Mrs. Malo

Cookbook Trials – Week #3

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

Monday – Mac ‘N’ Cheese Please page 56 The Family Dinner

The main ‘go to’ in our house for comfort food as well as an easy meal when we leave the kids with a babysitter is Macaroni and Cheese. We have many different recipes that we use so I thought that it was about time to try The Family Dinner‘s version. I will start by saying overall it tasted pretty good but this is the first recipe in this book that I had a few problems with. For starters the crunchy topping calls for panko bread. I have been looking for panko for a while now with no success. It was nice that in this recipe I was given an alternative of using crushed saltines. For cheese we used Monterey Jack, one of our favourites, and I liked the fact it called for evaporated milk – it gave the cheese sauce a lighter feel. As always we used whole wheat pasta. The main problem I had was with a few of the instructions. It told me to mix the sauce ingredients in a ‘small’ bowl – but I ended up switching bowls three times until I was using my largest bowl. It was the only way to fit all the ingredients. Also it is very important that when you have all the ingredients together in the pot you hat it very slowly. I had my stove on medium but it was still too hot and some of the eggs began to set. Beyond wanting a few clearer instructions this mac and cheese was pretty good and will probably be made again. On a side note I found that later in the week it didn’t reheat very well, compared to some of the other macaroni an cheese recipes I have made.

Tuesday – Leftovers: We had a lot of them!

Wednesday – Crispy Black Bean Cakes with Guacamole, “Grilled” Corn, and Slaw

This week we switched our Meatless day from Monday to Wednesday to make sure Gord was home to try this dish. I followed the recipe exactly for this one. The Guacamole, Cabbage Slaw, and “Grilled Corn” were made according to the recipes in the book. Every summer/fall we make our own salsa so we used ours instead of the recipe. We did leave out the green chilies because we love flavour but not too much spice in our food. When all was said and done (and cooked) we were amazed how much we loved this dish! Not something I would normally think to make but it was a hit with everyone except Kaitlyn, and I am not sure if she didn’t like it or if she was just being fussy. I was so proud of myself I had to take a picture.

Thursday – Asian Beef Stir-Fry page 48 The Family Dinner

I am making an alteration to next week’s meal plan. Where I write down the meal for each night I will indicate any advance prep or marinating time needed. Again this week I went to make dinner and realized that I didn’t leave enough time. Fortunately on Thursday I only needed to marinate for 3o minutes (the minimum) so we didn’t eat too late. I picked this recipe because I wanted to use some of the awesome local asparagus available around here. I couldn’t find Asian fish sauce and almost substituted oyster sauce until I googled the and learned they are not interchangeable. I thoroughly enjoyed this stir-fry but the flavour would probably have been a bit better with the fish sauce.

Friday – Pea Nutty Noodles page 128 The Family Dinner

As recommended on twitter this was a recipe we had to try. It was very much a kid friendly, hands on meal. The girls picked bow-tie pasta and it worked nicely. For toppings we had: tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, and pickles (all picked by them). I didn’t have enough smooth peanut butter left so we used a combination of smooth and crunch and the peanuts added a nice texture. It turned out really well and the kids like it. I am not a huge peanut butter fan so I would probably not make this for myself but I am sure the kids will ask for it again!

Saturday – A Better Burrito page 34 and Popcorn Three Ways page 26 Kids Cooking

I found the cookbook Friday night when I was cleaning my desk area. It had fallen between the desk and the wall. We decided to make the Better Burrito that we were going to make last week, and Kaitlyn has been asking me to help her make the popcorn since she first opened the book. For the burrito we used mozzarella cheese, refried black beans, tomatoes, sour cream, and salsa. They turned out pretty good but again Kaitlyn was frustrated that she couldn’t do more. There was a fair bit of prep on the stove and even I had to be careful around the burners. This recipe was also very basic but in this case it was explicit in that you are to modify and add what you want for fixings. Michael especially liked the burritos and they were all over his face.

The popcorn was an educational experience. We like popcorn in our house, and my kids often request it when they watch their movie on Saturday nights. We have boxes of light microwave popcorn in the pantry at all times. I had never made popcorn on the stove before so it was kind of cool and much easier than I would expect. Not sure about the health aspects cooking it in oil so that is something I need to look into. We tried the Cheesy Italian Popcorn seasoning and it turned out pretty well. It was funny, however, because we normally eat light popcorn the amount of butter in this recipe seemed a bit overwhelming – but the girls didn’t complain.

