Trying New Foods

Filed Under Avon, Cooking/Baking, Food, Sensory Processing Disorder, Two and a half years old | 4 Comments

We had some major progress today with trying new foods! It is SO hard to get Bailey to try anything new. After hundreds of hours of OT, and a cooking class at her Early Childhood Center, we have determined that she is just going to be a picky and hesitant eater. It frustrates me to no end. It’s like if I could just get her to try a certain food, I know she would like it. Mealtimes are not pleasant at our house- mainly because I stress out over everything and Jonathon keeps trying to convince her to eat.

Well tonight, I made a pot roast for dinner. Roasts are one of my favorite comfort foods. Jonathon is not a big fan, and Bailey has never touched one before. Well despite the opposition from those two, I make a roast anyway once every few months. Today Bailey smelled it cooking and started asking what it was. She said she wanted to taste it. At dinnertime I put a few carrots, pieces of celery, and meat on her plate. Along with a half a banana, a buttermilk biscuit, and some corn. We always give her at least one thing she is guaranteed to eat (in this case the corn and banana) and one thing we KNOW she won’t eat (the roast) and one thing that she might try (biscuit).

She started off by telling us that biscuits were for dogs, and flat-out refusing to taste it. So she kissed it goodbye and handed it to me. That was fine. Then she ate all of her corn, as expected. Then I casually picked up a carrot off my plate and commented, “I’m going to bite this little carrot in half.” She picked up her own carrot, repeated that, and ate it. Then she said, “That’s very good!” and ate the rest of her carrots. AND tried the celery- which I thought she would hate- but she said, “These green beans are good!” Since the child has honestly not eaten a green bean in at least a year I guess she didn’t even know that wasn’t what it was. We just went with it and she ate about five bites of cooked celery and took seconds on carrots!

Once she was done with that, she wanted to get down and I told her to eat her banana first. She did, and then as I was washing dishes she came into the kitchen and asked for more carrots. I’m not one to ever deny my child a vegetable (maybe because she only eats them once every six months) so we stood in the kitchen and picked cooked carrots out of the pot and ate them together.

We opened a new silicone baking pan that I got from Avon, and I showed Bailey how we can make little cakes and muffins in the shape of butterflies, ladybugs, etc. She wanted to try it, so we used a Jiffy chocolate muffin mix (the box ones that are like 2/$1). It was the perfect amount of mix and they only took 12 minutes to bake. She was so excited to watch them in the oven with the light on. After we took them out I told her they needed to cool off, and that when we got back from delivering Avon we could have a tea party with our special cakes.

We went to deliver some Avon orders and drop off new brochures to my customers. She mentioned a few times how she wanted to go home and eat one of her special cakes. She had fun deciding which one to try. She ate a ladybug one and I had a butterfly. They turned out really cute. This is my child who will NOT eat any sort of bread, muffin, or cake. She has has problems in the past with gagging on these textures and basically avoids them at all costs now. I think she was excited enough to try these, that she didn’t worry about that. She ate almost the whole ladybug and then told me she wanted to save the rest for later.

This was a super way to make a snack into something fun. I am going to have to buy more healthy mixes (like berry ones instead of chocolate!) so we can do it again soon. If you have a child who is a picky eater, this pan is an absolute miracle. They aren’t available yet on my website because they are brand new, but I can advance order them if anyone is interested. I believe they are only around $10 intro price.

Anyway, all this talking about food. If you have a child who eats normally it doesn’t make sense. If your kid is a bad eater like Bailey, well first of all HUGS to you, and second, you know why I am so happy about this small step we took today!

What’s not for dinner

Filed Under Complaining, Cooking/Baking | 3 Comments

Well let’s see… I have forgotten to thaw any chicken, hamburger, pork chops, etc. Our pantry and refrigerator are both fairly empty. Our grill is out of gas or whatever it uses (HONEY- PLEASE REMEMBER TO GO GET MORE! THIS IS NOT A GIRL JOB!) I wish I could enter “spices and dry pasta and frozen meat and lunch meat and canned veggies” into allrecipes.com and have them actually suggest a dinner to make. That’s about what I have to work with. So barring a creative miracle, we’re having spaghetti and canned peas and garlic bread. Not too horrible but I’m pretty sure we had that last week too…

Bailey’s Family Party, Part 1

Filed Under Bailey's Birthday, Cooking/Baking, Food, Twenty-three Months, Two Years Old | 6 Comments

Bailey has been soooo excited for her party. She has been saying, “Beelay’s happy birthday! Can-do’s! (Candles) Cake! Eat it! All friends! Ah cream! Elmo!” and singing Happy Birthday for days now. So when she got up from her nap yesterday and we told her it was time to get ready for her party… well she was pretty thrilled.

