I first saw this recipe on my girl Sammie’s blog, The LaMay Bakery, and it looked amazing. We are total kitchen soul mates and our families tend to like the same meals so I went with it and it was as big of a hit here as it was at her house! The not too cheesy, just crunchy enough combo did it for my husband, the butter was a serious win for Wee One #1 and the other two are head over heels for pretty much any variation on breaded chicken.

It’s very similar to the chicken strips I make, except this is cooked in butter and there is shredded cheese in the bread crumbs. It’s arguably much easier and faster than the strips because with this recipe you’re working with half a chicken breast per person in a single piece instead of about the same amount of chicken, pounded out and sliced into eleventy billion smaller pieces. Both are now requested on the regular, so similarities aside, it’s always nice to add another meal to the list of things everyone around here loves.

Cheddar Baked Chicken – via Allrecipes

1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 cup crispy rice cereal
3 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cut in half
2 tablespoons melted butter

First prep your bowls, you’ll need three. In the first one mix the flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. In the second one, beat the egg and milk together and in the last one combine the bread crumbs cheese and cereal. I totally spaced on the cereal so I made mine without it!	Coat your baking dish with the 1/4 cup of melted butter and dredge (aka plunk) each chicken piece first in the flour mixture…
…then in the egg mixture and finally in the bread crumb mixture before moving each piece to the baking dish.
Bake for 35 minutes or so at 350! So so so good!

As I sit here, listening to The Andrew Sisters (yes, really) and planning out the menu this week, I’m already thinking of the banana bread I’m going to make this afternoon. The rant about it is after this week’s menu plan and no, I didn’t post the recipe. I swear the book is worth the mere $10 for the eBook. This week, for whatever reason I’m not sure, I’m feeling especially like a domestic goddess. Maybe my weekend soap making adventures with my friends working out pumped me up? Maybe it was reinstating Sunday dinner that did it? I’m not sure, but I want to scrub the patio and wash the windows and cook and bake everyone’s favorite everything! This week’s menu is a little of everyone’s favorite everything.

This Week’s Menu!

Sunday – Lasagna with Homemade Rolls and Blueberry Pie for dessert

In her book, Peas and Thank You, Sarah Matheny boasts that this recipe will make you actually want to make banana bread – that it will no longer be a necessary way to deal with spotted bananas on the counter. I read that and thought, dude, it’s banana bread, we all like it but no one makes it on purpose. Well, it’s true. I now purposely put some bananas in a paper bag (speeds up ripening) the same day I bring them home from the grocery store. I love this banana bread and so does everyone I’ve served it to!

I hope everyone is off to have an amazing and memorable Father’s Day! If you are lucky enough to be able to hang out with your Dad today – go hang out with him! My husband and I will have to settle for Skype convos with our Dads tonight, but that’s after we spend the day celebrating here with the wee ones!

For now though, here’s a quick look at our week!

Sunday = my personal cheerleader	Monday = rad new shirt
Tuesday = so ugly it’s cute cookie jar	Wednesday = knitting on the patio
Thursday Morning = these animal crackers are not for sharing	Thursday Afternoon = time to plant some patio garden seedlings
Thursday Afternoon = patio seedlings started off in repurposed toilet paper tubes
Friday = the possibilities in soap making combos are pretty much endless – so exciting	Saturday = making personalized recipe cards

So, you know how I feel about children in the kitchen. I strongly encourage it and I really think they can learn so much. Obviously, they learn about cooking or baking and they might learn a bit about the dish they’re making, but they also learn a lot about fractions when we double of halve a recipe and they learn a little baking chemistry as well! One day, I’ll gift wrap brand new copies of The Cake Bible and The Pie and Pastry Bible for them to learn all kinds of crazy kitchen chemistry. In the meantime, I’ll assault them with information as we bake. I’ve also noticed that random questions about life pop up when we’re all relaxed and enjoying each other’s company in the kitchen – and that’s always a good thing.