Sunday Breakfast – Cinnamon Apple Grits (page 16) and Double Strawberry Toast (page 20) Healthy in a Hurry

Sunday is our big breakfast day so we tried a few new recipes. The first was the Cinnamon Apple Grits. I thought this would be more of a side dish but it ended up being quite large so I probably didn’t need to make anything else. It tasted pretty good but didn’t seem healthy at all. One serving had 517 calories and to me that seems like a lot for breakfast. We eat mostly low fat and low sugar foods to the taste was very sweet for us. The Double Strawberry Toast was much better and had a lower calorie count at 399 calories per serving. If we were to make it again I would simply use sliced strawberries maybe with a hint of lime juice – the honey was just unnecessary sugar. The french toast worked out well but you have to make sure to cook it long enough or the inside of the sandwich is a bit soggy. As a nice treat we used one of jars of freezer strawberry jam from last year. We are almost out but no worries because strawberry season starts this week!

Sunday Dinner – Soy Good Maple-Glazed Salmon page 46 The Family Dinner & Disgustingly Rich Brownies page 60 Kids Cooking

My mom was looking through my books last weekend and commented that this recipe, and the accompanying picture, looked really good so I thought we would try it. This Sunday it was just the 5 of us, we didn’t have any company for a change. Again I didn’t have the Asian fish sauce so I had to leave it out but it tasted great without it. I very often over cook fish out of a fear of under cooking them. I decided today I would follow the directions carefully, and this was difficult because I don’t trust my broiler (for no reason in particular). For the first time I cooked salmon perfectly! We serve it with brown rice, steamed green beans and cauliflower.

For desert we made the Distgustingly Rich Brownies. The directions were nice and easy for Kaitlyn to follow. They tasted good but not the best brownies I have every had.

One more week to go. I have enjoyed this experiment with the three cookbooks but am looking forward to the freedom to make whatever I want for dinner.

Fitness

Winding Down – It’s June 1st

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

It has been an interesting week so far. It should be a happy week – everything is winding down. Swimming lessons finished last Wednesday, the dance recital was on Saturday, yesterday was Kaitlyn’s last piano class and today Eileen finishes Sound Play (her speech therapy class). Some how I don’t have that happy relaxed feeling. This happens every year – we get done with all our activities and don’t know what to do with ourselves. Now don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of things to do, but it is just not the same as our day to day routine. Monday and Tuesday were difficult, but Gord returned home from China last night and it is a perfect spring day today. Kaitlyn got on the bus and I loaded the two smaller ones in the double jogging stroller and went for a run.

I have been trying unsuccessfully to get in an exercise routine all winter without much success. I am finding it so much harder with three kids than 2 to try and find sometime for myself. Gord bought us an elliptical trainer in the winter and it worked for a bit but there needs to be someone to watch the kids or they need to be sleeping. I do make it to yoga once a week, my sanity hour, and I did teach my Baby Bootcamp and Family Fitness classes throughout the winter so I am getting some activity – it is just not as much as I would like.

Yesterday when I was browsing facebook I came across a blog from Kristina from one of my favourite shows Anna & Kristina’s Grocery Bag. It is a very simple concept – exercise every day! As today is June 1st I am going to take this challenge for the month of June. The only extracurricular activity the kids have right now is Saturday morning soccer so this should be an easier month to manage this task. I have come to the conclusion that the key to my success is time of day. If I leave it until the evening to exercise it won’t happen, by the time the kids are in bed I am way to tired to exercise (with the exception of my once a week yoga class).

So today’s run went well. Running won’t work every day because I only have a double jogger and I don’t think Kaitlyn could last that long on her bicycle (when she is not in school) so Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be my tougher day. I will keep everyone posted on how it goes.

