Year of the Dragon- Chinese New Year -1/23/12

Gong Hei Fat Choi!  Happy Chinese New Year!   I've mentioned many times I'm a sucker for themes and nothing brings out themes like international holidays.  Chinese New Year is an easy holiday for anyone to celebrate.  Chinese food (or an Americanized version) is easy to find and many websites suggest fun ways to decorate for the holiday.  I used epicurious.com to find a simple kid-friendly menu and www.activityvillage.co.uk  for some cute Chinese New Year printables.  Eyrleigh and I decorated the table together.  I had some gold place mats and napkins that I tied with red ribbon.  I found some pillar candles and an Asian-style vase to make a centerpiece.  We printed out a lantern to glue together and some lucky money envelopes.  I slid some money in and Eyrleigh could barely wait to open her envelope.  She was so excited!

The menu on epicurious was titled "Chinese in a Flash" and it was a super easy take on Chinese that Eyrleigh loved.  The main dish of Hoisin Chicken in Lettuce Leaves was chicken and water chestnuts  in a simple sauce.  Eyrleigh doesn't like lettuce much, I think it's textural, so she ate her chicken without the lettuce.  Flavor wise, this is not an outstanding dish but it has simple flavors and is super easy to make so until I have more time (no crying 6 month old who won't eat any of this anyway!), this menu gets the point across. 

The Chinese Style Mushroom and Tofu Soup was also simple and not particularly flavorful but it was quick and easy.  It is a great introduction to tofu if you are not sure what your child (or husband:) will think of it.  The broth flavors the tofu and helps mellow the textural uniqueness of tofu.  I served these dishes with brewed green tea.

The dessert is a bit strange and though Eyrleigh loved it, I'm not sure I will repeat this recipe.  The Mandarin Orange Napoleons use the super kid friendly canned oranges which immediately makes them tops in my child's book.  I however could live without the candy sweet little things and liked them even less in what basically amounts to cream cheese frosting.  I also was very annoyed at the directions to bake the filo dough layers for 10-15 minutes.  The first batch burned to a crisp in 10 minutes and even the second batch that I only cooked for 8 minutes was dark and tasted burnt on the edges. 

Next year, I may try to amp up the authenticity in dishes but for my first Chinese New Year with two, this menu worked and allowed for some time to make some fun crafts.  I tried to get Eyrleigh to make a dragon for Richard's place setting but she ended up gluing white paper and some origami I made.  Rylynn played with (ate) her little toys and was just as happy with pureed butternut squash.  I look forward to next year as Eyrleigh gets more artistic and Rylynn will be old enough to scribble something.

Resolving- 1/22/12

I've always loved the prospect of a new year with new goals and new challenges. I hear some say that making resolutions just sets one up for failure but I for one love to feel like I can try again. I've even made and stuck to some significant resolutions over the years. After years of resolving the read the whole Bible in a year, I finally did it in 2001 and then again in 2010. Thankfully, major weight loss has never been an issue for me but in 2008 I did my first triathlon, in 2009 I did my first half marathon, and one of these years, when training doesn't involve pushing a jogging stroller, I will do a full marathon. This year, I didn't even think about resolutions until we were a few days into 2012. Rylynn was sick and we were up in New Hampshire at my mom and dad's.

I've always been a big fan of practical resolutions.  Eat healthier is too vague and impossible to quantify.  Eat more homemade meals is better but still not specific enough for me.  My food resolution for this year was to make weekly menus to help us save money and eat healthier.  This resolution stems from my total respect of a friend who writes out her menu for the month ahead of time and has it sitting on an easel in her kitchen.  (Yes, Beth Etheridge is my organization goddess!)  When I was blogging about Gourmet magazine, I loved that I never wondered what we would have for dinner.  I just looked on the menu I had written from the magazine and made what it said.  You would think there would be nights I wouldn't be "in the mood" for whatever I had written weeks before but I found that I was almost always looking forward to what I had written.  I didn't have to think about what I was "in the mood" for and the freedom of that took away the desire for anything else. 

I found the first week I wasn't prepared to write out a menu for the whole month.  I didn't have the energy to plan that out and it didn't allow for repeats. (Okay, it did but I didn't know how close was too close.)  I did however write themes for the days as a guide in deciding.  Monday is my planned shopping day so it doesn't make sense to put a meal that took a lot of preparation.  Tuesdays work for crockpot meals as those leftovers will be good in lunches throughout the week.  Wednesday is perfect for my favorite Mexican cuisine, Thursdays for pasta, and Friday I wrote soup/sandwich or something special.  To be honest, I am totally comfortable veering from this schedule but it gives me a base when I get stuck. 