All of the kids love to be in the kitchen. Wee One #2 likes big bakes mostly, like cakes and pies and breads. Wee One #1 likes to cook more than he likes to bake. Wee One #3 though, she shares my affinity for small, quick batch baking. Cookies, cupcakes, muffins, and the like. ‘Teatime Treats’ is usually the chapter of baking books she gravitates towards. When I announced that I wanted to bake up some cookies, she was my first volunteer and this video is the result.

I have tried other chocolate chip cookie recipes, but my Granny’s is just always, always better!

This is her recipe:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large egg
1 cup chocolate chips

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes!

This week, I’m linking up with The Organizing Junkie and The How To Mommy for Menu Monday!

Happy Monday!!

Monday has become a day of celebration around here because we try to only hit up the pool in our complex when we know it’ll be empty. We’ve been here for a little over two months, go almost everyday and we’ve only ever seen other people there four times! During the week, we go during our lunch break from home schooling and unless we go around dinner time, we don’t go to the pool on the weekends. Most weekends are filled with Daddy time and having fun with our awesome new friends (thanks for taking us thrifting and hosting a kiddie bbq!) so we are all generally too wiped out for the pool anyway. We didn’t go anywhere near the pool (or the ocean) this weekend, so when we take our mid-day break (somewhere between math and reading) we’ll break in our new pool toys!

After two weeks in a row of out of town visitors (we miss Brigitte, Hal, Lindsay and her mom already!), we are visitorless this week and we will likely be catching up with each other – which means we’ll cook together a lot and go for walks and probably stay up late making paper dolls and playing video games. 🙂

Menu Monday is one of my favorite bloggy days because I love to see the week in food laid out in front of me, even if I totally abandon it for whatever Martha is raving about in this month’s magazine (I can’t be the only one that feels compelled to make some ridic creation rightnow). This blueberry swirl coffee cake is not only amazing any day of the week, my 6 year old makes it pretty much by herself! She’s a pint size domestic goddess, but I swear it’s not hard. Recipe after this week’s menu!

This Week’s Menu (June 11 – 17)

Sunday – Roasted Chicken with Stuffing, Mashed Potatoes and Corn (& gravy oooof course) for the fam, probably more Veggie Potstickers with Pilaf for me and Chocolate Buttermilk Cake for dessert

I have been eating these vegetarian pot stickers I’m totally hooked on and I’d eat them everyday if I ever made enough so my menu this week is a little pathetic. Also, notice that Mondays have become Spaghetti and Meatball day and Fridays have become homemade pizza and/or calzone day. The kids make their own and are incredibly happy to eat what they made!

Blueberry Swirl Coffee Cake – adapted from Betty Crocker’s Best Christmas Cookbook

Set oven to 350F, and grease a jelly roll pan (or use your trusty 9×13 pan). Beat sugar, butter, shortening, baking powder, vanilla, almond extract and eggs with an electric mixer (or a whole lot of elbow grease) till smooth and then stir in the flour – make sure you scrape down the sides of the bowl!
Spread two-thirds of the mixture in the bottom of the pan. Spread the pie filling over it. Then dollop the rest of the mixture over the pie filling by tablespoonfuls. Bake for about 45 minutes! Mix the icing sugar and milk to make a quick and yummy glaze to drizzle over top of the coffee cake while it’s still warm.

Today I’m linking up with Dandelion House, Happy Go Lucky Blog, and Chubby Cheeks Thinks.

I have had a love for all things vintage and slightly chipped and worn and almost matching for as long as I can remember. I used to beg my department store-loving mother to take me downtown to Toronto’s Kensington Market so I could hunt for treasures from my favorite thrift stores. The concept of used clothing totally skeezed her out so most of the time my dad and I would go together – and more often than not, he’d find a treasure himself!

My husband however, is not so down with vintage stuff. I’m not going to get all psychological here, but he’s defo the kind of guy that likes new and shiny things. He likes sets of things that match. He likes new and matchy things even more than I like vintagey things, so a very long time ago (over a decade ago anyway) I stopped bringing random old cups and mismatched plates home and instead started hitting up Ikea and Pier 1 and if I’m totally honest there may have been some Crate & Barrel and even some Pottery Barn going on as well. Last year we bought a very pretty house in the woods of Central Ontario and we were slowly filling it with catalog wish list goodies. Then my husband was offered a situation he couldn’t refuse in Los Angeles – so off we went!

