What's For Dinner? Week 5

Mmm! Sophie got some new "teething biscuits" late last week. They're hardly teething biscuits - more like just dry oatmeal cookies - but they're a good source of whole grain and she likes the banana flavor. Will likes them too! There's no egg at all and, as you can see, they pretty much just hold their shape right from the scoop through the baking process. So maybe in the future I'll flatten them a little first. I posted the recipe for these in a previous dinner post but you can find it online at wholesomebabyfood.com:
Ooh! She also LOVED the spinach lasagna last week and ate it several times for lunch and dinner. I wasn't originally planning to serve it to her, so she was introduced to both spinach and tomato for the first time. But she loved it and had no reactions, so yay! I bet she'll love raw tomato diced up like Will does.

Okay, so this week is possibly going to be one of the craziest weeks ever. We're busy at work, a new baby is arriving in the family, a co-worker is leaving, we're prepping for Easter and we have a jam-packed weekend complete with egg hunt and coloring, a friends birthday, and two family Easter parties. Thankfully, our evenings won't be further hassled with dinner prep! Now... if I can just find the time to prep for next week amidst all the craziness... Oh well. If not, I'll just take a hand from things already made in the deep freeze.

Once more this week, I'm going to give a brief run-down of prep work as an example of how it works for us. This time I have a soup, a casserole, and a super-easy stir fry on the menu. So Friday evening, I got set up to begin about 9:50 (what is wrong with me? I need to get started sooner than that!)

Menu item #1: ham and noodle casserole. I've made this lots of times and even posted about it here before. I found it in Quick Cooking magazine years ago and Will and Craig both like it. We'll have this on Wednesday this week and leftovers on Thursday. Wednesday we'll be trying to get up to the hospital to visit the newest member of the Munoz family and Thursday I grocery shop, so there will be zero time for cooking on those evenings.
This recipe starts with making a roux (cooking flour and butter on the stove top) while boiling the noodles. I find it helpful to start the water to boil, then chop the ham, and THEN make the roux so all is ready to come together at once. I make this recipe in it's entirety and then just put it in the oven on the night we plan to eat it. Simple as that and perfect for really busy nights. It's really easy - tastes like mac 'n cheese with ham and peas added.
I like the bread crumb topping for a little extra flavor and texture. Craig happened to be heading out to the garage to do some work as I was finishing this so he took it out to the outside fridge for me.

Menu item #2: tomato bisque. This is recipe #3 in my "tomato soup challenge" (LOL) and I can already say that this is hands-down the winner! I'm not even going to look any further. Oh my gosh... it is SO GOOD! I just tasted a spoonful and so did Craig. I found it online and will include the recipe at the bottom. The mixture of the onion, garlic and herbs cooking in the butter in the beginning may be one of the best food smells on the planet. Don't leave any of those herbs out! This is also a very easy recipe with little prep work - just chopping the onions and garlic. The recipe doesn't say to blend it smooth, but you could if you wanted. I just like tomato soup a little chunky. The tomatoes are crushed/canned so it's not too chunky. I made the soup completely (though some may argue that you should add the cream just before serving?) and plan to serve it on Monday night with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Here's one of the spices it calls for and a new one in my pantry this week: ground white pepper. I've seen this called for in other creamy-type recipes like fettucine alfredo but just omitted it or used black pepper. It has a milder flavor and I think it's a good one to have on hand. I also picked up dill weed for this recipe, which I've used in the past but was out of.

Clearly, I'm not a professional photographer so I'm not sure the picture does it justice. But trust me... it's heavenly.

Menu item #3: Thai Chicken Stir Fry. My friend Julie and I are always mixing up the same Thai chicken recipe that they post on the wall at Blue Pacific Grill (like a Mongolian BBQ where they cook in front of you). She found a similar peanut sauce in the store and very thoughtfully picked me up a bottle along with writing down the recipe ingredients. Thanks Julie! As you can see, I'm using a frozen stir fry blend, fresh (already washed spinach) and peanuts... and I pulled frozen chicken breasts from the freezer. So I just made this for dinner tonight (Sunday) and cut the chicken up right before sauteing it = zero prep work on Friday... nice! Couple things that made this not exactly what I had hoped: I couldn't find the right stir fry blend so I ended up selecting a "Parisian blend" (whatever - it was fine) and I forgot to pick up cilantro (boo!) so I just sprinkled some ground coriander on the chicken before cooking.

