Fun with Watermelon

I'm not very good at making sugar cookies, in fact I have done it only once with my children. But I love our cookie cutters and wanted to put them to good use, so we used them on our watermelon yesterday. The kids loved it! The only bad thing about it was that my 3-year-old didn't want to eat the watermelon that surrounded his new creation. Oh well, more for me.

Two years ago I saw a fantastic idea in the Family Fun magazine to have a watermelon carving contest.  We carved one and the result was even creepier than the orange counterparts.  Our neighbors all commented on our creation.  Gutting the watermelon was a sticky mess, but the results were worth it.

Mini Muffins

Here is a short post in praise of my newly discovered kitchen wonder-- muffins.  Mini muffins.  They are just the right size for me children to eat, and they are easy and fun to do.

I love making Whole Wheat Bread, but lately I have had a hard time getting around to it.  Every step is easy, but there are so many steps!  Grind the flour, let the yeast sponge, mix the ingredients, punch down the bread, preheat the oven, and finally cook it it.  Enjoy it we do, but I have to dedicate about 3 hours to the process.

Mini-Muffins are the new bread lately.  I mix the ingredients easily by hand, cook them for 12-14 minutes, and there is a nice, healthy treat to enjoy.  My recipe is based on the white and red checkered Better Homes and Garden cookbook I got when I was married.

It is very versatle and I have made many variations, but pictured above,

• 3 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 2/3 cups sugar (I usually use brown sugar but slipped this time)
• 4 tsp baking powder
• A dash of salt (about 1/2 tsp)
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups of milk (I'm still using up some canned powdered milk)
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• Two small handfuls of freeze-dried blackberries, hand crushed
• A small dab of water so the berries wouldn't dry out the batter.

Mix all the ingredients, grease the pans, put a dab in each pan (about 2/3 full, doesn't have to be exact) and cook for about 12 minutes.  Makes 48.  I love my recent investment so I can make all 48 in one batch.  24 for devouring immediately, and 24 to munch on during the day.  Rinse and repeat, this is a favorite around here lately.

My children LOVE the small size, it's just right for them.  They don't ask for jam or any other topping, so clean-up and distribution are easier than sandwiches.  They especially like to have tea parties or picnics, when I serve it with juice, bite sized fruits and vegetables, and/or nuts.

Homemade powdered laundry soap

The short version:

• 1 cup borax
• 1 cup washing soda
• 1 bar of Dr. Bronner's peppermint castile soap, shredded.

Mix ingredients, use 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) per load.

The longer version: (i.e., why I love it!)
 
I have been making laundry soap for a few years now, and originally I used this recipe.
Because all of the ingredients were low-sudsing, it has worked great in our HE washer.  And it's CHEAP!  Recently we have been re-evaluating our laundry choices because of the Borax ingredient.  Do a search for "dangers of borax" and you can see what I am talking about.  I did a search for "homemade laundry soap without borax" and came up with a recipe that uses Dr. Bronner's castile soap.  I grew up using his castile liquid soap for hand soap, and I love the way that it smells.  What is castile soap?  It is an old fashioned way of making soap with vegetable fats instead of animal fats.  It is real soap!  No synthetic ingredients.  Here are the ingredients for the bar soap we use, which I took off of Dr. Bronner's page:
INGREDIENTS:
Organic Coconut Oil*, Organic Palm Oil*, Sodium Hydroxide**, Water, Mentha Arvensis*, Organic Olive Oil*, Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Organic Peppermint Oil*, Salt, Citric Acid, Tocopherol
* CERTIFIED FAIR TRADE INGREDIENTS
** None remains after saponifying oils into soap and glycerin

