Recipes

Hidden Veggie Recipes for Picky Toddlers (& Kids of all Ages!)

February 13, 2014 by Jess 1 Comment

hidden veggie recipes for picky toddlers and kids

It was literally only a few months ago when Ava was eating everything we put in front of her and I remember boasting proudly that she did so. Well I sure learned my lesson, now she has become much much pickier with her food. She has also learned that having 3 dogs and a pig sitting under her chair are great friends, as they happily gobble up any evidence of her not eating her food. Therefore, because I refuse to let her eat only bananas and mac n cheese for every single meal, I have had to get creative with adding veggies into other foods. Here are a few of our go to meals that so far have been a great success! It also works for hiding veggies from my husband too! He loves these meals as much as Ava does 🙂

My newest favorite (and this will now be my go-to rolled cookie recipe! Yep it’s that good!): (click on the photo to see the recipe)

(all of my recipes are posted at Homeketeers now, and you can print them out directly from there if you’d like to 🙂 )

This muffin recipe is also a new favorite, they are so moist and delicious!

This oatmeal is really tasty and Ava loves it! It’s a great way to get some veggies into her first thing in the morning:

We make these latkes in our house all the time! They are good for any meal, any time of the day 🙂

These Broccoli Cheddar Sweet Potato Pancakes are soooo yummy!!!

There are a bunch of neat ideas of healthy additives to jazz up mac n cheese:

I have some more hidden veggie recipes that I’ll get posted up here soon. I also have a bunch of other great healthy recipes for toddlers on my Toddler page here.

Enjoy! 🙂

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Randomness Today in Our House/Zoo

February 13, 2014 by Jess Leave a Comment

Today Ava still isn’t feeling 100%, far from it I think. Back to the Dr we go tomorrow. *sigh*

So we stayed home all day, and Ava had a PJ’s day.

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She asked continuously for a muffin and it’s so hard to say no to her when she asks so nicely “Pease??? Pease???”

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When I do say no, this is the pouty face she gives me:

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The muffins are pretty healthy though so I admit I did give in quite a bit – to an extent! (the muffins have veggies in them! See recipe here)

While Ava napped I made a huge batch of cookies for Valentine’s Day. Well actually I made 2 slightly different recipes that I created this morning. I love how both came out but I actually preferred the one with spinach in it! Yes spinach! I think I’ve been having too much fun lately creating new recipes with hidden veggies. The cookie recipe (both recipes are dairy free) without the spinach is here and the one with spinach is here.

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All 3 of us went crazy for the cookies later, they turned out really really good!

Ava loves to look at the fish in our kitchen. They are actually the fish from our pond outside but we decided we’d bring them in for the winter – I’m so glad we did! With this crazy weather we’ve had the last couple months, there is no way they would have survived out there. (even though they did survive out there last winter). Yes their names are Moby, Goldie and Fanny. I’ll let you guess who is who. Aren’t we original with our naming? And yes that’s a piece of muffin in Ava’s hand. Of course.

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Our patagonian cavy, Waldo, came by for a visit today. There was a point where he wandered away and I didn’t see where he went. I checked under his usual places like under the table and behind the chair in the living room. Nope and nope. Then I said it… “Where’s Waldo??”. Ugh. Why on earth did we name him Waldo? lol

(It turns out that Waldo was down the hall checking out Ava’s room but I quickly brought him back to the living room)

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A little bit later Ava and I skyped with my Mum. Of course as soon as we turn skype on, my usual chatty child clams up and no matter how hard my mum and I both try to get Ava to say something, to say anything, we barely get a “hi” whispered out of her and a small wave of her hand.

Next was bedtime for the kiddo but since Steve was out working tonight, I had another helper…..

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But as you can see, Norman wasn’t much help at all.

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Sweet Dreams!

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Welcome November

November 3, 2013 by Jess Leave a Comment

All day today I kept writing “October” on everything by mistake, cause really – how can it possibly be NOVEMBER already? Feels like I blinked and it went from August to November.

But November is indeed here and that means it is less than 2 months until Christmas! Yikes. I might as well just throw all my fabulous ideas for Christmas crafts and projects right out the window. How will I possibly have time to get everything done in time? I must try though, I have been feeling the “craft” bug again so I need to give in. I did have a lot of fun with my recent Halloween crafty things, even though that wreath took WAY longer than I intended. (I was able to catch up on episodes of Switched at Birth though as that was one of the only shows I could find to watch on my laptop. Don’t laugh. Ok fine, laugh).

