Welcome to my kids recipes blog!

Here is where I taste test our new recipes before i pass them along to you. My family loves food and I love to cook for them! As a family we strive to keep healthy foods in our cupboards and in our stomachs. Join in our journey ,our own personal food revolution. Visit us at MY KIDS Recipes and find your fun recipe today! See you there!

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Elf on A Shelf

The Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition with Blue Eyed North Pole Pixie-Elf

 This is a beloved holiday tradition and a very hard product to find at the holidays. For only 29.95 you can get this with free shipping at Amazon! Make this your family tradition!

Keurig Single-serve Brewer only $119.99 11/6-11/12

Great deal from Keurig!!



I just bought mine the other day and I love it. This is a great idea for holiday gift giving . Run on over to k-mart and pick yours up today!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Coupons and Old Memories

This is all the craze right now. Everywhere I look I see a coupon frenzies and ultimate coupon shows. I love it, I don't know how to do it but I love it. I started researching how to do this because our grocery bill has just gotten out of hand. We are spending around 800.00 a month for a family of five. I feel quite guilty about this,guilty about spending my husbands' hard earned money incorrectly. I have tried in the past and failed miserably at it. I failed because I was going about it the wrong way.

I remember when I was a little girl and I would go to the store with my mom. I was always so embarrassed when we would approach the register and right then and there I knew what was coming. It was almost as if the sound of her unzipping her purse would echo through my head, the rustling of the coupons in her hand like old crumpled leaves tortured me at the worry of how many coupons she would drop and ask me to pick up .I would search rapidly around darting my eyes back and forth and praying none of my friends had decided to join their parents that day at the store. I hated it it made me feel poor. I never understood why she would sit for hours clipping coupons and sorting through them quietly at the dining room table.


I understand now. My mom was preserving my dads' hard earned money just as I am trying to do with my family. I recently found two sites www.Iamthatlady.com and http://www.raininghotcoupons.com/ that have been really helpful to me. For those of you like me who sit and worry about what I am going to cook for dinner, come up with a recipe and then end up at the grocery store several times a day, really need to use coupons. We all want to eat healthier and there are ALOT of coupons that can help accomplish that good luck!

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Apple Pie and Picket fences

I have always wanted to make an apple pie. They always look so good in the movies. The scene starts with a picture perfect yard and a white picket fence. The house is right out of a magazine, the windows crystal clear. One of the windows is open just a bit, but just enough to see a sweet apple pie resting on the ledge. Clearly someone has taken their time slicing the apples and creating that beautiful lattice design.



I can't say mine turned out quite like that but it was pretty darn close.

Ingredients:

Crust:1 box refrigerated pie crusts
6 cups thinly sliced, peeled apples (6 medium)
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Directions: 

Heat oven to 425°F. Place 1 pie crust in ungreased 9-inch glass pie plate. Press firmly against side and bottom. In large bowl, gently mix filling ingredients; spoon into crust-lined pie plate. Top with second crust. Wrap excess top crust under bottom crust edge, pressing edges together to seal; flute. Cut slits or shapes in several places in top crust. Bake 40 to 45 minutes or until apples are tender and crust is golden brown. Cover edge of crust with 2- to 3-inch wide strips of foil after first 15 to 20 minutes of baking to prevent excessive browning. Cool on cooling rack at least 2 hours before serving.


My Results:
 My Filling
 Pre Bake
 End result

Much to my dismay,no beautiful house appeared and my white picket fence didn't sprout up from the ground, But my son did come over open his mouth wide and said: "Do I see apple pie?"

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Homemade Pot Pies

My husband said to me the other day,: honey we really need different dinners. I'm tired of the same ole' thing." I didn't want tho admit it but I was too. I had been wanting for a while to try and make potpies but the task of making the dough was quite daunting for me. However I found a very easy way to make these without all the work.Here's what you'll need:

Ingredients

4 cups chicken broth
1 bouillon cube
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 onion, finely chopped
2 large carrots cut in 1/2-nch rounds
1 rib celery, sliced
3 tablespoons chopped chives
2 chopped fine
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 store-bought 2-pound rotisserie chicken,diced
1 (7-ounce) bag frozen veggies
2 (9-ounce) packages store-bought rolled out pie dough
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water


Directions

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.

In a large saucepan heat chicken broth and bouillon cube over medium heat until hot.

In a Dutch oven,melt butter over medium heat. Add onions, carrots, celery, chives and garlic, and saute until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add the flour and stir together until it becomes pasty and lump-free, about 2 minutes. Stir in the hot broth, heavy cream, sherry, chicken and frozen onions and peas. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer.

With a ladle, fill 6ovenproof ramekins or bowls with the filling. Place on baking sheet.

Sprinkle flour on countertop. Roll out dough an extra inch. Using a biscuit round or mold, cut out dough to cover the tops of your oven-proof bowls, with about 1/2-inch hangover, depending on their size.Crimp the dough over the edge of the ramekin. Brush with the egg wash and make 4 small slits on the top. Sprinkle with kosher salt and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove from the oven and serve.

