Yeah, I know they're not good for me and they're loaded with sugar and other cardboard like substances but I love them. I have since I was a child. Hmmm, maybe that's why I like them so much:)

Yep, I'm a child of the 1970s and never got to eat Pop-Tars unless we were traveling to see my grandparents. My mom used these treats to keep me quiet on the airplane. Of course, in those days they weren't made with High Fructose Corn Syrup and they only came in the 6-pack box. I ate the crust first then at the rest, savoring each bite, drawing out the pleasuring as long as I could because once those six Pop-Tarts were gone they were gone until the next time I saw an airplane. It was a long couple of years between chocolatey goodness.

Then I got a job in high school and started making my own money and I decided to buy my own breakfast occasionally. Pop-Tarts were still just as magical and they're just as magical even now that they're loaded with stuff made in the lab. But to me the flavor is layered in pleasure and still takes me back to those trips to see my grandparents. Sure, I rationalize that there are essential vitamins and iron --there used to me 9 and now there are only 7 - not sure what happened to the other 2?

I realize Pop-Tarts aren't like rainbows and unicorns but they help get me going some mornings. Maybe I need to grow up and find an adult breakfast alternative but until I turn 50 I'm sticking with Pop-Tarts!

I'm amazed at how easy it is to make my own chicken stock. Really.Until last year I was buying it in a box or - gasp - a can. I know. Horrors. Now I use the crockpot. So easy!

The base of my stock is the carcass of our weekly rotisserie chicken from Costco. I'm pretty sure I've written about this before, but it's just one more way to be frugal and use every little bit of the bird. Especially a bird as big and convenient as the ones from Costco.

When I get around to actually making the stock I throw in whatever is in my fridge that is a 'stock like' veggie. Got some carrots that are past their prime? Throw them in. Wilted celery? Perfect.

How about seasoning? That's where I err on the light side. These rotisserie chickens already have seasonings so I throw in a bay leaf, some peppercorns, maybe some dried minced onion and call it good.

But today was a bit different. The Farmer's Market has been going on for a few weeks now so we have some great veggies in the fridge. We also have some from a few weeks ago that are definitely past their prime. And this week I was introduced to green garlic for the first time.

Making stock gave me a chance to clear out the wilted carrots - many of them - and to utilize the tops of the green garlic to add some wonderful onion-y flavor to the stock. The green tops of many veggies are often overlooked but making stock is a wonderful time to utilize them when you are able. Green garlic, scallions, and other similar stalk items would work wonderfully and impart a different flavor by using the tops rather than the bottom. It's wonderfully frugal, too, to use the entire item. And definitely a Cool Idea!

Yesterday I looked at how much it costs me to make lunches for Comfort and Joy to take to school each day. I spend $2.53 for two lunches each day which is significantly less than the $3.43 which is the national average that parents spend on the lunches with which they send their kids to school.

Would it sometimes be easier to send $2 to school and let them eat with their class? Sure. And sometimes they do. Joy eats with her class once a week as part of her development plan. Comfort probably buys lunch once a month just for fun.

One of the reasons I make their lunches is that I can control what they are going to eat and make sure that it has some nutritional value. I can say that our school does a good job of making nice food for the kids and it starts out as real ingredients and not as food in frozen compartments but it's still institutional food. Also, we try to drink organic milk and juice when possible and that's not an option at school.

It's important to pay attention to the food our children eat at school. Slow Foods USA has information about school food nutrition and a way to write to your elected officials if you're interested in making your voice heard. If you're looking for menus and recipes to help build your kids lunch hop on over to The Lunch Box. And if you want a very illuminating view of school lunch from the inside out hop on over to Fed Up with School Lunch which is a blog being done by a school teacher who is eating what her high school kids eat every day and writing about it.

We've all heard that making sure that tummies are full is the first step to being able to fill up brains but I don't think we want to fill their tummies with just anything. Let's make sure that we're giving them a good start and helping them to build good habits. Personally, I think that's a really Cool Idea!

A newsletter came home from school a few weeks ago that said that the average cost of the lunch that a parent sends to school with their child is $3.43. The newsletter's point was that school lunch at $2/ day was cheaper and nutritionally just as good as what a parent would send.