Well, the first two weeks are in the books and I have to say that it worked well.  I didn't get pictures of every night.  I haven't blogged as frequently so photographing my food isn't second nature anymore.  I did take some pictures and I'm a little embarrassed.  It looks like we ate out of bowls the entire two weeks.   We didn't but I only remembered pictures the nights we did.  I have a post coming up about my remorse for food snobbery but here let me suffice it to say that Taste of Home, a cooking magazine I had previously seen as less than gourmet has become the main tome in my cooking magazine library.  This magazine uses very accessible ingredients, has lots of kid friendly recipes, and has upped their use of creative menus making it a new favorite.  That being said, I used recipes from Bon Appetit and Food and Wine as well.  I won't list the family menu here but I will say that the four pictures represent some really good dishes.  The top picture is the Texas Beef Brisket Chili from Bon Appetit's October 2008 issue.  Several reviews mentioned that the brisket was greasy so I used stew beef as recommended and used the crockpot instead of a dutch oven.  I love the butternut squash in this chili.  It adds depth and you can see from the picture that I also added beans toward the end of the cook time.  This helped make the chili more of a meal and added some extra flavor to the meaty dish.

The second picture is the Baked Potato Cheddar Soup from this month's issue of Taste of Home.  This soup was super thick (you can tell from the picture) and needed a little blending (I used my food processor) that the recipe didn't tell you about but it was very good.  I served this soup with a No-knead Harvest Bread from the same issue that was excellent.  In the third picture I had taken great liberties with the Zesty Chicken Tortellini Soup, also from Taste of Home, but again the soup was very good.  The final picture is some Cornmeal Dinner Rolls, again from Taste of Home, that I will be making again and again.  They are a yeast roll with a cornmeal base that are super simple and really delicious.  I'm learning how to use yeast well.  (Why did I not know until now that yeast stored in the refrigerator should be warmed to room temperature before using for the best results?)  These rolls were one of my first real successes and I hope I can duplicate them again and again.

Craziness....Your name is December!-12/11

Nope, didn't post the whole month of December!  I'm only posting now so I remember a few things when I start the crazy cookie train next year.  One, I do not like the combination of mint and chocolate.  I know, I'm weird but Andes mints don't do it for me and sadly, neither do really cute, totally thematic holiday whoopie pies.  The Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies in the December '05 Bon Appetit are beautiful.  They scream Christmas cheer and if you do like the chocolate/ mint combination, by all means, make these!  They just weren't for me.  I want my chocolate rich and warm, the very opposite of a breath mint!

I did find a simple cookie that I want to make again and again and again and I don't even think you have to wait for Christmas.   The Cardamom Crescents in the December '11 Bon Appetit were excellent.  Sadly, my crescent making skills are somewhat lacking as the picture shows but do not be deterred.  These cookies had a wonderful warm spice taste (I obviously like "warm" in my cookies.) and the pecans added depth to the flour base.  I found myself eating these cookies in the morning as well as they were not too sweet and heavy.                                                    I didn't get a picture of the Chewy Ginger Cookies, also from the Dec '11 issue of BA but these were also a great simple cookie.  The addition of raw ginger, ginger powder, and crystallized ginger made them delightfully spiced and a quick roll of the dough in raw sugar made every cookie look great.  These cookies were my go-to cookie for exchanges this holiday season.  They were quick to make, looked good, and every one loves ginger cookies at Christmastime. 

Pajama Partying!-11/11/11

Several months ago, I began looking around on the Internet for good ideas for a 4-year-old pajama themed party.  I decided to have a pajama party when I realized that Eyrleigh's preschool's major fundraising event of the year fell on her actual birthday and there was no way I was going to pull off both on the same day.  That left Friday night available for a party and what better way to party at night than in your pajamas!  

I decided to choose the decorative stuff for the party around the pajamas Eyrleigh picked to wear for that night.  We went shopping at some of our favorite stores at the mall and she FINALLY picked a pair of Old Navy pajamas that were liliac and purple with a cheetah (or it could have been a leopard, I never did figure that out!).  So purple cheetah print it was!  I'm not an animal print fan myself but there is a lot of animal print stuff out there so it made it easy...sort of.  Purple cheetah print was a little tougher to find than pink.  I never did find full bolts of purple cheetah print but I did find a website, Jellyrollfabrics.com, that had strips of purple and pink cheetah print to use in decoration. 

