Modern Mom - Happy Birthday Nobody

The other day my son’s kindergarten was cancelled for teacher meetings. Having just returned from a business trip, I planned to take the day off of work and spend some one-on-one time with him. Since summer has finally arrived, I had all kinds of plans: we’d go to the pool, have a picnic, play outside, and go out for ice cream. If there was time left over, we might even squeeze in some miniature golfing. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans. We woke up that morning to cold, drizzly weather. And if that wasn’t enough to throw us off track, neither one of us was feeling well.

I figured we may as well use the unexpected free time to get some grocery shopping done (I know, I know, not quite as fun as swimming or mini-golf). There we were, trudging through the aisles, when my son spotted the cake mix and suggested we spend the afternoon baking a cake. I readily agreed —– any excuse to eat chocolate frosting. He asked me whose birthday it was, assuming it must be somebody’s birthday if we were baking a cake. When I told him it was nobody’s birthday, he decided we would make a “happy birthday nobody” cake. And did we ever. Frosting, sprinkles, glitter, and M&Ms decorated our masterpiece. Truth be told, it looked atrocious but tasted delicious. The best part was how much fun we had making it. We had our cake and ate it too, and I’m eagerly waiting the next dreary day: what better time to hold a “happy birthday nobody” party?

CommuterMom: Juice

Like most toddlers, CommuterGirl’s diet consists of mac-n-cheese, chicken fingers, waffles, plain turkey meatballs, yogurt, and any fruit she can get her hands on. We try hard to buy all-natural or organic versions of those foods so that at least she is getting healthy chicken fingers…but there is no variety in her diet. And no, she won’t eat sandwiches. I recently bought Deceptively Delicious. For those of you who don’t know, the idea behind the recipes is to cook and puree vegetables and “hide” them in the foods your child loves. For example, add spinach into your brownies, cauliflower to your mac-n-cheese. Great idea…but who has time to cook and puree all those vegetables, let alone cook the mac-n-cheese and brownies from scratch every night? Is it really worth the small amount of veggies it will add to her diet?

I did have a great discovery over the weekend. I was making green juice and CommuterGirl was watching. The carrot juice spitting out of the juicer caught her eye and she was intrigued. She wanted to try some of Mommy’s juice…she drank a whole glass. I may be on to something, green juice for both of us.

CommuterGirl’s Green Juice
1 apple
½ cucumber
2 - 3 handfuls spinach
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
½ peeled lemon
½ inch peeled ginger

CommuterMom: Get Out

With the weather turning to Fall, CommuterDad is determined to go to every outdoor festival or activity he reads about in the paper or online. We’ve been to the Book Fair, the local Farmer’s Market, the State Fair, the Town Fair, a corn maze, the petting zoo, and even the 90^th birthday celebration for marshmallow Fluff.

My favorite was the apple picking. We picked a ton of apples, drank apple cider, ate cider donuts, crunched through the leaves and enjoyed the weather. Its amazing to me how many apples you can pick in half an hour…since then we’ve made pie, apple crisp, baked apples, and applesauce – CommuterGirl loved helping. Happy Fall!

Applesauce

3 pounds apples, peeled, cored, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
1 cup water
1/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Combine apples, 1 cup water and brown sugar in heavy medium saucepan. Bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until apples are very tender, about 25 minutes. Uncover and simmer until almost all liquid in saucepan has evaporated, about 6 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in lemon juice and cinnamon. Cool 30 minutes.

Using fork, mash apple mixture until coarse and chunky. Serve at room temperature or refrigerate until cold. (Applesauce can be prepared 3 days ahead. Cover and keep refrigerated.)