Cooking with the Kiddies

Cookbook Trials – Week 2

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

Monday Breakfast – French Toast with Strawberry Butter, page 12 Kids Cooking

We had a family dinner for Baba’s birthday on Monday but we thought we would try another breakfast recipe. Kaitlyn wanted to make the French Toast with Strawberry Butter and Daddy left for a business trip to China, so I decided it was a good morning for a family breakfast. This recipe was much more appropriate for the age of my girls. Kaitlyn helped gather all the ingredients, washed and cut the strawberries, measured the ingredients, blended the butter and made the egg batter. All I did, other than supervise, was dip the bread slices and cook the French Toast. I was a bit hesitant about the strawberry butter but it was better than expected. The strawberry flavour on the French Toast was very good but the excess butter felt unnecessary. I would have preferred a light strawberry sauce but it was definitely a more kid friendly recipe.

Tuesday – Aloha Shrimp Stir-Fry, page 92 Healthy in a Hurry

The girls love shrimp and frequently ask for it so I thought this would be a perfect recipe to try. Overall this one was pretty good, and it only took 10 minutes to prepare – I actually had to make white rice instead of brown or it wouldn’t have been ready in time. I was surprised how hard it was to find uncooked large shrimp that were peeled and deveined. I had to purchase ones with tails on and pull the tails off but it wasn’t a big deal. The only substitution I made was that I used defrosted frozen mixed stir-fry vegetables. This probably made it a bit faster to prepare. Next time I make this I will add more cornstarch, the sauce didn’t thicken very well. A nice light dinner.

Wednesday – Speedy Pasta in a Pan, page 44 The Family Dinner

I love getting comments on my posts or responses from my tweets so I was thrilled when The Family Dinner responded to my tweet:

May we next suggest: speedy pasta in pan, black bean cakes, peanutty noodles?All so good! RT@KEMmommy: CookBook Trials – http://t.co/bpY8TYL

I had already done my meal plan for the week but I modified it to inlcude the Speedy Pasta in a Pan. It was a good day to do this recipe because I had a couple of hours at home in the afternoon so I could prepare the dish and then after spending an hour at the school I could just cook it for the last 15 minutes. I also doubled the recipe to have another dish for another night so this was a bonus. This time I made the basic recipe and it was good, however it would be much better with sausage or vegetables added. I also may reduce the amount of mozzarella cheese on the top of the dish. My girls loved it. They rarely ask for seconds but today they both did.

Thursday – Personal Pizzas, Kids Cooking

Some time between Thursday and the weekend I have misplaced copy of Kids Cooking so I can’t tell you the page right now. It has to turn up somewhere. These pizzas were made on english muffins, and we decided to use whole wheat. The kids enjoyed them and they were easy to make but again they were nothing special.

Friday & Saturday

Friday night we were at the dress rehearsal for the dance recital until 7:00 so instead of left overs we drove through Little Caesars and picked up pizza. Saturday we went to Gramma & Grampa’s for dinner

Sunday – The Family Dinner: Organic Chicken Legs (page 42) & Chocolate Pudding Fast (page 213)

Gord was still in China so we had Gramma & Grampa over for dinner. I learned a valuable lesson – read your recipe many times very carefully. I some how missed that I needed to cook the chicken in the oven for 45 minutes. I had the roasted potatoes, asparagus and carrots done a good 30 minutes before the chicken but amazingly everything seemed to work out. Normally I don’t like chicken drumsticks but these weren’t bad. I went to the poultry counter at the market and asked for chicken legs and they gave me drumsticks, so I cooked a lot more than the 4 that were called for. The tomatoes, onions, and garlic were a great sauce but I think I will try it with chicken breasts next time.

We always have homemade desert on Sundays and we were planning on making the brownies in the Kids Cooking books but since we couldn’t find the book we had to improvise. I found a recipe for chocolate pudding in The Family Dinner which I had all the ingredients for in my pantry & fridge and my girls love chocolate pudding. I have never made homemade pudding before (not sure why) so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Normally our pudding comes out of a box or plastic container. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was and I thought it tasted pretty good. Kaitlyn liked it but Eileen did not like it. I used semi-sweet chocolate and hence it was not overly sweet. I am going to find some good milk chocolate and try it again.

Next week we are using mostly The Family Dinner in our menu plans with a couple additions from Healthy in a Hurry. Hopefully Kids Cooking shows up soon.

