The Search for Miss Direction: Chocolate Caramel Birds?

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Chocolate Caramel Birds?

I want to have words with the people that originally established these food holidays. I want to know how they heck they ever decided when there was to be more than one celebration on a given day how to pair up the foods. What smart cookie decided that chocolate caramel and poultry should be on the same day? I mean, c'mon!

Not to be deterred, Thing 1, Thing 2 and I set out in Kid Kitchen today to cover all our bases. First we went off on a totally different tangent and made some carrot chips. I don't have a hard time getting them kiddos to eat veggies (remember, you're talking about the kids that eat mini peppers like they were candy) but it is always fun to let them try something new. Plus Noah is really enamored with using the peeler. It makes me really nervous (I'm afraid he's going to peel the skin off his fingers) but he has been doing a good job of being careful. Baby steps for us all, I suppose.

While Noah worked on peeling carrots I had Mikayla unwrapping caramels. We decided to make a chocolate caramel sauce for ice cream sundaes after dinner. Simple, relatively kid friendly (I think it took them 20+ minutes just to unwrap the caramels) and it reaped tasty rewards. Everyone had sundaes tonight and Grant said he thought our sauce would be great in a milkshake. I like that it was a good way to celebrate that can be stowed in the fridge for awhile and be used next time we need a sweet treat :) Oh, and because I didn't think that we could celebrate chocolate caramels without them, I picked up a box of Milk Duds for the kids to try out. Mikayla (bless her) has gone around calling them "Milk Cuddle Duds" all day. I love that little girl.

Alright, then to tackle poultry. I found a great broccoli chicken casserole recipe that I knew the kids would be able to help me put together. I prepped up some of the ingredients (I cooked the chicken, broccoli and rice) last night, so Noah got to help with the cutting and chopping while Mikayla was in charge of measuring out the other ingredients and then stirring it all together. The kids tasty dish earned 8 of 10 possible stars (hehe) at dinner tonight. They also had turkey for lunch so I'm thinking we covered our poultry base as well.

And if my complaining about weird food combos isn't enough, I've got another bone to pick with an American Institution - the Groundhog. Dude, you lied! It is currently the 19th of March and it is BITTER cold here. And snowing! What the heck happened to my early Spring? The fact that the radio this morning informed me that on today's date last year it was 76 degrees did not help my overall mood on this issue. Punxsutawney Phil you seriously better hope I don't run across you in a dark alley anytime soon...

Ravioli and Bock Beer tomorrow. Until then...