Fast forward to a few months later. We came down here with just a small trailer of absolute necessities. We packed light for two reasons – we didn’t think we’d be here very long and we knew we had to declare every single thing we were bringing aka ‘importing household items’ for CBP. After some bitching about how lacking my LA kitchen is (and truthfully the rest of our apartment is equally lacking), my friend Vanessa brought over some thrifted cups and cutlery for us to use because she’s super sweet like that, and one of those cups is now my husband’s hands down favorite cup of all time. He oddly likes that there isn’t another one of them in our little collection, which of course spawned a conversation about the possibility of creating a vintagey apartment down here and it was like 1000 Christmases rolled into one when he said he was totally down with it. All I’ve thrifted since that convo is a zebra print plate and a Little Miss Chatterbox cup, however last night? Oh last night I spent hours on Etsy looking for just the right picnic basket.

I proudly found this $60 wagon at a streetcorner ‘yard’ sale for $15 a couple of weeks ago and can now pull my two smallest wee ones to the farish park that’s perfect for picnics. Vanessa and I took the kids there for a picnic once already but picnics are always better when you’re rockin a beautiful picnic basket, right? Right?

These baskets are all amazing. I adore them and once I complete my actual shopping list of things I need for our new place I’d love to get a couple more and start a collection. I’m not including the basket that I picked in these pictures, I’m going to wait until it gets here and show it to you on a picnic!

This is one of the first ones I fell in love with. It’s $50 but there’s no domestic shipping on it! The fabric inside it melts my heart and I absolutely adore the double lid.	I crossed this one off my list when I decided that I had to have a double lid, otherwise this was a strong contender because it’s so roomy and I’m always packing a picnic for at least 4!
The charm of this basket is that it comes full of goodies (4 each; large plates, saucers, coffee cups, drinking glasses, forks, knives & spoons). I came thisclose to picking this basket and it’s dishes.	Are you kidding me?! A pie basket?! I love this!! I think it might be a bit too small for us though and again, as sweet as this one is the one I picked is even sweeter!

In this Etsy adventure I also found a really adorable little something for my sister – shipping on it to Canada is the same as here, so I could even have it shipped right to her so I’m not paying shipping twice! I also came across a lot of really painfully cute plastic picnic baskets from the 70s for the kids, but I’m not sure I can justify getting one for all of us and then another one! There is one more picnic basket that was in the running that I’m not going to post because it is perfect for patio picnics and I can’t wait to show it to you – on my patio!

Obviously, I’m obsessing over all things picnic (summer has officially hit LA, but of course coming from Canada even their ‘winter’ is official summer to us) and all things vintage (getting the thrifty green light from my husband has me totally over the moon with excitement). I apologize to everyone who reads this blog and loves all things shiny and new because I have a pretty good feeling that all of my Window Shopping Wednesday posts are going to focus on all things slightly worn. 😉

I will leave you today with some vegan picnic inspiration, courtesy of Mama Pea. I haven’t coughed up any recipes from this book yet because I really think it’s worth picking up – but Mama Pea gives you this recipe on her blog.

I’m aware that I used a piece of bread and the recipe clearly calls for a tortilla. Since I snapped this photie, I have made them properly and they amazing either way. They’re perfect picnic food too and will absolutely find a place in my new basket. <3

Today, I’m linking up with Kate Says Stuff, Obviously Marvelous, and Saved By Love. Check out some of the other blogs linking up, they’re full of great ideas!

Why my children prefer these rolled up grilled cheeses over classic grilled cheese sandwiches, I’m not sure. I mean of course growing up with me as your mother you’re going to go for whimsy instead of standard fare and that’s cool with me but man…they loooooove them.