I feel REALLY good about using coconut oil to wash our clothes!  Some people love how Fels-Naptha smells.  I really don't.  Ivory worked just fine for us.  But this stuff smells like heaven!  During my use of this batch, our clothes have come out cleaner, with just a hint of peppermint in our regular loads.  But the best part is when I use it for my cloth diapers.  No, they don't come out smelling like peppermint, BUT they actually don't stink while they are washing.  Previously in our new apartment, where the washer is so close to the kitchen, I would wait until we went to bed to put the diapers in the wash, or at least right after a meal so that we could evacuate the premises during the stinky "necessary evil".  Now I can wash diapers whenever I want, and I don't have to apologize when company comes.  You can achieve similar results by adding essential oils to your laundry soap.  However, I love that the oils are built into the soap.  I really enjoyed grating this bar.  :o)  In addition to peppermint, they have almond, baby mild, orange, lavender, eucalyptus, rose, and tea tree.  Some are better than others for laundry, but they would all be fun to try! 

My take on Borax
I have also decided that I personally don't mind using Borax for our family to wash with.  I talked to my mother about it, and she told me a story that she recently heard about a man who read who was told all of the dangerous things about the light-bulbs that he was using, in favor of a more natural light bulb.  He responded, "Thank you for this valuable information.  I will now stop grinding up my light-bulbs and putting them in my coffee."  Borax is a detergent, and a natural one.  When my soap-making friends do their magic, they wear safety goggles and gloves.  The scary things that have been written about borax have convinced me not to make slime with it to play with my children, but my family has benefitted from using borax for generations, and none of us have had birth defects or fertility problems.  Use the product as directed and use common sense!   My initial response to the fact that borax is illegal in certain parts of Europe is that Comfrey is illegal to sell for consumption here in the states.  Europe is as vulnerable to shady legislation as the states.  Perhaps this is a soap-box moment from an un-educated scientific background, and so be it.  I don't have time to become an expert.  Borax is cheap.  Borax is effective.  Borax works for my family.  Besides, the only people who have told me how dangerous borax is are people who were trying to sell me their laundry detergent.

This homemade powdered laundry soap is very green, especially when you think about all of the plastic containers that I'm not buying.  All of my ingredients are purchased in paper.  It also saves a lot of green.  And yes, it really does get your clothes clean.  I am just glad that I don't have to boil the soap over water and let it soak overnight anymore.  Grate the soap, mix the ingredients, and you are done!  Enjoy!

 Please note:  I was not paid in any way to for my endorsement of Dr. Bronner's products, or from borax and washing soda manufacturers.  This really is just a happy customer blogging about a cool product.

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Carmel Popcorn

We recently discovered a super-yummy popcorn recipe from mmmreport.blogspot.com.  We have made it twice, and our family has fallen in love with it.  Instead of processed sugar, it uses honey, which is perfect!  We adapted her recipe yesterday for our air popper, and it turned out great.

1/2 cup popcorn kernels
5 Tb butter
1/3 cup honey
Raisins
Salt to taste

Pop the popcorn and add a couple handfuls of raisins.  Next time we are going to try broken banana chips and walnuts.
In a saucepan, warm butter and honey and mix thoroughly.  Drizzle over the popcorn and stir.  Add salt to taste.  We love Farley's salt, available at replenishingpress.com.  Farley is my dad.  :o) 

Yesterday we forgot to add the salt at first, and when we started eating it was too sweet.  The salt makes a BIG difference.  This popcorn is very sticky/greasy, so be prepared for that.  I tried putting some of it in the fridge for awhile, and that seemed to help, but good luck having enough leftovers after the initial plunge.  It is REALLY yummy.  My husband doesn't care much for popcorn, but he loves this stuff.

My children love making popcorn with me.  We always sing Popcorn Popping as soon as the kernels start to pop.  I let them pour the kernels into the popper, and add the raisins.  My son loves to spray the salt.  This is a great "snack time" treat to involve the little ones.  Give everyone their own bowl or plate, because there will be a lot of finger licking!

