The Search for Miss Direction: Torte Law

Quick, what do all the following have in common?

1) A George Foreman Grill
2) "Naked" Crayons
3) The Macarena
4) Coconut
5) French Toast Sticks

Guesses? Thoughts?

If you answered they all played prominent rolls in my day today, have a cookie. But make sure it's chocolate chip! And while you munch on your cookie, let me fill you in on the wonderful Wednesday we had here in Farmington.

I'm still on my quest to make the kiddos lunch a little more interesting so when I picked up Noah from school we came home and did some mini Kid Kitchening to make lunch. Today Noah and Mikayla learned all about paninis! We whipped together some pizza paninis which the kids loved. Noah even inspired me by suggesting we make chocolate paninis. Hmmm, with marshmallows, I asked him. He said yes for sure. We might have to try that in the next few days.

After lunch I hauled up our box of crayons and told the kiddos it was time to get rid of the broken ones. After reassuring a teary Mikayla that I had a plan for them and they were not getting thrown away, I told them that we were going to recycle all the broken crayons into brand new ones. They were jazzed as Noah had gotten one for Valentines day that he absolutely loved. I told them the first step was to get the wrappers off all the crayons. And somewhere in there I must have said that would make them naked. Me and my big mouth. Every time Kayla unwrapped a crayon and put it in the bowl, she'd yell "Naked crayon!" I'm not sure who giggled the most. I think I pretty much destroyed a couple of my silicone baking molds (we'll see how the dishwasher handles getting some of that crayon out...) but it was worth it. I also got smart and used my mini muffin tin (with liners) for some of them. Those came out great! This afternoon the kids went about making pictures and trying out their new creations.

While the crayons were mid-melt we decided we needed to have a dance party in the kitchen. At school the other day Noah learned the Macarena (for M week!) so we went about instructing Mikayla in the finer points of the dance. The Macarena led to the Chicken Dance. Which led to the Hokey Pokey which led me to looking at the clock and realizing they were supposed to have been napping 20 minutes ago. Oops! All that dancing led to good naps, though.

After I got them into bed I started whipping together our food for the day - Coconut Torte. As I promised yesterday, here's the deal on a torte; a torte is a type of cake that contains little to no flour, but usually consists of a lot of egg, ground nuts or breadcrumbs/crackers. (As opposed to a tart which contains flour in the shell it is usually in) Often a torte is layered and then glazed with a heavy icing. Not so much on my torte. Plus it was coconut which I wasn't sure it was going to fly here. So I 1/4 the recipe and ended up making mini tortes in my muffin pan. The recipe I used also called for it to be topped with vanilla ice cream which I was only too happy to do. They were well received but I won't be in a big hurry to make them again. Still, celebrated none the less.

And because I needed to fit one more thing in today, I also decided to celebrate National School Breakfast Week tonight. This will tell you something about perspective. When I mentioned this to Grant I said "Oh, breakfast for lunch at school was the best! It was a huge thing for us. Those french toast sticks, hashbrowns, sausage and orange juice, too!" He looked at me like I was nuts. "Didn't you have breakfast for lunch at school?" I asked. This is how I had interpreted this week's celebration. "Babe, I went to a public school. They actually served breakfast before school." D'oh! Now that I give it some more thought (and work my way out of my SJCC bubble!) I'm sure that is what this week's celebration is SUPPOSED to be about. Well, darn it, I wanted a school breakfast that they served at lunchtime at my school! So we made it happen. All that was missing was milk in that cute little carton and those plastic trays.

Tomorrow is potato chip day and I promise you're not going to want to miss out on what I've got in store. Until then...