Every good party has to begin with cool invites and I found some I loved on Etsy from a vendor, Cutie Patootie Creations ( http://www.etsy.com/shop/CutiesTieDyeBoutique).   Stephanie was super quick to respond and made some changes that went perfectly with what I wanted.  She changed the little girl's hair to red to match E's and changed the text on the thank-you card to let guests know to bring new pajamas to donate to the Pajama Program (check them out at www.pajamaprogram.org) in lieu of gifts.  The only thing I would have changed was the wording of "regrets only" to "RSVP".  I think RSVP makes people more conscientious about letting you know if they are coming and also would have let me know how many adults and extra kids to plan for. 

I used the strips of purple and pink cheetah print fabric to decorate the table and used liliac and purple party supply stuff from Party City as the base.  You can't see it in the picture but I also got a "Happy Birthday" banner from Cutie Patootie to go above the table.  We had hot dogs, chili, chips, juice boxes, and soda available for dinner.  Richard did grilling duties and Mom helped me with the chili that was in the crockpot all day.  One of the other cool things I found in purple cheetah print was edible cake stickers. (link here)  I always have my girlfriend Devi make the cake for us.  She does a beautiful job (she decorated cakes for a bakery in college) and I love that E's cakes are one of a kind.  The cake sticker was the size of a sheet of paper and Devi just cut out the pajamas, slippers, and letters for the cake and decorated around them.  It made it really easy (for her, still would have been hard for me!) and though the stickers taste like fondant (YUCK!) there wasn't enough used to detract from the yummy buttercream frosting.

There are some wonderful party design sites on the web and I love to look through their amazing ideas for decorations and food.  But here's the truth, kids could care less if you label the food with matching labels and color coordinate your table.  Kids want to have fun and a party without activities will quickly become a nightmare for all involved.  Since I had 40 (yes, you read that right!) kids on the invite list, never mind their parents and siblings, I knew I had to have lots of activities and have them spread throughout the house.  My house is not that big and is chopped into rooms instead of the more modern large living/dining/kitchen area that can fit lots of people at once.   The picture below shows the sign that greeted guests as they came in. 

Each activity followed in the pajama party theme.  The most ambitious project was to make each child a pillowcase with their name on it.  I bought 14 yards of inexpensive white fabric and cut it in one foot sections.  Using the fabric edge as the top seam, I simply sewed up the two sides and flipped the case inside out.  Obviously these cases wouldn't fit standard size pillows but they were fun to decorate with stickers and could hold the treasures the kids collected in another activity.   Mom and I cut every kid's name out of the cheetah print fabric in either purple, pink, or brown.  I used Steam-A-Seal 2 Double Stick Fusible Webing to first iron the webbing to the print fabric, then the letters to the pillowcase.  I didn't give myself time to reinforce these letters by stitching but it would have been a good idea as some of the letters started coming off at the party.   I had debated printing the letters for each child's name on the computer but writing it out by hand was actually pretty cute!  I attached a couple of pictures so it looks pretty doable.  It really was!

I took an extra queen mattress and put it in the middle of the floor in Rylynn's room and let the kids jump on it.  We let the kids play in Eyrleigh's room and set out her toys.  We turned on Dinosaur Train, her favorite PBS show in the office, for kids to watch if they wanted.  My dad, who generally hides during parties, hid out in our room with some stuffed animals and buckets.  He had fun showing kids how to play Stuffed Animal Horseshoes!  After the cake, we had all the kids move to the living room and we showed the birthday episode from the cute series "Harold and the Purple Crayon".   As the kids left, we gave them a bag with a book ($1 books from Scholastic), Oreo cookies, and a carton of milk. 

I was really happy with how the party went.  It was a bit crowded and we forgot to tell our friend, Jennifer, who was taking pictures that our camera has a manual flash, so none of the midparty pictures turned out at all but really it was a success!  The picture  shows the almost 30 pairs of pajamas that we were able to donate to the Pajama Project for kids in need.  How cool is that!