I tried to get a picture of her in her cupcake shirt before the party. We are saving her party dress for her “friend party” on Saturday. Once again she wasn’t cooperating the best because we were at Grammy’s house.

Guess why I didn’t want to bake an Easter cake- I made an Elmo cake for Bailey! It’s not perfect but I think it turned out fairly well!

The cake wasn’t hard to make… just time consuming. I enjoy doing crafty stuff so it was fun for me. It would have been more fun if MIL hadn’t been leaning over my shoulder. Jonathon finally told her to go away and give me some space. After I gave him The Look. You know, the “Get your mother away from me right now” look.

Anyway back to the party. Bailey LOVED her cake. She does not really like cake in general (in fact she informed me before seeing the cake that she was ONLY going to eat ice cream). Here she was waiting for someone to start serving her food! This look cracks me up. And yes, she is topless under that bib. We stripped her down to a diaper for her cake and ice cream. There is an entire bottle of red food coloring in that icing! My right hand is still a little stained, in fact.

But when she saw the cake…. she couldn’t help but put her fingers in Elmo’s mouth, nose, eyes etc and taste all the different colors of icing. She loved it and we just let her do it since it was her own cake. I mean, it was just family…

This is what her plate looked like after mixing the cake and ice cream together and squishing them. Yum.

And now I am tired of blogging. Three posts in one day, that’s like a record for me lately. I will finish with the family party pictures later or tomorrow.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Filed Under Cooking/Baking | 2 Comments

I made the best chicken noodle soup earlier this week. I know it probably sounds like I am bragging, but it was the recipe, not me! It turned out really good and I think it was even better a day leftover because it got starchier from the noodles. Here is the recipe I used, with my modifications:

* 1 tablespoon butter
* 1/2 cup chopped onion
* 1/2 cup chopped celery
* 4 (14.5 ounce) cans chicken broth (I used one giant 46 or 48 oz can and added a little water)
* 1 (14.5 ounce) can vegetable broth
* 1/2 pound chopped cooked chicken breast
* 1 1/2 cups egg noodles (I used 2 1/2 cups cooked, which made the soup a lot less broth-y)
* 1 cup sliced carrots (I used REAL carrots instead of the baby ones, I actually peeled them and everything!)
* 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
* 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
* salt and pepper to taste

1. Cook chicken until it is almost done. I did it on the stovetop just because I don’t know how to use our grill. Don’t laugh.
2. Cook egg noodles separately in a pot of boiling water- mine took about 10 minutes.
3. In a large pot over medium heat, melt butter. Cook onion and celery in butter until just tender, 5 minutes. Pour in chicken and vegetable broths and stir in chicken, carrots, basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes. Add noodles right before serving.

**If you are going to have leftovers or freeze it, you might want to leave the noodles out and just make new ones to add next time you eat it. It will freeze better that way.

Meatloaf and Twice Baked Potatoes

Filed Under Cooking/Baking | 4 Comments

I have been trying to cook a lot more lately. (I got motivated by my friend Jen and her Tasty Tuesdays). I have always been the type of person to consider dumping bags and boxes onto plates, to be cooking. I never made anything that wasn’t from a mix or half made already. Like the crock pot dinners, and boxed dinners where you add chicken… I know, it’s sad. Other than that we ate a lot of grilled chicken and baked chicken. I decided it was my goal to learn how/start actually cooking better meals for my family.

I am in love with the website www.allrecipes.com. You can search for a recipe by keywords, category, cooking style, ethnicity, etc. Then once you find one that you like, you can add it to your online recipe box. You can create a shopping list by clicking meals from your recipe box. It automatically puts them into your shopping list with the right amounts of each ingredient. Part of my issue with cooking is finding good recipes and then shopping for all those dang ingredients, so this cuts out that problem. Also, you can choose to find recipes with photos, so that you can see what you’re supposed to be making. I prefer those.

