Cartersville Family

One of my favorite memories is my mom and I baking cookies. She taught me how and I have always loved baking. Now that I have little girls we are carrying on the tradition. Lauren and Emma love to watch and they take turns dumping ingredients into the mixing bowl. Emma is harder to handle because she always wants to take a taste. As a kids my favorite part was licking the beaters and so in keeping with tradition, the girls each get to have one after the mixing is done. Of course, now I don’t get one because there are only two.

I first heard about this book a month ago when the author was doing the media circuit. I was intrigued because I, like so many other moms, have picky eaters. It is so hard to get them to eat their veggies and fruits. As parents we have to do what it takes to get those healthy things into their little tummies. If it takes deception and sneakiness, then so be it. Well, I got the book a couple of weeks ago, and i have tried a few of the recipes. The first one flopped. It was sweet potato pancakes. Next time I will add a little more water and cook longer at a lower temperature. The second was applesauce muffins which had applesauce and carrot puree in them. They tasted good, but the topping has whole oats in it and they didn’t like that. My favorite so far is the grilled cheese recipe with butternut squash puree in it. My two youngest gobbled it up. Emma never gobbles anything up. Finally a little success. If you have picky eaters, try this recipe book. There are great recipes in it for regular food that kids already like. Good luck!

My friend Sunshine is one of those homeschooling, bread making kind of woman.  I kid her a lot about the making her own bread thing, but she know I love her.  She is always coming up with ways to get her kids to eat healthy foods without realizing it.  She makes fruit smoothies for her kids with veggies in it.  So i got her “recipe” and tried it on my own girls.  I put carrots, spinach and broccolli in the smoothies along with bananas, blueberries, strawberries, OJ, honey and vanilla yogurt.  You would think that all the good stuff would cover up the veggies.  Well, one sip and my 6 year old wasn’t fooled.  She made the YUCK face and wouldn’t drink it.  After a little encouragement about how healthy it was, she took a few sips and then gave it up.  My Emma, 2, also took one sip and made her YUCK face and said “I don’t like this”.  I must have really done it wrong.  I tasted it and I thought is was pretty good.  Sunshine says her kids beg for the smoothies.  Oh well, I guess I will just have to keep on trying to get them to eat their veggies.

My husband likes to cook. He doesn’t get to do it very often, but when he gets the urge, he will find an interesting cook book or magazine with the hottest new recipes in it and find just the right one. He likes to make his list of all the ingredients that he needs (which invitably are the strange ones that will only get used this once and will go bad). Anyway, I won’t complain becuae is means one less meal I will have to prepare while juggling the three kids.
Well, earlier this week he bought the Southern Living Ultimate Grilling and BBQ guide. He spent a while looking at all the pages and then made his list and went shopping. He prepared the Spicy Beef Fajitas. Awesome!! That is all I could say. They were delicious. I am including the recipe and instructions for you, but you have to check out this magazine becuase there are many other great recipes.

Makes 6 servings
You will need:
2 (10 oz.) cans diced tomatoes and green chiles, divided
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp. cumin
2 (1/2 inch thick) flank steaks
1 (8 oz.) container sour cream
1 tsp. grated lime rind
3 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
1 tsp. hot sauce (optional)
1 large onion, halved and sliced
12 (8 inch) soft taco-size flour tortillas
2 cups (8 oz.) shredded Cheddar cheese

1. Drain 1 can tomatoes with green chiles, reserving the liquid. Set aside
2. Stir together reserved liquid, remaining can of tomatoes with green chiles, olive oil, and cumin in a large shallow dish or Ziploc bag. Add steaks, cover or seal and chill for 3 hours.
3. Stir together reserved tomatoes with green chiles, sour cream, lime rind, lime juice and hot sauce. Cover and chill until ready to serve.
4. Remove steaks from marinade, discarding marinade. Let stand at room temp for about 30 minutes. Wrap onion in aluminum foil.
5. Grill steaks to your doneness. Med Rare - 8 min. per side; Med - 10 min. per side; Med Well - 12 min. per side; Well - 15 min. per side. Meanwhile grill onion packet for 20 minutes or until tender.
6. Slice steaks across the grain into thin strips; serve wrapped in tortillas with gilled onion, tomato mixture and cheese.

I loved these! Try them and you will too.

I love getting emails. I am kind of like Meg Ryan in the movie “You’ve Got Mail” in that I love seeing that I have something waiting for me in my inbox. When I click the mail button and search my inbox only to find that I have received a “forwarded email” I am so let down. There is so much talk about the viruses and such that are sent via forwards that I usually delete them immediately. However a few days ago a friend on mine sent me a forward with some useful tips. I thought I would share my ten favorites.

1) To reheat pizza leftovers, place in a non-stick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to
med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza.

2) Easy Deviled Eggs:
Put cooked egg yolks in a Ziplock bag Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done, such easy clean up.

3) Expanding Frosting in a jar
Whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar/calories per serving.

4) Broken Glass
Use a dry cotton ball to pick up little broken glass pieces of glass- the fibers catch ones you can’t see!

5) Reopening envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just
place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Voila! It unseals easily.

6) Squirrel Away
To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The
cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

7) Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gif wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow opening

Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill it with hot water. Dump
out the hot water, but don’t dry the cup. Next, add your ingredient such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

9) Take baby powder to the beach
Keep a small bottle of baby powder in your beach bag. When your ready to leave the
beach sprinkle yourself and kids with the powder and the sand will slide right
off your skin.

10) Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass fill it 1/2″ with Apple Cider
Vinegar and 2 drops of dishwashing liquid, mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!