Ginger Chocolate Chip Cookies

I can not believe that I forgot to take photos while making these cookies.  Kids are distracting.  This is another recipe out of my fav "Lunchbox Love" cookbook by Sally King.  Soft gingerbread cookies made with whole wheat flour and a full can of beans in them!  Hurray for added protein and nutrients in our treats!  As annoying as it can be to bake with my daughter (imagine the phrase "Can I taste it?" repeated hundreds of times), there is some good that comes from it.  She likes to taste every ingredient that goes into the mixer.  I take advantage of that a bit by not telling her about some of the things that may not taste that good.  She happily tasted a scoop of pureed navy beans and a finger of blackstrap molasses while making these.  She even asked for more of each.  And she has been enjoying the finished product.  Sure, I would prefer a classic chocolate chip cookie over these, but if I have to keep trying to like healthier foods I will gladly take this as a tasty alternative!  Recommend!

There's Hope!

What a good day we had Saturday. One of the better ones from the last 6 months!  There were a few highlights, but the one part that impressed me the most was an enjoyable meal out with both kids.  It was just Denny's, so the food was not the part to be impressed with.  A lady came by shortly after we arrived and offered to make a balloon animal.  She made an elaborate Hello Kitty that Amelie enjoyed for the rest of the day.  Ruby is now big enough to sit in a high chair on her own so I was able to feed her some applesauce and give her a rice cracker and toys to occupy her.  I did not have to try to nurse her while squeezed into a booth seat, or bounce and hold her while asking someone else to cut my food!  Amelie also wanted to sit in a booster seat... which she actually stayed in.  There was no climbing all over the place!  Both Steve and I were able to eat our meals without rushing or taking turns.  We were even able to have a bit of a conversation at the same time.  Wow!  Lets hope this is a sign of things to come. We will definitely be returning to Denny's!

Date Night, on the Cheap

What happy couple doesn't enjoy a date night?  We certainly do, but when you have 2 small children and are watching your dollars we found we just weren't making it happen.  My husband and I are both very committed to our marriage and making sure that we both stay that way so we realized that we needed to find a way to get a bit of time just for us.  Before we had our second daughter we would ask our niece or my mother-in-law to babysit our daughter and we'd go off for dinner or dinner and a movie.  As much as we enjoyed that we did not get excited about how much money we were spending for one little night out. Movies, dinner with a drink or two and appetizers or dessert, plus if it was my niece babysitting we always like to pay her for her services.  We would always enjoy the night out, but not enjoy spending $150 or more for a few hours away.

Since we've had our second daughter we have found a new way to have a little date night.  Its usually a Saturday night, and we feed our our older daughter supper and scoot her away to bed.  Depending on the baby's schedule at the time we usually can scoot her off to bed too.  Then we put in a take out order at a nearby restaurant and one of us goes to pick it up while the other tidies up from the day.  Sometimes we sit at the dining room table and enjoy chatting and eating, or sometimes we just set up in front of the TV where we watch a movie that quite often I have gotten from the library for free, or we watch a video on demand, or from a little place down the street that rents super cheap movies.  We always enjoy the anticipation of that time together, even if we are watching a movie and not talking a lot.  We get excited about where we are going to get our food from and find ourselves talking about it all day.  Being at home we don't need to pay a babysitter, can drink our own wine, and we don't need to tip a server.  And I can nurse the baby when needed as well.  How perfect for the stage of life we are at!

Please take note that there are potential drawbacks of the date at home.  Take last night for example.  We had picked up Japanese food, had it all spread out in front of us, and were watching "Bad Teacher" with Cameron Diaz.  Our daughter had her many excuses not to go to sleep, and eventually ended up down with us for a snack.  I didn't want to leave our setup so I put together a little snack for her and plunked her on the couch beside us to eat it and get back to bed.  We decided to turn the movie back on in the meantime.  Well, in those few minutes I think we exposed our daughter to more things that we have been trying not to expose her to than we could have imagined.  I'm just waiting for her to use a few of the words she heard.  Ugh.  The entire interruption was short lived though, and we were right back to enjoying our evening... and even had something new to laugh about.

