Homemade baby purees

How the time has flown by!  Rae is just over 10 months now and starting to eat more and more solid food but this kid still loves her purees.  I started out with the goal of simply attempting to make her own foods at home.  I thought that I would at least give it a shot and buy her jars if that didn't work out, no biggie, never thinking that I would make it this long.

I have loved making her baby food, it has been a great point of personal pride for me through this journey of new parenthood.  It has also been important to me to have some sort of creative or motherly outlet to feel, I suppose, needed.  Switching to formula has been harder than I ever expected and preparing her baby food at home has helped me to feel necessary again.  It's weird to describe, maybe baking and cooking is how I express my love.  Anyways, this whole process has been very cathartic for me and I'm so glad that I can share it with you.

I need to start by telling you that I didn't buy a single thing to prepare baby food.  I registered for a special baby food maker that would steam and puree, I registered for the trays to put that wonderfully prepared food into, I registered for a cookbook to use with that wonderful baby food maker.  I was so excited to nest!  And then along came baby and countless thoughtful and fantastic gifts but no baby food maker, no trays, and no cookbook.  Sure, I wanted all that but I knew in the back of my head that it was ridiculous and apparently everyone else did too!

So I searched all over the baby blogs and recipe sites for how to get started and discovered that I already owned everything necessary to make baby food.  This is what I found to be needed:

1. Steamer basket, either with a stock pot or in a rice cooker
2. Food processor or blender
3. Ice cube trays for freezing
4. Freezer bags for storing

I then found a fantastic site for food ideas called WholesomeBabyFood.  It is an outstanding source for figuring out how to start feeding solids to a baby!

I love the ice cube trays because they produce perfect little 1oz portions of food.  This makes it so easy to combine different foods for a new flavor every day.  The possibilities are endless and can be somewhat daunting.  If you are a little worried, just do what I did and walk down the baby food aisle to see what those master chefs put together!  

***Tip: the food doesn't pop out like ice, wedge a knife along the side and it will pop right out.  

The cubes are also easy for transporting to daycare.  I simply put 3 cubes in a little reusable storage container and they set it in hot water to heat up.  I also heat up two cubes of fruit purees and mix in plain whole-milk yogurt for a great snack.  

You can adjust the level of smoothness and thickness by adding water to the food processor.  Just be careful about adding too much because freezing can cause some vegetables, like carrots, to become watery.  Speaking of carrots, did you know that carrots spark in the microwave!?  I never knew until I put some steamed carrots in there for a few seconds and they popped like fireworks.  Turns out, it's the high levels of minerals that causes it.  Crazy!

I'm off now to mix a few cubes into Rae's oatmeal.  Have a great weekend!

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Prepping for long-term sub

Not only have I been busy nesting at home, I have been very busy preparing my classroom for a long term sub.  No easy feat and especially cumbersome when you are as OCD as me!

I started prepping my filing cabinets by organizing all of my papers, trashing obsolete ones, and making copies.  My kindergarten team is seriously ready for the first 9 weeks with all of our copies! I made 25 copies of each paper since I don't know my class size.  You can see the large labels in the picture above, I like these because it makes things so much easier to find than the normal sized file labels.  Plus my brain is kind of funny in that it remembers colors associated with certain titles, might be a little freaky but sure makes it easy to find that orange-colored Pete the Cat file.  I also attached sticky notes to certain worksheets if I tend to do something differently than the directions or if I know a book that goes particularly well with it.  I'm going to be honest, there are a bunch of sticky notes in my files!  I have a problem with relinquishing control... there I said it!

I placed my learning centers in my filing cabinets as well.  This is new for me, normally they are just in a plastic crate in the order that I use them.  However, I want my sub to know exactly when the appropriate time is to use each learning center which is why I placed them within my chronologically ordered filing cabinet.  I made hot pink label papers for all of my centers, you can see them evenly spaced in my cabinet picture above.  I glued the title page to the outside of the file and placed all of the papers and materials inside like so...

Each paper has been copied and clipped to a baggie with the contents for that activity inside.  By the way, I adore Julie Lee's centers!

I then went through and labeled my bins where I place the students' extra school supplies.  I never labeled them before because this was my kingdom and I already knew where to look for supplies, no sweat.  But imagine how frustrating it would be to have to look high and low for an extra glue stick because the sub placed them somewhere else.  Hmmm, maybe that's just my own personal nightmare. =P

I went completely nuts with documenting where things go, even the students' things like writing tablets and math workbooks.  If you have a system figured out that works for you I think it would be nice to come back to that same system already established in your classroom.

The documentation continued with my schedule.  I know that schedules look nothing alike from year to year but this will give my sub something to go off of.  This is probably one of the most time consuming parts of beginning a year and I want to make it as easy as I can for my sub.

Finally, I went around my entire classroom taking pictures of where furniture is located.  Each August I come back to tables piled up in a corner, cabinets turned around against a wall, and chairs stacked to the ceiling.  It is a crazy few days rearranging my classroom each year!  I might spend hours tweaking the location of a freaking bookshelf because it affects the location of my computers 20 feet away.  So this year, I got up close and personal with the location of everything in my room so that things can just be rolled, carted, and pushed back to where they should be.  No more guessing and moving 10 times.

