Holy Cow!

The Tribe's kitchen has been very busy with a certain boy having a birthday this week. Every year the kids ask for a special dinner and a special cake for their birthdays. This year's request was an especially large request. It was in fact for a cow!

 This cake was massive, the size of  9 cakes together. The base layer was chocolate with vanilla butter cream, the middle layer was yellow with chocolate butter cream and the top layer was again chocolate with vanilla butter cream. My fondant decided not to cooperate so ended up icing the entire cake in butter cream. The head was made from cereal treats and the accents were bits of colored fondant. These pictures are during the making. I wasn't able to get a photo of the finished product because just as the cake hit the table, said birthday boy ripped off the poor cow's head and took a huge bite. It was a success, the birthday boy enjoyed his cake!

Now I am by no means a cake decorator, but it seems that my children think I am. It is heart warming that they have so much faith in me. I think I keep pushing myself to fulfill their requests so that I can hold on to my "Cool Mom" status for a little longer and get those extra "your the best" exclamations and all the hugs that come with because I know all too soon those sentiments will be replaced with  "Really Mom?" and "No that's not my Mom" said in embarrassed tones.

Bread and butter

We were at the grocery store the other day and I was drawn in by a warm, comforting aroma. I followed my nose right to the bakery where they were filling baskets with freshly baked breads of all kinds, baguettes, loaves of Italian bread, hand formed artisan breads, you name it was all there stacked up and neatly packaged in paper sacks. At that moment all was right with the world, I felt safe and could feel all the warm and fuzzies coursing through my body. Strange what just smelling fresh bread will do to you.
Now I always make our bread at home, nice whole wheat bread and we all love it, but it just can't compare to tearing into fresh artisan bread. What was I going to do? I wanted to tear right into those little paper sacks and feast on the warm, crusty bread for the remainder of the morning. Then I heard that little voice in the back of my head, you know the one, the one that tells me to back away from the bread and try to make it at home, where I know exactly what's in it, when the wheat was ground, how long the flour has been sitting, plus as an added bonus I will have that wonderful smell in my house and I can share the warm and fuzzies with the whole tribe. Well, I went home and scoured the internet for recipes and ideas and finally started to make my dough. It was fairly simple and baked up very quickly, in about 30 minutes. The results were better than I thought, it was crusty on the outside, moist on the inside, slightly sweet and gone in a matter of minutes. I've made a few more since and all have turned out equally as wonderful. I made one on the smaller side, so we used it to build a sandwich that turned out to be to big for the hubs and I and one of our sons. This bread is definitely going to be added to my weekly bread baking.



Now that we have bread, what are we going to have with it? The choices are endless, but for me I love toast for breakfast or for a quick snack and we all know we need protein to keep us satiated, peanut butter is a good choice, but gets a little boring sometimes. Almond butter it is, smooth and creamy and packed with healthy fats, this is a winner in my book. I haven't bought almond butter in a while and was really craving for it to have with my toast and to use in snack recipes so I decided why not, I can make this too and so I did. I had plenty of almonds on hand so I roasted them in the oven and then ground them into a thick paste. So how did it turn out? Fabulous, even my daughter who doesn't like peanut butter or any type of spreads and condiments LOVED it. She ended up taking an almond butter sandwich to school for lunch the next day and I caught her sticking her finger into the container a few times.



I know the picture really doesn't do it justice but it was awesome. Turned out to be a great week, a few simple ingredients is all it takes to keep this tribe happy. I hope you'll take the time to try making something new, it really is quite rewarding.

Spring flowers

Wow it has been way too long since my last post. There has been so much going on, a truly crazy year. The past few weeks have been especially busy, stressful, exhausting, you name it. This past Monday I lost my Grandfather, a wonderful man who seemed to know everyone everywhere he went and if there was someone there that he didn't know, by the time he left they seemed as if they were old friends. He always had a way of making people feel special, make them happy. He had been in the hospital the last few weeks and was being attended to by a great nursing staff. They really treated him kindly and with respect.

Ok, so your probably wondering where the food comes into all this right? I mean really, it is a food blog. Well my Grandmother wanted to do something nice for the nurses who cared for not only my Grandfather, but us. They brought us snacks and drinks, pillows and blankets, made sure we were holding up well. Gram was going to buy those Edible Arrangements for each shift, but those come with a hefty price tag, so I made them instead. They came out pretty well, especially the big basket. I made a large basket for first shift since they have a larger crew and a smaller pot of "flowers" for each the second and third shifts. Let me know what you think.