Can't wait for next Saturday night!  (Cuz I'm assuming we won't have other plans!)

Banana Bread with Cinnamon Glaze

Last night I made a giant batch of banana bread.  I used a recipe from one of my favourite cookbooks: Lunchbox Love by Sally King. The recipe (and most from the book) is all whole wheat, made with applesauce and very little oil, and spices like cinnamon and allspice.  Yum!  If you double the batch (which Sally gives the numbers for) you get 2 loaves and a bundt pan full.  I took the bundt cake to my in-laws for brunch today.  To make it look pretty I made a cinnamon glaze this morning and poured it over and let harden.  My husband loved it, and I think everyone else enjoyed it too.

To make the cinnamon glaze I used 1 cup of icing sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1-2 Tablespoons of milk.  I stirred it up in a measuring cup and just poured it over.

Tip:  Put a line or a couple of circles of glaze under the cake to prevent it from moving around on the platter.

Tip: Place pieces of wax paper around the cake before pouring.  When it stops dripping remove the wax paper to leave a clean and tidy platter.  I forgot to do this so just took a couple of spatulas and moved the entire cake to a disposable dish that could be left with the hostess.

Sweet Potato Fries - Crispy style!

So I have a sick 3 year old this week.  Fever, sore throat, cough.  Went to the doctor today and its just a virus she'll have to work through.  Hate to admit it, but, its been kind of a nice couple of days.  TV all day, and she takes a nap!  I'm sure that the price I'll pay for admitting that one is that I will catch this virus and struggle all of next week or something.  Stay tuned for the revenge of karma to come I suppose.  Anyway, the poor child has been a trouper as I fill her with all sorts of homeopathics and vitamins, take her temp a thousand times, and still take her out trick or treating last night.  I've been trying to feed her a bunch of great things like turkey soup, chicken soup, butternut squash soup, etc.  She's had 2 bites of each and bread or crackers :(.  Today I decided to ask her what she might eat for supper.  The answer was noodles, with salt & pepper.  After a few hours I decided that maybe some sweet potato fries would be a better answer.  Always enjoyable, lots of vitamin A (a super food in fact), and not a lot else!  And to top it off I found a recipe that guarantees they'll come out crispy!  Yum, yum!

The secret is cut them small, then toss them in a bag with a tablespoon of corn starch, drizzle with a tablespoon or 2 of olive oil, mix them up by hand and space them on a cookie sheet. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes!  My proportions weren't perfect, but they were still better than the ones I usually make.  I would recommend them!  I forgot to take a picture of the finished product (we devoured them too quickly), but here are some in progress!

Amelie's 3rd Birthday

Today was the finale of Amelie's 3rd birthday, completing 3 weeks of celebrations.  Yes, some may call it overkill, but we were actually trying to keep it low key.  It began Thanksgiving weekend.  We thought it would be a nice idea to cease the opportunity to have both sets of grandparents here for some cupcakes and a couple of presents.  It turned into a wonderful day that was just perfect for a 3 year old.  A few days later was the 'day' of her birthday, and she had a celebration at preschool.  We then went to Edmonton for a weekend of fun at the Fantasyland Hotel and West Edmonton Mall (unrelated to her birthday, but a lot of fun events there). And finally, today we went to Butterfield Acres for a pumpkin hunt and invited along our closest second cousin, Evan, and his parents, and then came back for lunch and more cupcakes this afternoon.  Pretty exciting stuff for a 3 year old.  And, well, I must admit I had a lot of fun too.

One of my favourite parts of any birthday at our house is baking and decorating the cupcakes.  I really need to take a cake decorating class, but I don't think I've done too bad so far.  At least one person at these events asked if the cupcakes were from Crave or Buttercream! Best compliment I could have had!

Party 1: Chocolate cupcakes with pink buttercream icing or  purple stabilized whipped cream icing.

Party 2: Two bite brownies with buttercream icing for preschool.

Party 3: Marble cupcakes with buttercream icing.

Party 3 continued.