Here's the sauce - and it was delicious!

Finally, a couple useful tools this week: the silicone whisk and the hand-held strainer tool. I just bought the whisk this week for use with cooking Sophie's cereal and found it helpful in mixing the roux for the casserole. And the strainer tool is awesome for scooping cooked noodles out of their cooking water and into whatever you're making. That way you get to reserve the cooking water for thinning if needed. It's actually designed for deep frying and fishing fried foods out of the oil, but it's super helpful for pasta too.

I wrapped it all up by 11:20 again, so just about an hour and a half. Not bad!

Okay, hope that was another helpful glimpse of cooking prep!

Here's the tomato bisque recipe:

1/2 c onion

diced1/2 c butter, divided

2 garlic cloves minced

1 1/2 t dill weed

1 t oregano

1 t basil

5 c canned crushed tomatoes

1 (6 oz can) tomato paste

4 c chicken stock

2 T flour

2 t salt

1/2 t white pepper

4 t honey

1 1/4 c heavy cream

2/3 c half & half

In a large pot, melt 6 T butter. Saute onions, garlic, and herbs on medium low for about 5 minutes, until onion is SOFT and translucent. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, and chicken stock and heat to simmer. In a separate small saucepan, make a roux with the flour and remaining 2 T butter, whisking constantly over medium heat for 3 minutes, without browning. Add roux to stock, whisking to blend. Add salt and pepper. Bring to a boil to thicken, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to simmer, uncovered for 15 minutes. Add honey, cream, and half & half.

This Week In Tot School...

I always have the best intentions of writing certain posts at certain times. But then, somehow, the weekend just gets away from me and I have to backtrack and write a whole bunch at once. Ah, well...

Another week of Tot School during our play time! I think this is probably the most fun I've had as a mom so far: the planning and organizing and reading about and day-dreaming of all these play time activities for Will and I. There are so many creative ideas out there and I love this quality one-on-one time we spend together.

I'd also like to eventually start planning our weekly activities around a specific topic and tie everything into that. Then, hopefully, the "lessons" might impact him further and we won't seem to jump all over the place with our activities. I tried it a little bit for the week of St. Patrick's Day but it was still pretty rough. It may take a few more weeks of getting my feet wet with all this stuff before I'm really ready to start creating that organized of a "lesson plan". Haha! I'd like to incorporate related children's books into our weekly topics too and I've really been dreaming up activities we can do with some of Will's current favorite books.


Here is a quick snap of some of our trays this week (close-ups to follow):One of the many popular Practical Life skills within the Montessori teaching: pouring beans/rice/water between two containers.

Pouring the beans (they're actually split peas) between the bigger containers was a breeze for Will.

And, in fact, pouring peas into a smaller container without overflowing it went surprisingly smoothly as well. I thought this would be a good lesson on volume to pour a larger quantity from a larger container.

Moving on... supposedly water is harder than beans. We've done this once or twice before so he's doing pretty well with it.

This one, however, cracks me up. An excellent lesson on volume and size differentiation. LOL He was actually pretty surprised!

I've wanted to do a tray like this for quite some time now. It's another big Practical Life skill on the list (P.S. I have a whole big post coming soon all about PL work) and it just looked like lots of fun. It's called an Open-Close tray: a variety of containers that open in different ways. The child's job is to figure out how to manipulate each. It helps if there's some sort of "surprise" waiting inside each as an incentive. I put out six containers, each containing a red or an orange pom pom (his favorite colors), and a small paint palette to collect the pom poms as he found them.

Most of the containers, I already had. But the two paper mache ones (the hexagon and the tiny chest) were ~$1 at Hobby Lobby.

The drawstring pouch - he could get it open, but I had to show him how to pull both strings to close it.

