Ways to Celebrate Pi Day!

As a former math teacher, I am definitely an advocate of Pi Day which is on Wednesday this week--March 14 or 3.14. Math teachers don't always get the fun part of teaching so we have to take it whenever we can get it. Pi Day is one of those times.

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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Sharing Saturday #10

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week! We are always amazed at the wonderful ideas you each share with us. If you have not checked them out you should!!

Ok, now onto the features!!

St. Patrick's Day Cards and More Spring Fairies

Our First Spring Bulb Has a Flower!

Today we decided it was time to make the St. Patrick's Day cards to mail to our family. I am part Irish--Hazel is named after my Irish grandmother and her godmother is Irish, so we will do a small celebration for it.  I bought her a shamrock plant at Trader Joe's the other day. We took some of the shamrocks off to paint with them.

The prints did not come out exactly as I had planned, but we tried.

Then we decorated with stickers and we stamped the insides with a Happy St. Patrick's Day stamp.

Hazel wanted to do a rainbow on one, so I gave her some heart stickers for it.

And the insides:

Yesterday at school the teacher had a beautiful bendy doll fairy that was much smaller than what I have made, so I tried some. If you don't know what a bendy doll is there are several tutorials around. They are made of pipe cleaners wrapped with embroidery floss and usually a wooden bead for a head and more embroidery floss or yarn for hair. The tutorial I first used is at The Enchanted Tree. I still need to add some wings to my fairies, but thought I would share them anyway.

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Spring and Muffins

Yesterday and today feel like spring. It has been close to 60 if not over 60 and we are loving it. However we still have the feeling of brown all around us. Everything still looks brown. We see a few spots of spring bulbs starting to break through the earth, but not enough to change the overall color you see. We found a book at the library about this, And Then It's Spring by Julie Fogliano. This book literally talks about how everything is brown and you plant seeds and wait and wait and then one day suddenly everything is green. It is a great book for this time of year at least around here.

This morning we decided to make muffins before heading to school. I pulled out my Deceptively Delicious cookbook (by Jessica Seinfeld) and amended her applesauce muffin recipe. The recipe can be found here. I used whole wheat flour and used raw carrot puree instead of the butternut squash puree.

Hazel helping puree the carrots

I also used more carrots than called for (either squash or carrot in the book). Hazel has no problems eating most vegetables so she doesn't mind me putting them in. Her father on the other hand doesn't really eat enough vegetables so we do try to hide them in things for him.

Hazel mixing the dry ingredients

Hazel of course did the mixing and pouring of measured ingredients. Her technique has definitely improved.

Cracking an egg

She has gotten better with eggs as well, but still needs to do them in a separate bowl so we can get all the shells out.

We ate them warm for breakfast and then rushed off to school. It was one of the first times we were not the first ones in class there. They are changing the start time next week since everyone always comes late to our class. Oh, well. The muffins were delicious!

Oh, and why did we bake muffins today. So we would have something to link up at

Won't you join us over there!! Thanks, Kelly for hosting a great baking party!

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