It got me to thinking about how much I was spending on lunch for Comfort and Joy. I was pretty sure it was less - and significantly less- but I've been working to quantify it. For those of you who know who much I enjoy math you'll get a kick out of this. Yes, I'm using Excel and because thankfully it's doing the math for me.

First of all, I took into consideration the items that go into their lunches everyday. My girls eat the same sandwich every day. I tried to mix it up at first but they're toddlers. They don't like a lot of variety.

Milk [organic] for both girls: $0.96
Juice [organic] for Comfort for snack time: $0.20
Bread [3 slices]: $0.10 [Joy only takes half a sandwich each day]
slice of cheese: $0.09
slice of ham: $0.06
Peanut butter: 0.01 [bought on sale and with a Kroger coupon so I paid $0.45 for a 16 oz. jar. It's lasted almost 3 months so far.]
Jelly: $0.01 [This may seem low but Kroger brand jelly on half a sandwich - the jar has lasted over 3 months so far. I probably have another 2 weeks left before I need more.]

So everyday costs are $1.43 total for both girls.

Then there are the other items I put in which aren't always consistent:
baby carrots: $0.07
fruit cups: $0.22
clementines: $0.47 [this is a whole clementine and they each get half]
Goldfish crackers: $0.10 [I stockup when they're on sale for $0.88/ bag]
cookies: $0.42

My plan for building their lunches is a vegetable or a fruit [not both] and crackers or cookies [not both] and I usually alternate who gets the cookies and crackers each day and there's only cookies twice a week - at most.

So the average cost for "others" is probably $0.65-1.00 at the high end and $0.25 -.45 at the low end. This is a total for both girls/ per day.

And, I don't want to forget the start up costs of their reusable BYO Lunch bags, fruit cups, and cool packs. The total for all of this was $18.49 which I divided by the 180 days of school so it comes to $0.10/ day.

So, how much does it cost me to make lunch for Comfort and Joy each day? I decided to take the most expensive option of 'others' [which would be cookies and fruit cup - not that I'd probably pick that option but there you go] and plug a $1 into the formula:
$1.43 for daily stuff
$1.00 for 'other'
$0.10 for start up expenses
$2.53 = how much I spend each day for two school lunches

Not only is this significantly less than the national average but I think I do a fairly good job of a) sending food that is good for them to eat and b) sending food that they'll eat.

What do you remember taking to school for lunch? What do you pack for your kids lunch? Have you figured out how much you spend on school lunch?

I love gnocchi. I just love 'em. Those light and airy Italian potato dumplings. Well, not really a dumpling in the sense I think of them but that's the closest way I can think to describe them. I rarely get to eat them though because most Italian restaurants we go to, when we go out, rarely have gnocchi on the menu. Or they have it combined with some sauce I would never ever put in my mouth.

So, I began to think - how hard could this be to make? I found some recipes. Cooking Light has some great ones. Well, there are lots of great ones. Classic ones. And mostly they are all the same. And each time I tried to replicate this light and airy, mouth-watering deliciousness I ended up with wallpaper paste. YUCK!

Then a couple of years ago - maybe when I was first home with Comfort - I remember seeing an episode of Tyler's Ultimate on Food Network and he made gnocchi and he was very clear that the key was to bake the potato instead of boiling it. Well, heck - that's where I was going off the rails.

For those of you that have been reading this blog for a little while you may have guessed why I was boiling the potatoes. Yep, it's cheaper to use the cooktop than to turn on the oven. However, in this case you want the potatoes dry so it really does need an oven. So, use the oven. Or better yet do what I have done - I 'splurged' at Costco last month when they had an in-store coupon and bought a countertop toaster oven/ convection oven. I now use this for small cooking projects - like baking 1-2 lbs of potatoes.

Back to my story. One of the magazines I get for free - another reason I should keep up the weekly freebie post - is Bon Appetite. Mostly I flip through it and pass it along to my best friend because she's a much more adventurous cook and eater than am. But this time there was a recipe and 'help' section for gnocchi so I decided to try again.

