Potatoes for Pirate Pearl -- Picture Book Review for Hunger Awareness Month

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Do you know that September is Hunger Awareness Month? About ten years ago I joined with other mom bloggers to bring more awareness to the month. We shared different activities to help kids understand the need for food and how people across our country are food insecure. According to Feeding America 34 million Americans are food insecure and 9 million children in America are as well. (Source) Today I am sharing a new picture book that spreads information in a fun way about nutrition, hunger and even a bit about growing food. The book is Potatoes for Pirate Pearl by Jennifer Concepcion and illustrated by Chloe Burgett. It is recommended for ages 4 to 8.

Fun Facts about Dandelions with Craft & Recipe Round-Up

 

This week is National Wildflower Week! The other day I shared a post on Facebook about dandelions. A friend had posted it and I assumed it was true but wanted to know for sure. I decided to investigate the common wildflower, dandelions, and wow, what an interesting plant. First, did you know dandelions are in the same family as the sunflower and aster? Whether you see wishes, food or weeds, there is something here for you including where they came from, how to harvest them and how to rid your yard of them if you really want to (fun fact 11).

Books to Celebrate Filipino American History Month

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Did you know October is Filipino American History Month? Filipino Americans are the second largest Asian American group in the nation. They are third largest ethnic group in California (after Latinos and Blacks). October was chosen because it commemorates the first Filipino to step foot on the continental United States. On October 18, 1587, Luzones Indios came ashore at what is now Morro Bay, California, from Nuestro Senora de Esperanza, a Spanish galleon. In 2009 the United States Congress recognized October as Filipino American History Month. (Source) To celebrate I thought we would look at some books about the Philippines and their culture. 

National Homemade Cookie Day -- Let's Get Baking -- Recipe Round-Up and Fun Facts

There is nothing better than a homemade cookie fresh out of the oven. What is your favorite kind? Today, October 1st, is National Homemade Cookie Day, so I thought I would share some fun facts and a cookie recipe round-up so you can get baking!!

Fun Facts about Hot Dogs-- National Hot Dog Day

Did you know today is National Hot Dog Day? There are all sorts of events going on in honor of it. Be sure to check out this article for some of the deals you can get. Today I thought I would share with you some fun facts about hot dogs. 

Exploring Morocco -- Global Learning for Kids

Map Source

This month Global Learning for Kids is exploring Morocco. We have had a little exposure to Morocco in the past with the Moroccan Snow White and Maps Activity Book, but Hazel does not remember much about it. We also have eaten couscous previously, but she didn't really remember it since it has been awhile. We started as we always do with some books from the library.

Christmas Around the World - Christmas in Kenya

I joined an amazing group of bloggers put together by Beth at Living Life Intentionally to present Christmas Around the World. Each blogger is presenting how Christmas or a winter holiday is celebrated in different countries around the world. Some will be writing from their own experiences and some, like me, will be writing based on research. Today I present Christmas in Kenya.

Source

Pumpkin Blueberry Pancakes

As I have mentioned before, Hazel loves pancakes. Well she has been asking to make pumpkin ones again. I finally remembered to buy a can of cooked pumpkin so we could. Then when she asked to make them I was able to answer yes. 

We pulled out the ingredients. We adapted the recipe in our Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Cookbook that I have had since I was six. I love this book! We used one cup of whole wheat flour, two teaspoons baking powder, a half of a cup of almond meal, a half cup of oatmeal and a teaspoon of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg. Hazel measured and mixed our dry ingredients! 

Next we beat an egg--Hazel cracked it by herself and beat it! Then added one cup non-fat milk, one tablespoon olive oil and a can of cooked organic pumpkin. Again she mixed it for me. At this point I started heating the pan and sprayed it with a cooking spray.

Then we combined the two together and added one cup of frozen blueberries. We had fresh ones but I didn't see a reason to waste fresh ones by cooking them.

Next Hazel pulled her stool over to the stove and helped me scoop it into the pan. She didn't totally understand why we had to do it over the stove, but she did help with the first two batches.

Hazel claims these are her favorite pancakes. When I flip them over I press down on with the spatula to make sure the batter gets around the blueberries. I usually flip them twice and do this both times.


Enjoy!!


This is where I share...

