Green Breakfast

Or: How to Get Your Kids to Eat Superfoods

Inspired by the green smoothies they made at Bethy's Girl Scout meeting for the Brownie Snacks badge, I bought some fresh spinach and kale to add to my fruit slushy. I added two big handfuls of spinach and a generous handful of kale to the blender with the liquid from a jar of mandarin oranges in 100% fruit juice. After I puréed that, I added two bananas, three chunks of cantaloupe, and three chunks of watermelon. Next came two handfuls of strawberries and two handfuls of blueberries. The last ingredient was a couple of globs (very scientific terms here, people!) natural applesauce.

Sam and I enjoyed some right then. Okay, I confess: I filled up the 23.5 ounce jar the oranges came in and proceeded to gulp down the entire thing, sharing a few sips and spoonfuls with Sam along the way.

I put the blender with rest in the refrigerator. After a while it gets thicker. Sam called it applesauce when I spooned some into a bowl for him this morning.

After he ate some of his, he snitched mine and tried to pour his into my bowl. I helped, and he happily continued eating. Being two-and-a-half, he decided to stick his finger in it then eat it off of his finger.

I am trying to teach the child proper table manners, so I told him to use his spoon. He complied, but not in the way I meant.

I'll just take the victory of him eating a breakfast of green leafy vegetables today. Maybe tomorrow he won't need a bath after eating...

Aunt Crystal's Scones

I had cooked oatmeal with butter and about a half-teaspoon of cloves instead of cinnamon as planned (don't ask). We didn't want to eat clove oatmeal, so I set out to find a recipe to salvage the bleary-eyed concoction. I came across this recipe for cooked oatmeal scones by Jenny Sanders and thought it'd be a good foundation for the morning's experiment. I'm happy to report that the experiment seems to have been a success, and I have a new recipe for lovely, hearty scones.

Fresh from the oven

Aunt Crystal's Scones
(adapted from Jenny Sanders' Cooked Oatmeal Scones)

Ingredients:
2 cups cooked oatmeal (3 servings' worth per package instructions)
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup honey
1 1/3 cup milk (divided)
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup raisins

Ready to go into the oven

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F
2. Mix butter into slightly cooled oatmeal
3. Sprinkle cloves and cinnamon over oatmeal and mix thoroughly
4. Add milk, half at a time, and incorporate well
5. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt
6. Add flour mixture to oatmeal mixture
7. Turn dough onto floured surface and lightly knead in raisins
8. Form dough into a disk approximately one inch thick
9. Cut disk into 8-10 wedges
10. Place wedges onto a buttered and floured baking sheet
11. Bake 15 minutes until toothpick inserted in center of a wedge comes out clean

Cool according to preference:
- on wire rack for crusty top and bottom
- on pan for crusty top and soft bottom
- on pan with clean tea towel over scones for soft top and bottom


Warning: These are not your dainty party scones for low tea. These are hearty and filling - good for breakfast, elevenses, or high tea.

This is one of the "little" scones!

Pb&j bites for toddlers

Sam loves his pb&j, but prefers bits rather than biting off a piece. Digging through my baking drawer and trying to decide how I wanted to cut up his sandwich, I came across my apple corer:

Hello, perfect bite-size circles with a bonus side dish of shape learning!

Hap-tea Winner

Mad Hatter by karen.tkr, on Flickr

I finally found a minute to let Random.org draw a winner - comment number 4!


Anonymous said... I loved the challenge posed by your post. Unfortunately, I honestly don't know what the significance of choosing Hat Day for the date to have the entries in by. Unless their is a tie-in with preventing colds (wearing hats & tea). I have been googling, and honestly don't have a better answer... Regardless, thank you for the giveaway, and I woud love to win!!
terry (underscore) thacker (at) hotmail (dot) com


I'll be sending you and e-mail to get your address to send your goodies.

Julie got an extra entry for guessing why I chose Hat Day - Alice in Wonderland! Who wouldn't love to wear a crazy hat and have tea with the mad hatter?

Apple Dumplings

I finally got around to making apple dumplings again and taking pictures to share with you, so without further ado... *Warning: long post with lots of pictures*

Start with two rolls of cheap crescent rolls, two wedged, peeled green apples (Don't eat any! Moral to come later in our story), and cinnamon-sugar mix.

