Hot Dogs and Smoothies--Amelia age 8

Ready to blend.

The hardest part--poking the hotdogs with the fork. 

Microwaving.  Don't you wish you had this for dinner? 

Finished Product!!

Amelia's Take:  I do not want to write the blog.  Making dinner was enough.  


Amy's Take: School got done yesterday.  I pretty much can't stand kids with too much free time.  Why is it that they start fighting with each other as soon as they are supposed to RELAX??  So, I started summer vacation with a bang this morning--a list for each kid with enough stuff to keep them busy all day.  They cleaned house, rode bikes, jumped rope, started learning Spanish (At least Molly started learning Spanish--Sandra went to the website she was supposed to use and decided to learn Pirate instead), we went to the library, practiced piano and french horn and so forth.  It was really a nice, peaceful day. 

We checked out a pile of cook books from the library and out of all the amazing culinary wonders there--Amelia chose to make hot dogs for dinner.  And strawberry-peach-banana-spinach smoothies.  Do these two things cancel each other out?  Making dinner was so easy that she took most of her own pictures for the blog--hot dog in one hand, camera in the other. 

Other Views:  Sandra:  There were almost no dishes--very easy. 

Cranberry Muffins--Lucy age 2

Grating the Orange

Amy's Take:   I always start the school year raring to go.  Each  morning in late August and September my kids can choose between three different types of muffins that I have in the freezer, four different types of oatmeal and a pantry full of cold cereal--all of their favorites.  I make pancakes or waffles at least a few times a week.  By this time of year I've run our of oomph.  Last Friday my kids could choose between stale toastie-o's and a peanut butter taco (a flour tortilla spread with crunchy peanut butter) and whatever they chose, they were definitely going to have to get it themselves.
Today is the first morning of spring break, no one was in a hurry, so I made cranberry muffins.  I always buy lots of fresh cranberries after Christmas when they are cheap and put them in the freezer.  Lucy toddled in a few minutes later in her pirate pajamas and said the four scariest words currently in her vocabulary "I was to help you!"  So we made muffins.  She got to grate the oranges.

Life Lessons at the Iowa State Fair

I have spent the summer teaching my children how to garden and cook.  To see where their food comes from.  The Iowa State Fair is also trying to teach the same lessons.  We got to see two swine in labor.  And a baby ostrich. And a couch sized watermelon.  The highlight was Little Hands on the Farm.  We got to follow a winding sidewalk where the kids picked plastic vegetables out of buckets and plastic apples off of trees.  They were handed bags of corn and wool.  Then at the end they sorted all their goods into more buckets and were given some play money.  The play money bought real stuff!  Popsicles, muffins, a loaf of bread!  I think they wished that real life at our house were more like that.  Here they get to weed, sweating with the mosquitos, in order to eat zucchini.  I too have moments when I wish the zucchini would turn into a popsicle. 

Pesto Linguine with Chicken and Zucchini--Amelia age 7

Posing for a picture.

While the pasta boils over. 

And the chicken burns. 

It wasn't so green in real life.

Finished Product.  

Amelia's Take:  The sauce tasted kind of familiar.  Which was weird since it looked so strange.

Amy's Take:  Amelia wanted pasta tonight and found a box of linguini.  So, of course, I googled "linguini chicken zucchini"  and got Pesto Linguini with Chicken and Zucchini.  I decided that we should make it.  I had a few snags.  Mostly that I had linguini and chicken and zucchini and not much else.  So,I started with some homemade pesto (since we didn't have storebought) and we had fresh basil and olive oil and garlic, but I put in almonds instead of pinenuts (close enough, right?) and then got to the last ingredient--parmesan cheese.  We didn't have any.  I was going to throw in some Pepper Jack slices from the fridge, but it was moldy.  And what can you really use as a substitute for cheese?  Nothing .  I did add some salt. 
After that there was no use referring to the recipe anymore.  I cooked the chicken and deglazed the pan with some water and added that to my pesto that was still in the blender.  It was still lacking some so I put in a few ripe tomatoes too.  I blended that all up and poured it on top of the cooked chicken and zucchini.  It was actually great.  Really great. 

Other opinions:
Eric:  It was just fine. 