Toddler Lunch Idea

Yesterday when we got home from church I realized that we didn't have any clean plates or bowls and my kids were hungry.  It was time to use a snack-time idea that I saw on a video awhile ago and pull out the ice trays.  It was such a big hit that I am going to do it more often, even when the dishes are clean.  :o)

My children usually do not finish eating everything on their plate, but they ate really well with the tray.  They thought that the little compartments were really neat.  The video that I saw recommended using ice trays to introduce new foods to small children.  Most of the food is something that they already love, and only one tray has the new food.  You can also put chunks of meat and entree leftovers in them.  I didn't do that this time, but it is something to consider.  My tray had banana slices, cheese stick slices, craisins, freeze-dried strawberries, apple chunks, walnuts, and a couple of pretzels.  We are trying to cut back on dairy in general, and this way my son was content to have less than a whole cheese stick all by himself.

(He's not really making faces at you.  He was told to smile for the camera and was making a smile.)

Mommy, what happens to fish in the winter?

Well, it's a good thing that ice floats, or they would all be dead.  Luckily, what happens is that they just keep swimming and and living during the winter as they do in the summer, but the lake freezes on top.  Yesterday we illustrated this with a tasty treat, albeit with foods containing food coloring and corn syrup, which are usually avoided in this house.
We made blue jello and added Swedish fish.  If you add them right away, they will all sink to the bottom, so it's best to let the jello set a couple of hours before adding them.  My husband is the one who put the fish in, and he said that after some experimentation, the cleanest way to put the fish in was to make a slit in the jello with a butter knife and then push the fish in with the knife.  When the jello was ready we pulled it out compared our treat to fish in a lake during the summer.

In the winter, the surface of the lake sometimes freezes, and then is covered in snow.  If the ice is strong enough, people sometimes go ice fishing.  Our snow and ice was demonstrated with whip cream.  The children loved it!

Snack Time!

Inevitably when you have children, at some point in time, they are going to want to eat. This inclination does not always fall during mealtimes, and so, snack time was born. This newsletter highlights some of the things I feed my children when they are hungry.

Banana Cones

 For my children, it seems like one of the biggest attractions of ice-cream cones is the opportunity to eat the cone! I recently came up with a healthier alternative that holds as much appeal. I cut a banana in half and place the middle of the banana in the cone. If I have any other fruit lying around, I will accent the banana with it. Strawberries are pictured here, but raspberries and cherries work great too. The crunch of the cone combined with the creamy banana is also yummy on its own. My children love it!

Edible Play Dough

This is one of my favorites that my mom used to make for me. It is made with a mixture of half-and-half peanut butter and honey. Then, to make it less sticky, mix with powdered milk until you have the desired dough-consistency. Because of the strong flavor of the dough, and the price of the ingredients, I do not suggest large serving sizes, especially for smaller children. I have taught my husband how yummy the peanut butter and honey combination is, and when he wants a snack, he will often make this dough without the powdered milk. Sometimes he will add nuts, raisins, and craisins.

You can take this dough-play a step further by adding other ingredients. My son loves poking raisins in his dough, and he tells me that they are rocks. Carrot sticks, celery, chocolate chips, and apple slices have also been used.

Once I tried to recreate the Marshmallow Buildings  project with this dough and pretzel sticks. It didn't work. The dough wasn't sturdy enough to support the structures, but it was still tasty! I did this experiment with my younger siblings, and porcupines, bridges, teepees, and hot dogs were the successful ventures. Pictured here is an animal of some sort.

Other Snacktime Ideas

• Coordinate your snacks with story time. We recently made muffins after reading If you give a Moose a Muffin.
• Come up with your own concoction to go with other school activities. For example, see our Frog Swamp Soup.
• Make a trail mix with nuts, dried fruit, and maybe a little chocolate.
• Dip carrot sticks or apple slices in peanut butter.
• Take the traditional PB&J to the next level by cutting out the sandwiches with cookie cutters. For a less messy alternative, cut single slices first, and then add the topping. In our home, Mommy's share is the crust.
• Use all of those yogurt lids you have accumulated as snack time plates. We buy yogurt by the quart, and one day I was looking at the 50+ lids I had stacked up and realized that I had struck a goldmine.