Preheat the oven to the temperature on the rolls (375F in this case), and line your cookie sheet with foil so clean-up is easy.

Roll out the first can of rolls and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon-sugar mix.

Take a close up picture and be really proud of how it turned out considering you're using an iPhone.

Place an apple wedge on the wide end of the triangle of dough.

Roll the dough around the apple wedge from wide end.

Wrap the corners of the wide end of the triangle around the apple so that the three points of the triangle meet.

Place the roll so that the gathered points of dough are on the bottom of the dumpling. Space the dumplings an inch or two apart.

Repeat with second can of dough. 

Make sure you don't eat an apple wedge while you're wedging the apples or you'll have a lonely, sad, apple-less crescent roll like me.

Bake according to package instructions (13 minutes for the Great Value brand) until light golden brown. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Become the apple of everyone's eye when you declare that these are for dinner.

Take another good picture and pretend you're a real foodie/photographer.

Enjoy!

Hap-tea Holidays!

Tea by Laurel Fan, on Flickr

I'm a holiday junkie, but not in the typical sense. I like weird holidays. I like them so much I've actually managed to get people to pay me to learn about them and write about them - more than once! I've just discovered a new holiday: January is Hot Tea Month. How did I not know this? Anyone who knows me knows I love my tea. Extra points if you know which is my favorite! +20 coolness factor if you know how I take it. Also, today celebrates another love of mine - Trivia Day, so how about some tea trivia? Here are some interesting tea tidbits I discovered:

• Tea from the herb Camelia Simensis was first enjoyed by the Emperor of China 5000 years ago.
• Colonial tea was very bitter. The severely overcooked leaves were salted, buttered, and eaten.
• Tea is second only to water as the world's most popular beverage (take that, nasty old coffee!).
• 50 billion cups of tea are consumed in America each year; 40 billion of them are iced.
• The first tea bags were silk, created by Thomas Sullivan in 1904.
• Black, Green, and Oolong teas are all made from the same type of tea leaves. The difference is in the fermentation during processing: Black is fermented, Oolong is semi-fermented, and Green is not fermented.
• Herbal teas don't actually contain tea, but peels, flower leaves, herbs, and spices. They have no caffeine.
• Speaking of caffeine, tea only has 40 mg per cup, whereas coffee has 99 mg per cup.
• Tea must have a caffeine content of approximately 5 mg per cup in order to qualify for the "decaffeinated" label. 
• Black and Green teas have antioxidants called flavenoids.

Still not a fan? Check out these health benefits of tea:

• Consuming 30 oz. of black tea daily can reduce Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad”) cholesterol levels by more than 10 percent.  Study participants who drank four cups of tea per day had significantly lower risk of death following a heart attack – a decrease of up to 44 percent.  
• A Dutch study found that the incidence of heart attack decreased by 43 percent in the study participants who drank more than three cups of black tea per day.  
• Heavy smokers who consume four servings per day of green tea can have up to 31% lower levels of 8-OHdG (a biomarker for oxidative damage to DNA) in white blood cells. Oxidative damage to DNA is one factor which increases cancer risk and the researches suggest that a significant reduction of DNA damage found with green tea drinking may help reduce cancer risk in smokers.  
• Women who drink the equivalent of 2.5 cups of tea per day or more have a 60% drop in rectal cancer risk, as compared to women who drank less than 1.2 cups of tea per day. 

It's cold and flu season. Aunt Crystal says, "Drink your tea to fight viral infection!" Research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that people who drank 3 cups of black tea per day produced 5 times the amount of germ-fighting cells than those who drank coffee, suggesting that tea drinkers have more ability to fight viral infections such as colds and flu than non tea drinkers. I don't know about you, but I can't stand being sick. This sounds like a perfect excu-- *ahem* reason to drink tea.

So, care to join me for some tea? Leave a comment and I'll send a tea care package consisting of a dozen tea bags in a variety of flavors to the winner. Enter by midnight on National Hat Day: Sunday, January 15. An extra entry goes to the first person to tell me why I chose that day!

Disclaimer: This giveaway is not sponsored. I received no compensation for hosting this giveaway.

Wordless Wednesday

I am loved and my mouth is blissful.