We’ve been waiting for the longest time and today it is finally here - the first day of snow. When we got up this morning (WAY too early for a Saturday morninig thanks to B) there were a good three inches of snow lying on the ground. Hurrah!
It wasn’t really a surprise as the weather forecasts had predicted this - they are so much more accurate now than they used to be when I was a child. I remember them being completely wrong all the time when I was little (as in floods of rain when the prediction called for “nice and sunny”). Luckily, the forecasts are more reliable now. Which means I was able to buy all the ingredients for our special “First Day of Snow Lunch” yesterday and we don’t have to rush out this morning to get it.
Do you have a special meal you like to serve the day of the first snowfall (if you live in a snowy climate that is)? We usually prepare Chili, one of our favorite dishes.

Chili

Ingredients

• 1 Onion
• 1/2 green pepper (optional), some garlic
• 1 lb of ground meat
• 1 small can of beans
• pureed tomatoes or tomato paste
• paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, hot sauce
• balsamic vinegar (really)

Instructions

1. Chop onion (and pepper if used) in small pieces and sautee in a little bit of oil until they turn slightly brown.
2. Add in the meat and continue cooking until meat is browned.
3. Pour in some balsamic vinegar until you can smell it in the skillet.
4. Add in a good teaspoon of paprika, 1/2 tsp of cumin, hot sauce, salt and pepper to taste. (Sorry, but I can’t really tell you how much to use as it depends on how you like it. We eat our chili really, really spicy). Mix well and cook a minute or two.
5. Pour in the pureed tomatoes (or tomato paste mixed with water) and cook for about twenty minutes.
6. Drain the kidney beans well and put into the skillet. Add water to give the chili the right consistency. Cook another 10 minutes or so.
7. Tasty!

The chili is extra tasty with freshly baked cornmuffins!
Oops, I didn’t get to post it on Saturday (getting the photos put in always takes me forever - the main reason I have those boring, picture-less posts in between or I would never get to post at all), but better late than never, I say (that’s what I should have called my blog).

Last week was so busy that I missed taking part in Shannon’s WFMW blog carnival at Rocks in my dryer (and actually hardly posted anything at all!). This week isn’t much better, but I am nothing if not determined, so today I present you with something that really Works-For-Me (and not just on Wednesdays): my recipe for corn cookies.
I don’t know about you, but in our family there aren’t many meals that everyone likes (the boys can’t even agree on Spaghetti). Usually, one of the boys will gobble up the meal while the other refuses to even touch it. Not so with this recipe. And it isn’t just us either. I took the recipe in to the boys’ preschool and they have prepared it for lunch there several times - quite successfully.

Not only is it tasty, but also inexpensive, easy to prepare (no need to get hung up on the exact measurements) and fast. You can really sit down to eat barely 30 minutes after you start cooking - and you’ll even have time to unload the dishwasher and set the table! What more could you want?

After all that fanfare, here the recipe:

Yummy-in-my-Tummy-Corn Cookies

Ingredients:

• Small can of corn
• 1 egg, separated
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cornmeal
• Some oil for frying

How to make it:

1. Combine the flour, cornmeal, milk and egg yolk in a bowl, stir together and let sit for about 15 minutes. You can use this time to prepare a salad (which would go really well with the corn cookies - if your kids will eat it) or to set the table.
2. Put a generous amount of oil into the skillet and heat.
3. Add some pepper, salt, hot sauce etc. to the batter (according to taste)
4. Beat eggwhite until stiff. Drain the corn and stir into the batter. Fold in the eggwhite.
5. The oil should be hot by now. Drop batter by spoonfuls into the hot oil to make little “cookies” (mine are usually about 2”-3”). Fry for a couple of minutes, flip over and cook on the other side until golden brown.
6. Take out of the skillet and drain on paper towels for a moment to get rid of excess oil. Serve with tomato sauce /katsup for dipping and salad (if your kids are more amenable to it than mine).

Notice the extra effort in presentation. Salad would

make some nice “hair”.

