Baked Sweet Potato Slices

This is an easy snack that the kids love. Plus, they're a healthy alternative to processed foods.

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

-Start by slicing your sweet potatos into 1/2" rounds. Leave the peel on as this gives it a lovely texture.

-Place the slices in one layer on baking sheets that have been coated with cooking spray.

-Brushy with a light drizzle of olive oil.

-Sprinkle with pepper, salt and garlic powder.

-Bake for 30 minutes or until slightly crisp, flipping each slice after 15 minutes.

Serve warm to ravenous children.

Visit The Grocery Cart Challenge for more recipes.

Jennifer Hoech

Menu Plan Monday

Here we are again, another week. Last week went well with the exception of the butternut squash lasagna. That is just a bad idea all together. This week, my husband is starting a "biggest loser" contest. The dinners will be low cal from now on. The breakfasts and lunches are planned for the kids.

Most of these recipes are great but I do change some of the ingredients to make them healthier. For example you can substitute whole wheat flour for white flour, brown rice for white rice, skip the butter, add more veggies, use yogurt instead of sour cream etc.

Breakfast:
Breakfast Tacos - I love this article on Breakfast Tacos from Homesick Texan.

Bagels with cream cheese

Eggs in a nest

Green smoothies

Lunch:

Tortilla wrap w/mini carrots and hummus and strawberries

Mini Pizzas on WW English muffins w/strawberries and popcorn - Huge win with this last week!

Chicken Muffins w/apples and popcorn

Egg Muffin Sandwich w/yogurt and cantelope

Dinner:

Garlic Salmon w/broccoli

Quinoa and black beans

Lentils and Spinach

Black Bean Tacos

Shrimp Kebabs
photo courtesy of Shape.com

Bake for snacks and lunch boxes:

Sweet Potato slices - not sure why, but the kiddos love to snack on these.

Lemon Poppy Seed Scones - Haven't tried these yet but I think the kids will like them.

Popcorn -Pop a huge batch, then stick in small containers to be used in lunches.


For more Menu Plan ideas check out :

Menu Plan Monday

Each week I make a menu plan. It resides on the side of my fridge and is difficult to find the recipes each night. In an attempt to keep the recipes in one place, I've decided to start making menu plan posts each Monday.

Most of these recipes are great but I do change some of the ingredients to make them healthier. For example you can substitute whole wheat flour for white flour, brown rice for white rice, skip the butter, add more veggies, use yogurt instead of sour cream etc.

Hope this will give you some ideas as well!


Breakfast:
Pancakes

Bagels with cream cheese

Whole wheat toast with egg

Cereal/Green smoothies

Amish baked oatmeal

Lunch:

Tortilla wrap w/mini carrots and hummus and mini orange

Mini pizzas on WW English muffins w/grapes

Chicken tenders with honey mustard w/apples

Egg Muffin Sandwich w/yogurt and mini orange

Dinner:

Tikki Masala w/broccoli

Butternut lasagna
Picture courtesy of Tasty Kitchen.

Baked potato soup

Red Beans and Rice

Tofu Lo Mein

To Bake for snacks and lunch boxes:

Granola bars (These are so easy and delicious! I use brown rice rice crispies)

Banana muffins (Another crowd pleaser. Sub WW flour for white and vegan butter for regular butter.)

For more Menu Plan ideas check out

Holy Half Shell!

There must be an R in the month because...Oysters!

My husband doesn't bring home the bacon, he brings home the oysters.

Jennifer Hoech

Breakfast Tacos

Yes Sir! That there is gonna make me a whole lot of Breakfast Tacos.


To see the full recipe go to Full Bellies, Happy Kids.

The Best Potato Leek Soup

I love serving soup. Then I get to yell, "Soup's on!"

This is seriously the best. This soup could be eaten in any fine restaurant. Add the appropriate ingredients even if it sounds wrong.

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
One half a tube of breakfast sausage (like Jimmy Dean)
one half a tube of spicy sausage
5-6 small to medium baking potatoes peeled and diced
3 large leeks cut in half length wise then rinsed and sliced thin
1 large diced onion diced
Enough chicken broth to cover (about 6-8 cups)
3 bay leaves
1/2 cup Heavy cream (or any type milk to reduce calories)
Vanilla
Balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste

Pour 3 TBS of Olive Oil in a large heavy soup pot.
Brown the sausage. Add your sliced leeks and onion and cook for 5 minutes while stiring. Add bay leaves and your potatoes and enough broth to cover.
Bring to a boil then reduce heat and cook until potatoes are fork tender.