Pumpkins and Pinterest-10/27/11

 Ever since I began this blogging thing I've wanted to post my own recipe on "Cooking Mag Mommy".  I struggle with one big question though.  What makes a recipe mine?  When am I no longer copying the ideas of others and coming up with something "original" to me?  I mean...bake at 350.  Not exactly a novel idea!   Tonight I made a pumpkin pull-apart bread adapted from a recipe I found through pinterest.com on the blog, "Sunny Side Up in San Diego". recipe link here  Earlier this week, I had made a Garlic Parmesan Pull-Apart Bread I found on the blog "The Pastry Affair" using tastespotting.com, another awesome site I've been using to find great recipes on blogs. recipe link here  The recipe I came up with used measurements and cooking techniques from both recipes but the finished product really was its own recipe.   And it was really good!  Richard and I ate over 1/2 of it while watching the World Series tonight.
Here's my recipe!   I'm so proud...

Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Pumpkin Bread with Rum-Soaked Raisins

6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
1/2 cup milk
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
11/4 cups sugar, divided
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup rum (optional)
1/3 cup raisins (optional)

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat.  Pour melted butter into large bowl then heat milk to warm in same saucepan.  Add milk to the melted butter.  Cool milk/butter mixture to warm (between 100 and 110 degrees) then add the yeast and 1/4 cup of sugar.  Let this yeast mixture sit until foamy, up to 10 minutes.  Add the the pumpkin, salt, and 2 cups of flour. Stir by hand or mix in stand mixer with dough attachment until combined.   Add the rest of the flour 1/2 cup at a time and knead by hand or machine for 6 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic.  Put dough in a large, lightly oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap or towel. Allow to rise in warm draft free area until doubled in size (an hour to an hour and a half).  While dough is rising, soak raisins in rum in a small bowl if desired.

Melt the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter. Mix the the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in another small bowl.  (If you choose to add rum soaked raisins, add them to the cinnamon sugar mixture.)  Spray the bottom of a bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray.

Punch down dough and pull off small spoonful size pieces.  Roll each piece of dough into a ball and dip in melted butter.  Then roll each ball in cinnamon sugar mixture and put in bundt pan, covering the bottom with the small balls of dough.  When all the dough has been rolled in cinnamon sugar and placed snugly in the pan, cover the pan with a clean towel and let rise for 30-45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the bread for 30-35 minutes.  Let cool for 5 minutes in pan then turn carefully onto wire rack or plate, then flip onto other plate or rack so bread holds its shape.  Enjoy warm or at room temperature.

This yummy bread recipe was not the only pumpkin inspiration I've had of late.  The very top picture is Rylynn looking all ready for Halloween with a cute shirt from her grandma and an adorable pumpkin hat.  I whipped up that hat last week and have made two more since for several friends who have kids Rylynn's age.   It's so cute and easy.  I found the directions through pinterest.com, on a blog titled "My Bountiful Life".   I linked her free pattern here. pumpkin hat pattern link here 

I couldn't post about all my fun pumpkin themed projects without putting in a picture of my two favorite pumpkins all dressed up in their Halloween costumes.  There is some debate between Richard and I about how exactly we came up with the idea to do slightly irreverent matching costumes for the girls.  I'm sure you can tell from the picture but we convinced Eyrleigh to be a scuba diver (anything but a princess!).  I found some great ideas...on pinterest...that involved her own black clothes, soda bottles, and duck tape.  She looks great, though I seriously doubt she'll wear the goggles over her eyes at all!  We found a infant shark costume at Old Navy for Rylynn and for my favorite part of the whole thing, I made Ry a little sign that says "Give my sister candy or I bite".  I posted this same picture on Facebook and everyone loved it!

Great Halloween Read-Alouds-10/25/11

There will not be a single mention of food or cooking in this entire post...wait, that was a mention!  Oh well...
With Halloween right around the corner, I wanted to put in my votes for great Halloween read-alouds for preschoolers.  These are my current favorites to read to Eyrleigh and Rylynn and I'm planning on bringing them along to E's preschool class party on Monday.  Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson has all the qualities of a great preschool read-aloud.  It has a wonderful rhyming cadence and a repetative story that is easy for young children to follow.  There is even a "group participation" posibility if you want the kids to pipe up as the broom "whoosh"es away. 

