Try New Foods

We typically try not to label our kids as "good eaters" or "bad eaters" or things like that. However, Caleb is easily our pickiest eater. I do think that kids go through phases and that it's important to honor that, like how Lydia doesn't always like the texture of meat and sometimes goes through vegetarian phases. I think it's important to honor kids, validate their feelings, and not make dinnertime a battleground. We have a standing rule in our house that if you don't want to eat dinner, you can choose to eat oatmeal instead. All the kids will eat oatmeal, but it's not exciting enough to ditch a normal dinner. Then we don't have to fight a battle that may end with someone going to bed hungry. 

That being said, Caleb is getting pretty set in his ways and won't even try the food that I make for dinner saying instead. "I don't like that - can I have some oatmeal?" He eats oatmeal 5-7 nights of the week, even though the things I am making for dinner are things that I think he would like if he tried them! To add to the issue, Lucy has started to mimic Caleb, refusing to eat things because he won't eat them. 

So even though I know you're not supposed to bribe your kids at dinnertime, we've decided to implement a "Try New Foods" plan. We first talked to Austin and Lydia and expressed how grateful we were that they eat the dinner that is prepared for them and what good examples they are. David then took them to the store and let them pick any treat that they wanted. Then, we talked to Caleb and Lucy and presented the option that they had to participate in. For any meal that they tried 4 bites of dinner, they could get a ticket. Once they got 10 tickets we would take them to the gas station and let them pick a treat. Lucy is collecting puff balls and Caleb gets tickets. 

It's been reasonably successful, although more successful for Lucy than for Caleb. We are still trying to make it a low-stress, low-pressure environment while giving him some incentive to try new things. I hope that as we steadily get him to try new things, his palate will expand and he will eat a larger variety of foods. 

(Lucy's "Try New Foods" prize.) 

Yogurt and Cheerios

This deserves its own post. I know that we've mentioned it before, or in passing, but the longevity of this quirky thing alone demands it be documented. 

For years now, whenever we have yogurt and Cheerios for breakfast (which is at least once a week, and currently each Monday and Saturday and/or Sunday) there is a specific procedure to follow. The Cheerios go in on the bottom of the bowl, then the yogurt gets spread out over the top, completely hiding the Cheerios. 

Now here's the important part. Before the child can commence eating their breakfast a parent must say in mock exaggeration, "Oh no! I'm so sorry- you wanted yogurt AND Cheerios. I forgot and I only gave you yogurt. Sorry, no Cheerios today." Upon completion of the required phrases, the child smiles and scoops into their cereal showing the crunchy Cheerios below. This is immediately followed by "Oh my goodness! There were Cheerios under there after all. That was tricky!" The child can then resume eating their breakfast with a smile on their face. 

There are variations on this, of course. Sometimes they put in the Cheerios and yogurt and you have to say "I thought you wanted yogurt and Cheerios, you must have forgotten your cheerios!" and then say "You tricked me!" Once Austin even put the yogurt on the bottom and the cheerios on top in an attempt to be really tricky. 

I'm not exaggerating when I say that we've been doing this for years and each of the kids still regularly participate. It's funny how it has stuck and turned into a mandatory breakfast ritual. 

Lucy will often make her cheerios and yogurt then say, "Now say the thing that you say about the Cheerios." 

Sometimes we are more theatrical, and sometimes it's a cursory "Oh no, Lucy you forgot your cheerios." / "Oh wow, there they are - please eat your breakfast now!" But mostly it's a cheerful start to our day. 

It will be a sad day in the Peaden house when everyone just eats their yogurt and Cheerios like normal people and no one insists that the Cheerios must have been forgotten, just to discover them hiding under the yogurt. 

Five Things

Here are five things that have happened recently, in no particular order:

1. Preschool is driving me crazy. I can't believe that you have to register for preschool for the following school year in January! I put it off until February but now I'm feeling the pressure. These are the things I want: In my neighborhood (like, if there was one across the street, that would be great), child-centered learning that is developmentally appropriate (no worksheets- and I think I might be the only person who doesn't want the preschool to teach my child to read), a 4 year old class, not combined 3 and 4 year olds, affordable (we've budgeted $90 but was hoping for closer to $75 - and I know a bunch of people who are paying between $135 and $300, which is insane! ) It's not like I'm waiting for angelic visitors to tell me which preschool will be the best, but I am a little worried about finding the preschool that will be the best fit for us and will be the best for Lydia. I've gone to one preschool, and talked to several others. I think that we've decided on one but I haven't filled out any paperwork or anything. I'm going to go visit it on Monday, so hopefully it just feels like it will work for us. (Plus, it's probably the closest preschool to us - which isn't a coincidence. I just really value that proximity.) I'm having all of these flashbacks to college and how much I hated anything that had to do with preschool. The preschool co-op that we've been doing hasn't been bad, but ugh. I really have negative feelings about preschool.


