It’s that time again! Last week I held pretty true to the list I made for my week, this week I’m going to try to make recipes I haven’t posted before and hopefully photograph them as I make them so I can add them to the list!

This Week’s Menu (June 25 – July 1)

Sunday – This is Canada Day so we’re going all out
   Breakfast – Pancakes with real maple syrup for the kids, Cream of Wheat for us and pemeal bacon for everyone!
   Lunch – Poutine!!
   Dinner – Pemeal Bacon on a Kaiser* and Ice Salad, Nanaimo Bars and Butter Tarts for dessert

*this is crazy regional to Toronto and specifically St Lawrence Market but that’s Canada to me

A few weeks ago, I made mini chicken pot pies and ever since then the kids have been encouraging me to make mini versions of other dinners they love! So far I’ve made mini chicken hot pockets and these mini pizza bites. I served these with pizza sauce to pour over top or, as Wee One #3 chose to do, dunk in. Next time I will add some sauce to the mini bites before I cook them and see how that works out. This week I’m making Mini Shepherd’s Pies!

Your homemade pancake batter (or the batter prepared from a box or Bisquick or whatever)
24 slices pepperoni (or more depending on how much you love pepperoni)
1 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
1-2 cups pizza sauce

Spoon about 2 tablespoons of the batter into each (lightly greased) muffin cup, and top with cheese, pepperoni and more cheese.
Pour about 1 tablespoon of the batter over the pizza bites (adding more or less depending on how doughy you like your pizza). Bake for about 20 minutes at 350 and serve with dipping bowls of pizza sauce!

This week brought us the completion of my fourth pair of socks for the year! Happy Birthday Nanny! Her birthday was in April, but she’s sweet enough to totally gloss over that when these cuties arrive in the mail next week. 🙂 This week was also full of fun homeschooling lessons, I think we all genuinely enjoyed each day! Ok, that’s a dirty lie. Wee One #2 isn’t so keen on French (or cursive writing actually…), and while I’m aware that we are not currently in Canada, I am including it because even though we will be here longer than we originally planned, we’re not going to be here forever and they’ll need to know French eventually.

After whining about having to buy jugs of juice instead of squeezing my own, I found a little hand juicer! It’s perfect for making us each a glass in the morning to go with breakfast. This is probably what I am most hyped about in my kitchen right now.

Our little patio garden is doing well! I was pretty confident the seeds would sprout, but you never know until they do, so the kids were pretty excited when they saw the first little pieces of green poling through the dirt!

Hope you had a great weekend!!

Sunday = pair of socks #4 for 2012 DONE!	Monday = train wreck!
Tuesday = cursive writing practice for Wee One #2	Tuesday = juicer and fresh oranges!
Wednesday = Wee One #1 reading about nomads	Thursday = butterflies and fuchsia crayons
Friday = our seedlings in TP tubes are doing well!	Saturday = cinnamon brown sugar muffins

Our days are so different since moving to Los Angeles, which I guess is a redundant thing to say because duh but it’s more than just the geographic differences. The two huge differences to life before and after moving here are school and work because my husband has gone from telecommuting from home to working at the office and my kids went from being at school all day to being homeschooled all day! So, 3 months into this adventure we have found a new normal and it’s not what I would have ever expected, but it’s pretty sweet. My husband has telecommuted from home for years, so while him being at work 5 days a week is totally weird, he likes his job and it gives the kids and I a chance to loudly play board games and bake up a storm. Plus how sweet is it to come home from work and your wife is in a cute little apron finishing dinner?! The kids have really gotten into the swing of homeschooling, faster than I did for sure! If a lesson isn’t working for them, there’s always a way to tailor it a bit so it does work for them. Science should be amazing, reading should be inspiring, gym should take place in the pool whenever possible and art should always be messy.

Anyhooooo, one thing that has remained the same is everyone’s love of the weekend. Sometimes there is still some school or work to do over the weekend, but I celebrate every day that I don’t have to set an alarm before I go to bed at night. <3 I try to bake up something fun on Fridays, especially now that Friday has become homemade pizza day it's fun to have something a little epic to go with it. These were a big hit. I'm going to try out a bunch of different cake/frosting combos!

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup low-fat buttermilk

All I did was whip up a batch of Martha’s Vanilla Cake (recipe originally posted here) and spoon the batter into ice cream cones! I baked them for about 20 minutes at 350 and voila!

The recipe is pretty simple. Just whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in one bowl and beat the butter and sugar in another bowl with a paddle mixer till it’s smooth. Slowly add the eggs and yolks with the mixer on low and then beat in the vanilla. Then add a little of the flour mixture and mix, then a little buttermilk and mix and continue until both are all mixed in.

