nuts & bolts mix

 

This idea for the nuts & bolts came from Wendolonia's robot party ideas. She also has the adorable bag topper template to print off. Nuts & Bolts is essentially what Chex Mix is. It is apparently the preferred name for Chex mix in the South. I had never heard of it until recently, but it's the perfect name for a robot party treat! There are probably hundreds of ways to preparing this, but I kept it simple, and did no baking or adding of spices and butter.

Chocolate Chex cereal

Honey nut Cheerios cereal

Pretzel sticks

m&ms

In a large bowl, combine desired amounts of each ingredient. I started by emptying half the box of Chex into the bowl. Then I added a little less than half the box of Cheerios. I added 2-3 cups of the pretzels and about half of a large bag of m&ms. I wanted it to be sweet and chocolaty. I put about 2 cups into each treat bag. The treat bags I got at a craft store in the cake decorating aisle. Then I topped each bag with a robot bag topper and voila! It was ready to go. The kids gobbled them up and asked for more to take home.

traditional bento

Here is a traditional bento that I made for HF. It's brown rice and broccoli with roasted sesame seeds sprinkled on top. On top of the rice is red pepper lips I cut out of the pepper on one of the indents. On the right is a bed of green leaf lettuce with California Rolls. No, I did not make these myself, but saw them at Costco (16 for just over $5. not bad!) On the bottom right is a slicone cupcake holder with fresh cut pineapple. A small packet of soy sauce is tucked in the corner.

Wall-E bento

Wall-E sandwich is turkey inside. Instructions found here. Underneath Wall-E is nuts and bolts robot mix (recipe to come). On the other side is a bed of green leaf lettuce. Cucumber coins with star shaped carrot coins on top, a babybel cheese wheel, a heart shaped silicon cupcake holder with a clementine orange in segments and 2 raspberries inside. I was trying to make it look like a flower. Then a hard boiled egg to look like Eva, Wall-E's main squeeze. Her face is a sliver of olive with nasty blue cookie icing that I had leftover from HF's graduation cake.

apple pie trail mix

 

This was so easy to make and it really did remind me of apple pie. The longer you store the mix, the softer the teddy grahams and granola become. I prefer it crunchy, but it was still enjoyable soft. I like how the teddy grahams have belly buttons. . .

This is one of those recipes that you sort of eyeball until it's to your liking, but I started out with a cup of each ingredient and then added more of one or another until it was to my liking.

1 cup Teddy Grahams

1 cup Granola

1 cup yogurt covered raisins

1 cup dried apples, cut into bite size pieces

Mix all ingredients together and store in airtight container. I put mine into tiny little one-serving containers so my kids and husband could snack on them conveniently. I ended up adding the whole bag of dried apples, and used my kitchen scissors to quickly cut them in the size of pieces I wanted. I also added another cup of granola and a shake more of both the teddy grahams and the raisins. Yeah, a shake. Not a perfectly healthy treat or snack, but not too bad either.

food updates

I haven't been making any original recipes or anything lately. I've been eating boring ole healthy foods and snacks. I did eat more junk than I would've liked to during the holidays, and have made some big fitness and health goals that I am working on. I am also busy preparing for a local healthy cooking class I'll be teaching at the end of this month. I will be doing a demo on hummus and ways to use it, and talking about feeding our children healthy snacks and lunches, the resources I use such as websites, blogs, cookbooks, etc. to find inspiration for ideas and showing bento products and how to arrange them. It should be fun.

I'm going to start doing Menu Plan Monday again. I have noticed that t helps us with our healthy eating habits, and our grocery budget when I plan ahead and you can find lots of ideas through the links of others doing it.

I did get Pioneer Woman's cookbook for Christmas, which is one of the things I wanted. Here are the recipes I've tried:

Edna Mae's Sour Cream Pancakes. OMG these are good! They melt in your mouth and are just delightful. LOVE these. This recipe has now replaced my Fly Off the Plate pancakes, which are also very good and also use sour cream, but these pancakes are much more simple. It uses 1 cup of sour cream and just 7 Tablespoons of flour. You should definitely give these a try. You can find pictures and the recipe here at the Noshery.

Beans and Cornbread (page 101): This recipe is also on her website. This was good. One of those filling, comfort foods.

Tomato Basil Pizza (page 112): This is one of our favorites! This is also on her website.

Creamy Mashed Potatoes (146): Good golly these were good! And you wanna know why? Because there was almost 2 sticks of butter, and a package of cream cheese. Wow. And then we paired it up with her meatloaf (150). FANTASTIC!! You cover it with bacon. Out. of. control. Next time I make it however, I think I will precook the bacon and then make it in muffin tins and sprinkle the bacon on top of each cup and then cover it with the sauce. Yeah, these two recipes are hard on the ticker for sure!