The screw-top containers proved quite a challenge for him. He understood the twisting part, but not to continue twisting in one direction. He would twist back and forth.

I'm planning on a new tray with a variety of screw-top lids for the future. I've already saved an empty peanut butter jar and an empty spice container for it.

Will really likes working with tongs and "fuzzy balls" so I made a matching page for him using our new dot markers. It's not really difficult except to have some precision on placement.

An extention of our pasta noodles in the shaker container and beading... He has to poke the pipe cleaners into the shaker and thread the appropriately colored beads on each stem.

He started at the counter...

... but then decided the beading would be easier on the floor.

A random, last-minute activity (because he was interested in our vace that sits in our room): poking skewers through a narrow-mouthed vace.

A game I thought he would love: scooping marbles into the mini-muffin tray using a melon-baller.

This didn't hold his interest for long. I know he was winding down at the end of the day so maybe that's why, but we just put it away for later.

And when I brought it out the next night and suggested we take turns, he was all for it. Will wanted to use the long, ice-cream spoon this time though.

I'd also been wanting to incorporate some more play with stickers because I know he loves them. Craig made him this cool, little, road map to stick them all over!

The page with the big diggers and stuff came with his birthday invitations last year and I just saved them for future play. The page with all the vehicles and signs came from the Target dollar spot (this is only about 1/4 of the package).

Will was super excited about this and worked very intently for a long time. Great fine motor work with all that bending, peeling, and sticking! This was his finished product. Not very organized, but I didn't expect it to be. :)

Lately, Will's been selecting his blocks to build towers and "kitchens" (not sure where that came from?) Check it out: my kid has designed a leaning tower! ;) Just kidding - this picture was taken in mid-fall. I'm actually pretty impressed that my camera made it look still!

Another marble game - this time sorting them by size. There were three of each size and he had to transfer them with the melon baller again.

He didn't like digging them out of the jar, but was happy to scoop them out of the bowl.

A few times he tried to scoop them out and then cup the marble with his free hand to keep it from falling out.
Then we asked daddy to play and turned it into a game of speed. Here they were transfering marbles into respective bowls and trying to beat the other person.

Next, we placed the empty bowls at one end of the room on the floor and the bowl of marbles on the coffee table. Will and Craig raced back and forth to transfer their marbles. (Note: you can see Craig has paused "How I Met Your Mother" on TV to participate. LOL)

A look of concentration...

Hurry Will!!

Will's laughing because he dropped his marble. I was really proud that he was a good sport and not pouting when he made a mistake.

One beautiful evening after work, we exercised our gross motor skills with some more friendly racing (Will and Brutus) up and down the driveway.

When Brutus decided he was done with this nonsense, Will tried to convince him otherwise. Ha! Will was saying: "Come on Brutus! Let's go race!" But doesn't his body language look like he's saying: "Do you want a piece of me?" :)

"Please, doggy!"

Next, we broke out the bocce balls!

Will first played this on Father's Day last year and has been fascinated ever since. We showed him how to throw the bigger ball to try to get close to the white, marker ball.

Showing the ball to Sophie while she watched from the stroller.

Pretty soon daddy came home and practiced hitting some golf balls with his new clubs!

Craig always uses those light, plastic balls in the yard and Will loves to retrieve them for him.

After dinner that night, I gave him the open-close tray again, this time with a tiny piece of broken candy cane in each container for dessert. He loved that.

Still struggling with that screw-top.

I got Will a new toy this week from Lakeshore Learning. I've read lots of great reviews about it and decided it was something he might like. I searched for it on Amazon first (since my sister told me Lakeshore is rather expensive) but ultimately found the price just as good on their own website. I also ordered Sophie a fun addition to her Easter basket from there. Anyway, the toy is a peg board and I first gave him only the bottom foam pad and he tried to place a marble on each hole.

This was actually very difficult once he got a bunch on there because he would bump some as he was putting a new one on and knock a bunch around. I had to help finish by gently suggesting he work in rows to leave more free space for his hands.

