Cooking by Letters

This summer I have ben really trying to keep my kids engaged in learning out from in front of the tv. One thing that we have been doing is focusing on letters of the alphabet. We go through 2-3 letters a week.The kids are practicing writing their letters and coming up with words that start with the letter. One activity that we are doing is cooking a recipe that starts with our letter that day.

A few items that we are going to check out are:

Apple slices with different dips.
Banana Muffins
Chocolate Chip Chickpea cookies
Dolmas
Egg rolls
Falafel
Gooey butter cake
Hot dog soup -  favorite from my grandmother
Ice cream
Jello Jigglers
kabobs
Lemon ice
Macaroni and cheese
Nacho ordinary nachos
Orange glazed Pork
Popsicles
Quinoa salad
Ravioli
Soup (alphabet of course)
Tacos
Upside down cake
Venison Sliders
Watermelon ice
Xacuti
Yams
Zucchini Fritters

What is your favorite way to keep the kids involved in preparing dinner?

Another Blast From The Past- Ashley's Stone Soup

A few years ago Ashley received Paula Deen: My First Cookbook for Christmas. In it, there is a story of stone soup. Basically a man sits on a street, stirring a pot of water with a stone it. As people come up and ask him what he is doing, he tells them that he is making stone soup and names an ingredient that "would sure be good" in it. The people go and get the ingredients for him and put it into the pot. Soon he has a large pot of a delicious soup  to share with everyone. So yeah, I guess he kind of tricks people into giving him his ingredients for his dinner, but its a cute story and Ashley really wanted to make the soup.

Stone Soup pretty much is a clean out your crisper kind of soup. You can put any mix of veggies in you like, some pasta and a favorite protein. We went with carrots, celery, green beans, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, macaroni and of course, ham. That girl LOVES ham.



Here she is smiling and ready to get started. Look how young she looks!




Scraping carrots


Slicing celery


Look at all those veggies!




That is a good looking soup!


Goofy kid!


Served with a glass of milk to make it a well balanced meal.


Her little sister loved it too!



The soup was great and Ashley was so proud that she made a healthy meal for us for dinner. Her brother and sister were excited to hear her read the story and they all got several servings of vegetables.
To find out more ways to get your kids involved in the kitchen check out http://www.thekidscookmonday.org/

Kids Can Cook Good Stuff- Chicken Parmesan

This was a great and fun recipe for my daughter to try out. She is getting more and more confident in the kitchen. Soon my dreams of relaxing and sipping mojitos while the kids cook dinner will become a reality! Ok maybe not, but this Chicken Parmesan recipe taught Ashley several new techniques: breading, searing and baking.


First she started by rolling the chicken in seasoned flour,



Then beaten eggs,



 and a mix of panko and parmesan.





She set them on a cooling rack inside a cookie sheet.



The chicken was browned on each side in 3 tablespoons of butter and 3 tablespoons of butter for 3 minutes on each side.



The chicken was topped with parmesan cheese,



and mozzarella cheese.




Each chicken breast was covered with marinara sauce before being put in the oven to bake at 350 for 20 minutes.


Here is dad helping her spread the marinar over each of the chicken breasts.



Dad wants every drop of marinara on the chicken.





Don't they look amazing?!?!?!


We took them out of the pan and let them rest while we made the rest of dinner.





Ashley did a fantastic job!!!!



Check out other yummy posts at Tuesday's At The Table