Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss 2012

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

It's been a while since I have blogged. One of the reasons I stopped was I no longer had a working camera. Since I do now, I am going to be blogging much more. Today's entry is about one of my favorite days of the year. Dr. Seuss's Birthday! I love to make whacky food for my kids. They look forward to it. I just think its so much fun.

For breakfast we had Cat in the Hat Pancake Stacks! I used the recipe from this site - only I didn't tint all of the batter. These pancakes are easy to make and delicious!

Next up was lunch. Again, I made my daughter Poodles of Noodles - rotini pasta salad. Along with that in her lunch box was a special Seuss snack Mix!

All 3 kids got these in their lunchboxes.

Finally, Cupcakes for the boys' classes as well as a special dessert for L's lunch box. Lorax Cupcakes!

Until next time!

Also, a Very Happy Birthday to Jon Bon Jovi!

When life gives me snow... I make breakfast!

Today is a snow day.  I know I know, it's spring, you only got rain, blah blah blah.  We have snow.  School is closed.  I COULD catch up on laundry, mop the floor and do all that fun stuff, but instead I made breakfast!

First I made this loaf of bread in the bread maker.  I only made the following changes:

1. I used buttermilk instead of the oj concentrate.
2. I used old fashioned oats, because it's what I had. 

It came out really good.  I guess I should have taken a picture of it, but I cut it up already!  The kids loved it.  I made it into french toast.  All ready for tomorrow morning!

Another  French Toast  recipe I REALLY want to try!  This may have to wait, since I'll have to bake the bread :)  

While I have the griddle out, I'm going to attempt to make this pancake recipe using whole wheat flour and and this chocolate pancake recipe.

My kids have been asking to eat the french toast all day, so I guess that's a good sign :)

***UPDATE**** The first round of the chobani pancakes came out GREAT!  Using the whole wheat flour worked fine, just needed to up the liquid a little bit.  The kids LOVE them! WOOHOO

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!!!!

Today's blog is brought to you by the color GREEN!!!!!!

I am going to have to add the pictures in later, but here's what we made.

Breakfast was whole wheat pancakes, tinted green, in the shape of shamrocks.

Lunch was GOING to be mac & cheese, tinted green... I used taco cheese, thinking it would give it a good taste.  The whole thing was horrible.  Maybe my butter browned too much, maybe I shouldn't have used whole wheat flour for the rue, whatever it was, it was HORRIBLE!

I thought quickly, I rinsed off a bit of the pasta, put some broccoli, olive oil and garlic in it.  

L's lunchbox:

*Spirals with broccoli, garlic and olive oil

*Cucumbers - cut into the shape of shamrocks (I used a v-cutter)

*Peppers - cut across instead of up and down, so they look like shamrocks

*Pudding tinted green

R & J will get the veggies and the pudding. 

Tonight's dinner, corned beef, cabbage and boiled red potatoes.

Irish Soda Bread!

Enjoy the day!

Maybe I'll make pancakes today, maybe I won't....

There is no other way to word it my kids LOVE pancakes.  Before the big diet change, they ate those mini pancakes like they were never going to eat another meal again!  When my husband and I talked about making this switch, this was a big part of the discussion.  I said, "I'll just MAKE mini pancakes!"  (I imagine myself wearing a super hero cape and swishing it at this point, while aiming my mighty spatula to the sky).  So began the search for a 100% whole wheat pancake.  There are several frozen ones out there.  To me, they just had too many ingredients in them.  Also, why should I pay $4.00 for 8 frozen pancakes, when I can just make them for pennies!
I found a few recipes that I thought would work.  *Sidenote - most of my recipes start from a recipe found at All Recipes.*  I did some modifications on them, and this is what I came up with:

2 cups of whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon of honey or sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 ½ - 2 cups of milk
1 tablespoon of baking powder
2 eggs
2 Tablespoons of oil

You can add SO much to these, fruit, chocolate, bananas, pumpkin, food coloring.  We've tried it all and the kids still love them.  The banana and pumpkin do thicken up the batter, so you may need to add more milk.

(these are our Valentine's Day Pink Pancakes, just added some food coloring and shaped them into hearts)

(Some of our Halloween pancakes - Pumpkin shaped pumpkin whole wheat, with chocolate chips)

Combine your dry ingredients together.   Mix 1 ½ cups of the milk, with the eggs, oil and honey if you are using, together.  Pour into the dry ingredients and stir... adding more of the milk if mixture is too thick.  Thinner batter makes thinner pancakes.  I use an ice cream scoop, a small one for silver dollar size and a larger one for, as my kids call them "Big Pancakes".  Pour into a heated, greased griddle, (I found my electric grill w/the flat top on it cooks them perfect!) cook until bubbles form on top and the edges are dry, flip, cook until lightly browned.
Serve with your favorite topping!

The diet switch happened over night, there are a few items we let the kids "keep".... Log Cabin is one.  Honey Nut Cheerios and Frosted Flakes (only on weekends) are some others.

We use Log Cabin for 2 reasons.  1- It's the one Costco sells and 2- No High Fructose Corn Syrup.  That stuff is EVERYWHERE!!!!  I try REALLY hard to not buy products, except the HNCheeros and FF, with it in them.  It's in your bread, read the labels!  It's in PICKLES!  It's in Salad dressing!  The reason I converted the recipe to only have 1 T of sweetneer, is because the pancakes don't need to be super sweet, just sweet enough, because they ARE putting SUGAR on it!

Back to the pancakes...  Make a double or a triple batch - put them in the freezer (just let them cool first)...  Pop them in the microwave for 30-45 seconds and viola, instant breakfast!

So, maybe I'll make pancakes today, or maybe I won't... but now that you have my recipe, you certainly can!