2. One of our neighbors invited us to go on a little field trip to the Fire Department. I told Lydia that morning and she was so excited! She insisted that she wear her firefighter coat and helmet. I tried to convince her to just wear her coat, but she insisted on having both. Then, once we got there she pretty much just complained the whole time and repeated over and over, "I just want to go home, right now." "Mom, I'm soooooo hungry. I just want to go home, right now." Nevermind that it was only 9:30 in the morning and that she had eaten a mountain of french toast for breakfast, and then several "snacks" before we left. (This girl is hungry all the time!) In her defense, when I finally got her some more food - she really did eat a lot and was much happier. She really was hungry, which made her grumpy.  So my bad for not bringing snacks in my diaper bag. Hangry, if you will.

So the whole experience was pretty much a bust, ending in tears when she was standing on the front of the firetruck for a picture and the garage door went up and she was afraid that the truck was going to start driving away with her on it. (Poor girl, it's hard to be so little.)

3. Did I mention (pardon me while I have a proud-peacock moment) David recently received a promotion at his work? He is now an Audit Manager at Eide Bailly, and is rocking it - if I do say so myself. I'm so proud of how hard he works and it's obvious that he is a huge asset to his firm. In fact, the national office has selected David, along with 11 others in the whole nation (23 offices) to be a specialist in the new software they are going to start using. As a "knowledge coach" he will be trained in the software, and then go out to the rest of the company to teach each firm the software. It's a huge deal for him to be selected and is an amazing thing for his career. He will get to work with many people on a national level and have some serious name-recognition. He's definitely a leader in the company and I'm SO proud of him.

*ahem* I digress. So, along with the promotion to manager comes a fancy office. For Christmas I gave him a nice photo of Old Main to go up on the wall. We went to his office last Friday and hung it together. It looks really nice and clearly marks him as an Aggie. :) He's gotten lots of compliments on it and I'm just glad that it looks so nice in his office!

4. I've been in kind of an adventurous food mood lately. There have been some failures (I'm looking at you Cheesy Beef Enchiladas with homemade enchilada sauce), but also some super successes. Some of the best new things that I've found and made lately: Beef and Noodles (with homemade egg noodles), an incredibly flavorful beef roast, Pineapple-upside-down cake-in-a-mug, and a rock-star White Chicken Chili (something that I've been searching for for years). Things that are on the meal plan to try are: Italian BMTs with homemade Italian bread, taco cups, chicken gyros with tzatziki sauce, AND for Valentine's Day - I will be attempting to make Beef Wellingtons. Seriously. It might majorly fail, or it might go down in history as the fanciest meal I've ever made. 

Can we talk for a minute about making my own egg noodles? I've been watching a lot of Food Network lately, (namely Worst Cooks in America where I've realized my cooking skills actually fit in better with those competitors vs something like Chopped or Cutthroat Kitchen), and they've made noodles several times. I thought, if these "worst cooks" can manage this - shouldn't I be able to? The recipe I was using for the above mentioned Beef and Noodles called for frozen egg noodles. I couldn't find any at the store, and really- my budget was tight and I was going to squeeze them in because I wanted to make this recipe. When I couldn't find them I thought, maybe- maybe I'll make them. I did and it was really not that difficult. Plus the look on David's face when I told him that I actually made the noodles in the soup he was eating was priceless. I must have done something right because he raved about that soup for days. I think it's probably the best thing I've ever fed him for dinner. 

5. We've had some pretty good dates lately. Seriously, joining a babysitting swap might be the best thing we've ever done for our date-nights. (We babysit one Friday night and we get two Friday night dates.) Some of our recent dates: Going to the temple together, walking around City Creek and thinking about all the money we saved by not buying anything, and most recently going to the ropes course at Thanksgiving Point Museum of Curiosity. (We've wanted to go to the ropes course for a long time, and we had such a good time. We decided that we could definitely cross a tiny log over a giant ravine in the jungle if we were being chased by lions or something equally as dangerous. Especially if we had enough time to warm up and practice, and double-especially if we were connected to super secure harnesses. Our favorite part was balancing-no hands, and also racing each other up the big rope-stairs.) 

We also have season tickets to Hale Center Theatre Orem this year and we went to our first play, "The Nerd" last weekend. Melissa and Blake came and watched our kids. (They are so awesome!) We had such a fun time. We love the Hale, and The Nerd did not disappoint. There were times we were laughing so hard that there were tears to be seen. Just so funny and fun to be together. 

Family Canning Time

Last weekend my little sister Jenna was planning to be home in Morgan and so naturally, David, Lydia, and I packed up and headed that way ourselves. Any time we can spend with family is golden in our book and we make an effort to go up anytime Jenna is able to come down from Idaho. The original plan was to hang out on Friday and bottle apples on Saturday. (Yay for fall canning!)  Unfortunately, when we went to the fruit stands on Saturday morning - we were informed that apples weren't "on" yet and that we needed to come back in a couple of weeks. Boo. We were so disappointed. It seems like every year we go at the end of the apple season and have slim pickings, so this year when we tried to go a little earlier - we missed it altogether. Not to be deterred from our canning plans, we switched gears and decide to make salsa. The fruit stand that we were at had a "Salsa Special": 1/2 bushel tomatoes, 2 green peppers, 2 onions, and $5 worth of hot peppers. We jumped on that deal (twice) and headed home with a massive amount of produce. 

Do you know how many hot peppers $5 will buy? A lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. They were having a buy one get one free deal on buckets of anaheim peppers that they layered on top of the salsa deal so we had peppers coming out of our ears. They said we didn't have to take all of them - but if we were going to pay for them, we were going to take them!

We got an assembly line going, and started scoring, blanching, peeling, and dicing the tomatoes. Our bushel of tomatoes measured out to be 90 cups of tomatoes. Holy cow! I don't think we realized how much salsa a bushel was going to make. We had a great time chatting as we diced, even if it was a bit stressful for a while trying to decide which recipe to use. (The Utah State Extension recipe that is supposedly tested for food safety called for like 20 onions and a million peppers. It was super intimidating. So we found one online that professed to be safe as far as the acidity of the tomatoes was concerned and prayed that it wouldn't give our family botulism. 

 

(Don't judge this picture. We had a line of people cutting tomatoes at the counter and no place for our giant pot, so I had it next to the counter where I could dump the diced tomatoes. We didn't think about how it was the perfect location for Lydia to snitch out of. After this picture, we made room for it up on the counter. We really are sanitary people.)

 

Meanwhile, Lydia was having the time of her life playing with Grandma and Grandpa's toys. They set up the princess tent, which she loved. I can't believe we didn't get a picture of her in it - she played in there all day. She also found this flag and she walked around like a professional flag dancer, waving and spinning it around. 

This is how many peppers we had left. SO many. However, we found out that you can chop and freeze them and then use them as a replacement for the little cans of chopped green chilis. I'm so excited to try it out. Honestly. I think that I may be just as excited for the chilis as I am for the salsa. 

And here is the final result! I'll be honest. I'm surprised at how few bottles our 90 cups of tomatoes actually ended up filling. However, we had a great time and I am SO so excited for all of the yummy salsa we made.  

Honestly, I just love spending time with my family and love making memories like this. I hope that my kids love each other as much as I love my siblings and that we make an effort to do fun things like this as a family. It's important and wonderful. 

Lunch Date at Kneaders

While house-sitting in West Jordan while Cal and Sue went on vacation, Lydia and I had the chance to go out to lunch with Aubrey, Wendy, and Grandma McAllister. We decided to go to kneaders and we had a great time. Lydia snacked off my sandwich and loved pretty much everything about it. The biggest surprise of the day is how much she liked my tomato. I broke it up into little pieces and she ate pretty much the whole slice. (My mom would be so proud.) Lydia also loved looking at her cousin Aubrey. I'm so glad that we live so close, and I can't wait for Lydia to get a little bigger so that they can really play together. 

Of course, I took several pictures. I just love them. 

I'm lucky that I was able to spend time with these beautiful ladies. Good food and even better company.