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 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!

I’m editing the site today so if something is wonky or broken, it wont be for long!

This week, I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday and The How To Mommy’s Meal Planning Monday.

For years and years and years now, I have been a planner. Both in the ‘knowing whats for dinner next Tuesday’ kind of way and in the ‘I keep a notebook of running ideas I add to my calendar’ kind of way. This way of thinking and planning had ingrained itself in me pretty deeply. So deeply that not knowing exactly how long we’d be in California was stressing me out before we even left Canada. It bothered me that as I was reading through blog posts of neat home decor projects I didn’t know when or where I’d be able to work on them, or that I didn’t know what my routine would be like with homeschooling so I had no idea when I’d be blogging or how much time I’d have for baking. I’m not kidding, it honestly stressed me out to think about not having the info I needed to make solid plans and even worse that there was no way for me to find out that info because it just didn’t exist yet. So I packed up our most loved and used treasures, helped my husband change the oil and tried not to freak out about it too much.

At first, about a week before we left when we were still looking at apartments in LA online and trying to pack up the last of our ‘must have’ list, I started to let go of the idea that I’d know exactly where we’d be living. I rationalized to myself that it was ok to not know yet since I’d like to see the place in person before deciding to move there anyway. So leaving Canada without having picked a place in LA ushered me into letting go of planning, which made it a lot easier and honestly a lot more fun for all of us to just enjoy our 2700 mile road trip! We totally did too! It was so so so much fun!

After that, instead of pressuring my husband and rental-unit-finder person (what’s that job called?!) into getting us a place ASAP, we moved into a really cute extended stay suite with a wee (but sweet) kitchen and spent some time finding a great place for us. Ever since then, I’m pretty breezy about plans. I mean yes I still menu plan, but that’s a sanity saver more than anything else – and I rarely actually make these meals in order (plus down here there is a lot more popping out to Chipotle and tossing all plans aside). Of course there is homeschool planning to do, but really I just read ahead in the homeschool books at night so I know what I’m teaching the kids the next day, I don’t obsess over exactly what needs to be taught each school day and exactly what needs to be on each review for each unit. I will roll with it.

So now that I know that we are here for a while, I’m not freaking out about exactly how long or when we’ll upgrade to a bigger place or if we even upgrade to a bigger place and man – this feels so good! So here’s my tentative menu plan for this week – and yes I’m aiming to make these fudgy snowballs twice because they’re uber simple and a serious hit with the whole fam (even Wee One #1 who is not big on dates).

This Week’s Menu
Monday – Spaghetti with Meatballs and Breadsticks for the fam, Spaghetti without Meatballs for me and Cinnamon Buns for dessert

Sunday – Beef Stroganoff for the fam, Crack Wrap for me and Chocolate Chip Cookies for dessert

Fudgy Snowballs – via Skinny Taste

15 pitted dates
2/3 cup cocoa
1 cup whole roasted unsalted almonds
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp + water
3 tbsp icing sugar

Grind up the almonds into almost dust and add the dates. I pre-chop mine a little so they don’t gum up my food processor! Then add the honey, cocoa and water and process till it holds together.
Now scoop out small balls and roll them tightly. Just like this, these treats are perfect but to make them snowbally, you need to roll them in icing sugar.
Voila! Simple and pretty healthy (especially if you leave off the icing sugar).

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 Polly Want a Crafter, Skip to my Lou, Brassy Apple, Boogieboard Cottage, Craftomaniac, Between Naps on the Porch and Making the World Cuter! So many creative projects on this link ups!!

One of those genius ideas I’d have no idea about if I didn’t read blogs! All you need is sandpaper (the finer the better), crayons, an iron and some paper towels – and something to iron the image onto. I came across this idea on Alpha Mom last summer and knew I had to try it with the kids.

The finer the sandpaper the clearer the image so depending on the look you are going for, a coarser grit may be better.

Draw whatever masterpiece you’d like with crayon on a piece of sandpaper.
Once the drawing is finished, place the sandpaper image side down on the fabric you’re ironing it on to, with a piece of paper towel between the sandpaper and the iron. If you’re ironing onto a shirt, slide a piece of cardboard inside of it to keep the image from transferring right through to the back of the shirt! If you’re ironing it onto something else, place a piece of cardboard under it to protect your ironing board. I also ironed it over it again with a paper towel on top and then I set it by running it through the dryer (alone) on high heat for about 30 minutes.
We made this one for my dad, it’s so cute and he totally wears it!