Gardening with Kids

Planting the Garden

Posted on May 24, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

It is finally warm enough to get the bulk of our veggies in the garden.

Our first round of peas have been in the ground for a few weeks now and they are looking good. The girls planted the rest of the row today so we should have two good harvests.

Today we got the plants out of the green house and by the end of the day most of them made it into the ground.

Onions – I don’t think I had any clue how time consuming these would be to plant. The instructions had me plant them in a flat in the greenhouse but this meant I had to very carefully separate all the roots before putting them in the ground. It took me a long time to do our one room but hopefully they don’t have too much transplant shock.

Beans & Carrots – These aren’t in the ground yet. It is still too early for carrots and my dad was going to bring us his leftover bean seeds and forgot. Hopefully the beans are in the ground by the end of the week.

Broccoli – Again these were in flats and I learned quickly they have extensive root systems. I carefully separated them and planted them in the garden. I have a lot left over so hopefully I can find a good home for them (in someone else’s garden).

Tomatoes & Peppers – As this is our first year using the greenhouse we didn’t want to overwhelm ourselves. The kids and I heading to our local nursery and purchased some tomatoes and peppers today. I can’t remember all the varieties but will check the tags and put them in a future post. I did have one slicer tomato plant, one grape and 6 romas.

Pumpkin & Cucumbers – I had a lot of these plants aswell. We decided on 3 hills of the pickling cucumbers and 6 of pumpkins. I really want to make lots of pickles but the kids love pumpkins and I can use them with my kindergarten class in the fall. I also have lots of cucumber plants left looking for a good home.

Watermelon – Still too early and the plants are still very little.

Here is what it looked like after planting today. I am hoping to post a picture at least every 2 weeks to show our progress.

Craft Thursdays

Chinese Festival Family Style – The Crafts

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

Other than our Panda puppets we made one craft to prepare for the day and two crafts at the festival.

To decorate we made Chinese lanterns. These were very easy for Kaitlyn and Eileen loved making them with a bit of help. We followed the simple directions we found on Kaboose.

First I measured out and marked the lines for the girls. I cut Eileen’s for her and Kaitlyn cut her own.

After our first one we learned that it was much easier to decorate the lanterns before assembling them. I got out our craft bins and anything they could use to decorate their lanterns: foamies, stickers, markers, and crayons but their favourite was the glitter glue.

To assemble them all you need is a stapler and some string or wool to hang them up.

At the festival the kids did two crafts. When all the kids had arrived we made dragon puppets. I printed off a template I found online an each child coloured their own. I put out crayons for them to use and let them do any colour they wanted. After they were coloured the adults helped cut them out. At this point we realized that this pattern is rather intricate and time consuming to cut out. After cut out they were assembled using red construction paper and wooden skewers.

Our final craft was Chinese kites. I looked online for patterns for making kites and settled on a diamond kite. We followed the pattern exactly and the kids had fun making them but I don’t think they will ever actually fly. It said to use strong paper so I purchased bristol board, but I think it is too heavy. Again I got out decorating supplies and let the kids decorate their kites however they wanted. If we had more time I would have introduced the concept of the zodiac or Chinese New Year and encouraged them to use their symbols on their kites. Kaitlyn is a bit dissapointed her kite won’t fly so we are going to experiment with other materials and see what we can come up with. We did manage to find wooden sticks of bamboo in the gardening section of Canadian Tire and they worked well. We have lots left over and will use it on our new kites.

Have you every had any luck making homemade kites that fly? What are your suggestions?

Cooking with the Kiddies

China Festival Family Style – The Feast

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

We couldn’t have a chinese festival without chinese food – and I don’t mean American Chinese food – real chinese food!

One of my favourite shows on T.V. is Ann & Kristina’s Grocery Bag. This was my first stop in the search for a good authentic chinese cookbook. They reviewed The Chinese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, and it didn’t get the A&K stamp of approval. My next stop was the local public library. They only had one Chinese cookbook: Cooking Chinese by Deh-Ta Hsiung. I put it on hold and decided to give it a try. While I was looking for cookbooks I also came across The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee. This book is a look into the world of Chinese restaurants – American Chinese restaurants. I am not finished reading it but so far it is fascinating. The world that most of us know of Chinese food is not at all similar to the food actually eaten in China. Fortune cookies aren’t even Chinese. This is a fun read that I am going to sign out again this summer as an easy read at the cottage.