Last year I bought The Spooky Wheels on the Bus by J. Elizabeth Mills from the Scholastic Book Fair.  Sung to the tune of the more traditional "Wheels on the Bus", this story is a great one for preschoolers and a reader who can sing.  Using the numbers one through ten and Halloween themed bus "parts" and riders, the whole class can sing and act out this story together.   This one is great for a party where sitting and listening just isn't in the cards.  The kids can sing, wiggle, and make all the silly noises they want and still be a part of the activity.

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams is not a novel pick by any means.  Almost every list I found of Halloween read-alouds included this classic.  Don't worry though, kids could hear this one 100 times and still have fun.  The repeating actions of the scary pumpkin man are great to keep kids engaged and acting out as the story goes along.  Wiggling, shaking, nodding, and clapping is sure to keep little listeners engaged in the story and though the pumpkin man is a little scary for the really little ones, the ending is cute and not at all frightening.

10 Trick-or-Treaters:  A Halloween Counting Book by Janet Schulman was a new one to me this year but I'm  adding it to the repetoire.  The rhyming verses and the counting back from 10 to 1 are great for a preschool class.  The kids are just beginning to recognize numbers and this book has big contrasting numbers on each page that kids can see.  Using their rhyming skills and the visual numbers, most 3 and 4-year-olds should be able to shout out the appropriate number as the story goes along.  It's a  great way to reinforce number recognition in a really fun story.
These are just 4 great read-alouds and I hope to find a few more in time for the preschool party next year!   Reading other reviewers, I think I need to find In The Haunted House by Eve Bunting  and Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming.  Have a great week reading to your kids!

Christmas In October-10/25/11

I've blogged since 2008 but in the last few months, I've finally started following other blogs.  I've discovered something about myself.  I am hopelessly into themes.  Maybe it's the teacher in me but everything is more fun in themes...themed parties, themed food, themed lessons.  I know there is a large and vocal group of people that find themes cheesy but I  (and may I add, Martha Stewart) am not one of them.   I love things all tied together around one central idea. That's why I've had so much fun with Eyrleigh's parties and what I've become really addicted to looking at on blogs that show parties all centered around everything from apples to zebras.

My last blog post was a seriously tardy review of our Halloween party and this post will continue that.  Here is a quick summary of our Christmas party LAST year complete with allergy friendly food ideas, a game, a craft, and some fun Christmas stories.
The photo above is our table setup.  Now that I've spent hours looking at all these classy party purveyors, I see we are pretty amateur but this is for  two-year-old preschool class and not wealthy paying clients.  I actually left my camera in the car for this party so I had to get my pictures from Lori. 

Here are some of the cool things we did to make the food more fun.  The fruit for the party was threaded on kabobs and stuck in a whole pineapple.  If you look closely you can see the star fruit at the ends to give a Christmas look to our fruit tree.  We also made little ham sandwiches.  Jacob, Lori's son, has outgrown his wheat allergy and can have certain breads if they are made without milk products.  We cut these little sandwiches in tree shapes with a cookie cutter.  Like at the Halloween party, we made Jello Christmas bells in red and green and even cut out candy cane shapes from corn tortillas and fried them for chips.  

Lori took some good closeups of our most creative additions to the food.  We made little popcorn snowmen for the kids to take home.  Basically, we made these much like Rice Krispie treats.  We melted marshmallows,  mixed it with popcorn, and rolled the popcorn into two balls.  We used raisins for eyes, fruit leather cut into strips for a scarf, pretzel rods for arms, and Skittles for buttons.  They were really cute and fun to eat.  Lori also made some adorable Christmas mice.  She used Enjoy Life chocolate cookies and dipped one half in melted baking chocolate (also from Enjoy Life Foods).  The ears are sunflower seeds and the tails are red licorice rope.  She even made a snowy bed of coconut.  So cute!

Our craft went perfectly.  The little Christmas mouse you see Jacob holding was was easy for the kids to assemble.  The mom who made them cut out a red mouse shape from felt (basically a teardrop shape) and put two slits near the pointed end.  She then cut out green ears (basically a dumbbell shape) that could be slipped through the slits in the red.  The children were given two eyes and a small white pompom for a nose to glue on themselves.  The candy cane attached by sliding into the loop created by the ears on the underside.  The kids thought these were great and they didn't take a lot of parental assistance.

