar added!

Anyway, this is why I have been absent from the blog for so long!

So, I’m taking the day off!  The crazy rain cancelled running club for today and the twins are still in their pjs (and not likely to get out of them at this point since it’s 2:30 in the afternoon).  Even though I’m “taking the day off,” the kids still need to eat.  This is when doubling and tripling my recipes comes in handy!  So, here’s how I’m feeding my family with less than 30 minutes of work:

Breakfast: Cinnamon Rolls from the freezer – Freeze them before they rise and leave them to thaw overnight.  Put them in the oven first thing in the morning and everyone gets to wake up to the smell of cinnamon rolls!  Yum!

Lunch: Pizza Rolls

Friday night is always pizza night around here and last Friday I decided to make some extra dough and whip up some pizza rolls.  Same concept as cinnamon rolls and they’re great for lunchboxes.  Much less messy than pizza!  I made mine with just sauce and cheese, but I plan to add some more veggies next time.

I tripled my pizza dough recipe which made enough dough for a large pizza and three square pans of pizza rolls.

Pizza rolls

1 recipe pizza dough

veggilicious pasta sauce (or your favorite pizza sauce)

grated mozzarella, parmesan and cheddar

Roll out the dough into a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick.  Spread with sauce to within a 1/2 inch of the edges.  Sprinkle with cheese.  Roll up very tightly and crimp along the edge to seal.  Cut into 1 inch spirals.  Place in ungreased baking pan.  Let rise while you preheat your oven to 350.  Bake for 25-30 minutes.  Yum!  (If you’re freezing these, do so before baking and let thaw in the refrigerator before baking.  I like to add a little extra cheese sprinkled on top and broil for a minute at the end.)

Dinner: Taco Soup - Only takes about 15 minutes to throw together and it’s perfect for a cold and rainy day!

Look at the beautiful eggs you can create.  Paas has nothing on these.

BLUE: We filled a small pot with blueberries and put in enough water to cover them.  We let them simmer for a while and mashed the blueberries until the water turned blue.  Then we strained the blue water into a bowl and added a splash of white vinegar.  We put our hard-boiled eggs in to sit for a few minutes and they came out a beautiful shade of blue!

YELLOW: We boiled a small bowl of water in the microwave and then dumped in about half of a bottle of turmeric.  We stirred until it dissolved and added a splash of vinegar.  Let the eggs set and they turned a vivid shade of yellow.  (You could take them out earlier if you want a pastel yellow.)

GREEN: We tried in vain to dye the eggs with spinach until my son pointed out that we had yellow and blue that we could just mix together.  So, we dipped the eggs in blue and then in yellow.  It produced a pretty mottled green.

PINK: Those pale orange ones were supposed to be pink.  I tried boiling beet stalks, but they didn’t produce enough color.  I think you need to use the actual beet, but we had already eaten those.  :)  So, the orange is from the light pink beet water mixed with a little paprika.  (We’ll have to experiment more next year to find the right way to get that color.)  ** We plan to use the whole beet this year to get a more vivid color. **

One of my favorite things to make for holidays is a cheeseball.  For Easter, we make it into a bunny.

I could eat that whole bunny in one sitting.  This cheese ball recipe is super simple and it is so much fun to decorate.  Be creative with what you have on hand!  (It has also been made into a turkey for thanksgiving.)

1 pkg cream cheese

4 oz shredded cheddar cheese

about 1/4 of an onion, chopped (red works best)

splash or two of soy sauce (this is my secret ingredient to give it that nice smokey flavor)

Combine all in a food processor and blend until smooth.  Wrap in plastic wrap and shape into a ball.  Chill for at least an hour in the refrigerator (or 30 minutes in the freezer) and then decorate and serve.  I used red bell pepper for the nose, almonds for the teeth and eyes and dates for the ears.

Macaroon chicks.

My son added the little “peep” signs so that people would know that they were supposed to be chicks.  (Recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie.)

And no Easter would be complete without some carrot cake.  (The colored frosting on there is not 100% unprocessed.  I’m going to experiment with more natural decorations this year.  I was using up my food coloring.  :) )

Carrot Cake (don’t save this recipe just for Easter!)

** This recipe made two cakes – I frosted one and we had another unfrosted one that was a perfect treat to add to the lunchboxes. **

adapted slightly from a recipe found here

2 cups evaporated cane juice (or sugar/sweetener of choice)**

3/4 cup butter, melted

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup buttermilk

2 packed cups grated carrot

1 cup unsweetened coconut

1 20 oz. can crushed pineapple in juice (drained as well as possible)

2 cups white whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp salt

Frosting

1/2 cup butter

1 pkg cream cheese

1 tsp vanilla

2-4 cups confectioner’s sugar (add until desired consistency – I like a thick, less sweet frosting, so I use less)

Combine first 5 ingredients in mixer bowl.  Stir in the pineapple, carrots and coconut.  Whisk together your dry ingredients in a separate bowl and then combine with the wet ingredients.  Pour into two greased 9 inch round baking pans.  Bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (about 40 minutes).