So back to the dinner. Cooking Chinese by Deh-Ta Hsiung was the perfect cookbook four our feast. It had 50 recipes to choose from and each was broken down into 3 steps. Some ingredients were a bit exotic but most I could find in our small town. The most helpful part was the back of the book where there was a page entitled “The Chinese Meal”. I was trying to make this dinner as authentic as possible so this was a huge help in my planning. I first learned that in an informal dinner all foods are placed in the centre of the table with everything ready to eat. A lazy susan is a asset. To make my life a little easier in my preparation I decided to make a 4 course dinner, more like a formal Chinese dinner.

As suggested our first course consisted of both cold dishes and hot dishes:

Chicken with Mustard Sauce (cold)
Spicy Beef (cold)
Vegetable Salad with Spicy Dressing (cold)
Hot and Sour Cabbage (warm)
Vegetarian Egg Rolls (warm)

All these dishes turned out very well. I was nervous about the egg rolls but they were delicious and everyone wished I had made more.

It was interesting to learn that soup was never served as the first course. Drinks are usually not served during a meal and clear-based soups are used in their place. I decided to serve the soup between the first and the main course.

Wonton Tang Soup
Tofu and Fresh Vegetable Soup

As I was trying to make this as authentic as possible I didn’t take any shortcuts and made my own Chinese stock. This was used in the Wonton soup to great success but in the Tofu and Fresh Vegetable Soup I substituted vegetarian vegetable broth to meet the needs of our vegetarian guests. It was lacking a bit of flavour but we think this was because of the substitution. As with the egg rolls I was very proud of myself with the success of the wontons.

We took a short break after the soup course so I could get the main course ready. If I was to do this again I would definitely have 2 woks. My wok broke a couple of months ago so I borrowed my aunt’s electric wok. It was awesome to use but it was our bottle neck. I was grateful for my warming drawer so all dishes could be served warm.

Stir-Fried Shrimp with Snow Peas
Kung-Po Chicken
Cantonese Beef
Red, Green, and Yellow (ie. tomatoes, cucumbers and eggs)

Most of these dishes turned out excellent. My favourite of the entire day was the Cantonese Beef – awesome! The Red, Green and Yellow wasn’t my favourite but I think it was just ingredients that my pallet didn’t like together.

Chinese don’t normally have desert but that wasn’t going to fly in our house. The cookbook did give a recipe for Almond Junket, also known as Almond Float. Basically this is jello type cubes served with fruit salad. It was not a big hit, but probably an acquired taste. Of course we had to have Jasmine tea with our desert. When I was doing my grocery shopping I came across Hello Panda Chocolate cookies. I am not sure if these are really Chinese but I found them in the asian section so we are saying they are – and they were a hit with both the adults and children. Even though they are not Chinese I did pick up a box of Fortune cookies. We had fun with them but we made sure everyone knew that they are an American invention.

A couple of notes about our dinner. I have to give a huge thanks to my amazing husband. He stopped at an Asian grocery store when he was in the city to pick up some of our more unusual ingredients an it was a frustrating experience for him to say the least. After much searching we did have two recipes with ingredients missing but we didn’t seem to notice. In the Spicy Beef we didn’t add the rock candy and in the Hot and Sour Cabbage we were missing the Sichuan peppercorns.

And finally you can’t have a Chinese feast without chopsticks. We had normal bamboo chopsticks for the adults but I wanted to find something a little easier for the kids to avoid frustration. My favourite online kitchen store, Golda’s Kitchen and great one piece chopsticks that were perfect. The only problem I have now is that my kids want to use them everyday.

An awesome dinner and I definitely am looking into purchasing Cooking Chinese by Deh-Ta Hsiung. I don’t think I will make all those recipes in the same day again but can definitely add a few to our weekly meal plans.

Cooking with the Kiddies

Cook Book Trials – Week 1

Posted on May 22, 2011May 22, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

As promised we are cooking exclusively from our 3 new cook books for the next 4 weeks. The only exceptions will be a few dinners we have at family gatherings at other houses.