I am always looking for little things to make life easier (or at least manageable), and my latest discovery is something that might make a good addition for the weekly Works-for-me-Wednesday hosted by Shannon at Rocks in my dryer. I don’t know about you but if my boys don’t get fed regularly (like every two hours at least) they turn into little monsters. Not that I am starving them. If they tell me they are hungry I will get them a snack (unless dinner is less than two minutes away) as fast as possible (or you know what will happen). But often they don’t say anything until it is almost too late or if they do it is when we are walking home from the store and are ten minutes away from the nearest food source (and ten minutes is definitely too long to wait for them).
Lately, we have especially struggled with this because of some changes in our daily routine. The first problem arises in the morning. J. has to be at the bus stop just before seven am and he is not a morning person. Which means breakfast doesn’t go so well. The second problem happens when he gets off the bus a bit before two pm. He is so starved that walking home and waiting for the ten minutes it takes me to prepare even the easiest meal are out.
Luckily, I remembered a cookie recipe that is easy to make and yields tasty and fairly nutritious (especially considering that these are cookies) treats that can help to keep hunger at bay until a proper meal can be fixed. (In a pinch the boys have also been known to just gobble down cookies!). So if you have the same problem with your kids (or if you need an easily portable snack for yourself) you might try these.

I-am-starving-cookies

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cups butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 6 tablespoons molasses
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 cups oats
• 1 cup nuts, chopped
• 1/2 cup raisins

Preparation:

1. Beat butter with sugar till creamy.
2. Add molasses (coat the measuring spoon with oil first to get the molasses off easier) and eggs.
3. Mix flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda and add to butter/sugar mixture.
4. Stir in remaining ingredients and drop onto greased cookie sheet.
5. Bake for about 10 minutes at 400°F.

I was going to add a picture of the cookies but the boys ate up the last batch and I am all out of moasses (which is fairly hard to find around here). So the next batch (and the pictures) will have to wait until I can make a trip to some fancy store in the city to get more molasses. But never mind, go ahead and bake up a batch of these cookies and you can make your very own picture (if the kids don’t get to them first)!

The other day (I’ll admit it was over a week ago; I just didn’t get around to posting) I took the boys to the local children’s museum. That is always a fun trip in itself, but now, before Christmas, they are offering a special activity that I love (we already took part in this program last year): All about chocolate.

Yes, you heard right. Chocolate can be quite educational. And if you like chocolate as much as I and B., you’ll be delighted to hear it. Anyway, I realized that many of the activities could just as well be done at home, either in a homeschooling context or just for fun. So I thought I would give you a quick rundown on what we did and you can pick and choose any (or all) of the activities you would like to do with your kids.

Part One: Where does cocoa come from?
In the first part of the program they explain basically that cocoa is a main ingredient of chocolate and where it comes from. Some (and admittedly the most interesting parts) of this you won’t be able to do but here goes:

• Talk about what gives chocolate its taste (cocoa) and where cocoa grows (rainforest)
• Look at a globe or map and let kids identify where there is rainforest (right around the equator). They also put on a CD with “rainforest sounds” which was fun.
• At the museum they had a fake cocoa tree to look at. You probably don’t have one at home (though you never know). Still, you might be able to see one at a botanical garden etc. If not, just find a picture in a book (not quite the same but still).
• Then everyone got to taste a real cocoa seed. Probably you won’t get to do this at home but don’t worry - it doesn’t taste good at all.
• Here a quick info on how cocoa is made: First the fruits are cut off the trees with big knifes. Then they are put under huge leaves in the sun and left there until the fruit rots away (yuck, that may be more than you wanted to know). Later the cocoa beans are roasted to give them the right taste.



• At that point the kids got some cocoa beans that they had to grind to a powder on a huge mortar and pestle. Unless you have access to cocoa beans (we don’t) you’ll have a hard time to recreate this part of the project. If you think your kids would really get into this activity (or if you just want to show them the hard work involved in making cocoa the old-fashioned way) you could just do it with some other kind of bean
• Then hot cocoa was prepared by pouring hot water over the ground cocoa (you could easily do this with store-bought cocoa). Now, without sugar this will not taste very good. However, that was the way the Aztecs originally prepared it and “chocolate” actually means “bitter water”. The aztecs even added other spices to make it spicier.

Part Two: Make your own chocolate
Next the kids got to make their very own chocolate. All you need for this is cocoa powder, powdered sugar, powdered milk and coconut butter.
Just mix 1 teaspoon each of cocoa powder and coconut butter with 1/2 teaspoon of powdered milk and powdered sugar in a small pot and warm gently (best in a hot water bath) while stirring constantly.
Once the mixture is a smooth consistency you pour it into small molds and let it sit for a bit to harden. Voila - your very own chocolate. Of course you can experiment by varying the amounts of sugar/cocoa and by adding nuts etc.

