This month’s co-op cooking class was “tea” themed…which meant they made tea sandwiches, scones, and raspberry tea.
The sandwiches had ‘rainbow’ cream cheese inside, which was achieved by mixing in shredded carrots, bell peppers, scallions, and I don’t recall what else…as well as sliced cucumbers and radishes. Shockingly, they put everything INCLUDING THE SCALLIONS into their sandwiches. And NOT shockingly, they were once again the only kids at the table to polish off every single crumb on their plates. Scones, too!
And how cute are these kitty cat scones!?!? They used orange zest to make whiskers! Adorable.
Here are the recipes if you are interested in doing a similar thing with your littles. Or with yourself, haha!
She is living for tea parties lately. My parents got her a tea set for her FOURTH birthday. Did you catch that?? My baby girl is turning freakin’ four. She’s my baaaaaaby. How is this happening?
You know what else is happening?? Me coaching!
WEEEE.
Oh hey, that’s my name up there.
I had my first class and it was soooo fun. I was nervous, but more excited nerves than anxious nerves. And everyone gave such good feedback. That said, the class was 15 of my friends soooo…hard to imagine it going another way.
I’m really excited to do more.
This dinner. Oh man. This dinner.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to post about it, but this is a food blog after all (and it was yum), so let me race through the back story so I can share how to make it.
My friend had a baby a month ago, so we made a meal train for her. She eats super similar to me (GF/DF/organic/non-processed foods) so I wanted to make her something packed with wholesome nutritious foods to nurture her.
A few days after I brought her this dinner she ended up in the ICU. And nearly died. And our mama community was rocked. Hard.
And today, after a full week in the hospital, she was released home. Thank God.
And as ridiculous as it sounds, looking at these dinner pics is bringing me back to that super scary place. You realize how fragile life is when things like this happen. We will definitely be bringing her a lot more meals in the next few weeks as she continues to balance her recovery AND taking care of a toddler and infant.
Soooo, back to the recipe.
I ended up letting our CSA from the week guide me in choosing a meal…which meant cabbage, green onions, cilantro, radishes, etc.
I decided on a veggie slaw with home-made ranch dressing, BBQ chickpeas, and crushed peanuts.
But in order to make sure it had enough caloric oomph (breastfeeding appetite), I added in quinoa as well.
The night before, I made some chickpeas in the IP – same way I always do with salt and a bay leaf.
While they were cooking away, I made the Ranch dressing using Danielle Walker’s recipe from her Celebrations cookbook (which I have blogged about plenty of times before). And I chopped up every veggie in the house (see above prep photos), including green cabbage, red bell peppers, green onions, watermelon radishes…
I even used the carrot pulp from juicing in the salad!
Once the chickpeas were done, I tossed them in BBQ sauce and left them to marinate overnight before roasting them in the morning.
Just before delivering the meal, I added cilantro and crushed peanuts on top.
And as you can see, I doubled the recipe so we could have the same thing that night.
Our version had BBQ chicken instead of chickpeas (my girlfriend doesn’t do chicken), but was otherwise the same.
Kyle and the kids totally shocked me in how much they loved it! Kyle doesn’t like dill, so I was nervous about the home made Ranch dressing, but he loved it and the kids had an equally as enthusiastic response.
You never know what you’re gonna get!
Still juicing to my heart’s content.
Look how excited V is to be touring our town’s Recology center!!
She has a crazy sense of smell (hyperosmia) and we ended up having to leave the site early, despite me REALLY wanting to stay to learn everything I could about recycling and how much of our bottles, cans, etc actually gets repurposed. Valley’s nose was not having it though. She can tell from across the room when we have brushed our teeth due to the minty smell (which she detests) and will run the other way as soon as she gets a whiff.
Maybe I’ll try to go back with P…
What started as a sick day painting craft to eat up time, ended up in an HOURS long solar system project. P came up with the idea after we had finished painting the masks that I’d initially set out, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t 100% into his follow up idea.
We had plates, so we decided to paint the Earth…and then Mars…and next thing I know we are out scavenger hunting for rocks to be the moons for the various planets.
I mean, if you haven’t washed rocks in your sink are you even a parent?
The kids discovered chia pudding. It’s an easy and delicious option for rushed mornings…or to bulk up leftover oatmeal that isn’t quite enough on it’s own. Or both!
And that’s our latest!