Whole Wheat Bread

My 100% Whole Wheat Bread recipe

When our bread maker broke down we stopped making bread, but we really missed that rich texture we had grown to love. I started experimenting with making bread, but it seemed that it would only turn out right if we used white flour, and we wanted to use our wheat and have that nutrition. I finally discovered that gluten is the secret ingredient for fluffy bread when you use only whole wheat. I found a recipe I liked online, and changed it a bit to better fit our needs. Whenever I make this recipe for rolls at parties, I get a lot of compliments, and in our home it is loved by all. Enjoy!
Ingredients

• 1 1/2 tablespoons of yeast
• 2 1/2 cups of warm water
• 6-8 cups of whole wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon of salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of gluten
• 1/3 cup of oil (we usually use olive oil, but coconut oil was really yummy too!)
• 1/3 cup of molasses (you could also use honey)

Step one

Put 1 1/2 tablespoons of yeast in a large bowl. Pour the water over it, and dump 2 cups of flour on the water mixture. Do not stir, but let it sponge for 15 minutes.

Step two

Stir with a kitchen mixer, then add salt, gluten, oil, and molasses. I find it helpful to pour the oil in first and then use the same container for the molasses. The oil makes the molasses pour out really slick. Stir again. Notice the dark color of the dough. It will be much lighter if you use honey. I like to use molasses because it's cheaper than honey, and it is rich in iron, which is something I really need with my pregnancies. My husband doesn't usually care for molasses, but he prefers it in my bread.

Step three

Add as much flour as you can stir in with the mixer, about two cups. Set the mixer on its side, and add two more cups of flour. Then have an extra cup of flour ready to go as your hands will be sticky. THEN take the mixers off. You will have messy hands after you pull the dough off the mixers, and you will have messy hands as you knead the dough.

Step four

I used to be really intimidated on what kneading was, and how to do it properly. Kneading really is just mixing the dough by hand. It's so easy, my toddler can do it! Well, sort of, he loves to help. I usually have to add about an extra 1/2 cup of flour to get the right consistency. You know the dough is about ready when it starts sticking more to itself than your hands, and you find your hands start "self-cleaning", as in the picture below.

Step five

Wet a dish-cloth with hot water, wring it out, and place over the bread bowl. Wait until it has doubled in size, about 1/2 hour. In my bowl, I know it's ready when it starts pushing the cloth up.

Step six

Punch the dough down and prepare the dough for its purpose. You can make two loaves of bread, 24 rolls, or two or three pizzas with it. You could also use it for cinnamon rolls. I have successfully frozen this dough and used it later for pizza and dinner rolls. If you want to freeze it for dinner rolls, separate the dough into little balls and freeze them like that on a baking sheet.
For bread, eyeball the dough and divide into two. One of my loaves ended up being a little bigger than the other loaf, and that is just fine. I wrap the dough inward into my finger tips and when I have the right size, I slap the dough around the edges to make it smooth and put it into the bread pan. The bottom looks a little weird so I share a picture. After the dough has risen again, and after it bakes, this crease virtually disappears.

Grease the bread pans and place the dough inside. I like to pour a few drops of olive oil into the pans and spread it with my hands. Then my hands are nicely greased for punching the dough down. Re-wet the dish cloth in hot water, wring, and place over the bread and let it double in size again, about another 1/2 hour. When it starts to push the cloth up, preheat the oven to 350 F.

Step seven

AFTER it is preheated, put the dough in and cook for 30 minutes. The bread is done when you can tap it and it sounds hollow. I never have had doughy or burnt bread at 30 minutes though. You may have to adjust for your altitude. I live in the Rocky Mountains. Enjoy! This bread is really yummy!