Baking Muffins & Growing Magic Beans Part 1

This weekend Hazel and I baked some banana muffins and we planted magic beans. First our muffin recipe. I adapted this recipe from Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious. As last week, I am trying to include more nuts, whole grains, fruit and vegetables in our diets.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar (brown or white)
1/2 cup almond butter
2 medium carrots pureed (you may want to add a bit of water to puree them raw or you can cook them)
2 medium very ripe bananas mashed (Hazel is my masher!)
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 egg
1/2 cup flax seed meal
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup of ground walnuts and almonds (I ground mine in the blender more to hide the walnuts from Hazel)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350 and spray a muffin pan with a cooking spray (do not use paper liners or the muffins will stick to them).

Mix sugar, almond butter, carrots, bananas, egg and applesauce in large bowl.

Mix the remainder of the ingredients in a smaller bowl.

Add dry ingredients to liquid ingredients and mix well. Then scoop into muffin pan. This is the first time Hazel successfully helped scoop them. I can see her improving each time we bake together and with age!

Bake for 20-25 minutes (the recipe said 15-20 but I found mine took closer to 25 and still were a bit moist). Then cool on a rack and eat warm or cool. Yield 12 muffins.

Now on to our magic beans!! For the first part of this project (the part I'm sharing here) I got the idea from StrongStart which was featured on Sharing Saturday #14. Over the weekend we planted some magic beans. I had to go out and buy more jelly beans because my dear husband got into the magic beans that I set aside without realizing they were for a project.

Magic Beans Planted (Left: Magic beans = jelly beans) (Right: I will share another time)

So I put some garden dirt into an egg container and we planted one of each color of jelly beans. I added the two later after I bought more magic beans. Then we put them by the window. In a couple of days we had this:

Hazel decided we were growing candles at this point. We drew in her garden journal. I drew a picture and wrote candles and then she added to it. I had labeled the page Magic Beans and added the date. Later in the day we had:

I put a jelly bean on each lollipop stick for this phase. At this point Hazel guessed lollipops, which of course is what we are growing. The next morning she woke up to this:

If you try this, make sure you wet the soil and pack it around the sticks to get the lollipops to stand. She was so excited this morning. She wanted to pick all of them and have one after lunch each day and we had to call Daddy at work to tell him about it.

Checking out her lollipops that she grew!

Overall this was a fun gardening activity to try especially with the cold wet weather we are having and having our yard sprayed for ticks so we can't go on the grass for 3 days. This definitely entertained her for a few days.

Oh, and I bought a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk today which I'm going to read to her soon. Hope all is well with you!!


This is where I link up...

Vegetable Baked Ziti

Since my husband is Catholic, he tries not to eat meat on Fridays during Lent. Since neither of us eat fish, this makes Friday meals a bit hard. Here is a recipe for baked ziti I came up with adding as many vegetables as he will tolerate. If I wasn't making this during Lent I would add a pound of ground turkey breast to the recipe.

Vegetable Baked Ziti

Your Recipe

6 PointsPlus Value (Weight Watchers)

Prep time:  20 min

Cook time:  30 min

Serves: 8

Ingredients

	1 pound(s) cooked whole wheat ziti
	1 cup(s) uncooked zucchini, chopped
	1 clove(s) (medium) garlic clove, minced
	1 pound(s) fresh baby spinach
	3 tsp olive oil
	1 cup(s) Carrots, pureed or grated
	29 oz canned diced tomatoes, 2 cans
	24 oz canned tomato sauce
	2 cup(s) fat-free ricotta cheese
	10 oz shredded fat free mozzarella
	1 oz parmesan cheese
	1 tsp dried oregano
	1 tsp ground basil

Instructions

• Cook pasta. While pasta is cooking saute zucchini and garlic in oil. Add spinach and carrots when zucchini is looking basically cooked. Add tomatoes and tomato sauce and herbs and parmesan cheese. Turn to low. After pasta is drained, combine in pan with ricotta. Mix. Then stir in sauce. Pour into 13 by 9 inch pan. Sprinkle mozzarella on top. Bake at 400 for 30 minutes. 

 Enjoy!!

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Baking and Cooking

When I was in college I loved making banana bread. I made it all the time when I lived in off-campus in an apartment. I used a recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book similar to this one. I had a different version of the cook book then and the newer version changed their recipe some. But the truth is I changed their recipe as well. I like my banana bread to be moist and not dry, so I always add more milk. I decided to use up some bananas today and Hazel and I made some. I changed the recipe to make it healthier as well.