All this is leading up to me telling you about the dinner I made tonight. I did two things for the first time- meatloaf and twice baked potatoes. I know, meatloaf, ew. It was so random and while I don’t think I would make it again for a while, it was edible and tasted okay. I just hadn’t had it in years and was curious.

Here is the meatloaf recipe:

* 1 1/2 pounds ground beef (Use a lean ground beef or your meatloaf will be greasy/soggy)
* 1 egg
* 1 onion, chopped
* 1 cup milk
* 1 cup dried bread crumbs (I used Contadina Three Cheese Bread Crumbs)
* salt and pepper to taste
* 2 tablespoons brown sugar (I just eyeballed the amount because I didn’t feel like looking for the measuring spoon, it was fine)
* 2 tablespoons prepared mustard (eyeballed this one too)
* 1/3 cup ketchup

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, combine the beef, egg, onion, milk and bread OR cracker crumbs. Season with salt and pepper to taste and place in a lightly greased 5×9 inch loaf pan, OR form into a loaf and place in a lightly greased 9×13 inch baking dish.
3. In a separate small bowl, combine the brown sugar, mustard and ketchup. Mix well and pour over the meatloaf.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour.

The second new thing I made was the twice baked potatoes. This, I will definitely do again. It took about five minutes longer to prepare than regular baked potatoes, but tasted so much better!

For this one I kind of looked at a recipe and modified it. The whole issue is that I don’t like to measure. Any recipe that I can just throw in a little of this and a little of that, it’s a keeper. So here’s what I did:

-Bake two whole potatoes at 350 for about 45 minutes
-Take them out of the oven (I used toaster oven since meatloaf was in big oven) and be careful not to burn your hands when cutting them! Cut the top 1/3 off each potato and then scoop them out, leaving about 1/4 inch of potato inside the peel. They’ll look like you are going to make potato skins.

-Put the scooped out potato (and also scoop out the top 1/3 to use) and mash it up in a bowl. Add enough milk to make it mashy, butter, and I also chose to add Greek seasoning and cheddar cheese.
-Scoop it back onto the bottom of the potatoes as pictured, and then put back in the oven for another 15 minutes. You can use some type of cake decorator/squirter to make it pretty, but I was in a hurry at this point.

Here is our dinner! It’s not the most exciting looking thing ever, but it tasted decent and our bellies got full.

Two Days Post Christmas

Filed Under Christmas, Cooking/Baking, Gifts | 2 Comments

It is now December 27th. The Christmas madness had died down and I have a lot left to blog about. First I want to tell about my gifts, though! Guess what I got? Jonathon gave me a TomTom GPS thingy! I had never really considered getting one, but it makes sense because I hate driving and I get lost ALL THE TIME. (Can it be a business expense for delivering my Avon orders? LOL)

We took it out that night and used it to find some houses where we wanted to see Christmas lights. One of them was Christmas On the Hill, which I recommend going to see if you live close enough. The lights themselves aren’t that spectacular, but they have the whole thing set to music (you tune in on the radio) and it’s a cool show to watch.

My grandma got me a sewing machine. I have been wanting a sewing machine for a long time, even though I basically have no idea how to use it. Jen, we are going to have to get serious about sewing classes! I don’t even know how to thread it. But I am really excited to learn how to sew! I have a bunch of things I want to try and make.

Jonathon got a digital picture frame (from my parents) for his office at work. It holds up to 4000 pictures and can also do video and music. He had been wanting one of these for a while. I got him a grill light and grill cookbook from Avon, hamburger storage containers for the freezer, a cd, and some Best Buy gift cards and guess what he did. He has been griping that all of his hard drives are full so he went and bought another freaking hard drive. And a card reader thing for an SDHC card he got for his birthday. So now he can boot his computer off a memory card or something? I’m not really sure but he told me all about it.

I baked a lot before Christmas. I made five kinds of cookies and a loaf of banana bread. This is the first time I have ever made a loaf of bread (I swear) and I didn’t even use a mix! I am trying to learn how to cook more.