Clean Mud Day

The girls and I have been wiped out with a stomach bug the last couple of days so we have no fun activities to report. Mike came home for the afternoon and is caring for the girls who are currently on the upswing and I...am not. So I thought I'd take this time to look back on an activity we attempted a few weeks back. I posted an account of Clean Mud Day on Facebook so I am able to retrieve it and share again, with pics!

Creative Mom Fail--Winter Activity "Clean Mud Play"

So after fingerpainting (messy kids) I decided to do clean mud (torn toilet paper, grated bar soap, warm water). I pile to girls into the tub, and get them going on ripping the toilet paper. Meanwhile, I grate my thumb while grating the soap. Take toilet paper out of Mia's mouth. Add grated soap, give Laney pitcher of warm water. She pours it on Mia. Give Laney another pitcher of warm water, make mud. Start playing with shapes in mud. Take mud out of Mia's mouth. Take muddy shapes out of Mia's mouth. Laney has rejected clean mud play and is wet and soapy, and still covered in paint in the kitchen now. Take Mia out of tub. Place Mia in sink to rinse. Put Laney in shower, spend 10 minutes getting clean mud out of hair. Dress shivering Mia. Dress shivering Laney. Plop in front of Yo Gabba Gabba and spend 10 minutes cleaning soap out of grater. Band-aid still bleeding thumb.

If anyone thinks their kids might actually enjoy this activity, you can make clean mud by ripping up a roll of Charmin, grating a bar of soap and dumping water over the mess. Be warned that your toddler will then think it's appropriate to rip up rolls of Charmin.

Where 'ya shopping, Melissa?

Every once in a while I commit to following a recipe. I have favorite ingredients (onion, garlic, balsamic) and my food starts to all taste the same. So I follow a recipe to the letter to try to get new ideas and shake it up a bit. I was watching $10 Dollar Dinners on The Food Network and decided to make Melissa D'arabian's North African Meatballs with Dated Cous Cous and Glazed Carrots.

First off, $10? Honey, where are you shopping? Not a chance. The cilantro and parsley alone cost $2. The meat another $3, and that was on sale. The dates for the cous cous were $1.30. And there are about 20 other ingredients. Now, here's a loophole for Melissa...using small amounts of lots of things. For example, a half cup of wine. Does this mean that she's using 2-Buck-Chuck and dividing it by 10? As in, the wine cost $.20? Because it didn't. And 1/4 cup of stock? I don't need to count things like dashes of cinnamon, that's fine, but the zest of a lemon? The lemon was almost a dollar, but she didn't actually use the lemon, just the zest. Hmmm.

Anyway, so I made this recipe. It was pretty labor-intensive. I started my usual way when I'm making complicated dishes when caring for the girls. I start chopping my aromatics, herbs and veg parsed throughout the afternoon. That way, when it's time to cook, things are ready. Yep, I chop an onion, feed a babe. Mince some garlic, read a book. That's just how it goes. It works for us.

So I made a sauce, meatballs, cous cous and carrots. The sauce was good. The meatballs were fine. As usual, when I make meatballs, I end up thinking the dish would be just as good just making a sauce with meat and saving a half hour and 3 dishes. I liked the cous cous, but Mike said it tasted like Cream Of Wheat (?) but in a nice way. And I have to admit, I didn't bother with the carrot recipe. I just squeezed the naked-but-unused-lemon on them and steamed.

All in all, this dish was interesting but not SOOO good. Not really worth the ingredients (kind of a waste of fresh herbs to cook them, imo) and resulted in TOO MANY dishes to clean. Didn't taste particularly healthy. I enjoy the funky flavor combinations of North African food but can do it in a crazy easy crockpot stew from now on. And the biggest downside is that there was really nothing the girls could help me with--too much dealing with raw meat, knives and hot oil. It was really a struggle to keep them entertained during the time-sensitive cooking process. Mia crawled around my feet and ate an onion peel. That was kind of a highlight.

Here's the recipe.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/north-african-meatballs-recipe/index.html

This House is B-A-N-A-N-A-S

My girls and their dad love bananas. I don't really get it. They're just not very satisfying for me. But yesterday Laney wanted to make a "treat for Daddy" and banana cream pie seemed like a good plan. Here's why--a two year old can make the pie. Pretty much by herself. And she did, with a bit of instruction from me. Don't worry, I was nearby feeding Mia, ready to step in if pudding whisking got too enthusiastic.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, it's pretty intuitive. Make banana instant pudding with a little less milk (1 and 3/4 cup maybe?) Whisk it up. Pour in prepared crust. Slice banana coins, decorate. Refrigerate.

Here are some pics.

$.63 well spent

So Laney has this book (it's a Blues Clues paperback) about planting seeds. Last week, she was asking for me to read it at least once a day. It's a nice book, has a little meat to it, doesn't rhyme...so I was agreeable. Before we knew it, the 2 yr old was walking around telling people what a seed needed to grow (water, soil, plant, sunlight etc). Ok, so then we're watching Sesame Street, and of course, Elmo is planting a seed!

The universe was telling me something. SCIENCE lesson!

Always looking for activities, I am on board. A trip to Copps for a small bag of dried organic pinto beans from the natural food bulk section and we're ready to go. Here's what we did--shoved a bunch of Bounty (yes, you must use Bounty, it's just better) into a mason jar. Laney drops in a few (yeah, 10) dried beans. Laney pours in a ridiculous amount of water. We stick it by the window. And wait. Surprisingly, only a few days pass, and we have sprouts! They were ready to pot a few days later. Daily activity, watering and monitoring our bean plants!

But $.63 buys a lot of beans. We have many left over. A quick boil and simmer and now Mia is involved in the bean project--we have a healthy, cheap and easy finger food! You know I hate those puff things. Seriously, those beans are in a Ziploc in the freezer and 20 seconds in the microwave gets the job done.

Yes, this stuff is exciting to me.