Add cream, and a dash (about a table spoon of each) of vanilla and vinegar. Just do it, you can thank me later.

Salt and pepper to taste.

If you would rather omit the sausage, please add a dash of Tabasco at the end. You need a little spice to even out the sweet.

You can either remove bay leaves or state before serving with a very British enthusiastic voice, "if you get a bay leaf in your bowl, you have good luck for a week!"

Ummm Soup

My kids love soup. They will put spoon after spoonful into their mouths until their bellies are swollen.

Here is my secret weapon, the blender.


Yep, whatever soup you are making, put about 3/4ths of it into the blender before serving, then pop back into the pot. Assuming of course there are not any noodles, rice or meat in there. This little trick seems to make the soup a much more kid friendly consistency.

I love the fact that the kids have no idea that they are eating super-healthy-good-for-you food, that I can get rid of huge quantities of vegetables and that most soups are pretty effortless.



If you're interested, we had Cauliflower soup today and Monday the kids scarfed down some eggplant and tomato soup.

Cupcakes

February! It's the month for pink and hearts and sparkles and all things cute. I'm so excited.

We started the month off by making some fancy cupcakes. The kids had fun using the candy that I supplied to decorate with.

I am saving most of it up to make some fun sugar shacks. If I can find the sugar cubes that is. Are sugar cubes even made anymore?

Come on! All the kids are eatin' it.

I have a butt load of cheerios in my cupboard from Costco. The kids won't eat cereal for breakfast so I had to do something with all these O's. Found this recipe for Cheerios muffins. Pretty easy and not too unhealthy, just follow these directions, sprinkle some extra O-love on top before baking and watch the kids scarf them down.

Freya's favorite part was mashing up the Cheerios in the beginning.

















Unfortunately, this recipe only takes 2 cups of cereal so I made some not so healthy Cheerios Bars. Pretty much exactly like Rice Krispie treats with Cheerios instead of Krispies and I added a cup of raisins so that there is at least something good in there.

Good thing the O's are being eaten as I really didn't want to start grinding them up to add to meatloaf or something similarly disgusting.

Freya had a fun day at preschool. Everyone dressed in PJs and got to make lots of fun holiday items. Here she is putting some kind of marshmallow on an ice cream cone to in the end make a decorated tree. So cute.

So tell me, at 6:00am, would you be able to tell the difference between these two?

Yeah, me either.

That is why my kids all experienced soy sauce over waffles this morning. A true East meets West recipe....Lovely.

Welsh Cakes

the kids' school is having a festival this Friday. There will be booths from many different countries. We're doing Wales and are making welsh cakes.

Here is the recipe, I have these coming out my ears right now.....

Originally these are fried in a pan but I had to adapt it to fit the oven as I didn't want to fry 400 of these.

3 1/3 cups self-rising flour

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup raisins

1 teaspoon mixed allspice

8 oz butter

2 eggs

milk


Put all dry ingredients from bags into bowl. Cut in butter until it is coarse like breadcrumbs.

Add eggs and mix together. I added about 1/4 cup milk or less by small increments, until it was similar to a pie dough. (this seems to need to be done by hand)

Roll out on a floured surface with floured rolling pin until about 1/4" thick. Cut with approximately 1" diameter cookie cutters. Put on a baking sheet and bake at 350 for 7-8 minutes until slightly brown on the bottom.

Dust with regular granulated sugar straight out of the oven.

Each recipe will make at least 100 1" cookies.

Muffin Tin Monday.

Look, Look! I got on the muffin tin website!!! Sycamore Stirrings.

Here is my muffin tin from today. I really don't know why my camera is making everything so white. It has something to do with the flash but I don't know what.

My theme for today was animals. Freya had; ants on a log, dino-nuggets, goldfish, a tortilla snail and she cut the kitty out of cheese.

The next theme from Sycamore Stirrings is Halloween. I-can-not-wait!

Muffin Tin Monday

I know, it's not Monday but that's OK!

Today's theme is shapes. We have circles, hearts, rectangles, ovals, triangles, stars and even a diamond. The tomato juice can is in the shape if a cylinder!

There is a great website where these all started here at Sycamore stirrings. Lots of other muffin tin ideas here!

