Zucchini Breakfast Bars with Alfalfa Sprouts

I've been having fun growing sprouts in the dead of winter. I was looking for recipes that I could add them to and decided to try making a zucchini muffin bar. Alfalfa sprouts hide very well in these since you expect some green flecks from the zucchini anyway. The sprouts add a ton of vitamins but don't change the flavor at all. Hooray! My kids have devoured these and don't even care that I hid sprouts in them!

Pizza Pot Pie

Sometimes we are in the mood for the flavor of pizza, but not the work. This recipe is a perfect solution for those nights. I always keep precooked sausage and hamburger in the freezer so this meal can be thrown together in a quick hurry. It is also one we love to do when we are camping. My husband is a scout master so coming up with recipes that can be done in a Dutch oven that 16 hungry boys will love is a challenge. This is one they all enjoy!

Whole-grain Oatmeal Carmelitas

Here's another family favorite made over to be a little more healthy and big enough to take to a pot luck or youth acitivity. These freeze well so when I make them just for us, I always package some up in snack baggies and keep them in the freezer to use for school lunch treats. I hope you enjoy them too.

Banana Bars

These bars are a great way to trade up what you have available for a quick breafast on the run or an after school snack. I often double the recipe and cook up two jelly roll pans at once. These bars freeze well.

Kids Craft: Handmade Cards

Every year at the holiday time, we like to do some sort of service project as a family. This year we are making fleece blankets for Project Linus and also making cards to be delivered by our local Meals on Wheels organization. I turned to Pinterest for some inspiration. We took some art project ideas and did them in miniature.

Zucchini Brownies

As my five kids grow, I am increasingly responsible for providing treats for large groups. This is a great homemade brownie recipe that is a mix between fudgy and cake-like. I have been on the hunt for the best homemade brownies. I've tried 6 recipes in the last couple of months and this is by far our favorite!

Kids Craft: Fall Leaf Watercolor

Emma and I spent a fun afternoon using watercolors. We each painted one of these. The cool and warm colors are a good contrast and they just look stunning on the wall.

Homemade Apricot Fruit Rolls

We've started the harvest season in our neck of the woods. I've been busy these last few weeks picking cherries to make pie filling, picking raspberries to make freezer jam, and picking apricots to make fruit rolls. My kids love to eat the fresh apricots, but they are not big fans of  apricot jam or bottled apricots. They LOVE the fruit rolls though!

Dutch Oven Caramel Chocolate Crumb Bars

We've been experimenting with some Dutch oven recipes to get my husband ready to go to Scout Camp for a week. Some of our experiments have flopped and some have become new favorites! These Dutch oven caramel chocolate crumb bars are one of those new favorites. The scouts have already requested them for their next (and every other) campout! My kids love them too.

Kid's Craft: Salt Dough Fun

Quick, easy, and no mess - Salt dough is the perfect activity to keep little ones entertained! 

Scrumptious Snickerdoodle Bars

I've grown more and more fond of bar cookies lately. As my kids get older and busier with all of their activities, my time in the kitchen has shrunk. I still bake regular cookies every now and then, but I more often bake a pan of bar cookies

Spring Fever Solutions

“It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

― Mark Twain

I love this quote from Mark Twain. We have definitely been feeling this way around here lately. I turned to the internet for some inspiration of just what we could do with the cold weather keeping us inside for far too many days in a row. Below you will find pictures and links to a few of the ideas we came up with. All the pictures are from others - click on the links to see the sites they came from . They were enough to inspire me so I figured they would inspire you as well. We have done some of these projects already and others will happen soon.

Kid's Craft: Painted Snowman T-shirt

With the kids home for the holiday, I am trying to come up with things that are fun for them to do. Painted T-shirts are a fun and quite in-expensive project. I already have quite a few colors of acrylic paint that we have collected over the years. I also have a stash of white t-shirts. I watch for them to be on sale and snatch them up to have on hand for projects like this or tye-dying or whatever else we come up with to do.

Kid's Craft: Ice Candles

We took on a fun project with the 3rd graders and the boy scouts. My son's 3rd grade teacher found the idea for these ice candles and asked if I would be willing to help their class make them for gifts this holiday. They turned out to be quite simple and look so fun that my husband decided to tackle them with his boy scouts to make as gifts as well.

Kid's Craft: Growing Borax Crystals

I'm always looking for something simple, yet fun to do with my kids - these Borax crystals were great! We actually did this with the entire cub scout group a few weeks ago and all the boys loved it! I neglected to take any pictures of the finished product - that required remembering to take pictures the next day and sometimes that is just too difficult. We did snowflake shapes, but there are so many you can try.

Banana Cookies

My daughter usually requests traditional chocolate chip cookies. The day I developed this recipe and had them ready for an after school snack, she declared them "the best cookie I had ever made!"

I don't feel so guilty serving these banana cookies to our family and friends because the bananas replace so much of the fat that is in traditional cookies. They work great for anyone with an egg allergy as well since the bananas replace those too. Plus, they are delicious!

Move over banana bread - I think we have a new favorite for our ripe bananas!

Banana Cookies
½ cup butter	1 tsp baking powder
½ cup sugar	1 tsp baking soda
½ cup brown sugar, packed	½ tsp salt
1 ¼ cups mashed banana	½ tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla	1 cup chocolate chips
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
Cream together the butter and sugars. Add bananas and vanilla. Add remaining ingredients. You can use half wheat flour and half white flour. Mix or stir together. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased baking sheet. Bake at 350° F 8–10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool for a couple of minutes on a baking sheet before removing to a wire rack. Makes about 3 dozen cookies. You can freeze the dough and thaw and bake later or you can freeze the cookies once they are baked.

