Ready or Not Here I Come

Who doesn't love a good game of Hide and Seek?  Especially when you are playing with a young child where "hiding" means they can't see you.  Usually they hide in the same place over and over again, tell you where they are hiding, or hide where they just found you.  Now I love playing this game with my kids, but I recently discovered a way to play this game with food.  Yes, you read that correctly.  It's time to play Hide and Seek with your food.

Hide and Seek Muffins. 
This is another big hit from Mollie Katzen, author of Pretend Soup.  Which I am happily cooking my way through.

You measure and dump and mix and pour muffin batter in the pan just like usual, then you take strawberries, roll them in sugar to add some sparkle factor, and hide one in each muffin.  When we hid ours, they were still poking out a bit.  But we were also a bit low on batter after a baby on the loose grabbed the mixing bowl and sloshed some of the ingredients out.  We didn't know exactly how much of which ingredients we lost so we just continued as though nothing had happened.  So, maybe your berries will be all the way hidden at this point. 

Then while we weren't looking, our muffin batter baked itself right up over the berries and hid them inside.  Well, in our case it was more like a Peek-a-Boo situation, where not much berry was showing.  But I'm interested to try again and see if they are all the way covered up next time!

These muffins taste just like strawberry shortcake. Yummers!  And while you are eating them you get to "seek" the treasure in the middle.  Sawyer always chose to eat the muffin that had the least berry showing because he loved the surprise of finding the berry in the middle after a few bites. 

If you give a Baby a Blueberry Pancake . . .

She’ll eat the whole thing.  And she'll want to help cook more, so you'll have to distract her from "helping" by giving her a whisk.  But giving her a whisk will make her think she's going to get to mix the batter, pour the batter, eat the batter.  You see where this is heading . . .  a big MESS and a HAPPY baby.

Anyhow, you will love this recipe because it involves BUTTER! Lots of it. You add melted butter to the batter. And then later you add a slice of butter to the pan each time you start a new pancake. This explains why these blueberry pancakes were so good that we didn’t even use the syrup. I didn’t even think about the syrup. And neither did my kids.

Two new and exciting cooking skills were introduced in this recipe.

1) Cracking eggs! Yup, I let Sawyer do it by himself. Or at least I was ready to, but he didn’t really want to get egg on his fingers. So he cracked it and then I pulled it apart. Usually, I don’t even let him hold the eggs so this was a big step.

2) Flipping with a spatula! I know we don’t even think about this being tricky because as adults we do it all the time. But Sawyer was as excited about getting to do the flipping as I would be if I learned how to toss pizza crust in the air without messing it up. (Sidenote: our favorite places to watch pizza pros at work are Flying Pie Pizzaria in downtown Issaquah, Zeeks Pizza in the Issaquah Highlands, and Tutta Bella off Gilman.)

Seriously, he talked about how he got to flip the pancakes himself ALL DAY. “Me put-ed butter in the pan, me pour batter in and it cook-ed for a little while, me put-ed blueberries, mom put-ed the spatula under, and me flip-ed it over!”

He was a little worried about the hot pan when we started off. So I had him practice the flipping motion with the spatula before he tried it with the heat and the actual pancake. And we did the first one with my hand over his. But he did the rest himself- I was having visions of myself reading at the kitchen table, feet up, chai latte in hand, while he cooks me breakfast! The secret to his flipping success was following Mollie’s advice and cooking only one pancake at a time so that there was plenty of room to maneuver the spatula and a larger area for the uncooked side of the pancake to land.

Another genius piece of cooking wisdom was Mollie’s plan of pouring the milk into a smaller pitcher and having kids pour it into the measuring cups over a pie pan. It worked like a charm. I used the pitcher from Sawyer’s tea set which was just the right size and weight for him to be able to pour on his own.

And as you can see he had a blast dropping the butter into the hot pan and watching it melt, dumping the batter into the pan, and especially dropping the 6 blueberries onto the pancake as it cooked. If only I was this excited to cook dinner every night.

So, if you let your child flip their own pancakes . . .
they will want to make them every day. And they will eat them all up!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, EAT

When I told Sawyer we were making Number Salad, his first response was, "But I don't like salad."  What he meant was, "I don't like lettuce."  When I explained that the ingredients that we were using were actually all fruit and cheese he was at least willing to give it a try. 