Zucchini Cookie Wars--Smith age 3 and Lucy age 2

Contestant #1 

Contestant #2

Amy's Take: School started this week. The kitchen was mine again. I made peach galette, peach cream pie and mock apple pie (made with zucchini, of course, and amazingly like apple pie) all in one day just to reclaim my territory. That was a bit much pie.We still have some left. 
Smith and Lucy are still home, of course, and haven't figured out that I have any territory that is off limits to them. So, they helped me out this week to try two zucchini cookie recipes. The first was Zucchini Cookies with Lemon Glaze. We didn't have a lemon so we used a lime. I  figured that the lime zest in the cookie dough kind of hid the green bits of zucchini.  I used the lime juice in the glaze and put in one drop of yellow and one drop of green food coloring.  They looked like froggy cookies.  Maybe we could put faces on them somehow?  The recipe made a couple dozen cookies and the kids ate them after school until they were gone.  That was because they were totally wonderfully delicious. 
The second cookies were Zucchini Cookies with Chocolate Chips and Dried Cranberries..  Smith was all excited to make cookies with me, ran into the kitchen and saw me grating more zucchini.  "Mom! No more zucchini muffins or zucchini cookies or zucchini bread!  This is wrong."  So, we didn't start out on the right track, really.  Plus we didn't have any chocolate chips since NO GROCERY SHOPPING MONTH is almost over.  Maybe they would have been WAY BETTER with chocolate chips.  But then everything is WAY BETTER with chocolate chips.  Everything is WAY BETTER with CAPITAL LETTERS too.  Just so you know.  Anyway, these cookies are still in the cookie jar.  That's how good they were.
Conclusion:  #1 is obviously the less healthy cookie.  But it is obviously worlds better than cookie #2.  Should cookies be healthy anyway?  That is a philosophical question for another day. 

Thai Zucchini Salad--Sandra age 10 with Amy

Making the rice. 

Thai inspired zucchini salad. 

Trying to take a self portrait with the food. 

Makes you wish I was wearing a hairnet while I cooked. 

I am so good at self-portraiture. 

I gave up.  Here is the finished product.  With Smith.  In a paper bag. 

Amy's Take:  Sandra was bored this afternoon.  I told her to cook.  She made amazingly tough lemon bars.  The same texture as my shoes.  I was grateful because then I had dessert to use as a bribe to get kids to try dinner.  Sandra started the salad too, but then she had to go to 5th Grade Orientation with Eric.  So, I finished everything.  And this was my favorite use of zucchini EVER.  It is very loosely based on a recipe from the Holy Cow Vegan Blog.  My version is below.   I have to confess--I broke my no grocery store diet and bought a mango.  For the salad.  And while I feel a little guilty, it was totally worth it.   We served it with Thai Basil Chicken--recipe here  and rice.  I am going to make that salad every single day until the 17 zucchini on my counter (plus the 400+) that will be produced in my garden in the coming weeks are all gone. 

Other takes:
Amelia:  Why do you always make food I hate?
Amy:  You don't know that you hate this food.  You've never had it. 
Amelia:  Well, I hate fruit salad.
Amy:  It's not fruit.  It's zucchini.
Amelia:  I hate cooked zucchini.
Amy:  It's not cooked.  It's raw.
Amelia:  I hate cheese in my zucchini salad.
Amy:  It's not cheese--it's mango.
ad nauseum for 25 minutes.  Much longer than it took to eat dinner.   



Thai Inspired Zucchini Salad
3 smallish zucchini, cut in matchsticks
8 baby carrots, cut in matchsticks
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 mango, cut into small chunks
1/4 cup chopped peanuts or sesame seeds
Put all this stuff in bowl and toss.

In a blender, put
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp hot sauce
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 1/2 tsp sesame oil
Blend up and add some water until it is pouring consistency. 
Pour the dressing over the salad and mix.  You can add 10-12 chopped up basil leaves if you want.  I didn't since I was already serving basil chicken. 

Pigs in Green Blankets---Sandra age 10 and Smith age 3

The Green Dough.  This idea should be worth something. 

Wrapping up the sausages. 

The piggies (as Eric calls them).

Finished Product.  And happy about it. 

Sandra's Take:  These were like extra special pigs in blankets.  Pigs with green spots.  That's what I told Smith.

Amy's Take:  I am a woman obsessed.  With zucchini.  I had a zucchini omelet and zucchini muffin for breakfast, a zucchini sope for lunch (really), but tonight I thought I'd hit my limit. I didn't think I could eat one more bite of the green stuff.  But I'd done some research and found that adding zucchini to everything we eat is actually adding some good vitamins and even more important--I learned that a cup of zucchini has like 20 calories--so that has got to be a good filler for muffins and cakes and stir fry and such.  It  means that everything we eat these days is total spa food.  So, I attacked my pile of zucchini and added a cup of it to my pizza dough (and put some extra flour in to balance it out), rolled it out and Sandra and Smith rolled the dough around Lil' Smokie sausages to make pigs in blankets.  Pigs in green blankets, that is.  The zucchini in the dough  cancels out the fat in the sausage--right?  We served them with a side dish of zucchini.

Other Opinions:
Molly:  You put zucchini in this too?!
Eric:  Everything in this meal is zucchini?
Amelia:  Zucchini again??