That's all for now. That's a cookbook to pull out occasionally.

bentos 29-32

bento 29:  Ritz crackers with squares of Gouda and Havarti with dill cheeses, olives, carrots, turkey skewered, applesauce with a shake of sprinkles on top for fun, and a chocolate cinnamon bear.

bento 30:  HF's bento- banana cut in half, mini carrots, olives, a spinach salad with toasted sesame seeds, craisins, and roasted almond slivers with a little container of poppyseed dressing, and cocktail sausages.

bento 31:  carrots, strawberry yogurt, pulled chicken, clementine orange, craisins and cheerios mix, and a mini dark chocolate 3 musketeers with mint.

bento 32:  I don't know why sometimes the pictures turn this way. Just cock your head to the right to see it properly. This one has mini spinach quiches, mini pretzels, grape tomatoes, apple slices, and strawberry yogurt.

PB smoothie

We love this smoothie. And you know, it's pretty healthy! If you like Jamba Juice's Peanut Butter Moo'd, this is a good copycat recipe. 

3/4 cup nonfat milk
3/4 cup nonfat vanilla frozen yogurt
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter (we use natural)
2 fresh bananas, sliced and frozen
1 cup ice


Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

turtles

These babies were good! And so easy to make.

what you need:
mini twisty pretzels or the square grid pretzels
bag of rolos
roasted pecans

The first thing I did is I toasted my raw pecans. I poured them onto a cookie sheet and basted them with melted butter. I put them in the oven at 350 and toasted them for 10-15 minutes, stirring every 3 minutes or so. Using just raw pecans are delicious too. You don't have to toast them.

Place desired amount of pretzels on cookie sheet. Unwrap Rolos and put a Rolo candy on top of each pretzel. Place in a 325 degree oven for 3-5 minutes until just started to droop. Take out immediately and place a pecan on top of rolo and gently press down. Let cool for several minutes or hours until the chocolate has set. Otherwise there will be gooey dripping chocolate all over the place. You can make these for a party or give them to friends and neighbors for a holiday treat.

french apple pie

See, I did make treats during the holidays! I don't eat fruit pies. I have never liked them. Except for the apple pie. I love apple pie. But I cannot eat a store bought apple pie. It has to be homemade. In my opinion, it's the crust that makes or breaks it. I've tried a variety of crusts, but I always come back to a basic. My mom's pie crust recipe.

Crust:
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 cup COLD water

Combine flour and salt. Add shortening. Use pastry blender or 2 knives in criss cross pattern to crumble mixture until fine. Add cold water and mix until well moistened. Form into ball and let rest for 10 minutes. Roll out. Makes 1 pie crust.

Apple Pie:
6-8 cups Golden Delicious apples, peeled and sliced very thin
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice (if you are using granny smith or a very tart apple you can omit)
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon

Gently toss sliced apples in a large bowl with lemon juice. Combine sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over apples and toss until well coated. Set aside. Make crumb topping.

Crumb Topping:
1/2 cup cold butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour

Combine ingredients in a bowl and cut together using the same method as when making the pie crust until you have pea-sized crumbs.

Place pie shell on top of foil-lined cookie sheet. Pour apple mixture into pie shell and then top with the crumb topping. This will be very high and spilling over. Just be careful to keep it all on top. Once it is cooked, it will shrink down significantly. Also, most apple pies have flour or cornstarch included in the apple mixture to thicken it up, but I always leave it out. I prefer the taste difference it makes. It does cause your apple pie to have more liquid. This doesn't bother me, but it does thicken up the longer it sits out.

a compromise

I was at Sam's Club and saw this Le Creuset lookalike cast iron enameled pot for $38.72. HF knows that I want the collection seen here at Williams Sonoma for over $1000! And that's the sale price! That does seem kind of crazy to spend that much for a set of pots, but they are lifetime guaranteed! Anyway, this pot at Sam's Club is over 6.5 quarts and it is also lifetime guaranteed and only a fraction of the cost of a le creuset one. This same pot size in the le creuset is over $300. But I do love the variety of colors to choose from in the le creuset. *sigh* HF knows I want this pot and I think he will be going to Sam's to get it. I read on one of the reviews that the enamel on the outside chips and gets darker with use. I didn't know that. But it works so well and is lifetime guaranteed, so I think that a pot losing it's shining beauty with use is okay.
Oh, and I also want one of these. We used to have the old fashioned one that you place on the stove top and turn the handle, but I remember my parents using an air popper. We have decided to stop buying microwave popcorn and get back to basics for a number of reasons. Cost, taste, chemical makeup, variety of flavor options, fun to use with the kids, etc. And these are around $20 or so. This one pictured above is by Presto.

kitchen wish list II

Calphalon Nonstick 15-piece set from Williams Sonoma

Automatic Yogurt Maker

White Mountain Ice Cream Maker, maual

Stainless Steel Pastry Blender

Splatter Screen

Le Creuset Teakettle

Zoku Quick Pop Maker

bentos 27 & 28

potstickers, monterey jack cheese cubed, banana slices, molasses cookie cut into quarters, bun, and sugar snap peas.
This bento is the exact same as above except for the vegetables. I put raw carrots, cauliflower and broccoli in this one.

jello fluff

Jello has been around for at least a hundred years, but it still never ceases to amaze me. For example, when my mom was in college in the 60s, she had this Jello Cookbook. She still has it too. It's totally worn, pages missing or falling out, stains all over it, but it is so fun for me to look at. I can tell which recipes she used most often. The thing about this cookbook that I love most is that there are sections labled things like "meat" or "main dishes". With Jello?! Well, I have seen many of these concoctions.