So that's how I have prepared my classroom for a long term sub starting at the beginning of the year.  I've come to terms with this small amount of control over a situation where I seem to have none whatsoever.  

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Good tip

Ok, I know this is not a pretty topic and the pictures are far from beautiful, but this is a tip that has helped me immeasurably. Try this out the next time you make a meal that calls for ground beef, so much easier than precariously draining the meat with the pan lid and better for you than keeping all that oil in your meals.

Line a wide bowl with a layer or two of tin foil. Follow the shape of the bowl and leave extra tin foil hanging over the edges.

Place a colander over the bowl and tinfoil, then simply dump your cooked ground beef into the colander. You can let it sit there for a few minutes while you prepare other things or you can lightly press the meat along the bottom of the colander.

Lift up the colander and look at all that oil that isn't in your meal or down your sink!

Fold it up into a neat little pouch and pop it in your freezer for a tidy package that doesn't mess up your trash. So easy!

P.S. If you're making pasta in the same meal don't wash out the colander, the little bit of left over grease helps to keep your pasta from sticking.
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Birthday Apple Cake

Today is my wonderful husband's birthday! So amazing to think that he has been alive for a quarter of a century... only for the next couple of months will he be alone in this feat, I'll be there soon enough. To celebrate his special day I've made his absolute favorite dessert: Apple Cake. I'm not going to lie to you, this is not as easy as the other recipes that I've posted, but it is the most amazing thing. I guarantee, you will want to try this in your own kitchen. This recipe comes from Judy Rosenberg's cookbook, Rosie's Bakery All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No-Holds-Barred Baking Book (yeah, nothing in it is good for you).

Apple Cake

Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temp
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large eggs, at room temp
4 cups apples (3-4 large apples), peeled, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 teaspoon cinnamon mixed with 1 tablespoon sugar for topping

Good tip: To keep the apples from turning brown, let them soak in a mixture of water and some acidic liquid like orange juice, lemon juice, or pineapple juice.





Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 (340 works better in mine, play around with what you like). Lightly grease a 10-inch tube pan with a removable bottom.
2. Sift the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt into a small bowl.
3. Cream the butter, oil, sugar, and vanilla in a medium-size mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until blended, about 2 minutes. Stop to scrape the bowl twice with a rubber spatula.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, and mix on medium-low speed after each addition until blended, 10 seconds. Scrap the bowl each time. Once the eggs are added, mix again for 10 seconds.
5. Add half the dry ingredients and blend on low speed for 15 seconds. Scrap the bowl, add the rest of the dry ingredients, and mix on low speed until blended, about 5 seconds more.
6. Add the apples with a few turns of the mixer.
7. Spoon the batter into the pan and sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar over the top. Bake the cake on the center oven rack until the top is firm and golden and a toothpick inserted at the cake's highest point comes out dry, about 1 hour and 5 minutes.

So worth the effort...
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Ricotta Stuffed Manicotti

A little while ago our good friends had us over for dinner and served up some delicious meat-stuffed manicotti. It was very tasty and the passed down family recipe seemed easy enough... it gave me the courage to take a stab at a similar recipe. I decided to make ricotta-stuffed manicotti with meat sauce. This recipe is many recipes put together the way I thought they might taste good. It turned out unbelievably tasty!
Ricotta Stuffed Manicotti
1 pkg. (8oz) manicotti
2 containers (15 oz) whole-milk ricotta cheese
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups shredded parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup (or less) freshly chopped basil
1 1/2 jars (1lb, 9 oz) spaghetti sauce, marinara or something plain
1 tube Italian Sausage (I used Bob Evan's)
1/2 cup water *helps to continue cooking undercooked pasta

1. Mix together ricotta, 1 cup parmesan, eggs, and seasonings, set aside (could be refrigerated for use later).

2. Boil manicotti until just barely al dente NOT FLOPPY (6 min for Barilla brand), drain and cool. It makes it easier to fill manicotti if it is undercooked, the extra 1/2 cup of water added to the sauce will continue the cooking process.

3. Brown meat and add to marinara sauce with 1/2 cup water, add thin layer to lightly BUTTERED 9x13 baking dish.

4. Good Tip: Using a large plastic baggie, spoon ricotta mixture in and snip off 1 corner. Use this to easily fill cooled manicotti.

5. Place manicotti into baking dish as you fill them, cover with remaining marinara/meat sauce, sprinkle with remaining parmesan.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-55 minutes.
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Door trim

I was admiring some great pictures of a linen closet re-do from Sage Mommy's blog and thought about a project that Estevan did for our house (that's right, I'm not taking any credit for this... I love my handy husband). We have hollow-core, oak veneer doors all through our house. These things are so ugly, straight from the 70's. We decided to do something about them but didn't have the budget to buy new doors for our whole house. Good tip: By nailing on simple oak trim in the shape of a rectangle, about 5 inches from the edge of the door he created an authentic looking detail. He then primed and painted the doors all satin white so that you can't even tell that they were once nasty veneer. Beautiful...

Before and after

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