I’m hoping November will be a better month for us health wise. We have all been sick since the end of September. We just can’t kick this thing. Last night Ava woke up around 11 and the only way we could console her was bringing her to lie in our bed with us. She promptly fell asleep in my arms and I left her there for about 45 minutes telling Steve “I just want to make sure she is really asleep before we take her back to her crib. Less chance of her waking up”). In truth though, I just loved snuggling with her! 🙂

Something that is keeping me busy but I’m having a ton of fun with: my new Snapshot 30 class! Today’s post is here and I just have to say that there are some really talented people in the class. You can look at some of the photos that people are posting on Instagram by searching for #snapshot30. Every time I check into Instagram there are new photos posted by the class participants! So much fun! If you want to sign up you still can, and the class is free too – woo!

Oh I did want to share this quick recipe that I made tonight for dinner – it turned out really good – we ate every last morsel.

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4 medium gold potatoes

4 cloves garlic (or more if you love garlic like I do!)

1 – 2 slices of cheese (I used cheddar with a bit of asiago/parmesan blend)

1 cup fresh spinach leaves

spices

1. peel and cut potatoes into cubes, place in saucepan of boiling water and boil until soft

2. Peel and slice garlic into thin slices

3. Saute garlic in a bit of olive oil in frying pan (I love using our cast iron pan for this)

4. Once potatoes have cooked, mix them into the garlic in the frying pan and stir fry. Add cheese (break into small pieces) and continue stirring. Add any spices that you wish.

5. Chop spinach leaves and mix those into the frying pan. Continue to stir everything together until cheese has melted and spinach has started to wilt.

Next time I am going to add broccoli and chicken to this mixture. But with what I had on hand tonight this was it, and it was really really good!

One last thing: here is a pic of my little monkey. We let her have a small piece of homemade chocolate cake (it was one of our friends birthdays and he sent home some cake with Steve today after they finished work). It was really yummy! As you can see, Ava quite enjoyed it.

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I still can’t get over how fast she is growing, and the amount of new things she is learning each day. Today she was saying all kinds of things: puppy, kitty, bear, baby… and at one point she picked up a toy cell phone that she has, she put it to her ear and it totally sounded like she said “Hi Daddy” into the phone. I almost fell over.

She is so much fun and so sweet but then there is the lovely other side to toddler-hood. Like tantrums, at the worst times. Such as later this afternoon when I took her to JC Penney to quickly run in to get something. She did not want to be in the stroller so she hollered until I took her out. She did not want me to carry her so she hollered until I put her down. Bingo. That’s exactly what she wanted, and maybe I should not have been giving in, but when you’re in the middle of a department store, the last thing you want to have with you is a screaming toddler. Am I right? So I let her walk/run all around as I chased behind her with the stroller. I almost lost her in the winter coat section as she’s so short, I couldn’t see her amongst all the racks of coats. I had a brief wave of panic and then she appeared with a huge smile on her face, and as I stooped down to pick her up, she dodged me and ran away laughing. *sigh*

Time to leave. Once I caught up to her and grabbed her, she did the classic toddler “noodling” to make it very hard for me to get a hold of her. I then carried her to the checkout and at this point she was fine. Once we were in line however, she turned into a different child. There were about 6 people in front of me, and a few behind me, and it was this moment that my dear sweet toddler started screaming and screaming….and screaming. Nothing I could do was making it any better. I tried everything I had. Snack? nope. Toy? nope. ok, iphone? nope. What?? No iphone?? I picked her up, still screaming. I put her down, still screaming. By now everyone is looking at me probably thinking I am as horrible a mother as I felt at that moment. Then finally, the little boy standing behind us with his mother came to our rescue. He was holding a stuffed Snoopy dog and he held it up and waved it around in front of Ava (who I was holding again, and she was looking over my shoulder at this little boy). She stopped crying and said “puppy!” and for the next few minutes until we got up to the register, this wonderful little boy continued to entertain Ava with Snoopy. Funny enough, this is not the first time this has happened. A similar situation occurred in Target a couple months ago and another little boy came to our rescue and managed to get Ava to stop crying in the line up. Amazing. So to all you nice kids out there who help a frazzled mother get her crying toddler under control in a line up – thank you. It is very much appreciated. 🙂

Halloween Goodies!

October 27, 2013 by Jess Leave a Comment

How can it be right around the corner already? We haven’t even been to the pumpkin patch yet…

Here are a couple quick and easy (and of course yummy!) Halloween recipes for you:

I’m also working on 3 tutorials for Halloween crafts and I’ll have those up later today, but here is a little sneak peek:

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One last pic for now: this is still one of my favorite projects (a Halloween Canvas I made several years ago)

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Healthy and yummy soup recipe

April 1, 2012 by Jess Leave a Comment

Lately we (ok, I) have been trying to eat healthy, by eating more fresh fruits and veggies, as much organic as I can, and less meat/animal products. It’s been tough trying to change Steve’s eating habits though as he is the King of fast food places and pizza. Especially pizza. I think he should own shares in Papa John’s by now. He’s been quite willing to try all these new foods I’ve been making though, and now loves to have a breakfast smoothie in the mornings. (I make the smoothies with berries, cabbage – yes cabbage! it’s super healthy and you don’t taste it – tofu, ice cubes, and wheatgrass). To get more protein into the healthy things I’ve been making, I’ve been sneaking tofu into everything: smoothies, pasta sauces, soups, etc.