Monday – Ricotta Rotini page 104 Healthy in a Hurry

Trying to stick to our routine Monday is Meatless. The thing I like about the Company’s Coming series of cookbooks are the very clear instructions. We started with this recipe because most of the ingredient were familiar to our family but we still had one new ingredient: artichoke hearts. As promised this recipe was done in less than 30 minutes, and that including preparing all the ingredients. We made one substitution using shredded Parmesan cheese rather than grated but it worked out fine. My only complaint is that even though it was considered heathy it still had 702 calories per serving. The serving was a good size but I thought there could be ways to reduce the calorie count. For example it called for regular ricotta cheese and we used light instead, and the flavour seemed fine. Not an amazing dish but O.K. for meatless Monday.

Tuesday – Gary’s T-Night Tacos page 9 The Family Dinner

When I was making my weekly menu last Sunday I opened up The Family Dinner I realized that I probably needed to read this book before cooking too much from it. I decided to tackle the first recipe in the book as I figured I could ready the 8 pages leading up to Gary’s T-Night Tacos. This is no normal cookbook – it could more realistically be considered a parenting book. The Foreward by Harry Karp had a great quote that I think show the focus of this book:

I encourage you to think of family dinner as your child’s nightly dress rehearsal for adulthood, a protected space for him or her to master patience, conversation, an cooperation … one meal at a time.

The foreward is followed by an introduction by author Laurie David and then the recipe we tried.

We are a pretty traditional Taco family so I was not sure how this was going to go. Our tacos usually come from a kit with ground beef, tomatoes, cheese, and lettuce added. We have had some luck in the past trying the non-traditional so I thought we would just go for it – and we were pleasantly surprised. The texture of this recipe is a big softer than I would normally like but the favour was great! I asked Gord what he thought and his comment was: “Surprisingly pretty good”. There were many ingredients in these that my kids would not normally eat, eg. avocado, but they devoured them in the tacos. It wasn’t amazing but was pretty good and probably a make again.

Wednesday – Tarragon-Poached Fish page 91 Healthy in a Hurry

For the next couple of weeks Wednesday’s are still pretty busy for us, until swimming lessons finish at the end of the month. Because of this I picked a really quick recipe for Wednesday. This recipe definitely met my criteria. It took less than 10 minutes to prepare and was very easy to clean up. This was a nice light fish with a mild flavour. Again not an outstanding recipe but good for a weeknight.

Thursday & Friday – Thursday afternoon and evening were crazy busy with a visit to the Naturalpath, make up dance classes, and our Family Fit exercise class, so we decided to make it a leftovers night. Most of the dishes were left over from our Chinese feast last Sunday but the Ricotta Rotini from Monday re-heated pretty well. Still not a big fan however. On Friday it was a gorgeous day so we decided to treat ourselves to a hot dog from the Arbor in Port Dover after dance class.

Saturday – Alphabetter Soup page 32 Kids Cooking

Saturday is our kids “Cooking with the Kiddies” day so it was the perfect day to try out Kids Cooking. I picked the Alphabetter Soup because it looked pretty easy and it wasn’t anything too strange for the kids. I really like the way this cook book is set out for kids. The ingredients and tools are listed both with pictures and words. Then the recipe was divided into Getting Reading and Cooking. Kaitlyn helped read the recipe using both the pictures and any words she knew or could sound out. The steps are pretty well laid out and it tells which steps to have an adult do. We did have one problem as it tell the child to “Open the can of tomatoes and carefully pour them into the pan”. This is a step that an adult should do – when Kaitlyn was pouring them in the oil in the pan splashed up on her hands. She doesn’t take too well to pain, like any child would react, and it took her a bit to come back in the kitchen to finish dinner.

The cookbook seems very kid friendly and very well laid out but there seemed to be a lack of creativity in the recipe we tried and in short it was not very good. I think the problem was two fold. First it needed more flavour. Other than a bay leaf there were no spices added and they would have been a welcome addition. Secondly it called for 4 bouillon cubes in the soup. We never use bouillon and now I remember why. It didn’t say which type to use so we used chicken bouillon. Upon first taste I knew something wasn’t right. It wasn’t until Gord mentioned it that I figured out what it was – SALT. It tasted like I was eating pure salt. It was sooooo strong that you couldn’t taste the flavour of the vegetables. I went to check the bouillon package and quickly noticed the first ingredient listed is salt – no surprise. This recipe would possibly have been much better if made with low sodium vegetable broth instead of the water and bouillon, or possibly even just using the water and adding more natural spices. A very disappointing dinner. Hopefully the next recipe we try from Kids Cooking will be much better.