For someone who loves to experiment with food and flavors and styles of cooking, I have a somewhat resistant family. Only somewhat in that most of the time Wee One #1 will try just about anything and if it’s a sugary baked good that doesn’t involve coconut he’s usually happy with it, the other two wee ones are usually down with variations on their favorites but not so into totally new things. My husband is supportive of my kitchen experiments but not always down to actually sit down to eat them. So I try to keep that in mind when I absolutely must switch something up and try a new take on something they’d eat everyday (possibly all day) if it was offered. These grilled cheese rolls were an instant hit and I’ve been making them several times a week now!

Today on Thankful Thursday over at Kate Says Stuff, we’ve all (yes you too) been invited to talk about how awesome we are. These grilled cheese rolls have me feeling pretty awesome because making something decently healthy (if you get sneaky with your choice of ingredients of course) for my kids and having them asking for more is pretty rad. I’m also feeling pretty amazing because I made a tray of four different kinds of cupcakes yesterday for a friend who hadn’t celebrated his birthday in years (wha?!?!) and he went on and on and on about how great they all were and that I should get into catering and my domestic ego was polished to a shine. Lately homeschooling has been a lot of fun and that makes me feel really awesome because at first I wasn’t sure it was a good fit for us – we just needed to find our groove!

I’m going to tag a few awesome people as well. For the record I’d tag my sister and my girlfriends because they’re all pretty amazing girls – very talented and while some of them are kind of badass they’re actually really sweet – but they aren’t blogging at the moment. Their awesomeness shines the brightest when I remember how present they have always been for me even where there is a whole lot of distance (and now time difference) between us.

My dear friend Romi has written and (as of today) has published two books. They are amazing. You can buy her new one right now, here -> Last-Minute Love (Year of the Chick series). She’s always been up for skipping dinner for wine and cake even when going back to her place was a bit of an epic journey. She’s extremely driven and talented and smart and funny and oh Romi, you’re amazing.

My girl Sammie over at The La May Bakery is probably the sweetest person I know. I mean, damn. Not only is she super sweet and cute and always, always looking on the bright side (even right now when her husband is deployed and she’s 16 weeks pregnant with Wee One #2), she’s a good friend and is always there to listen and help figure things out. She’s also a great long distance kitchen buddy and more than once we have cooked the same thing for dinner – coincidentally! So so so awesome.

If I’m talking about awesomeness, I absolutely MUST include Mutant Supermodel. For two years now I’ve been watching her amazing journey in single parenting and amazing, wonderful advice on budgeting. She is a very strong woman but also someone who can chill out and just be a real person. Ah. Maze. Ing.

And last but never least, I’m going to add Erik of Diary Dad to this collection of awesome because he’s such a dedicated and devoted dad! The world would be a better place if more dudes jumped into parenting with both feet! He engages his kids in everyday activities and ‘dadventure days’. Cuuuute (and awesome).

Now, back the ‘recipe’ today, it’s barely a recipe, all you need is bread, butter and cheese slices. If you’re sneaky, like me, you’ll use whole grain bread, vegan ‘butter’ and veggie ‘cheese slices’. Shhhh.

Cut the crusts off the bread and win instant points with wee ones everywhere! Then flatten the life out of them with your rolling pin.
One slice of cheese per slice of bread (more gets messy, trust me), and roll those babies up! I brushed a wee bit of ‘butter’ on each side so they’d look browned and pretty.
Just cook them as you would normally, except make twice as many!

This is what you make when you want to usher something out of the kitchen that is as hilarious and exciting to serve as it is to eat. Cutting and serving this cake was no joke but since everyone that ate it fell in love with it, I’m filing it as a win. It’s the prefect cake for someone who loves candy and of course works especially well for someone who has a house full of people who also love candy!

Scroll down for pics of the cutting and serving!!