We started off with all the ingredients in separate bowls like the set up for making bagel faces.  This led to lots of snacking while cooking, just with fruit this time instead of veggies.  Let your child do as much of the cutting themselves as possible.  The melon and banana are good candidates for slicing with a table knife.

Mollie's recipe is:


1 handful of coconut

2 Tablespoons of OJ concentrate

3 slices of Orange

4 slices of apple

5 cubes of cheese

6 slices of banana

7 pieces of melon

8 grapes

Stir 9 times

EAT.

I thought this was a pretty tasty fruit salad.  I loved the mix of fruit with the Monterey Jack cheese.  Just a warning:  Sawyer didn't touch his salad once it was all mixed together.  But, he did eat a lot of each ingredient individually. 

 

Counting out the pieces for each step was good practice.  Get some extra counting practice by making several servings.  Also, you could do countdown salad and start at 10 working backwards.  You could let your child determine which ingredients to use for each number so they would end up with more of the things they prefer to eat.  And best of all you could make "Number Salad" with whatever ingredients you have around- fruits or veggies.  I want to try one that has more berries and some mango.  Or try making "Number Trail Mix" using dry ingredients.

 

Happy counting! 

Green with Spaghenvy

We play outside in the cul-de-sac all the time.  And you always know when Mrs. Hunt is making her "green pasta" because it smells SO good!  Everyone is salivating as they get their mail and chase their kids around the pavement.  And of course she is very generous and has shared her recipe.  But I have to say it looks like a lot of work so I haven't tried it yet. 

Lucky for me Mollie Katzen has a super duper easy recipe for Green Spaghetti.

The big highlight of this recipe was pulling the basil leaves off the stems.  This led to some great discussion about which part was the leaf and which part was the stem as well as which part was edible and which was not.  If you are a super gardener and happen to grow your own basil that could add a whole layer of fun- harvesting the basil yourself.  We are about to plant some basil for future pesto making.

In this version of green pasta (you could use any kind of pasta you want) you throw all the ingredients in the food processor and let it do all the work.  We had a little trouble with adding 6 "shakes" of salt since our shaker is kind of fast and Sawyer didn't really get what a shake was.  Definately demonstrate this and have them practice in the sink or over a pan so you don't add too much.

And it's another chance for kids to grate the cheese themselves.  Grate extra so you can sprinkle it on top. Yummers!

Perfect Playdough?

I recently made five batches of playdough in one afternoon for my son's birthday party. While stirring, and stirring, and stirring I was contemplating whether my recipe was as good as it gets.

I'd love to hear about any other recipes you have. This one cooks up easy with ingredients you probably have on hand, looks terribly lumpy and like it's not going to work out, but you keep cooking and stirring and sure enough it forms a ball. Inspired by my son's awesome teachers at The Children's Studio I tried a couple batches with scents thrown in (cinammon, mint, vanilla, lemon). It keeps for quite a while in a tupperware at room temperature.

Cooked Play Dough
from Kindergarten Cooks by Nellie Edge and Pierr Leitz

1 cup flour
1 Tbs oil
1 cup water
1/2 cup salt
2 tsp cream of artar
food coloring

Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan.
Cook over medium heat.
Stir constantly until mixture forms a ball (and you think your arm will fall off)
Knead until smooth.
Store in a covered container.

So that's the best I've found. But here are two more that I plan to try out once my five batches get dried out. Test them out and share the results with me if you get a chance.

Playful Peanut Butter Dough
from Kindergarten Cooks by Nellie Edge and Pierr Leitz

1/2 large sized jar creamy peanut butter
2 Tbs honey
2 cups powdered milk
raisins
mini marshmallows

Put peanut butter into a bowl.
Add honey and some of the powdered milk.
Mix it with your hands.
Keep adding powdered mlk until the dough feels soft and playful.
Use it like playdough.
Mold it into shapes.
Or use cookie cutters.
Make designs with raisins and marshmallows.



KoolAid Dough
from the BC Parent Handbook for 1st Year Toddler Class

Depending on what flavor KoolAid you use, this dough has a wonderful smell and unusual color.

Boil 2 cups water and add 3 Tbs oil.
Add these to the following dry ingredients:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbs cream of tartar or alum
2 packages of unsweetened KoolAid (any flavor)

Cool a little and knead. This recipe works well in the food processor.