Variations

Sometimes I have ran out of flour during the last kneading phase, and so I have added quick oats or white flour in its place, and the bread turned out fine. The dough will be a little bit stickier if you use oatmeal, but the oats will absorb the moisture in time, so this is okay. You can also add a handful of raisins during the kneading phase. I like to add 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon with the gluten and salt if I'm going to make raisin bread.

Apple Pumpkin Dessert

Thanks to Helen Anderson

Ingredients:

• 1 small pumpkin
• Several apples, grated to fill the pumpkin
• Sugar, about 1-2 cups, depending on the size of the pumpkin
• Cinnamon, 1-2 tablespoons

To prepare the apple pumpkin dessert, cut around the top of the pumpkin, remove the lid, and clean out the seeds. Fill the pumpkin with apples. The fuller you fill the pumpkin, the tastier it will be. Add cinnamon and sugar to taste. You could certainly use very little sugar and the recipe would be more of a main course, but for a dessert, add a lot! You can mix the sugar and cinnamon with the apples before or after adding them to the pumpkin. As the pumpkin cooks, the sugar will mix with the apple and pumpkin juices and become delicious syrup.

Replace the pumpkin’s natural lid and put the pumpkin in a cake pan or on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 30-60 minutes, or until done. Be aware that the pumpkin’s shell will become very soft, and when you check it, it is very easy to make the syrup leak, so it is important that the pumpkin has something under it to support it. If the syrup does leak, you will probably be dealing with burnt sugar on the pan and on the pumpkin shell, but this will not affect the delicious result awaiting you.

This recipe is sure to make a pumpkin eater out of even the pickiest little Peters. I think I just didn’t add enough sugar (about ½ cup). Our attempt was delicious, but not the way I remembered eating it as a kid. So if your kids don’t like it, try again, and add sugar, because done right, this recipe is simply divine! Vanilla ice cream on the side is a nice touch. Enjoy!

Easy Granola

Faster-than-pancakes Easy Granola

This easy granola recipe is one of my favorites to make because I can use the 10 minutes baking time to get the kids ready for breakfast. Perfect and delicious!
This recipe is adapted from Where's Mom Now That I Need Her? but I've tweaked it enough to not be infringing on any copywrite issues. It's so versatile and yummy! We buy quick oats in bulk and it makes it very economical as well. I have been wanting to try this easy granola bars recipe that uses similar ingredients, but I have yet to do it. Granola bars and granola are expensive to buy pre-made, but are very affordable if you make them yourself.

The Easy Granola Base Recipe

• 7 cups of quick oats
• 1/2 cup oil (I recommend olive or coconut, I used olive oil in these pictures)
• 1/2 cup molasses or honey (I prefer molasses because it's high in iron, which I really need with my pregnancies.)

And then the fun...

This recipe is very versatile. Here you can add whatever you want. I added flax seeds, chopped walnuts (I like to chop a lot up at once and put the remainder in the fridge for other recipes, like salads and stir fry), craisins, and after baking, I added freeze-dried raspberries. In the past I have added shredded coconut, strawberries, banana chips, freeze-dried pineapple, cinnamon, apple chips and almonds. You can also add almond extract or vanilla to the mixture. Add whatever you want! Freeze-dried or dehydrated foods and coconut are best added after baking.Then spread them out on two baking sheets and bake in pre-heated oven for 10 minutes at 300 degrees. You're just toasting it, so a minute more or less will not make much difference, and you don't have to worry about whether it's done or not. That 10 minutes is such a life-saver for me on busy mornings! Pull it out, add whatever ingredients you want, and enjoy!
I like to leave out all of the ingredients and dishes to make a second batch sometime the same morning. I store them in a cereal dispenser and the granola will keep for at least a month (if it lasts that long!). I made some for my in-laws once and when we went back two months later they still had some left and it was just fine. Voila, inexpensive, healthy, quick breakfast! When you have to eat on the run, it is still refreshing to be able to say "I made breakfast". Enjoy!