Candy Corn Cookie Bites

Remember my All Purpose Christmas Cookie Dough recipe? It's great at other times of year as well. I had a roll of it frozen in the freezer from a previous cooking session. I pulled it out the other day and put these together. The kids loved them! 

Honey Roasted Pretzels

I went in search of a recipe to use up a large bag of pretzels the other day. I had all my cub scouts coming over after school and they always hit the house hungry! My older daughter is my big pretzel eater so I have learned to keep some on hand as part of my short-term storage. The problem is she just got braces and pretzels are now on the "no-no" list - she can only have the sticks. That meant I had a very large bag of pretzels that was in need of being eaten. This recipe was great!

I often change up a recipe just a bit, but this one I did as is and we loved it. You could add some nuts if you wanted a sweet-salty mix. The cub scouts ate a lot of them and then the boy scouts finished them off over their weekend camp out. They would work great for teacher or friend gifts for any occasion or be a quick treat for any pot-luck or party. The topping just adds a hint of sweetness to the salty pretzels.

Start with a few basic ingredients -  Mix the sauce ingredients after microwaving them. Pour over the pretzels - notice how the sauce changes color after adding the baking soda. (You could turn making it into a science lesson for your kids.) Microwave again -  Stir to break them up. I used my hand to separate some as well. From start to finish in less than 10 minutes - perfect for my needs! Honey Roasted Pretzels  (Makes 9 cups) 9 cups mini pretzels (10 ounces) 1/4 cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons butter or margarine 1 tablespoon honey 1 tablespoon light corn syrup 1/8 teaspoon baking soda 1. Place pretzels in 2 or 3 quart microwave-safe casserole or measurer. Set aside. 2. Combine brown sugar, butter, honey, and corn syrup in 4-cup microwave-safe measurer. 3. Microwave mixture on Full Power 45-60 seconds or until mixture boils hard, stirring once. 4. Continue to microwave mixture on Full Power 60 more seconds. 5. Stir in soda mixture. 6. Pour syrup over pretzels. Stir to lightly coat pretzels with syrup. 7. Microwave coated pretzels on 50 % power, uncovered,, 3-4 minutes or until lightly toasted, stirring twice. (If you don’t have 50% power, try using the defrost setting for 4-5 minutes). 8. Turn onto lightly vegetable-sprayed waxed paper or foil 9. As mixture cools, break into pieces. 10. Store in tightly covered container or resealable plastic bag. Source: http://deannahouse.com/pages/recipes/snacks_honeyroastedpretzels.html

Our Very Own Fair Experience - Homemade Funnel Cakes

Our kids all chose to enter some items into the state fair this year. It was fun to go see their projects - each one of them received some sort of ribbon for their category. My one son took first place in the yeast bread category using my Fabulous Homemade Bread recipe. They were all pretty excited.

Before leaving for the fair, we discussed the amount of money it was going to cost to get in, ride the rides, purchase food, etc. We talked to the kids about needing to make some choices to be able to stay within the amount we had budgeted for this activity. They all decided to forgo any food purchases at the fair knowing we could make something at home for a lot less. For breakfast the next day, we made funnel cakes.

After mixing the batter, pour it through a funnel into hot oil, swirling a little as you go. I used a plastic cup for a funnel - just poke a hole in the bottom. It worked great and I could just toss it when we were done.

Fry until it is golden brown on one side and then flip it over to complete cooking.

Drain it on a paper towel when it is done.

The kids were so quick at grabbing them that I had to settle for pictures of half eaten samples. You can top them with powdered sugar like the recipe suggests.

Or honey is tasty - 

My favorite and many of the kids' favorite is raspberry freezer jam. Honey butter would also be delicious! We don't make these very often - once every year or two probably, but when we do, we devour them! Perhaps your family will love them too.

Funnel Cakes
2 eggs, beaten	1 tsp baking powder
1 ½ cups reconstituted powdered milk	½ tsp salt
2 cups all-purpose flour	2 cups cooking oil (for frying)
Combine milk and eggs. Stir in dry ingredients. Drip through a funnel into hot oil, swirling the funnel a little as you go. Fry until lightly browned, turning once with tongs. Remove to a paper towel covered plate. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. I use an electric frying pan with the temperature set at 350° F to help control the temperature of the oil. Note: I use 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup all-purpose flour

Lofthouse Sugar Cookie Bars

All the softness of the perfect sugar cookie with the convenience of a bar. This is a recipe that I found in a small local magazine - The Eagle Informer Dec 2012. It took me a few months to get around to trying it. It was fabulous! Who doesn't love the soft-textured frosted sugar cookies you can purchase at the local grocery store bakery? This recipe is a little more healthy for you since half the fat is replaced with cream cheese and I also used some whole wheat flour. 

Cream butter, sugar, and cream cheese. Add egg, vanilla, and the dry ingredients.

Press dough into a well greased jelly roll pan. (Spray some foil to keep your hands a little cleaner as you press.)

Do your best to press it into a even thickness.

Bake for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees - just until the edges are lightly browned.

Here is a close-up of the edge. You don't want to over-bake. Allow to cool and then cut into bars. Frost with your favorite icing - we love cream cheese or butter cream frosting.

Lofthouse Sugar Cookie Bars
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup softened butter
8 oz. softened cream cheese
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups white wheat flour (or all-purpose flour if that is what you have)
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Cream butter, sugar, and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Stir in dry ingredients. Press dough into a well greased jelly roll pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes or until the edges are just starting to brown. Cool and then frost and cut into bars.

Or cut into bars and frost individually if you would like. If I am going to serve the entire pan at once, I frost it as one big cookie and then cut into bars. If I have planned it for a snack for my family to use over a few days, I cut into squares and store in an airtight container and they can frost each cookie as they are ready to eat it.