Chocolate Kit Kat Skittles Cake – via The Kitchen Magpie

First, preheat your oven to 300 and melt the chopped chocolate in the hot coffee. Just pour the coffee over the chocolate, and in a separate bowl whisk together sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Theeeeeeen in a smaller bowl (though you’ll probably want to use a bigger bowl than the one I did…), whip the eggs till they’re thick and then combine them with the oil, buttermilk and vanilla. Once that’s mixed well, add it and the melted chocolate to the dry ingredients.
The batter was runnier than I had expected, but just roll with it – it’s perfect! I poured it into 3 greased 9″ cake pans and baked for almost an hour.
Then I made the frosting and dyed it blue – use your favorite frosting recipe, or even *shudder* a can if you must. I used a little between each later, mostly just as glue and for the same reason I slathered it all over the outside so the Kit Kats would stick.
Line up the Kit Kats around the side of the cake and use the ribbon to pull them tight to the cake, but don’t pull so hard you break them! Make a cute bow at the front and voila! Super cute! Then I covered the top with more frosting and dumped two big bags of Skittles on top!
The cake looked so not like a cake that someone stuck their hand in it, thinking it was an elaborate bowl of candy!
The blog I first saw this on made no mention of the hilarity that ensues when the cake is eventually cut. The platter I put it on is made of pretty light plastic, so as the Skittles fell from the top of each piece to the platter they made the same plinking noise as the Skittles that hit the floor in the commercials! So so funny. It was messy, but thankfully the hosts are lighthearted and it was all good.
So obviously this cake looked amazing, but how did it taste? Well, I made this for our new friend Steve’s birthday. I didn’t know anyone at the party other than him and his (amazing & delightful) girlfriend Vanessa. When each guest left and said their goodbyes it went like this ‘Thanks for the invite Vanessa we had fun, happy birthday Steve have a great night, I loved the cake May!’ So ridic, I love it. Someone even loved it enough to draw it’s likeness in chalk on the brick wall in the backyard.

They don’t look like fishies, but they taste pretty bang on!! I was going to follow the little homemade goldfish cookie cutter tutorial on the post with the recipe, but I just moved about a million miles and don’t have kitchen scissors yet! I know, I know, it’s total insanity. It really is, I’m forever saying ‘why didn’t I bring that?!?.

The recipe itself is very simple and as long as you have a food processor you’re totally set. You have to pop the dough in the fridge for a while so it’s easier to work with, and then of course you’re rolling it out and cutting it, but it’s absolutely worth it. Any time you make a snack from scratch yourself it’s worth it because you know what’s in it!

Homemade ‘Goldfish’ Crackers – via Miss Anthropist’s Kitchen

1 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoon cold unsalted butter
8 ounces grated cheddar cheese
3/4 teaspoons salt
1/8 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder

So simple – first process the flour,onion powder, salt, pepper, and baking powder. Then add the butter and cheese.
It’ll look doughy and hold together. Now wrap it and chill it for a while.
Flour your surface and roll it out! Cut whatever shapes you want, just make them small and mostly uniform so they bake the same.
Yes, I used a water bottle lid. Ahem. 10 minutes at 350 did the trick for me! So good!

Today I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie and The How To Mommy.

Tater tots are really just rolled up mashed potatoes and everyone knows mashed potatoes go with pretty much anything! Whatever they don’t work with french fries or scalloped potatoes can totally stand in for them. It’s potato madness. So once I discovered how to make tater tots myself, a whole world of weird culinary (I use the word extremely loosely) adventure opens up. Tater tots IN a casserole? sure, why not? Wrapped in bacon? What isn’t there to love?! I have also recently stumbled onto, but haven’t tried, Tater Tot Pie, Cheeseburger Tater Tots and some kind of insanity called Tater Tot Hot Dog Casserole?! What?!

I’ll stick to wrapping or stuffing mine, thanks.

This Week’s Menu:

Saturday & Sunday – Cooking with Visitors! We’ll let them pick!

The tater tot recipe I used in this recipe is the same one I used when I made The Duggar’s Tater Tot Casserole last year.

From here, it’s painfully simple. Just roll each tater tot in a single strip of bacon and secure with a toothpick. Cook at 375 for about 30 minutes, give or take (check on it). Make these for a crowd, take some to your neighbors, whatever you do – share them!