Summer activities

Look at this lunch made by a 3 and 5 year old!

It took them two days to polish the whole thing off, but they made it and ate it all to themselves for back to back lunches.

I’ve been setting three goals for myself each week to do with the kids.  Nothing major – just activities, crafts, and whatnot – but I have found that having ideas at the ready makes me actually follow through and DO stuff that requires more effort rather than just take them to a park.  Not that there’s anything wrong with a park, but we go to the park all the time all year round.  My objective this summer is to do things I wouldn’t ordinarily do with the kids.  Like letting them cook.

We didn’t have a recipe for this “frittata” but I had a rough ratio in my mind thanks to my foodie research.

They picked the veggies while we were at the store (black olives and mushrooms – shocking choices that I was a little nervous about) and the rest is pretty straight forward.

Mushroom and Olive Fritatta

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces mushrooms, sliced
• 1/4 cup black olives, sliced
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp tamari
• 6 eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• salt and pepper

Directions:

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Sauté the mushrooms in a pan with the oil and tamari until cooked.  Meanwhile, combine eggs and milk in a large mixing bowl and whisk.  Add olive, salt and pepper, and mushrooms with their cooking liquid.

Pour everything into a greased pie dish and bake for 45 minutes (until center is set).

Wait for it to cool and then slice and serve.

They were able to do most of this on their own and then they played in the toy room while it baked.

They could hardly wait for it to cool, though, so I gave them carrots and bananas to munch on until their slices of frittata were cool enough to eat.

And what do you know!?!?  My kids like black olives!?!

In other messy news, these excavating kits from the Target dollar bin were a big hit, although I had to help them much more than I thought I would.

I got a pair of gem stones and dinosaur fossils, but we’ve only done the gems thus far.

It took them a while and now they are playing with the gems non stop so I may re-use them by freezing them in a block of ice with some coins for them to dig out for another excavation activity.

Summer loving over here