Part Three: Tasty treats with chocolate
The kids then went ahead and made three different types of treats:

• The littlest kids used a small brush to smear melted chocolate on Graham Cookies. Yum.
• The bigger kids made some sort of chocolate truffles with ground nuts. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the recipe but I am sure you can find one you could substitute.
• My boys made almond splitters:
1. Boil some water and put a bunch of almonds in for a couple of minutes. After that the kids can easily slip off the almond skin (or of course you could buy your almonds already prepared)
2. The kids cut the almonds into long, thin slices (yes, my three year old did this but you’ll definitely have to be there and watch little ones)



3. Pour the almond pieces into melted chocolate, mix together well and drop by spoonfuls on a piece of baking paper. Let cool off (best in the fridge) until firm.
4. Enjoy!

Today, September 29, is the day we celebrate Michaelmas. It is traditionally the day to honor St. Michael (and the other archangels). The boys have mixed feelings about this day. Legend has it that the devil fell into a blackberry bush when he was thrown out of heaven. Satan cursed the brambles, and for that reason, blackberries traditionally should not be eaten after Michaelmas. The kids will miss eating those juicy black treats (which are mostly gone by now anyway). For the most part the boys love Michaelmas though because we go on our very own dragon hunt, a great idea for Family Moment Monday.

For some reason, St. Michael is connected to the stories about St. George. I can’t quite understand the reasoning behind it, but it is all to the good because we haven’t got a book about St. Michael. Instead, we always read St. George and the dragon. This book has a very fierce dragon and the text is a bit too long and difficult for very small children. However, we like to look at it and I shorten/simplify the story according to the boys’ ages. I am thinking that in a year or two we can go ahead and read the book in its entirety.

Though the boys enjoy reading the book, the real highlight of the day is of course the dragon hunt. For that we first bake a dragon:
Ingredients:

• Puff pastry
• Two apples
• Raisins, sugar, cinnamon

Preparation:

1. Peel the apples and cut into small pieces. Mix with some raisins and sugar/cinnamon to taste.
2. I cut shapes out of the pastry dough that will then be assembled to make a dragon shape. A long, slightly triangular piece serves as the tummy, two more pieces as the sides and back. No template necessary, just make it look a bit like a dragon.



3. Fill the inside of the dragon with the apple/raisin mixture.
4. Depending on your own artistic talent and your kids expectations, add on extra features with the dough (wings, feet, ears etc.). Put on raisins for eyes and almond slices etc for scales.
5. You might want to use something (eg. aluminum foil) to hold up the dragon’s head while baking.
6. Bake according to the pastry instructions.

Once the dragon has finished baking (and has cooled a bit), I “hide” him somewhere in the house. The boys and I then go on a dragon hunt to look for it. Once it is found, the kids get to “kill” the dragon with a knife or stick. Then, of course, comes the best part: Eating it all up.

Last Saturday a friend was coming for an afternoon visit. Unfortunately, our house was a complete mess and we spent most of the morning trying to make it look presentable. Usually, I like to offer guests some sort of homemade treat (cookies, brownies, muffins etc.). However, with all the cleaning we had to do (you wouldn’t believe the mess our house was in - or if you have two small boys maybe you do) there was little time for baking anything impressive. I know, I know, showing off is not nice but surely a tiny bit of housewifely pride is allowed. And let’s just say that the state of our house still wasn’t impressive even after the cleaning spree so the cookies were my only hope.

Luckily, I found a pretty nifty recipe which turns out several varieties of cookies from one basic dough. So in case you find yourself in the same position here you go:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 cups butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Preparation:

Cream butter with sugar and add vanilla and egg. Mix flour, salt and baking powder together. Add flour mixture to butter mixture.

This is your basic cookie dough. Now here is what you do: Divide into four parts. Add different stuff to it. You can pretty much use anything (well, any cookie ingredient - not mustard or anything like that) you like (and happen to have at home).

I added the following:

Batch one: about half a cup of crushed cornflakes and a small handful of M&Ms
Batch two: about 1 tablespoon cocoa
Batch three: about 1/2 cup chocolate chips
Batch four: about 1/2 cup grated almonds and a drop of almond extract

Those are just some possibilities though. As I said before, you could use lots of other things (peanuts, walnuts, coconut, raisins, dried cranberries, other flavorings etc.). Use teaspoonfuls of the different doughs to shape cookies. I just took little balls of dough and pushed them into circles or bars. If you manage to make them look a bit different in shape, noone will notice that you basically only made one kind of cooky. Bake at 350° for about 10 minutes.

Jonathan and I really liked the cookies (my personal favorite was the cornflakes version). Our guests seemed to enjoy them too, but Benny didn’t care for them too much. We think they might not have been sweet enough for him, so if you like your cookies extra-sweet go ahead and increase the amount of sugar a bit.

Have you had enough fruit posts for a while? Never fear. This time we’ll talk about something completely different - vegetables!
It is still harvest season and today we did something that is especially fun for the kids (and me). Actually, it is kind of like a treasure hunt - digging for potatoes. We do not eat lots of potatoes at our house (we are more the pasta and bread people) but every spring we beg Grandpa to plant some potatoes. Not a lot - maybe fifteen or so. Now I have shared before that I am not much of a gardener, but I do think potatoes are fairly foolproof. Basically, you just have to make sure the potatoes are covered with soil all the time (or they’ll turn green and inedible), keep off some of the weeds and water them occasionally. Then, when fall comes around, you wait for the potato plant that you see above the ground to kind of whither. And finally, the best thing of all, rooting around in the dirt to find your “treasure”.

Someone had a great time!

As I said, we are not usually big potato eaters, but both boys enjoy potato soup so that is what we cooked up. It is really easy too:

1. Wash and peel potatoes (I use about 4 medium sized ones for the three of us) and cut into small pieces.
2. Put water into a pot and add potatoes. Simmer gently. Now don’t ask me how much water to add as it really depends on the number of potatoes. Just use your own judgement. Make sure the potatoes are well covered and keep an eye on it while it is cooking. Add water as needed.
3. After about 30 to 40 minutes the potatoes should be tender. Smush them up (I use a small blender) and add water if the consistency is too thick. Add in salt, pepper and any other spices you like (we usually add hot sauce). Cook a bit longer.
4. You can add some cream in with the soup (which I like but the boys don’t so we skip that step) and add sausages or bacon pieces if you like. (I do)

Watch for more potato recipes to come in the days ahead as we still have plenty left!



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Fall is still in the air and we are not done with our apple project yet. Today we went to Grandpa’s garden to pick apples. Unfortunately, there weren’t that many apples this year (presumably for the same reason as the dearth of plums?). Still, there were plenty for two little boys to pick (and what could be better than being told to climb up on the trees?).

Picking apples (or harvesting anything for that matter) is a great activity for the whole family to enjoy together. Not only does it help the kids to get a better understanding of where food comes from, but it is also plain fun. If you don’t have a garden (or at least none with apple trees), don’t despair. There are plenty of farms around that will let you choose and pick your own apples. Just be prepared for quite a crowd if you go during a sunny Sunday afternoon! Of course, this is also a great activity for Family Moment Monday.

We used our apples to bake a tasty apple pie:

Ingredients:

• Pastry dough for 9-inch pie
• 4 to 5 medium apples
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 11/2 TB flour
• cinnamon and nutmeg to taste
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup ground almonds
• 1/3 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar

Preparation:

1. Peel apples and cut into small pieces. Mix 1/2 cup sugar, 11/2 TB flour and spices together. Mix in apple pieces and raisins and toss until fruit is coated with flour-sugar mixture.
2. Roll out pastry dough and line pie plate with it. Fill in apple mixture.
3. Use 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup ground almonds, 3/4 cups sugar and 1/3 cups butter to make a crumble and spread it on top of pie.
4. Bake 50 minutes to a hour at 375° until filling is bubbly.

We used another apple-themed book for read-aloud today. Somewhat to my surprise, The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree is a favorite at our house. Personally, I am not a hundred percent crazy about the illustrations. Probably because I am a fan of very detailed pictures (like you see in our book about Johnny Appleseed). By comparison, Arnold’s Apple Tree has very simple illustrations. However, it is a great book to talk about the changes in nature that take place over the course of a year (The tree blooms in the spring, carries fruit, is harvested, looses its leaves and lives through a snowy winter). It also gives lots of fun ideas for things to do with apple trees (and apples, of course): Apple pie, apple cider, decorating apples, playing with apples, building a tree house etc.). Definitely a good book to use for any sort of apple project!

