Penguins on Parade

This year's cake bake was alot of fun and also a little bit stressful.  My son LOVES penguins.  I think if he could he would marry a penguin.  One of his favorite sites on line is the live Penguin Cam.  He'll sit for an hour and just watch the penguins doing their thing.
So naturally for the cake bake we made a penguin cake.

Top view of our penguin cake

Baking, Baking, Baking

My daughter Loves to bake.  So now that we have power back, we've been on a baking spree.  In fact we may have gone a little crazy.
I've been planning to make zucchini bread out of our several very large zucchinis.  Ladybug took over and made us two very yummy zucchinis breads.  She also looked through our cook book

Celebrating Lammas

Just like almost everything in our hectic lives, we celebrated Lammas late.  (It's even taken me over a week to finish this post.)  But that is ok.  I've learned to accept that fact and move on.  What's most important is that we celebrated and enjoyed two awesome days together as a family.  (part of our family was gone one day)

The kids and I made spiral cookies.  I really enjoy baking with my kids.  It's one of the few times when I slow down and let go of the control. 
Everybody gets to read the recipe, measure out ingredients, pour ingredients into the bowl, and st
 ir/mix everything together.  And lets not forget about the best part licking the spoons!  We chatted

Cake Bake

We made our first Dirt cake last night.  My youngest needed to make a cake for Cub Scouts' Cake Bake auction.  All the boys make a cake, the cakes are auctioned off, and the money goes to a charity.  We decided on a Dirt cake, because it was easy enough for a seven year old to make and would be fun to make/decorate.  It was also a messy project, and what boy doesn't like making a mess!  I supervised while my husband and son worked together on the cake.  We all had lots of fun and enjoyed the special time one on one time with just the Potato.
Here's how to make your own Dirt Cake:

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
2 (3.5 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
3 1/2 cups milk
1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
32 ounces chocolate sandwich cookies with creme filling

Directions

1.Chop cookies very fine in food processor. The white cream will disappear.

2.Mix butter, cream cheese, and sugar in bowl.

3.In a large bowl mix milk, pudding and whipped topping together.

4.Combine pudding mixture and cream mixture together.

5.Layer in flower pot, starting with cookies then cream mixture. Repeat layers.

6.Chill until ready to serve.

7. Enjoy!

~Your Earthy Mom

Raising a Vegetarian

As if raising children in the world today isn't hard enough, my oldest has recently decided she wants to be a vegetarian.  I am supportive of her choice.  And I'm very proud of her for making a life choice and sticking to it.  (It seems that I'm doing a better job at parenting than I thought.)  Of course her choice is now raising my "Mommy worry flags".  I'm concerned that she won't have a healthy balanced diet.  The rest of our family are not vegetarians, so cooking has become somewhat of a challenge.  My daughter is not the most adventurous eater when it comes to vegetables.  Thankfully she is very good about trying new foods.  My job as her mom is to make sure she is eating healthy and getting the right nutrients.  Let me tell you how thankful I am for the Internet right now.  Google is my new best friend! 

Lunch is actually the hardest meal of the day.  Ladybug sits at the nut-free table, so she can eat with her friend, who is allergic to peanuts.  So we can the Scratch PB&J sandwiches.  Let the experimenting begin.  Here are some of my daughter's favorite lunches.

• Soy-based faux meats - She loves the "turkey" and "pepperoni".  We make sandwiches or grinders/subs
• Tomato soup - Her absolute favorite is when we add some rice, broccoli, and corn to the soup
• Mini bagels and cream cheese -  mini bagels make the meal a little bit fun
• Leftovers - These often make the list.  I've gotten pretty good at making vegetarian substitutes for meals.  Good enough that she wants to have dinner for lunch.
• Breakfast for Lunch - packing some cereal is a nice treat.

My sister came to my rescue this past week with some veggie substitutions ideas for dinners.  The big one: I haven't been able to make a good veggie gravy.  (HUGE gravy fans in my house)  On the advice from my sister (a vegetarian in High School and College) I picked up some vegetable bouillon.  I boiled it up and added about a teaspoon of flour, to thicken it.  What do you know I made a "Great tasting gravy!"  Ladybug was trying to lick the bowl.

Here are a few websites with vegetarian/vegan ideas and recipes.
Veg Kitchen
Better Health USA
PETA

Enjoy trying out some yummy veggie meals!

~Your Earthy Mom

Late to Spring!

Spring time is actually here!  My family just celebrated Ostara last weekend.  We have been so busy with planning our wedding that the actual date came and went.  So being flexible with these kinds of things, we planned our celebration any way.



Tomato Seeds



Cucumber and Zucchini seeds



This year we did a split two day celebration.  Saturday morning was spent eating candies and starting plants for our garden.  We are planning to make our first garden this year.  So far we have cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes.  The kids loved getting in the dirt and planting the seeds!



Beginnings of a garden





Cutting Blackberries for dye



Sunday we made natural egg dyes for the first time.  This project was very time consuming, kind of messy, at times frustrating, and most of all Lots of FUN!  Grownups started with doing the cutting.  Our oldest wanted to help, so we figured why not.  We showed her how to use the knife safely and let her go for it. 



Pouring the Dye





After we cooked up each dye all of the kids helped with straining and pouring into bowls and cups.



Smelling the Dye



Onion Dye

Commence the egg dyeing extravaganza!



Beet Dye



Blackberry dye





Blueberry Dye



Spinach Dye







Onion Dye

Since this was our first time making the dyes, it was kind of an experiment.  Here's what we did.

• Fresh Blackberries - light purple - finely chop and boil in 1-2 cups of water then strain.
• Fresh Blueberries - dark/light blue - finely chop and boil in 1-2 cups of water then strain.  (one of our favorites)
• Fresh Spinach - very light green -  finely chop and boil in 1 cup of water then strain.  (we didn't like how this color came out)
• Onion - golden yellow/orange - Take the skins off two onions.  finely chop them and boil in 1 cup of water then strain.  (one of our favorites)
• Beets - light pink - We used canned beets and finely chopped.  We boiled the beets and the juice from the can.  (Next year we plan to use fresh beets if we can find them)

All in all we had a great weekend and are looking forward to watching our plants grow.  In a few weeks we should be able to move the plants outside to the garden.  Keep your eyes out for posts on how our garden is doing.

~Your Earthy Mom