Baby food with benefits

As many of you know, I have been making my baby's their food for years. This is something I truly believe helps me to set the foundation for healthy eating habits as they grow older. How, you may ask? Have you ever tried commercially made baby food? It generally does not taste like what we would cook and serve at our tables. A lot of flavor is lost during the processing of commercial baby food. Children like the familiar so if they are use to green beans tasting one way (from the jar) and you serve them fresh or frozen, chances are they will take a taste and reject them because the flavor is not what they are use to. Homemade baby food tastes truer to what nature intended, the flavors are much stronger and more vibrant, plus you can tailor the texture to your baby's needs.

Flavor is not the only benefit to homemade baby food. Nutritionally speaking, homemade food is far superior because it is fresh. Essential vitamins and minerals are broken down and lost during the jarring process. When you make your baby's food, you would take the food from the market or garden, to the steamer and to your baby, you know exactly what goes into each meal you serve your child and you know it hasn't been sitting on a shelf for months before making it to your baby.

Financially speaking, homemade baby food is much more cost efficient. Baby food costs about $1. a jar now. When baby first starts eating that may not seem like a lot, but as they grow so will their food intake and your grocery bill. When you make your own you can take advantage of store produce sales and create a week or two worth of food for less than a jar of baby food. As an example, last week my local market had cantaloupe for $0.88 each. I was able to take 1 cantaloupe and make almost two weeks worth of fruit for my baby. $0.88 for two weeks versus $1. a jar is a big difference, especially in this economy.

Ok, so you may be thinking, yeah it's better for my baby and costs less, but is this really something I can do or is this going to be time consuming and difficult. The answer is YES, this is something you can do and NO it doesn't take much time or effort. In 15 - 20 minutes you can have one to two weeks worth of food. All you need is a pot of boiling water, a steamer basket and a blender really. Cut your food, toss it into the basket over boiling water, pop on a lid and give it 10 minutes to steam (depends on how big you cut the food and how hard the food is, cauliflower will cook faster than say carrots), toss into the blender and puree. So now your thinking two weeks worth of food is not going to stay fresh in the fridge, your right. What I do is refrigerate only what my child will eat that day, the rest I put into ice cube trays and freeze, once solid I put in a freezer bag to use over the next two weeks or more depending on how ambitious I was. Now you have food cubes which are great for portioning out your baby's meals (defrost and heat or take directly from freezer to microwave for heating, takes about 30 - 45 seconds from frozen). An example of my 7 month old's daily intake, breakfast is a little rice cereal or oatmeal with 2 cubes of fruit, lunch is 1 cube of fruit, 1 cube of vegetable and a few Cheerios, dinner is rice cereal, 1 cube of fruit and 2 cubes of vegetable.

Homemade baby food is great, it is delicious, nutritious, inexpensive and easy. I hope you'll consider giving it a try. I know making baby food isn't for everyone, you do what works best for your family, this is just what works for mine.

Rice cereal

Well The Babe with the Power started on solid food a couple of weeks ago and I didn't want to buy the commercial baby rice cereal that is generally recommended as a first food because it is not whole grain and it is so processed. Instead I broke out my grain mill and a bag of whole grain brown rice. I ground the rice into flour and cooked some with water to make pretty much like a porridge, then I just scooped the amount I needed into a bowl and for the first few feedings added a little liquid to thin down for him. Now that we are introducing other foods too we mix whatever we are giving him with his cereal to get him familiar with the taste and texture before we give it to him alone. So far bananas are the favorite.

Holiday baking

As usual I did a bunch of baking for the holidays although in comparison to years past I really slacked this year. I made sugar cookies, jam thumbprint cookies using my homemade strawberry jam, pumpkin roll and venetians. The venetians came out awesome, I found chocolate transfer sheets to put on them. I couldn't get a great picture, but they say Merry Christmas.

Granola bars

I love trying new snack recipes that are healthy for the kids to eat. I've been making granola for a long time and they love it, but sometimes they want something else. Every couple of days the kids and I have a conversation that goes like this: Them "Mom, can I have a snack?" Me: "Sure what do you want?" Them: "Can I have a junk snack?" Me: "What kind of junk snack?" Them: "Something with chocolate."
So I've been trying to perfect a granola bar recipe that the kids would enjoy as much as the prepackaged variety that was healthier for them with no luck, until tonight. I decided to try out a recipe from one of the blogs I follow. I made a batch a few days ago, but I got distracted and only added half the oats I needed, plus the recipe called for cinnamon which we all thought overpowered the flavor. Tonight I made sure I measured out the ingredients properly, omitted the cinnamon and added chopped up dried cherries and some chocolate chips. They were a big hit with everyone, well Super Why ate all but one bite of his then handed it to me and said this is icky. I'm pretty sure he was just full since he ate the rest of it.