Mashing the Bananas

Hazel is a good banana masher as well as a pretty good mixer. She also loves adding the ingredients.

Mixing the dry ingredients

Beating the eggs

The completed batter

Banana Bread

Your Recipe

4PointsPlus Value

Prep time:  30 min

Cook time:  60 min

Serves: 16

Ingredients

	3 large banana(s), over ripe and mashed
	1 1/2 cup(s) whole wheat flour
	2 tsp baking powder
	1/2 tsp baking soda
	1/3 cup(s) sugar
	1 tsp ground cinnamon
	1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
	1 pinch ground cloves
	1/4 cup(s) ground flax seed meal
	1/2 cup(s) uncooked rolled oats
	1/3 cup(s) lard and vegetable oil shortening
	1 cup(s) fat-free skim milk
	2 large egg(s)
	1/4 cup(s) chopped walnuts

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients. Mash bananas and set aside. Beat eggs, then mix in shortening and milk. Then add banana. Add liquid to dry ingredients. Mix well. Stir in walnuts. Pour into a sprayed bread pan and back for 1 hour. Let cool 10 minutes in pan and then let cool on rack. 

The consensus between Hazel, myself and our babysitter is that it came out great. We each had a few pieces. I think there is some left for Steve, but he worked late tonight. I don't know if he found it when he got home since I was leaving when he came home.

Then for dinner we put some chicken in the slow cooker. Since we had our usual Wednesday babysitter here, I didn't want to spend too much time cooking when I could be doing something else. We changed the salsa chicken recipe I have seen in cook books and heard at WW meetings. I wanted it a little more well balanced. I will serve this with rice tonight. Oh, and my chicken was frozen. Hopefully it cooks in time.

Hazel helped with this as well. I didn't let her touch the chicken, but she loved adding the vegetables, salsa and canned goods. And of course turning it on. Sorry I didn't take any pictures of this.

Salsa & Vegetable Chicken

Your Recipe

5PointsPlus Value

Serves: 6

Ingredients

	6 item(s) cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast(s)
	1 cup(s) fat free salsa
	2 cup(s) canned diced tomatoes
	1/2 package(s) frozen mixed vegetables
	1 1/2 cup(s) canned black beans

Instructions

• Mix all ingredients into slow cooker. Cook on low for 4 hours or if chicken breasts are frozen cook on high for an hour and low for 4 hours.

Again, we all liked it. This Steve did tell me was good as well. So it got four thumbs up. We had it with rice but you could also serve it in a taco shell or tortilla. My little kitchen helper loves to help prepare all meals. Of course her favorite thing is to chop the vegetables now that I got her a cutting board and chopper. We seem to be eating a lot of zucchini now that she is chopping since it is easy for her to cut. Unfortunately, it is not one of our favorite vegetables here, but we are learning to love it.

How do you let your kids help you in the kitchen?

Places I sometimes share.

Halloween Countdown for Toddlers & Spiced Pear Muffins

So Hazel has been getting excited for Halloween. Last year, she had a teeth breaking through and was miserable. She also refused to wear her lion costume that I made her. You can see in the picture when I forced her to try it on, she was not happy. For a Halloween Party at the library I got away with putting her in a dress and saying she was a princess. It was all she was willing to wear or should I say unable to take off herself. On Halloween, she literally refused to dress up. She was feeling miserable. So we did not go trick-or-treating. So I'm excited that she getting into it this year. She has changed her mind a couple of times (with some influence from her grandmother), but she has decided to be the dish and carry the spoon from Hey, Diddle, Diddle. If you have been following me, you will know this is one of her favorite nursery rhymes.

So to help keep the excitement going, I made her a way to countdown the days until Halloween. I was going to make something more formal and have things to do or stories to read each day, but didn't get my act together (or should I say the plan together) soon enough and also thought this would be perfect for her age. I made her an October calendar with the correct dates and the number of days until Halloween. At the bottom I included pictures of kids trick-or-treating. On our's I also included a picture of the dish and spoon. However, I removed this before I saved it as a pdf. Here it is in case you want one. Halloween Countdown Each morning Hazel will put a sticker on that day. This way she will have a sense of when Halloween is. She has been asking to go trick-or-treating every day, so I have been trying to give her a sense of the time.