Freya caught a lizard. It's missing it's tail and is tiny but amazingly still alive. She had it in the house and was hiding it in her pudgy little hands. I told her to take it outside and she pitched a fit because she really wants to show Chloe. So we put it in a jar with holes in the lid. We also had to feed it grass. We read Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse last night and I am wondering if she thinks it is the magic lizard in the book. HMMMMMM



And on to pumpkins and baking.
My dad use to always make us pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. They were the absolute best cookies. You just make your standard CCC and then add half a can of pumpkin to the batter. I saw this recipe for Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins. Chloe really wanted to take a picture of the batter. It looks pretty disgusting but I am telling you, these are better than pumpkin pie.

Cheesy Bran Muffins

Yep, the bran in here will counteract the stopped-upedness of the cheese. We make these minis and keep on hand for the kids' lunches. They also pair well with chili or soups etc.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup bran
1 TBL baking powder
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
4oz (1 stick) melted butter
1 beaten egg
2-3 TBL of ground flax (optional)

Put dry ingredients in a bowl and mix. Put cheese in flour mixture and mix together.
Make a well in the bowl of dry ingredients.

Mix butter, milk and egg in a separate bowl.
Pour wet ingredients into the well of the dry ingredients.

Mix together using more more than 15 strokes. (the batter will still be lumpy)

Spoon into greased mini muffin pans until 3/4 full.
Bake at 400F for 15 minutes, or until golden.

Cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container. Muffins can be frozen in a sealed bag for up to 1 month.

Since Freya has started school, I have been using Tuesdays as my do everything day. The day to do the laundry, clean bathrooms, plan and shop for meals and bake up the woo-hoo for the week (or hopefully 2 weeks!) etc.

Today we also made some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. The recipe is the basic recipe, I just change it up using half whole wheat and half all purpose flour. I also always add some ground flax to it for added nutrition. Today we had some Texan Pecans so those went in there too. I always make a large batch because inevitably one of my friends has done me a favor and I love to say thank you with baked goods.

Speaking of oatmeal, I found this great recipe for Amish Baked Oatmeal. I followed the recipe except I put half the sugar and added some raisins. Next time I will try honey or agave instead of the sugar. It was fabulous! Prepare it the night before and put it in the fridge. When you wake up, pop it in the oven and it's done when you get out of the shower! The kids loved it. We put it in a bowl then topped off with milk. Chloe said it tasted like oatmeal cookie cereal.

First Day of Preschool.

Freya had her first day today. When we were waiting to go she looked at me with a huge grin and said, "I'm so 'cited today!"

She was perfect, walked right in, found her name and started coloring. She didn't even want to look away from her work for the camera. When I left, she was talking to Mrs. Dee and asking her what they would do today. I did get choked up, thankfully no tears though.

Here is a great recipe to put in those kid's lunches.

Homemade Orange Julius
1/2 can frozen OJ concentrate
1 cup milk or soy milk
1 cup water
dash of vanilla
Sweetener of choice either 1/4 cup sugar, 3 TBL agave or 3 TBL honey

Blend in blender until mixed. Add ice cubes as needed while blender is going until you get your desired consistency.

Raw Version
3 Oranges freshly squeezed
1 cup almond milk
dash of vanilla
3 TBL agave

Follow directions above

I save these little drinkable yogurt containers because they are small and have screw lids. You can send juice in there or smoothies. Today they all got an Orange Julius!

Perfect Play Dough

Perfect Play Dough Recipe

This is the recipe from my children's preschool. It is awesome and I have never had a problem making it. The dough is super soft and lasts a very long time if you keep it in an airtight container.

Recipe:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup salt
2 TBL cream of tartar (to keep fresh)
1 cup water
2 TBL oil
food coloring
kool-aid packet (optional for scent, be mindful of the color of the kool-aid, it will change the color of your play dough)

Combine flour, salt and cream of tartar in a pan. Add water, food coloring and oil and stir. Add Kool-aid and stir. Once mixed together, put pan over low heat and stir until a ball forms in the middle (the mixture will be sticky). This usually takes 3-4 minutes. Make sure you scrape the sides down and get in the corners when stirring so you don't end up with burnt dough.

Dump out on a counter and kneed until it has cooled down a bit.

At this point you can either add glitter and/or essential oils for added effect.
The kool-aid is not a necessity but it does make the dough smell really good. It also will effect the color of the dough so make sure you choose the appropriate color of kool-aid for the color of dough you will be making.

You can keep it in a zip-loc bag or container for many moments of enjoyment. This makes a great gift! Tie a bow around your container and gift it to playmates and mothers of new babies with toddlers. I also always made a large batch to give to the kinder-teacher on the first day of school!

Leave a comment, I wonder if people read my blogs.....