Here's their recipe:
1 1/2 lbs. russet potatoes - scrub, dry, prick with a fork
1 C flour
1 egg yolk
1 tsp kosher salt
large pinch fresh nutmeg - I just grated it right into the bowl
olive oil
potato ricer or food mill
1. Bake potatoes for 1 hr at 400 degrees. Cool slightly and scoop out flesh and work through ricer. [I couldn't find my ricer for the life of me, so I used my pastry cuter to make sure there weren't any chunks.]
2. Spread out and let cool to room temp.
3. Line baking sheet with foil or parchment. Put potatoes in bowl. Add 1 C flour and toss to coat. Make a well in the middle and add egg yolk, salt, and nutmeg.
4. Stir with fork until it's all crumbly then turn it out on a floured surface. [I use this chopping board from IKEA as my baking board. I treat it like a cast iron skillet - I never use soap and water and only use it for floured items.] Knead the dough together adding additional flour as necessary.
5. Cut into 4 pieces and roll each piece into a 1 inch thick rope. The rope was as wide as my board - 18 inches. Cut into 3/4 inch pieces and place on lined baking sheet.
6. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and working in small batches cook gnocchi. It's done when it floats to the top. Skim from pot and transfer to bowl and drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat.
[recipe from Bon Appetite, Feb 2010]

So, if you bought a 10 lb. bag of russet potatoes at Kroger last week like I did because they were such a great deal then thought - what on EARTH am I going to do with them - here's a great recipe. It's not time consuming but you do need to plan ahead. Plan ahead then leave it alone.

I've made this two days in a row because we didn't have any leftovers last night. Yep, it passed the Trial by Toddler. Comfort and Joy both cleaned their plates so today I'm making another batch to put in the freezer. Tomorrow I make some more since I hear that potatoes are still on sale this week and I think homemade gnocchi are now the Coolest Idea EVER!

It's been really cold here in Virginia lately. In fact, cold enough that the snow hasn't really begun to melt very much, but that doesn't mean that we can't begin to think about food that evokes feelings of warmer times.

What am I talking about? Two words - pimento cheese. YUM!!

For those of you who don't live anywhere near the south and aren't familiar with the concept of pimento cheese let me try to explain it. Pimento cheese is made from grated sharp cheddar cheee, but still - somehow - ends up being creamy. It has smushed pimentos in it and it's a little salty and I remember it fondly from childhood because my mom made me pimento cheese sandwiches occasionally when I had field trips. The other times she made peanut butter and honey and those were super yummy, too!

But back to pimento cheese. Buying pimento cheese isn't hard. You can find tubs of various sizes and prices but they will also vary in taste, texture and quality. And, yes, the Ukrop's Kitchen does make the best pimento cheese but it's something like $5.99 for 4 oz. So, over the years it's gotten me to thinking - just how hard can it be to make this stuff?

Well, looking at recipes side by side I couldn't come up with the common denomintors before my head exploded. Lately, though, I've decided that I was just trying too hard so I just jumped right in and picked a recipe to start from. I chose Paula Deen's Pimento Cheese recipe because if you want southern food you gotta at least look at what Paula's making.

Here's Paula's Recipe:
Ingredients
1 (3-ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup grated sharp cheddar
1 cup grated Monterey Jack
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon House Seasoning, recipe follows
2 to 3 tablespoons pimentos, smashed
1 teaspoon grated onion
Cracked black pepper

Directions
Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth and fluffy. Add all of the remaining ingredients and beat until well blended. It can be used as a dip for crudite or as a sandwich filling.
House Seasoning:
1 cup salt
1/4 cup black pepper
1/4 cup garlic powder

I keep Paula's House Seasoning on hand for other stuff so I didn't have to make that up and I didn't have any Jack cheese so I just used all cheddar. No biggy. But when I pulled it all together it still felt too 'mayonnaisey'. Maybe not a surprise since this is a Paula Deen recipe:) It also didn't seem to have much seasoning coming through. Another problem I had - I now had 5 oz. of cream cheese left.

So, I kept working and this is what I came up with. I may try something a bit different next time but I'll start with my recipe and work from there.

My recipe:
8 oz. softened cream cheese
4 C grated sharp cheddar
1/2 C mayo - I use Duke's and if you can get your hands on some I highly recommend it!
2 tsp. Paula's House Seasoning
3 Tbsp smashed pimentos

1. Beat cream cheese and then stir in other ingredients.
2. Put in fridge to chill before serving - if you can resist!

I'm not exactly sure how much this made before we started eating it but after we noshed for a while I put away a pint sized container. We noshed before chilling and it was truer to store bought pimento cheese after it came out of the fridge. Still creamy but not as wimpy in texture as it was at first.