Our game was actually a repeat of one we played with the kids at Halloween...and I completely forgot to explain in that post.  We choose a fast beat Christmas song, I think "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree".  (At Halloween, we did the Monster Mash and Ghostbusters.)   We placed two different Christmas themed shapes on the floor with enough of each one for each child.  (Here you see we did gingerbread men and trains, at Halloween I did pumpkins and ghosts)  We played the song and got the kids dancing then quickly stopped the music and shouted one of the two shapes.  The kids had to run and stomp on the shape we called....kind of like musical chairs with no losers.  The kids got to dance around and work on shape recognition and following directions.  It was fun!

We read a few holiday stories too.  The Night Before Christmas is always a great one and I have a beautiful pop-up one by by Clement C. Moore and Niroot Puttapipat.   Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn and Mark  Buehner has cute rhyming and is easy for little kids to follow. 

This final picture is just for laughs.  Eyrleigh and Jacob are usually at school while Lori and I make the party food but because of timing, they played while we worked the day before the party.  This adorable picture is the two of them playing in the Jello scraps after we cut out the bells.  They ate some, they smashed some, and basically had a blast.  Gotta love them!

Halloween in August-8/14/11

 I'm sure you've heard of Christmas in July...but Halloween in August?  And what cooking magazine is doing that theme?  Well no, Halloween in August is not a new trend, and no cooking magazine is doing a spread on it. 
I've loved doing the cooking magazine reviews each month in the past but for a number of reasons, I've decided to change it up a bit on my blog.  Sure, I'll still review recipes from cooking magazine, though I won't necessarily use a current issue or even a magazine recipe.  For example, tonight I made Sweet Potato and Zucchini Bread  ( link here) from a November 1992 issue of Bon Appetit.  I do save old cooking magazine but not that old.  I found this recipe on Epicurious, my favorite recipe site. (link here)  I had zucchini and sweet potatoes and simply put both words in their search box.   This recipe is for bread but you can see I made muffins and had great results too.  This was actually the second time I did this recipe this week.  Earlier I made bread and learned a little bit more about how to make this recipe successful.  First of all, make sure you do not add more than the recommended amount of zucchini or sweet potato.  It doesn't bake up well and is very wet.  Also, the reviewers on the site are right.  Use less sugar, I used a cup and a half instead of two and you can reduce the oil to 1/2 cup or use 1 stick of softened butter.  I made these muffins with 1 cup white flour and 1cup whole wheat and it worked just as well as all white.  These are a great bread muffin for any time of the year and since zucchini is cheap right now, give them a try.
Wait, you say, what about the title...and these random Halloween pictures?  Well, I wasn't kidding about mixing it up.  I will be adding some new elements to this blog and I'll start by harkening back to last Halloween.  I told you in the previous post that one of the things that kept me busy while I was ignoring blogging over the last year was being a room mom for Eyrleigh's preschool.  As room mom I, along with the other room moms, am in charge of the 4 classroom parties for the year.  As a teacher, I loved coordinating our class parties but found them pretty stressful.  I had to keep kids busy, moms happy, all while planning around teaching "real" subjects like math and reading.  Being a room mom for Eyrleigh's class, all I had to do was plan the parties and boy, is that fun!
One of my close friends and fellow room moms is the parent of a little boy in Eyrleigh's class.  This adorable little guy, Jacob, has lots of food allergies and Lori wanted our parties, understandably, to include only foods Jacob could eat.  So our parties had to be fun and yummy while avoiding nuts, eggs, dairy, and wheat. 
 The Halloween party was the first party of the year and Lori and I agreed that it made sense to make all the food ourselves in Lori's kitchen to ensure there was no cross-contamination or accidental allergens.  So instead of asking for food from parents, we asked for a $5 donation per party to defray costs.  This worked pretty well, although we often spent more than $60 because some of the items were pricier specialty items. 
The first Halloween themed picture above is just  simple gift boxes I made for Eyrleigh's teachers.  I bought cheap wooden boxes at Michael's, painted them black, wrapped them with Halloween ribbon, and glued on some cut-outs that were on sale.  I filled the boxes with Halloween candy and had Eyrleigh give them to Ms. Tracy and Ms. Kathy.  I was a teacher so I'm big on little teacher gifts.
The second picture is the kids' gift bags.  The plastic cauldrons I've had forever and I have no idea where I got them.  The bags were actually Walmart.  I am NOT a Walmart fan but I have to say their Halloween stuff this year was pretty cute.  We filled the bag with a pencil, bubbles, erasers, and Dum Dum candies (allergy friendly), again all from Walmart.
The best part of the party was of course, the food.  Lori was the creative genius on this one.  She uses websites to research which foods not only do not contain allergens but carry no risk of cross-contamination (products made on same equipment as those with allergens).  One of the best candy companies for allergy friendly foods is Spangler Candies.  The cupcakes pictured above are actually Spangler Candy Peanuts (link here) on top of Cherrybrook  Gluten Free Cupcakes (link here) with Cherrybrook Chocolate Frosting (link here).  The pumpkin stems are Glutino pretzels (link here).  These cupcakes are super cute and everyone can eat them.