To make the frosting, combine all ingredients in a mixer with the wire whisk attachment.  Whip until fluffy.

The original recipe said that this makes about 15 servings, but we got about 15 slices out of just one of the 2 cakes it made.  You really only need a small slice of this cake to feel satisfied.

** I’m not sure how liquid sweeteners would work out here.  If you want to try honey or maple syrup, you might want to only use that for part of the sugar (and decrease the amount of buttermilk you use).  If anyone experiments with this, please let me know how it turns out!

HAPPY EASTER!

While I don’t think my lunch menus are the most exciting around (have you seen some of the super-cute angry birds lunches made with babybel cheese?? I wish I were that creative!), I don’t want to give them the same thing every day.  About this time of the school year I start thinking how nice and easy it would be to just pick up a couple of lunchables.  But then I start thinking about all of the HORRIBLE things in those.  Not to mention the wasteful packaging.

Today I sent the kids to school with a healthy, quick lunch that’s still fun:

I made a big batch of these pizza muffins loaded with veggies and froze them so they’d be quick to put in lunchboxes.  Everything’s more fun with something to dip it in, so I added a small container of homemade pizza sauce.

A small container of edamame in the pod.  If you’re worried your kids won’t eat these, just show them how much fun it is to pop the beans out of the pods.  I still remember Tim cracking up telling me about eating these in the cafeteria and accidentally popping one out that shot across the room.  Maybe it’s a boy thing.  :)

And I added a little cutie in there.  So sad that it is almost the end of clementine season.

And in the waterbottle is WATER.  That’s all my kids get in their lunches.  On very rare occasions, they’ll get juice, but I really think that kids need to learn to enjoy drinking water.  There’s nothing better for you.

What kind of quick and healthy lunches do you pack for your kids (or yourself)?  

I could use a little inspiration right now.  They lunches are getting a little dull around here.  :)

Frozen chocolate pie.

Only 6 tbsp of sugar.  IN THE WHOLE PIE!

And if you drizzle some caramel sauce on it, it tastes a little like a girl scout samoa cookie!  :)

( I would have liked to show you a picture of the whole pie, but some little hands got to it too quickly. )

Frozen Coconut Chocolate Pie

based on a recipe found here

1/4 coconut oil, melted

2/3 cup toasted coconut*

1 cup ground almonds

1/2 cup flour

1 tbsp sugar

16 oz. extra firm tofu (I used what I had – any tofu would work, even silken)

1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp cocoa

5 tbsp honey

3 tbsp coconut milk

optional: caramel sauce

Combine 1/3 cup toasted coconut, melted coconut oil, ground almond and sugar in a small bowl.  Press into the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate.  Combine tofu, cocoa, honey and coconut milk in a food processor until very smooth.  Pour tofu mixture over pie crust and top with remaining toasted coconut.  Freeze until firm (about 4 hours – we didn’t exactly wait for it to be completely frozen before we tried it ).  Drizzle with caramel sauce to serve.

* Unsweetened coconut can be toasted in a skillet over medium heat.  It will just take a few minutes for it to start to brown.

Apparently people have decided that we need to get the food dyes removed from Kraft Mac and Cheese.  (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/mom-bloggers-yellow-dye-kraft-mac-cheese/story?id=18668692)

While I obviously don’t think that there SHOULD be dyes added to our food.  I just think things like this miss the point.  Is it really that important to us to be able to feed our kids a “healthier version of processed food”?

It comes with a package of powdered cheese mix.

While most of the ingredients may be innocuous and OK for us or our kids to be eating, wouldn’t you feel better just giving your kids real food.

Just plain old pasta and a cheese sauce made from actual cheese.  That’s pretty simple.  This is actual a pretty easy recipe.  Obviously making your own food is going to require more time and effort than opening a little flavor packet, but food shouldn’t be THAT easy.  I think as a society we’ve gotten this idea that food should be quick and easy.  But really of all the things to cut corners and save time on, do you really want to cut corners on your family’s health?

So, I’m posting my mac and cheese recipe again if you’d like to use a little common sense and make real food for your family.

I added some white stripes to our red strawberry hats to make the Cat in the Hat’s hat.  (Just whip cream cheese with a little vanilla and sugar to taste.)

Oranges in the fruit bowl turned into the Lorax.  This would be a fun snack on Earth Day as well!