Sunday Breakfast – Egg in a Frame page 15 Kids Cooking

Normally Sunday is pancake day but none of our three new cookbooks had a pancake recipe. Instead we decided to try one of the “Four Ways to Cook an Eggceptional Breakfast”. My girls had never had them before so we made “Eggs in a Frame”. Again there was not a lot Kaitlyn could do in this recipe. She used a cup to create the hole in the center of the bread but Mommy had to do the rest as it was over the stove. I am starting to think this cookbook is for much older children.

Sunday Dinner – Simple Beef Broccoli page 75 Healthy in a Hurry

Normally Sunday night is our big family dinner and we invite extended family over for dinner. This week we were suppose to go to a BBQ for my father-in-laws birthday but that was cancelled so we made a dinner we were suppose to have early in the week (but decided to go out instead). Simple Beef Broccoli was a very easy recipe. The most time consuming thing was cutting up the meat and veggies. I purchased a whole steak instead of pre-cut beef stir-fry strips so it took me a few minutes longer to prepare the meat. Instead of the suggested rice I served the beef over a bed of whole wheat egg noodles. Sometimes it feels like we eat brown rice every day so this was a nice change and a nice pairing. We did make one substitution in the recipe. It called for 2 tbsp of dry sherry, which I did not have and did not want to buy a whole bottle for one recipe. I found a great website that gave substitutions for different types of alcohol in your cooking. It called for vanilla extract, orange juice or pineapple juice. I couldn’t imagine using vanilla in this recipe and I didn’t have orange or pineapple juice so I used apple juice, a staple in our fridge. The substitution seemed to work fine.

So that was our first week of cookbook testing. We tried a few recipes from Healthy in a Hurry and Kids Cooking and I am really looking forward to next week and trying more from The Family Dinner.

Craft Thursdays

Easy Caterpillar Craft

Posted on May 21, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

We were busy on Thursday so decided to do our craft today. I was looking for a craft to do this week and came across a cool idea for painting caterpillars. I loved the idea, especially since you are using different, and unusual objects to create the patterns. There is a lot of potential to do this with my Kindergarten class in the fall if we study monarch butterflies again this year. I thought I would do a test run with the girls today while daddy was cutting the grass.

The first thing we did was make the grass for the caterpillar. I love when you can get get kids painting with objects other than paint brushes. The idea of using plastic forks for grass is awesome (not my idea – found it on Education Ease). Eileen was even able to figure out how to do the grass by herself. We have bit of grass in the sky but lets just call it an abstract, she is only 2 years old!

Next we used empty applesauce containers to make the body of the caterpillar. To avoid wasting paint we painted the rims with a paint brush and then used them to make impressions on the paper. If I did this with a larger group I would put paint on small plates and they could just dip the containers in the paint.

Finally we used Q-tips to create faces, antenna and legs on our caterpillars. Kaitlyn was able to do this herself but Eileen needed a bit of help from Mommy. She proudly did the spots herself.

I definitely think this would be a great activity with a preschool or kindergarten class and will try it is some version with my class next year. I will probably use this when we study butterflies and then try some other art lessons using unique materials. I would then do a culminating project where they had to create their own original artwork using a variety of objects. I would provide a bin with materials and they would have to select which ones to use.

What would you put in the bin? What objects would create the coolest patterns? Comments encouraged!

Craft Thursdays, Family Adventures, Literacy Tuesdays

China Festival Family Style – Introduction & Research

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

If you have been following my Literacy Tuesday blogs you will know that we were reading a number of alphabet concept books. One of the books we read was D is for Dancing Dragon – A China Alphabet by Carol Crane and Illustrated by Zong-Zhou Wang, and if you are interested in the book I commented on it at my library blog. This book was the jumping off point for our China day. From here we found a research idea, crafts and decorations to make, and food we had to include in our celebration. I am not going to try an include everything in one blog post, instead I am going to try and group what we did preparing for the day and on the day itself, into a few blog posts.