Every Thanksgiving, my mom would make a gorgeous layered jello salad. Each layer a different color, and the middle was a mixture of cream cheese and something else. She usually put cut up fruit in our jello. Once in a while, she would do shredded carrots. Blech! I would estimate that we had some kind of jello salad at least once a week. Now I have seen things in jello that are almost too horrible to mention. Every Easter, my friend's grandma brings a green jello mold with sliced hot dogs in it. No joke. Sometimes it's even more fancy with the addition of shredded carrots. Hideous.

The jello fluff pictured above has been in the family forever. I don't know if it came from the 60s recipe book or not, but it makes me smile when I eat it. I remember eating ONLY jello fluff for Thanksgiving as a little girl and not touching anything else on my plate. You can do this with any flavor jello. It doesn't have to be strawberry. We've made lime fluff and that was pretty good too. Here's how to do it:

1 large box (6 oz.) strawberry JELLO
10-12 ice cubes
6-7 oz. strawberry yogurt
1 (8 oz.) carton cool whip

Follow instructions on box for boiling water. Pour JELLO into medium to large bowl and add boiling water. Stir until JELLO is completely dissolved. Instead of adding more water, add the 10-12 ice cubes. Once ice cubes are melted, add in the cool whip and yogurt. Mix on high or stir with a whisk until mixed completely. Cover with serran wrap and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

This takes just a few minutes to make and the kids love it. I might make it for our daughter's ballerina party coming up in March. Everything is going to be pink.

Do you have any funny JELLO stories or recipes?

food related t-shirts i adore

Check out these food related t-shirts from threadless.com. These were some of my favorites.

"Milk Moustache"

"Pancakes Mountain"

"Food Chain". If you can't see it very well, it's a zombie on top of the food chain.

"Cheesy Friends Forever"

"Playin' in the Sprinkler"

"Cookie Loves Milk"

"I took a bite out of crime. . ."

I don't remember what this one is called, and it's from a while back, but I couldn't find it anywhere on their website. That makes me sad, because I really loved this one enough to buy it.

They sell these in little kids sizes too and onesies. I thought the "cookie loves milk" would be so cute as a onesie on our little guy.

bentos no. 24-26

dinosaur sandwich with just cheese inside, a pretzel rod broke in half, craisins, and strawberry yogurt.
Mrs. Officer's delectable pumpkin bread, carrot sticks, black olives on picks, mozzarella cheese cubes, and a little mixture of almonds, craisins, dried apricots, and chocolate chips.
black olives and mozzarella cubes on picks, trail mix of dried apricot, craisins, peanuts, raisins, and chocolate chips, raspberry jello in foil ghost, and more amazing and moist pumpkin bread from Mrs. Officer.

kitchen wish list part I

(click on image for more details)

Le Creuset 12-piece Cookware set at Williams-Sonoma

set of biscuit cutters at Williams-Sonoma

mandoline

Cook's Illustrated or Cook's Country magazine subscription

Apple Pocket Pie Mold at Williams-Sonoma. They also have heart and star shapes.

Can you tell that I love Williams-Sonoma?

Blessings Mix

inside the bag

the tag

the final product: the template found here

This is a fairly new Thanksgiving tradition of ours. We make Blessings Mix. A friend of mine made it for us a couple years ago and we stole the idea. But apparently we are not alone. I had no idea that it was a widely known thing to do. It's all over the internets. This is what we will be giving to Daisy's teachers.

Blessings Mix
2 cups Bugles, original or Caramel
2 cups mini twisty pretzels
1 cup nuts or seeds (I used a combination of whole almonds, cashews, and peanuts)
1 cup dried fruit (I used dark raisins and craisins)
1 cup candy corn
1 cup m&ms
Hershey's Kisses (I also use hugs)

In a large bowl, gently mix together all ingredients except for Hershey's Kisses. Once thoroughly combined, put 1 cup into cellophane bag. Put a couple of kisses and/or hugs on top. Print out tag with Blessings Mix poem and loop onto ribbon or twist tie used to secure bag.

BLESSINGS MIX

Bugles: Shaped like a cornucopia or Horn of Plenty, a symbol of our nation's abundance.

Pretzels: Arms folded in prayer, a freedom sought by those who founded our country.

Candy Corn: The sacrifices of the Pilgrims' first winter. Food was so scarce that settlers survived on just a few kernels of corn a day.

Nuts or Seeds: Promise of a future harvest, one we will reap only if seeds are planted and tended with diligence.

Dried Fruits: Harvest gifts from our bountiful land.

m&ms: Memories of those who came before us to lead us into a blessed future.

Hershey's kiss: The love of family and friends that sweetens our lives.