Food and Fun

Love, love, love this little shirt. After much protesting she finally wore it, and then bragged the whole time at church about how it has a built in belt (what she hated about it to begin with). It came from Zulily - which along with Facebook, Amazon, Pinterest and Paypal would be the five websites I would have to have if on a deserted island. I get such great deals on unique things there that I'm really not all that into consignment season this year!One of our dinners over the last couple of weeks were these banana snowman pancakes. It's from a Taste of Home Kid Approved cookbook that has tons of cute family recipes to make together. Our book buyer got a sample and brought it over to me because she knows how much Lilli loves to help cook. It's got some really cute ideas in it, and the first thing I wanted to make from it were these pancakes.
It was just a simple banana pancake batter, and as you make the pancakes you make your circles touch so they all cook together. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, use craisons and choc chips for face/buttons, and pretzels for arms. I wanted him to have a scarf so I added some organic gummy worms we had in our candy bowl. We also made berry smoothies to drink that night (from the same cookbook) to glam up the whole evening. It was a simple recipe with cherry yogurt, strawberries and mixed fruit (and some milk). Delicious! We rarely make smoothies but it's one of the things I'd like to do more often. That week we also made a Southwest Tuna Casserole from the same cookbook that was just ok - just your typical tuna casserole. There are a ton of other cute ideas we'll be trying (like turning simple hot dogs into butterflies).
Kid approved for sure! This was a big hit since we've had no actual snow this year and she's been telling me for ages to put up our snowmen.
Some dress up fun - Spiderman pajamas on bottom, Ariel on top.
Old Buzzy does hang around in the back yard some. This summer there is definitely going to be some territory battling between Buzz Lightyear and Pippin for backyard domination! Since Buzz is the outdoor street cat and Pippin is the spoiled indoor lap dog I'm pretty sure I know who is tougher.
For Fat Tuesday we made our absolute favorite Cajun Jambalaya recipe. We've been making this forever and absolutely love it. I like a good bit of rice in my jambalaya so I add more rice and stock, and keep adding stock as it cooks. We also put more meat in it than it calls for. We boiled up some corn on the cob from my parents farm and had a fantastic Fat Tuesday! That day I had gotten an email from Home Simple with a recipe for Fat Tuesday punch - we just mixed grape juice with pineapple juice, lime juice, chopped up some orange and then topped it with Sprite. So delicious and it tasted a lot like our wedding punch! Lil thought the orange slices floating in it were fantastic.
Uno attacks!
Some of our other recent meal plan items include our fave homemade spaghetti - Rachael Ray's cowboy spaghetti. It's really not much more difficult than just opening a jar of pasta sauce and any spaghetti that has bacon in it has to be good! We also made our very first brisket last week. Brisket is just not a meat I know much about, and this crockpot recipe sounded pretty simple, and the cut of meat was pretty affordable ($5). But, it shrank way up and it really was pretty dry. It didn't cook much longer than the recipe called for, but it was a pretty dull piece of meat. I think the worst thing was HOW GOOD the house smelled - like this amazing french dip or something, and then it was super bland.

This week's meal plan-

Indian Chicken Tikka Masala
Skinny Cajun Chicken Pasta
CrockPot BBQ Chicken
Marinated Spicy Pork Chops
Baked Pork Blade Steak

I'm still trying to clean the freezer out to make room for the new popsicle maker so a few old cuts of pork from last summer's CSA have got to go!