Last night while we were getting groceries at Trader Joe’s, I mentioned I needed to go grab some tofu (they have a great organic one there – I use the firm and extra firm ones). Steve asks “have you put tofu into any of the food you’ve been making lately?”. “yep, everything! and you’ve been eating all of it!” I responded with a laugh. So later on at home while we were eating this delicious soup I had just made, Steve finishes the entire bowl in a matter of seconds it seems, then he asks me “Do you think you can add tofu next time you make it so we get the added protein?”. Good thing I was sitting down, totally not what I would have expected him to ask! Who is this guy? Where is my junk food loving husband? 🙂

So here is the delicious healthy soup recipe that I made last night. I originally got it from Brooke Burke’s book: “The Naked Mom”. She talks about trying to eat green for an entire week to cleanse your body and how good it is for you. And she lists her recipe for “Cleansing” soup that she says you can eat it as much as you want. So since I rarely follow a recipe to its full content, here is my rendition of it (and I have to say it turned out pretty darn good!)

Green Veggie Cleanse Soup

5 cloves garlic

3 bay leaves

1 red onion

1 large handful of parsley

2 stalks celery

3 tablespoons of chicken stock soup base (I use an organic one that I got at Costco – it comes in a paste)

1 piece of kale

1 zucchini

1 leek

1/2 head of green cabbage

Using a large saucepan, fill 3/4 full of water and bowl with the garlic, onion, parsley and bay leaves. In the original recipe she put a parsnip in it as well but I didn’t have any. Also it said to chop everything up. I put everything in my Vitamix and minced it. Boil for 30 minutes, then reduce to simmer and add the remaining ingredients. Simmer until you get the tenderness of the veggies that you prefer. I minced everything that went in and let it all simmer for another 30-40 minutes. It was delicious! My hubby added a bit of garlic powder and some sea salt to his. I ate mine just the way it was.

The best thing about it, besides being super healthy, is that is was a cheap meal to make. Even though I used all organic ingredients, it made a big pot of soup and I have enough leftover veggies to make at least a couple more pots of soup. Very well worth it.

National Craft Month Contest & New Recipe

March 5, 2012 by Jess Leave a Comment

I’m so excited to be a part of an awesome new site called Homeketeers. It combines everything I love in one place: scrapbooking, paper crafts, home decor, fabric crafts, cooking, baking, and other crafts/sewing/quilting!

To celebrate National Craft Month, Homeketeers is featuring a different tutorial every day for the entire month! PLUS, there is a huge contest going on with FABULOUS prizes: FOUR Cricuts machines!!!! Yes I said FOUR. Three Cricut Mini’s and one Cricut Expression. Each week there will be a winner. How cool is that? I have a cricut and it’s amazing, so if you don’t have one, jump on over to Homeketeers for your chance to win one 🙂

I’m also excited to announce that I’m teaching again at a local store: Craft Fancy

This store is awesome, I love it! Everyone I’ve met there is so nice and the store is so organized and welcoming. This month I’m teaching 2 different technique classes as well as a fun paper bag mini album

Stuff I’ve been loving this week:

Shamrock Shakes at McDonalds are back! It’s been YEARS since I’ve had one, so I just had to get one. It was so yummy!

Barnes and Noble sells the vintage Fisher Price toys!! So cool! They are exactly like the ones I had as a little kid 🙂

Angus chillin’ in the dogs bean bag chair. I love how his leg is up on the arm rest 🙂

Norman eating the veggies I spilled all over the floor. He’s even better than a vacuum cleaner.

My newest favorite meal! Chicken avocado chow mein. Recipe below.

I could seriously eat this every night, it is so delicious! I made it by fluke almost as I was trying to use up some left overs and this is what I created.

Chicken Avocado Chow Mein

– Cooked chicken breast cut into small cubes (approx 1 cup)

– sun dried tomatoes (I love the ones from trader joes) (approx 1/4 cup)

– 6 fresh garlic cloves

– 1 avocado (I get the organic ones from Trader Joes – love their organic produce)

– 1 cup cooked chow mein noodles

– coconut oil cooking spray (I found a great one at Whole Foods)

Peel all garlic cloves and slice them into thin slices. Pan fry garlic until lightly browned in a frying pan sprayed with oil. Mix the chicken and sun dried tomatoes and stir, reduce heat. Add noodles and sea salt, stir. Turn heat off and add avocado cut into pieces. Mix well, but leave some avocado in chunks.