Kid Kitchen Sweeties

 Today Noah is one happy kiddo.  All month he has been reminding me that this month is National Sweet Potato month.  And all month I have been telling him we'll get to it.  Well, the month is over as of Thursday so I suppose we should get to it already!  So I was thrilled the other day when I got my issue of Parenting (thanks Colorado Koz's) that had a kid friendly recipe for Sweet Potato Patties.

Noah got a bit of a jump start on putting them together with a quick lesson in vegetable peeling.  After we talked about the peeler and how to use it, he was able to peel most of the sweet potato on his own.  No small feat in my opinion.  He was really taken with the fact that the 'teeth' on the peeler left stripes on the sweet potato.

After cooking and then mashing the potatoes we set about assembling our patties.  Any time my twosome get to get their hands dirty they are thrilled.  The actually did a really good job as the pictures show.  The thing I like about this installment of Kid Kitchen was there was a few 'new' things for them to learn about, including a lesson at the stove in how to fry up the patties.  Huge step for this Mama to allow them to stand there and watch/help with this part :)  They were good about standing well clear of the pan, though and spent most of the time dancing to the 'music' the patties made while they were frying.

They also helped me whip (literally) up tonight's desert for one of our food celebrations - pistachio pudding!  Note to the silly person setting up these holidays, we already celebrated pistachios!  Remember?  But my fact check of multiple sources confirmed that today is Pistachio day again.  So I decided on a low key celebration with some pudding that disappeared in the blink of an eye after dinner tonight.

It is also Chili Day.  I love making chili and I have a great go to crock pot chili that I always use, but I wanted something a little different tonight.  I've never made white chili so I decided to try it out tonight.  I don't know if I'd call it 'white' because it still has salsa in it which gave it more of an orange hue, but we did swap out red/black beans for white and I used ground turkey instead of ground beef.  Grant LOVED it, the kids (who I usually have a hard time convincing to eat chili anyway) gave it a hearty 'meh'  It was super easy, though and I'd definitely make it again.  Chili, consider yourself celebrated!

As I type, the snow is falling rapidly here in Farmington.  It was sleet until just after 5pm, but I already can't see any grass.  The weather reports are calling for between 5-8 inches (ugghh, my body hurts from just the thought of shoveling already!) and I've already warned Noah that it might mean no school again tomorrow.  We'll see what happens.  Until then...

Noah tries out peeling the sweet potato

Showing of his finished results (he was really proud)

 Posing with Calvin before we start our patties

 The patties even had their own dipping sauce which we made up first

 Mash mash mash

 I tried to convince Kayla to mash gently...

 Noah's first patty

 Kayla tries, too

 Their handiwork

 Watching the patties cook

 They couldn't wait for them all to cook they had to start eating them as soon as they came off the stove

 I know he looks angry, but he wasn't, he was scarfing down his creation

 Fryin' them up

 Whipping up the pudding

 Kayla, too

 'white' chili

 Pistachio pudding

With more pistachios on top of course!