This came out soo delicious and it was quite easy to make. This was a great way to get my family ready for fall!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

First day Blues

The first day of school has come and gone. Gabe seems to be adjusting to school quite well but his mom (me) not so much. He gets up each morning with the anticipation of putting on new clothes and dresses himself happily. I stand in the doorway and start my daily 20 questions." Gabe did you find clean socks, Gabe did you make your bed?, Gabe where are your sneakers?, Gabe what do you want for breakfast? I ask all these questions not for his benefit as much as for my sanity. I fear every morning that I will forget to make him breakfast and he will go to school with a rumbly tummy or I forget to ask about socks and he has to sit out in gym class because the teacher doesn't want 15 second graders with smelly sock less feet trotting around the gym.i have to commend him, he is very patient with me throughout the first five questions and then responses start getting longer and slower. It starts out as " yes mommy I did", and it turns into " yeeees moooom!!!!"It's ok because he still bounces happily to the bustop and faithfully wait for his bus.And there is mom standing in the doorway to the garage looking as if I was in a bar fight with a Brillo pad and wiping the baby drool off of several parts of my bed worn shirt. Pretty isn't it. Although I have my two little ones to keep my company during the day I miss the half hearted {on Gabe's part} conversation that I would have every day with my little guy. Most of the time the conversation was a combination of Gabe jumping around playing the xbox and inviting me stare at the screen with him as he changed all the characters on dragon ball Z, to stories about playground chatter between him and his best friend and ended with,"Mom {jump} can you {jump} get me a drink? Because {jump} I am really thirsty, thanks mom!" I 'll take the crazy rantings about game playing and spiderman toys if it means that I can talk to not quite and adult but thinks he is at times man child. Sweet child of Mine. I am tempted every morning to get teary eyed as he makes his way up the bus steps and slings his bag into the seat , while consciously ignoring my cries of love from the garage door. He doesn't need me everyday for 7 hours a day everyday, everyday,everyday. But he will need me when he descends from that bus everyday, everyday,everyday. I am still his mom.




Thursday, September 1, 2011

Fall Weather and Pumpkin Cake

So because of the weather at this very moment as I sit at my dining room/kitchen table, I am feeling the fall vibe. This is a very special time of year for my family. It is almost as if new life is breathed into all our relationships. My husband and I tend to get very nostalgic with our stories of what we have done each fall. This is followed by moans and groans from our six year old . I think the fall tends to be important to us because with every year that we have been together it has gotten better with each addition to our family. Some of the things that we love to do are the obvious: pumpkin picking, apple picking, apple fest, halloween and thanksgiving. Halloween is so great when you have kids that love to dress up . We live in a predominately old neighborhood, old as in old people. Which makes for a very quiet neighborhood but a very interesting Halloween. There were a couple of pieces of candy that were thrown in my sons bag last year that were let's say "questionable". There was a neighbor that came to the door dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz , my son says" trick or treat "and she proceeds to stare us in silence and drop a melted snickers in the bag. Gabe later asked me what she was dressed as and I said "a very creepy Dorothy" and secretly removed that "questionable" piece from the bag. My toddler dressed up that year as a duck and it could not have been cuter, this costume even had the stripe stockings and a duck tail, the hood went over his head with a beak. This was thrilling for us parents taking pictures an arranging poses.As for Apple picking I think this one might be my husbands' favorite. A couple of years back we went to an Apple Fest in Lafayette,NY and he bought a bench for me that has since then been several different colors and in many different rooms. It currently resides buried beneath my sons stuffed animals decorated with peeling stickers. I think the biggest reason that we love fall so much is that all of our birthdays are in the fall except for my daughter she just had to be different. Every year we set out to have these wonderful cozy birthday parties and end up having a thrown together shindig. But I guess those are the best kind.So I decided that this fall I would start a new tradition, to make one dessert every month that represents one person in our family. This month I would like to make a pumpkin cake that represents my toddler round and yummy. I'm using these photos for inspiration.




This one is my favorite.   


I haven't quite found the perfect recipe but I am diligently looking.So far this one sounds good from tasteofhome.com:

Ingredients

  • 2 packages (18-1/2 ounces each) banana cake mix
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup half-and-half cream
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans

  • BUTTER CREAM FROSTING:
  • 3/4 cup butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 to 4 tablespoons milk
  • Red, yellow and green food coloring
  • Ice cream cone or banana

Directions

  • Prepare and bake cakes in 12-cup fluted tube pans according to package directions; cool.
  • For filling, melt butter in a saucepan. Stir in flour to form a smooth paste. Gradually add cream and sugar, stirring constantly until thick. Boil 1 minute; remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and salt. Fold in pecans; cool.
  • Cut thin slice of bottom of each cake. Spread one cake bottom with filling; put cakes together with bottoms together. Set aside.
  • In a bowl, cream butter and shortening. Beat in sugar and vanilla. Add milk until desired consistency is reached. Combine red and yellow food coloring to make orange; tint about three-fourths of the frosting orange. Tint remaining frosting green. Place a small glass upside down in the center of the cake to support the "stem". Put a dollop of frosting on the glass and top with an ice cream cone or banana. Cut the cone or banana to the correct length; frost with green frosting. Frost cake with orange frosting. Yield: 12-16 servings.
The banana sounds interesting in this recipe.If anyone has any suggestions please send me a comment.  I love to cook fall food it sets the mood for the rest of the season and my husband loves coming home to sweet treats. Get ready for fall!!!!