Cooking Mag Mommy

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 Chine...

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.  ...

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...

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 prin...

 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....

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.  Usi...

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 setu...

 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...

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 suf...