So, if you're trying to figure out what to do with all that great Kraft Cheese you got at Kroger during the Mega Deals or if you also have more mouths to feed in your house due to snow days then think about whipping up some pimento cheese. It's such a Cool Idea!

Did you shop the Kroger Mega deals this week? I did and between The Grocery Game and the mega deals I only paid full price for 2 things. DH wanted pita bread for his breakfast sandwichs next week and I needed coconut for granola. Those cost me around $3.50.

I bought 30 items that were covered by the mega deals so I saved $15 from my total! I also had $5.50 in coupons and $.95 in bonus coupons and $47.89 in Kroger Plus Savings. My cellfire and shortcuts coupons didn't pull from my loyalty card because I had paper coupons for the same items but hey, I saved a total of $54.34 from the shelf price of the items I bought today!

So, what did I get? I stocked back up on some snack item for the girls' lunches and there were great deals on canned tomatoes and frozen appetizers. Yep, I love soft pretzels and Kroger's frozen pretzels are as good as it gets right now. Oh, and there are Kraft cheese coupons in the coupons.com sidebar and they are part of the mega event! It's a great double-dip!! Also, Mugs Root Beer - which is caffeine free - was only $.79 so I splurged and got a couple. I rarely have soda in the house. And to balance it out I got DH some Mt. Dew - ick.

Will there be anything to actually eat from all of this? Probably, but my planning is to work out of my pantry most of the time. I'll grab some canned tomatoes and pasta and maybe the black beans I did a couple of weeks ago that are in the freezer and we'll have something yummy. Or maybe I'll put them with some hamburger that's in the freezer and it'll be a meatloaf.

Gotta love the Mega Deals at Kroger - they are definitely a Cool Idea!

DH is a teacher and the boys generally covet his lunches. He does take great lunches! One of the things the kids especially love about the teacher's lunches is that they get to use the microwave so the kids live vicariously through the lovely warm smells.

Today I made some meatball subs to put in the freezer so DH can just pull one out and take it. This works best especially this time of the year when school is sooo busy for him.

This is what I did:
1. A couple of nights ago I realized I had a large can - probably 28 oz. - of tomato sauce. I diced up half of a small onion and added that to some olive oil and a clove of garlic. Actually I use preminced garlic because it can sit in my fridge until I'm ready for it, ya know.
2. Once the onion and garlic were softened, I added the tomato sauce and brought it up to a boil.
3. After it boiled I turned it down to a simmer, added some oregano in the palm of my hand - and the same amount of basil.
4. Stir it up, cover and simmer for an hour or so.
5. Let it cool and put it away or use it right away.

You could just use a jar of marinara or pasta sauce but I didn't have any on hand and this can of tomato sauce was looking kinda nekkid, which was why it got doctored up a bit.

Today I got the jar of my sauce out an put it in the crockpot with a bunch of frozen meatballs from Costco and put them on low. I stirred them a couple of times over 4 hours but it wouldn't have been necessary. I did it because I know my crockpot has a 'hot side' and I didn't want those to get too hard.

Once all the meatballs were done, I opened up 8 sub rolls [also from Costco] on a baking sheet lined with foil and put 4 meatballs on each roll and added some sauce to each sandwich. Then I sprinkled shredded cheese over each. I used the shredded cheese blend that Costco has because we always have it on hand and we use it for everything but use whatever works for you. Total, I don't think used much more than a cup of cheese.

Pop these in a warm oven for 5 minutes to melt the cheese. Let cool and wrap in plastic wrap and then put in a freezer bag before putting in the freezer. DH now has 8 lunches and it probably took me 20 minutes of total attention time today and another 20 minutes of time for the sauce.

One of the things I like about doing meals like this is that I've used item from my pantry and I'll have less overall waste of items bought. Sometimes sub rolls go bad before we eat them because they come in such a large quantity and there's only the 2 of us going through them. This way they'll keep in the freezer as part of the meal and not turn moldy! A definitely bonus and a perfectly Cool Idea!