 It's hard to see the detail in the next picture but we made our own chips for the kids.  These were the simplest part of the whole meal.  All we did was use a bat cookie cutter to cut out corn tortillas and fried them in oil.  We used vegetable oil since Jacob is not allergic to soy, the main ingredient in most vegetable oils.
 Another simple part of our party meal were the Jello pumpkins.  Again, we just made a batch of Jello and used pumpkin cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.  Our preschool is associated with a Methodist church so none of our students had pork restrictions.  If you have vegetarian, Jewish, or  Muslim students who can't have gelatin, here is a link for pork-free gelatin here. 

My favorite cute food of the whole party was also one of the healthiest.  We cut the tops of oranges and  took the segments out which, with a bit of practice, was easier than you would think.  I used a grapefruit spoon to get it started then pulled out the "orange part" and the white pith around it.  We then cute out eyes, nose, and mouth just like you would a pumpkin.  They made the cutest little fruit cups.
  I don't know why I didn't get a picture of this but Lori also made meatballs as a main dish for both the kids and adults at the party.  Each child is required to have an adult attend the party so we had calculated for adults to eat as well.   I found a number of allergy free meatball recipes on the web so you can find one you like through Google. 

Unlike adults who can have food alone and call it a party, things are different with a 2-year-old preschool class.  We have four room moms in this class, seems a bit of overkill for a class of 12, but it's fun to work together.  We agreed early to divide the party into 4 parts and each take a part.  Besides food, we had a game time, craft time, and story time.
I didn't get a picture of the craft we did.  Maybe it was the excitement of the first party or just ignorance that I would want to post pictures of what we did but I got nothing.  The paper plate pumpkin I show here is an example of our craft.  Since this is a two-year-old class, we painted paper plates orange beforehand.  With older kids you could have the kids paint them but 2-year-olds, paint, and Halloween costumes are all a very bad combination, particularly since the party was before Halloween and the costumes would be needed again in a few days for trick-or-treating.  We also precut the shapes for the mouth, nose, eyes, stem, and leaves out of felt.  All the kids needed to do was put the cutouts in the "right" places and glue them on.  Notice right is in quotes because most kids had a very abstact looking pumpkin by the end.  You could tell whose parents helped the most, let's just put it that way.  We put the loose shapes for each pumpkin together in baggies so each kid had a bag of the right shapes to begin with to avoid confusion.

I did the games so I have good pictures of those.  I was pretty sure 12 kids doing one thing would be chaos at this age and I was right.  It was tough enough to keep 6 of them in line so I was glad I had two games and the groups switched after a few minutes.  Organized games are really tough at this age so I choose two really simple things and let them work on taking turns (also VERY tough at this age).  The first game was a variation of Pin The Tail On The Donkey.  I called it "Catch The Flies".  I drew a spider web on large banner paper and glued on flies .  Then I stuck Velcro to the backs of die-cut spiders from the School Box store.  I put the fuzzy part of the Velcro on the flies and the kids had to take turns sticking a spider on a fly.  I did 24 flies and spiders so each kid got to do it 4 times before they switched activities.  It was super simple, not hard to explain, and they again practiced taking turns.

The second game was also really simple.  I bought a cheap piece of plywood from the hardware store and painted a large pumpkin.  I cut out the eyes and the mouth and found two squishy balls we had at the house.  Each child got to try to throw the balls through the pumpkin's eyes or mouth.  Glad we had the parents there for this one.  Guess who chased the balls?!  This game just rotated through until the spider game was done and worked again on the ever difficult "taking turns".
We also had a story time.  We actually did the story right after the food so the parents could wipe down the tables and set out the craft.  We did the games last so we could do another round if we had too much time.  Thankfully, our class had playground time at the very end of the day so we were able to send them out to play at the end of every party and do a good job cleaning up without corralling kids.  We had a few stories too but if I remember correctly we only ended up reading one because of time and kid attention span.  The one we read, Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, was perfect for kids this age because it wasn't too long, had lots of rhyming, and even a part where the kids could participate. 
For our first party as room moms, Lori and I were really happy about how everything went.  The kids loved the food,and the craft, games, and story were age appropriate and relatively successful at holding the kids attention.  It's not the best picture of her but I know my little Princess Presto had a good time and she was really excited to have Mom at school with her.  Happy Halloween...really late...or maybe just a bit early!