The past few years I have worked as a teacher-librarian and one of the main focuses has been to teach students how to learn for themselves. This was the first opportunity I have had to directly teach my own children research skills, well Kaitlyn was the only one actually researching, Eileen just was along for the ride. We started by reviewing the letter P in our alphabet book – The Giant Panda. We started this on a literacy Tuesday so I printed off some P worksheets and colouring pages for an introduction. Kaitlyn particularly liked the P wordsearch and I appreciated that it was the perfect level of difficulty for her. Eileen made an attempt to trace the P letter pages I gave her, which is a big step for her. They both coloured a few printable pages, and Kaitlyn even made an effort to colour the correct colours in the correct places.

Because my kids respond to hand-on crafts, we made paperbag panda puppets. I found many different templates online but we chose the one through Circletime kids. They were very easy to make. Kaitlyn did hers all herself and I helped Eileen cut out her pieces but she did most of the gluing. A quick and easy panda craft

The final part was to learn a bit more about Pandas. I picked up a number of panda books at the library, both fiction and non-fiction but before I let the girls look at them I told them they had to come up with 5 questions they wanted to know about Pandas. I first introduced the concept of an endangered species and the definition of extinct. The example of the dinosaurs being extinct is easy for them to understand.

Kaitlyn’s Research Questions:

Why can’t we have a panda as a pet?
What do they eat?
Do they live around people?
Do they run or walk?
How long do they live?
Why are they endangered? (O.K. this last one was Mommy’s question)

I thought they were pretty good questions. We used our books from the library to find the answers. I read the books to the girls and Kaityn stopped me everytime there was an answer to one of her questions. When we were done we made a Giant Panda poster and picked pictures that answered some of the questions. For example she learned that Giant Pandas like climb so we made sure to include a picture of a panda climbing.

I decided to try and take it one step further and introduced some social awareness to Kaitlyn. After discussing endangered animals and the possibilities of extinction we started to talk about what we could do to help. We discussed the WWF and decided to have a donation jar at our Chinese festival. She let our family who was coming know of the jar and she collected $13.87 in loose change and her Aunt & Uncle also made a symbolic adoption in her name. Mommy and Daddy added to the $13.87 to make another symbolic adoption. One small step to start raising the idea of making a positive impact in the world. We even got a bit of a math lesson out of it sorting all the coins.

And what is a party without party favours! I found a seller through ebay who sold Chinese parasols. For my cousin’s son who was at the party I got him a small dragon puppet.

Gardening with Kids

Our Garden – Update

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Mrs. Malo

So we have done some more work on our garden since my last gardening post and I thought I should give an update. Everything is growing nicely in the greenhouse an we have had no more falls in the water.

Mid-April it finally warmed up and dried out long enough for use to plant our peas. We have planted peas for the past couple of years but never have used a trellis to help them grow. This year I wanted to do it properly. I found a great post on the blog My Crazy Life as a farmer’s wife with great tips for planting peas. She suggested using hog/cattle panels for a trellis. I headed down to our local TSC with my dad (who is also my handyman) and we found a rabbit fencing that seems like it mike work perfectly. I will let you know how it turns out. It cost me a bit of money (around $30 including the posts) but I hope to use it year after year. This was our first day out in the garden with the girls and we quickly learned that they love digging holes. I had picked them up kid sized shovels when I was at TSC an they are a huge hit. A few weeks later the peas are coming up and we just need to make sure they are getting enough water.

This past Tuesday we planted our pickles and our sunflowers in the greenhouse. We could have planted the sunflowers earlier but we really don’t want them to bloom until the end of August/ beginning of September. Sunflowers blooming is a sign that school is starting and it really confuses the girls when they bloom too early.

The other great thing I wanted to share are these great gardening sets the girls got from Aunt Kirsten and Uncle Ben for Easter. They are from Creatology and include a small gardening tote and three tools. They also gave them the matching gardening gloves which are awesome and were very much needed. I don’t like them handling the seeds too much and these are great at protecting their hands. They fit both of the girls perfectly!