I think that the Food Network should have a new show called 'Homemade Cakes' and it could be a cautionary tale about cakes gone wrong or cakes that started out as good ideas but didn't quite make it.

Let's just say that Comfort will never confuse her birthday cake with store bought! She said she wanted 'big' and 'pink' - like Melody's. For those of you who have not had to watch the straight to video Little Mermaid story in which Melody - Ariel's daughter - has a birthday and then finds out that she is a mermaid. Well, the fairy tale cake is multi-tiered and pink.

There was no way I was going to try multi-tiered but I figured I could handle pink. I tried 'big' by cutting the cake into smaller pieces so that it could go taller. What I neglected to figure in is the structural integrity of a Betty Crocker cake is roughly that of a Twinkie. Zilch.

So, after a couple of layers it started to topple. I decided to make this a reality rather than an accident and put the cake on it's side so the layers were vertical intead of horizontal. Not a bad decision in reality.

The pink frosting as easy since I just put a bit of red food coloring into a can of white frosting. Where things went a bit wrong was the white piping that I tried. The 'cookie' icing that I bought was too runny to hold up on the edges and for writing so it moved across the cake.

Let's just say that this is a cake that a four year old enjoyed and tasted great but there are several reasons why there is not a picture accompanying this post! But no matter how it looked it tasted fine - if a bit sweet due to all the frosting - and Comfort got what she asked for a big and pink cake. But most importantly we had a lovely time together celebrating a wonderful day in the life of our family and I can't think of a cooler idea than that.

Except for a few things in life I subscribe to an 'all things in moderation' philosophy. However, a couple of years ago we, as a family, decided to not bring sodas into the house anymore and to try to cut HFCS out of our diet. Obviously this was easier said than done.



We didn't go cold turkey. We still drink sodas when we go out sometimes although I rarely do anymore since I have also given up diet sodas. But one thing we became aware of was how pervasive HFCS was in our food culture. If you or your child eats yogurt - other than Yo-Baby - HFCS is usually in the first 3-4 ingredients. Check out your pasta sauce next. But what does this mean?



That's a good question. Apparently it might not mean what we thought it meant. Obviously, USAmericans have an obesity problem and HFCS might be one of the issues at the core of the problem. The Eating Well magazine blog will be discussing the issue of High Fructose Corn Syrup and what it means to our lives and to your health. Check it out and see what they're saying now.

Now that Comfort and Joy are growing up each meal is a challenge. Gone are the days when I made their meals - either with my body or out of pureed fruits and veggies - and they looked at me like Oliver Twist saying, "Please, mama, some more."

These days we go through stages of not hungry, too tired, too mobile, etc. to eat and I think back with a strange fondness to just being able to pop a boob in their mouths and take care of dinner. I never had to wonder what to fix for them. But, alas, they grow up and we all needed better sleep and so there hasn't been any breastfeeding in our house for a year now. 

So it is with constant experimentation that I look to find the perfect breakfast food. Last summer I found a recipe on a mommy blog and made it the next day because it met all of my criteria for perfection.

1. Inexpensive to make.
2. Did not come from a mix and did not contain high fructose corn syrup.
3. Used honey or other natural sweeteners [we were noticing a, shall we say, unfortunate behavior issue that we thought might be due the sugar 'highs'.]

The next morning we sat down at the table and the girls looked at the muffins as if they were from another planet. They never touched them. I don't know what clued them in to the 'differentness' but somehow they knew. We tried again the next day, but had the same results. I liked the muffins but that wasn't the point.

Back to the drawing board and along the way, thanks to the coupons in the paper I had several boxes of muffin mix and a new mini-muffin pan. I made a batch of Betty Crocker Blueberry Muffins in this tiny tin and - you guessed it - Comfort and Joy practically ate their body weight in these the next day. In fact, each time I have used a box muffin mix and the mini-muffin tin they have eaten the results. However, if I have made muffins from scratch they have not. In their defense, I haven't wanted to eat the last batch either. Allrecipes dot com should pull that one because it was seriously defective:)

And now we are on the search for the PERFECT homemade blueberry muffin recipe. I have dried blueberries that I know the girls like and I want to try them in a recipe. I have a mini-muffin tin that yields tiny breakfast treats that tempt them into eating but I can not for the life of me find the right recipe. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know, we need your Cool Ideas!