1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish: A Kid Lunch

Seriously, the weeks are going by insanely fast lately.  Is it because I know summer is slipping away?  It's almost August!

I got the idea for today's Silly Kid Lunch from some gummy candies I bought at the grocery store.

For the sammies, I grated some cucumber and mixed it with cream cheese and a splash of lemon juice. (Thanks for the idea Terry!)  I thought they were delicious, unfortunately, the kids were not fans.  I pretty much had to bribe them with the candy on their plates to eat them.

The lines on the fish and the legs of the jelly fish are fruit leather. (BTW, The Girl said, Look at the cute jelly fish!  The Kid said, It looks like those crabs have beaks!  One out of two ain't bad I guess.  lol)  The eyes on both are raisins, the "beaks" are mango.

The numbers around the rim of the plate are fresh mango, the orange seaweed/grass/reeds, whatever you wanna call it, is dried mango.  Raspberries at the bottom - some kind of sea creature?  Gummy fish around the rim and a gummy shark on the plate.

Here's today's lunch:

I took a few pics of the kids actually eating their lunch this time.

Here's an ADD pose for my brother-in-law.

"Summertime, And The Livin' Is Easy"

 

Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong. -- Ella Fitzgerald
 

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes

I'm sticking to my word.  I made something else off of my Dessert Pinterest Board this morning.  And boy am I glad I did.  These cupcakes are DEEEELICIOUS!  They're a Martha recipe.  The only thing I changed was the frosting.  The original recipe calls for Seven-Minute Frosting.  It had a ton of eggs in it and sounded meringue-like.  The girl who's blog I got the recipe from substituted a brown butter frosting.  I went with regular old buttercream.  'Cause I'm lazy it's easy.  They're amazing.  I will definitely be putting this one into the "Keeper" binder.

The recipe says it makes 28 cupcakes.  I made 18 regular sized and 24 minis.

If you want to try them (and why wouldn't you!?), click here.

Here they are ready to go in the oven.

Here they are out of the oven and cooling.

And the best part, here they are with frosting and cinnamon-sugar sprinkles.

Now go make yourself some cupcakes!

Eggplant Sammies & Oven Baked Garlic Fries

I'm sure I've mentioned the neurotic steps I go through to get a grocery list together.  Yesterday and today I worked on the menu part.  I usually choose one place to get recipes from for a new menu, otherwise it's too overwhelming. 

I have my cookbooks, my recipe index box, my two "keeper" binders with recipes I've made before, my accordion file with loose recipes I've torn from somewhere, and a Food folder in my email account with things people have emailed to me. 

Phew.  That was stressful just thinking about it. 

Well now, I have a NEW place filled with recipes.  Pinterest.  Ah yes, Pinterest.  The food photos are so pretty.  I decided last week that I needed to start making more of the recipes that I'm pinning. 

I've made a few and I've been commenting on them under the actual pin.  If it was a fail, I delete it.  I don't want to make a bad comment and hurt someone's feelings, so I just make it disappear.  I'm pretty sure I would cry if someone told me that something I had posted sucked.  So don't tell me.  I don't want to know you hated it.  It will send me into a spiral of deep depression.  Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it would hurt my feelings and I'd obsess about it.

So tonight's meal came from my Pinterest boards.  To see the sammie link, click here.  For the fries, click here.  I won't tell you what other things I'll be making this week, just in case they don't live up to their photo.  They'll just disappear into never never land.

The sammie was delicious, but The Kid was not on board even a little bit.  He faked a tummy ache and asked to be excused from the table.  He'll be really hungry by breakfast.  The Girl ate hers, but I think it was the goat cheese that sold it for her. And the fact that I bought special popsicles for dessert.  She'll do anything for sugar.

The fries were super yummy, but there seemed to be a lot of steps involved.  Although, anytime I make something new, I'm kinda like a headless chicken, reading, rereading, making sure I'm following the recipe.  I'm much more calm if I'm just cooking from my head.  I would definitely use the same seasonings again - there were a ton - but I'd do them like I normally do oven fries, without all the extra oil involved.  The crunchy fried garlic on them was amazing, so that part is a keeper as well.

Here's the taters ready to go into the oven.

And here they are screamin' hot and ready to eat.

The sammies use pan fried eggplant as the "bread".

Here it is ready to assemble.

I layered lettuce, tomato, and basil on the bottom half.

Goat cheese from the farmer's market on the top.

Put the two together and it's ready to eat.

Here's dinner on my plate: