dirt never hurt

Carmen is following in the tradition of those before her.

homemade frostys

I've never been one for chocolate ice cream. I'd go as far as saying that I hate it.

Which always makes me surprised as to why I'd like a Wendy's frosty...except that it's not as chocolatey as regular ice cream.

Lately, we've been making a lot of homemade cool-whip, whipped cream, whatever you call it.  It's so easy:  heavy whipping cream, a little vanilla, and a little sugar... beat in a bowl for a few minutes until it looks just right.

But the kids came up with this genius idea--mix the whipped cream with chocolate ice cream and it might taste like a frosty.  We mixed them in our bowls with a spoon, just like when I was a kid and always turned my ice cream into soup before eating it.

Oh, how they were right!

jumping rope

Here's a quick, cheap way to have fun.

Connect a tube of glow sticks into a long jump rope.

It's so cool.

Or you can twirl them around your arm.  That's cool, too.

master chefs

Carmen is an adventurous eater.  We're glad there's still one left in the family!  Here she is eating a bean sprout for the first time.

Actually, we've been doing a lot of dinner experiments lately.  And the kids have been watching shows like Master Chef and Food Fighters.

I still can't believe I was raised on sugar cereal for breakfast, ham sandwiches for lunch, and frozen vegetables (or worse, canned!) for dinner.  Maybe that's why I never cared much about food...it was just a way to keep me from starving.

Now that I'm responsible for feeding this family of six, I've really had to learn to broaden my cooking knowledge from more than just eggs and spaghetti.  And encouraging them to help out will hopefully keep them from eating cup o noodles for every meal when they are finally on their own.  Diego is great at chopping mushrooms, Joaquin can make amazing smoothies, and Isabela just made an entire batch of oatmeal cookies from scratch, start to finish, without a single help from me.  And Carmen is happy to eat it all.

So the presentation may be lacking on this dish, but it was the first time in my life of steaming salmon, broccoli and water chestnuts.  Amazing.  And it turns out Isabela likes water chestnuts, JP and I loved the salmon, Joaquin still loves broccoli, and Diego still loves nothing.

(It had an amazing soy sauce, ginger, garlic, lemon, olive oil and green onion sauce on top!)

The spoon is mostly for show.  But for a sixteen month old, she's great at drinking from a regular cup and even manages a fork every now and then.

That's how we really do it!

Have you cooked anything great lately? Did your kids like it?