You know I love Christmas. Still, there are limits. Yesterday I went to the grocery store, and they already had an aisle filled with all Christmas treats - gingerbread and everything! I’m sorry, but here the kids are still on summer vacation. Isn’t it just a tiny bit early for Christmas cookies? What’s special about fruitcake if we eat it at the pool in the summertime? Much as I love Christmas - or maybe because I do love it - some things (like gingerbread) should wait for the Christmas season. Hopefully, I can hold out and keep from buying any of the tempting treat until at least Halloween has passed.

On a different note, it is starting to feel like fall. Some days it still gets hot and sunny but then again it will be rainy with a decided chill in the air. I love plum cake, but you can really only make it when it is plum season. Unfortunately, for some reason I can not discern (I haven’t a clue about gardening) the plum tree in our garden didn’t carry a single plum this year. If anyone with more gardening knowledge could drop me a hint, I would really appreciate it. Anyway, I didn’t want to lose out on plum cake, so we bought some nice ones.

Now here the recipe for our Plum Cake:

1. Put a good 3/4 cups milk, 1/3 cups melted butter and one egg in your bread machine. Add 3.5 cups flour, a pinch of salt, 2 tablespoons sugar and yeast according to package directions. Set your bread machine to make dough without baking it. (Of course, there is nothing to stop you from preparing the yeast dough without a bread machine - nothing that is unless you are like me and can’t get yeast dough to rise even to save your life. Without a bread machine there would be no more pizza at our house. Anyway, if you are luckier than I that way, just go go ahead and mix and knead by hand).
2. While the dough is rising, wash a good two pounds of fresh plums, take out the pits and cut in several times to spread apart (see the picture below to see what I mean).
3. When the dough has risen (I just wait till my bread machine peeps to let me know it is finished) roll the dough out onto a greased cookie sheet.
4. Mix cinnamon to taste with approx. 1/3 cup sugar (it kind of depends how sour the plums are and how sweet a tooth you have. Use your own judgement here). Sprinkle about half of this mix onto the rolled out dough.



5. Cover the sugar-sprinkled dough with the cut plums evenly. Bake in 440° oven for about 30 minutes
6. Sprinkle the remaining sugar-cinnamon mix over the finished cake and serve with whipped cream if you like

Our cake turned out truly delicious. Older son declared it “Yummy, yummy”, and he is quite hard to please. We had it with whipped cream (Everyone but Benny that is. He still refuses to touch white foods) which made it extra tasty. However, this cake would be good even without cream (or maybe ice cream?). We actually had this for dinner because I started too late and didn’t have it ready for snack time, but it was certainly filling enough.

The air is starting to feel like fall, and that means it is about time to start our apple projects again. For some reason, apples just provide many great project opportunities. The first thing we did for our apple season project this year was to take a trip to the local grocery store. There we chose one apple each of every different variety offered. We ended up with eight different kinds.

.

The best apple of all!

Once the taste test was complete, we sat there with eight partly eaten apples. Because Benjamin is the only one of us who truly loves apples (and even he can’t eat eight at once), I took four of them to make apple crumble. It turned out delicious. Apple crumble is definitely one of my all time favorite desserts, and so easy to make:

1. Cut four midsized apples into pieces and put in a casserole dish.
2. Mix 1 cup flour, 2/3 cups sugar, 1/2 cup butter and some cinammon until you have a crumbly mass. Pour on top of the apples.
3. Bake at 180° for about 30 minutes.
4. Enjoy!

Tasty, tasty

While the apple crumble was baking, we sat down and read one of our favorite apple-themed books: Johnny Appleseed. I really enjoy the colors and the style of the pictures in this book. I enjoy quilting and like the quilt patterns used for borders. The kids love to look at the detailed pictures which give lots of opportunities for discussions and questions. What I like most about the book though is the way Johnny Appleseed is portrayed: as a gentle man who loves nature, people, and God (and apples of course). Somehow, the rhymed text really works for me. This is definitely a book I - and the boys - would recommend.