Since we did not bake yesterday, I baked today. I had five very ripe pears to use, so I combined some recipes to make spiced pear muffins. The verdict is good. All three of us liked them!

Spiced Pear Muffins
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 teaspoons cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
dash of ground cloves
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, divided
1 large egg, lightly beaten
6.5 ounces Greek non-fat yogurt
5 pears, cored and pureed in food processor (I did not peel them)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Spray 18 muffin cups and set aside.

Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices and set aside.

In mixer bowl cream butter, granulated sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Beat until fluffy (if butter was not at room temperature it will take slightly longer but the mixer will do the work). Add the egg and mix well. Add yogurt and pear puree. Mix and stop to scrape bowl at least once.

Add flour mixture to mixer and mix well. Remembering to scrape bottom and sides of bowl.

Put batter into muffin cups. Divide and sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup of brown sugar on top of each muffin.

Bake for 10 minutes at 450 and then turn the oven down to 400 and bake for another 10 minutes. The muffins are moist, so it takes a bit to bake them. Cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!!

Apple Trees, Apple Songs & More Apple Crafts

Yesterday's tissue paper stained glass apple

My Apple Cinnamon Wreath

Our paper orchard

Today we focused on more the growth of the apple. We talked about the seed growing into the tree and the blossoms on the tree in the spring turning into green apples and then they become red (or stay green or turn yellow). The book from the library, I Am an Apple by Jean Marzollo really helped with the lessons. It is an early reader book, but that helped make it simple for Hazel to understand. She keeps looking at it. We also read a short story about Johnny Appleseed and sang some apple songs (including of course the Johnny Appleseed song).

Apple Tree in each season

Our crafts today are making paper trees, making apple cinnamon wreaths, talking about the parts of the apple, the tree in each season, crayon stain glass apples and leaves (a great way to use some of those broken crayons), and if we have time we will do a handprint tree, but we may save this one for Friday. We are also going to bake whole wheat apple muffins tonight for breakfast tomorrow. Our big Michaelmas celebration will be tomorrow so our crafts will be focused around that and we have school in the morning.

Hazel's Cinnamon Apple Wreath

Unfinished apple stained glass using crayons

It seems as naps may be coming to an end for Hazel. She has not napped this week. The positive side is she is going to bed by 6:30 which gives Steve some time for himself at night, but she can be very cranky by the time he gets home. She is however taking quiet alone time in her room every day instead of a nap. She spends a half hour or so "reading" her books and playing with the few toys that are in there. It gives me some time to breath.

Ok, now onto our crafts.The paper trees came from All Kids Network. We drew on the apples instead of using beads. I figured it would be a bit easier for Hazel to handle at this age.

The Cinnamon Apple Wreath also came from All Kids Network. We used cardstock instead of craft foam for the apples, stems and leaves, but I loved the idea of putting the cinnamon stick on it to add another sense to it.

Before doing the four season tree we talked about the sequence of the apple tree. There is a great worksheet on Mrs. Nelson's Class. For older kids you could have them do the sequence on their own, but for Hazel I showed her the sequence and we talked about it. She is now coloring it in. The four season tree was inspired by The Virtual Vine. And yesterday Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas also did a similar craft. I cut four of the trunks out and two of the green leaves both from cardstock. Then I had her glue them on with some help. Then we added tissue paper. We talked about the spring being the pink blossoms, the summer the blossoms become green apples which turn red as they mature, the fall the leaves falling as well as the apples and the winter the branches are bare except for our cotton ball snow.

Crayon Flakes

Flakes on wax paper pre-iron

Iron at low heat setting

The crayon method for stained glass pictures came from DLTK-kids. I posted this link yesterday, but we did it with tissue paper as we had done a leaf earlier. Today I tried the crayon method. To do this, you first use a crayon sharpener to make flakes of crayon in the colors you want. The smaller the pieces the easier it will be. Then you put the crayon flakes on a piece of wax paper. Fold the wax paper over it and with a low heat iron melt the crayons between the wax paper. Be careful not to get crayon on your iron or ironing board. I did let Hazel try the iron, but we talked about the hot part. Then glue the outline on it and let it dry. Once the glue is dry you can cut around the outline and glue the other side on. Then you can hang it in your window. Here are some pictures to help with this explanation.

Melted crayons

Frame glued on...Waiting for it to dry

Ok, that is enough for today. I'm off to make a quick dinner and those muffins! Have a great day!!