Hambrick's-Party of Four!-8/1/11

On August 24th of last year, I wrote a innocuous little post on this blog about my husband being a good sport about my creative culinary exploits.  And then....nothing....for over 11 months.  What happened, you may ask?  Well, the picture at left tells a rather significant part of the story but not the whole thing so I'll try to summarize here in case another 11 months go by before I post again.  (Okay, I will seriously try not to do that!)  The year 2010 started off on the wrong foot with the loss of our fourth pregnancy (Thankfully, pregnancy #2 had resulted in Eyrleigh!) at 18 weeks.  We were still reeling from the devastation of that event when my only sibling, my brother Ben, committed suicide at the end of February.  Then in April, Richard's company hired a new CEO and things professionally went south from there for him.  Since a blog is a public format and could therefor be accessed by anyone, including this individual, let me suffice it to say that after 9 years with the company, Richard knew his days  were numbered.  In November, this was further clarified by an incredibly unbelievable event that left our family and many of Richard's co-workers shaking their heads.  Richard began the job search in earnest and in March of this year, took a job with a new company. 

Despite a very upsetting November for us on a professional level, on November 9th, Richard's 34th birthday, we found out we were pregnant again for the final time.   Some may ask how we knew this would be the final time...we knew.  We had decided after the last miscarriage that we would try until the end of 2010 to have another child and if we were not pregnant or had another pregnancy loss, Richard would have surgery to make sure we were done.   The stress involved in the process was not something we wanted to feel indefinately.  So less than 2 months from our deadline, we began to think that Baby #2 might actually happen. 

After our past experience, this pregnancy was even more anxiety producing than the last four.  I gave myself blood thinner shots daily and increased some levels of hormones and vitamins.  I saw not only a regular ob, but also a high-risk specialist to make sure everything was going fine.  At 32 weeks, we found out that our little girl had a sizable cyst on her ovary but it shrunk as she grew and is no longer a concern.   Throughout the whole pregnancy I had an incredibly limited diet because of severe acid indigestion so my cooking creativity came screeching to a halt.

I tell all this not to say I didn't cook at all for over 11 months but to show that life began to take on a higher level of intensity and creative cooking, and therefore the blog, faded into the background.  I actually looked back at my calendar for August 24th of last year and that day was the Back to School Fair for Eyrleigh's preschool.   I was a room mom in Eyrleigh's class and even subbed a few times at the preschool.  I really miss the creative aspects of teaching and the adult interaction of work.  It was on a much lesser scale but I loved being on the "mom" side of school.

On July 8th, Rylynn Candace Hambrick was born and after several weeks of family in town and numerous meals brought by friends (some are still coming!), Saturday night was the first night we really got creative again and I was reminded of my delinquency in regards to this blog.  I say "we" because the initial inspiration was Richard's.  He mentioned that he felt like shrimp po'boys.  At first, I was nonplussed but when he did the legwork, downloaded a recipe, and headed to the store with a list, I was getting excited.  Richard actually found his recipe on the The Food Network site at this url http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/aarti-sequeira/shrimp-and-pineapple-not-so-po-boys-recipe/index.html .

Working together (Richard said I hijacked his recipe) with a little help from Eyrleigh, we made the pineapple relish and fried up the shrimp in cornmeal.  The pineapple relish is delicious.  I kept just taking spoonfuls by itself.  The spices don't overwhelm the sweet but cut it perfectly.  Richard fried the shrimp in cornmeal and cajun spices, Eyrleigh's got just cornmeal as she is still a bit whimpy when it comes to heat.  These po'boys sure were messy but they were excellent and easy to make.  I paired them with a simple pasta salad I lived on when I was pregnant. It's a bit bland but made a good compliment to the flavor packed sandwiches.

Shrimp and Pineapple Not So Po'Boy Sandwich (foodnetwork.com)- A