It's so fun that Lydia is now big enough to sit in the little high-chairs at restaurants. This was the first time we attempted it, and she did a great job. I also love that I was able to just give her food off my plate. It made for a much happier little girl. (It certainly kept her entertained!) 

Superbowl

Because we were homeless and staying with my parents during the Superbowl this year, we decided to have a fun little party.  Lydia went to bed fairly early and then while David was watching the game - I got my "cook" on. We had lots and lots of yummy things and I didn't want to miss out on documenting all of the fun. And so, in no particular order, photographic evidence of our awesome superbowl party: 

Yummy loaded potato disks. These were gone before anything else was even ready. 

My dad, always willing to help me with my crazy kitchen adventures. 

David, the only one really invested in the game, and thus the one who spent the majority of the time actually watching the game. The rest of us hung out in the kitchen for most of the night. 

Jacob, hanging out at the computer while waiting for the rest of the yummy food. (Note: see that giant dog? Yeah - I think if we let him he would eat my baby. Luckily, he hasn't attempted that yet - and Lydia loves him. Everytime she sees him she starts laughing and keeps her eyes glued to him.)

Football Sugar Cookie Bars

Chicken Bacon Ranch Bites

David enjoying a sugar cookie. 

Okay. So here is the deal. I really really really wanted to make homemade pretzels. Like, really wanted to. So even though we'd already eaten a ton and we didn't really need any more treats, I convinced my dad to help me out. Using several recipes I found on Pinterest, we made our attempt. Seriously, it was a disaster. You were supposed to put the dough into a baking soda/water bath and all that happened was the dough shrank, then got soggy. It was super gross. I was so sad! However, after baking - the pretzels turned out decent. (Other than being stuck to the bottom of the pan, and being slightly over-salted. Ha.) 

My dad is awesome.

I'm so sad that the pretzels were so weird. 

But I'm happy that they turned out semi-okay in the end. 

Happy Superbowl! 

Baking Day

One of the best (or at least yummiest) parts of Christmas at the Peaden house is all of the Holiday goodies that there are to eat. Unfortunately, Sue was sick with Pneumonia and with Christmas right around the corner Amy and I decided to come and have a baking day so that we could all enjoy the Christmas goodies come party time. Lydia was such a champ and spent much of her time chattering and playing in the highchair while she watched us in the kitchen. 

We started out with these yummy yummy rolls. The recipe is called Richersweet Dough and can be used for rolls, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls, or Christmas Roll. These rolls are so yummy - plus you can make a ton of them and freeze them. Then when you need some for dinner you can just pull them out a couple hours early and let them defrost. Then right before dinner pop them in the oven to warm them up and yummmm.

Recipe right here: Richersweet Dough

And here are the rolls all packed up and ready to pop into the freezer. 

Up next were these Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies. They were the messiest of the bunch. Not that they were difficult - but there were lots of little steps. Make the cookie, place and toast the marshmallow, frost the cookies. 

Recipe right here: Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies

Lydia was so happy when David got home because he took her out of the high chair and loved on her. He is such a good daddy - and he looks so good with his little girl in their matching Aggie Blue. 

Day 2 found Lydia in her high chair again. Don't worry - she was seriously a happy baby. We pulled her out and played with her lots and lots. She just looked so stinking cute in her high chair that I couldn't help but take lots of pictures of her.

Cheese Chip Cupcakes are really relatively simple to make, however - in this house we have to make four different versions. The top version is normal, the middle version had no egg white or nut (due to allergies), the bottom right has no egg or dairy (also due to allergies), the bottom left has no nuts (just due to preference). These are also served frozen. Are you seeing a pattern? Yum!

Recipe found here: Cheese Chip Cupcakes

I really can't tell you how much I love this darling little girl. Here are some pictures just because she is so cute. And because she likes marshmallows like her mama. 

Next up... sugar cookies! 

These are the tins that the goodies get stored in. 

We made the sugar cookies during the day, and then when everyone got home we had a big cookie frosting party. 

When we are with family - Lydia never wants for attention. Ever. Plus she is just so cute when she eats. I'm grateful that she is such a good eater. 

It was such a fun couple of days. I'm glad that we were able to go and help out Sue, and grateful that she taught me how to make all of these yummy treats. I'm glad to be able to carry on the tradition and hopefully raise my kids loving these Christmas goodies as well.