These are the cool pegs. They're great for sorting, stacking, patterning, etc. Will really liked it - hooray! This is nice because the pieces are big and chunky enough that I can leave it out for him even when Sophie's awake. And I have high hopes that she'll get to enjoy this at a much younger age as there are lots of ways to play with it.

This is what he did while I was cleaning up from dinner.

Then I helped him pattern some of them. This is still a concept he's working on. However, towards the end of the week I got an e-mail from Lakeshore for 20% off one item for their spring sale and I ordered a really cool patterning toy that I'd been drooling over. I'll probably save it for a birthday gift, but it's really cool and I'm super excited about it.At 11 months, Sophie is quite young for most of these learning concepts. But I'm still always on the look out for fun ways to engage her and interesting things to let her explore. It's all about the sensory experience for babies, so when she grabbed at my necklace with intense fascination one morning, I decided to make a little "jewelry box" for her to explore. I just took an empty tissue box (the kind with the plastic film over the opening) and stuck four of my old (never worn anymore) dangly necklaces inside.

I took way too many pictures of this... but she's just such a cute, little subject! And watching her deep concentration and interest with this activity just made me so happy to get to witness it. She's at such a different place of learning than Will, but both are incredibly fun and exciting to watch. At this age, babies can just sit and do the same seemingly monotonous work over and over and over. I love it! It's actually very inspiring. Will wants to know how and why things work now and once he figures it out, has less interest in repeating it again and again. So this was refreshing to watch.

There was the element of surprise each time she reached inside and the fun sensory experience with the feel of wood versus plastic beads and metal chains versus ribbon. And then there were the wonderful sounds each made!

I showed her how to wear one like mommy and she loved it! Of course, this is definitely a supervised activity (duh!) and one that is put out of reach when we're finished.

There were four necklaces inside but she mostly preferred the same two over and over. We put them back in the box and took them out, shook them around, wore them, banged them together, etc.

A short intermission to scope out the bookshelf...

... and then back to the jewelry box.

She had a bit of a wet nose in all these pictures but I just love her expression in these next few:

By the end, she knew how to put them on and take them off herself. :)

One of Will's most difficult activities this week was working with nuts and bolts. Daddy gathered a few different sized ones and Will had to match the correct nut to each bolt and attempt to screw them on and off. I say attempt because he is a long way away from getting them ON.

He was good at matching them and also laying them out from biggest to smallest.

He concentrated very hard, but ultimately I had to start each one for him.

He still has that back-and-forth motion going with the twisting, so he's got some more practice to do, but he did better at getting them OFF... And ultimately came back to this several more times over the week so he has an interest! I think the bolts are a little small for starting out with this activity. Maybe bigger ones would be better for beginners.

This made me smile. The next night that we worked with the nuts and bolts, he said "look, mommy, I'm using my pointer finger and thumb!" (for the twisting) I'd shown him to do that the night before and he remembered my words without my reminding the next time. I swear, this kid's memory is a steel trap. :)

Another popular repetitive work for babies is taking any sort of objects out of any sort of container and putting them back in... and taking them out... and putting them back in. At work one day last week, I thought of this while I watched a little boy pull all of the veggie scrubbers I was giving away out of a big, open box and then happily put them all back in while his mom and I talked. So when I got home that night, I brought Will's bucket of blocks into Sophie's room and encouraged (showed) her to do just that.

Of course, since they were his toy, Will had to participate. Thankfully, at this age, Sophie's not at all possessive of her toys yet. If Will takes something from her, she just moves onto something else. I still remind him of sharing ALL THE TIME, but it's a work in progress. And I'm sure we will have many a sibling battles in the future when Sophie does learn to value her belongings.

Love my happy girl!

Also love this picture when the kids both took a break to hold library time. :) Warms my heart.

Whew! That was a ridiculously long post. Next week is Easter and we're doing all sorts of Easter related activities... as in the eggs and bunnies and baskets... I'm still not sure how to present the real meaning of Easter to a toddler. But I'm reading and learning, so maybe I'll come up with something. Also, stay tuned for our fun weekend activities and a whole post of Practical Life learning the Montessori way.