And we had My Many Colored Days Rainbow Pasta Salad, which was sprinkled with truffala seeds of course.  :)  The great thing about a celebration like this is it doesn’t cost anything and it’s healthy.  And the kids thought it was great fun.  :)  They don’t care that this is the same pasta salad I make all the time.  The fact that I gave it a silly name to go along with the theme makes it fun.

Rainbow Pasta Salad

12 oz. pasta (cooked according to package directions)

4 stalks celery, thinly sliced

3 cups chopped broccoli*

1 red pepper, diced

1 can chick peas

4 oz. crumbled feta

6 tbsp. olive oil

4 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 1/2 tsp mustard (I used our homemade mustard, but any dijon would work)

1 tsp each of oregano and thyme

salt and pepper to taste

a sprinkling of truffala seeds

Toss pasta with veggies and feta in a large bowl.  Whisk together your dressing ingredients in a small bowl.  Pour over your salad and toss to coat.  Sprinkle with sesame seeds, if desired.

* If your kids don’t like raw broccoli, you can blanch the broccoli a bit by adding it to the pasta water for the last couple of minutes of cooking.

What silly holidays do you celebrate with your family?

So, being stuck in the house for the fourth day in a row with sick kids, leaving the house only to visit the doctor and buy sore throat supplies (frozen fruit pops, juice, etc.), I decided to do a little baking.

We all needed a little treat this morning.  :)  I threw in some mandarin oranges because they just seem sunny to me.  And my secret ingredient for dense, moist tea bread this morning??

TOFU

Yes, I used my “tofotta”.  I always use tofu instead of ricotta in lasagnas, but I haven’t had a lot of success using it in sweet recipes.  I think I can say this one was a success!  And it’s all whole wheat flour.  You can give this to your kids (and yourself ) for breakfast and feel good about it.  Feel free to increase/decrease the sweetener based on your family’s preferences.

Tofotta Mandarin Tea Bread

(makes two loaves)

1 14 oz package extra firm tofu

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups softened butter

1 cup evaporated cane juice

3/4 cup agave nectar (or honey)

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

3 1/2 cups flour (I used a mix of white whole wheat and whole wheat)

2 tsp cardamom

3 cups mandarin orange segments

Preheat oven to 350.

Puree tofu and 1 tsp salt in food processor until very smooth.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter with sugar, agave, tofu mixture and vanilla.  Incorporate eggs one at a time.

Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, powder and cardamom.  Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients.

Fold in mandarins.

Grease and flour two loaf pans.  Divide your batter between the two pans and bake for 60-75 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Enjoy!

The giveaway winner’s apron is on its way.  For those of you who didn’t win, don’t despair!  You can make your own!  I promise it is a very easy and forgiving project.  Trust me, you can do this!

Child’s Apron

(makes an apron suitable for toddler/preschool age – adjust measurements accordingly for older children)

Materials: 1/2 yd base fabric, 1/2 yd back fabric (and pocket), 2 yd. trim for ties

1. Cut your fabric pieces.  Cut one apron size piece in your base fabric 21″ long and 17″ wide coming in to about 6 1/2″ at the neck (start your taper up around 7″ from the top).  Curve the bottom of your piece to your liking.  Basically, make the piece look like an apron (I don’t follow patterns myself and there’s no need for a pattern for this, just make it look right!).

Now use that piece as a guide for cutting your other pieces.  Cut one piece in your backing fabric to match the base fabric.  Cut a pocket piece about 11 1/2″ long by 17″ wide (again, use your base piece as a guide).

2. Optional Step – Add applique or embroidery to your base fabric.  You could skip this step and just use two coordinating patterns for your base fabric and pocket fabric.

3. Pocket.  Fold and press the top seam of your pocket.  Stitch your hem closed.  Place your pocket on the base fabric and pin in place.  Decide where you want to divide your pocket.  I came in about 5″ on each side to give the apron three pocket, one large middle one and two narrower ones.

4. Assembling your apron.  Line up the front and back pieces of the apron, right sides together.

Cut your trim into three pieces – two 22″ pieces for the ties and one 26″ piece for the neck.

Insert the trim between the apron pieces and pin in place.  (Refer to pictures above and below.)

Sew all around the apron leaving a small opening for turning your project right-side out.

5. Turn your apron right-side out and it should look like this:

Tuck in your small opening:

Run another seam along the outside edge of your apron and your finished project will look like this:

I added a little bit of fray check to the ends of my ties.  The neck loop may seem long, but it makes it easier to put on a small child and you can always cinch it up a bit when it’s on.

There you have it!  A simple project for an afternoon.  It should make any little baker happy.

Please let me know if any part of these instructions is confusing!!  And if you do try this project, I’d love to hear how it turns out!

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