Kitchen Monday

I don't have any pictures of Peanut wet up to his knees from the massive puddles at the playground. Neither do I have pictures of his buddy who one-upped Peanut by crawling through the puddles. We do have a child who doesn't mind a shower instead of a bath nowadays, so at least the bathing before lunch scenario is a bit less traumatic now.

I do have pictures of our afternoon kitchen session, though. We got quite a bit done and had fun doing it as well. Finding ways to include Peanut in cooking without causing either a major mess (his) or a major breakdown (mine) still requires creative thinking, but we're getting better. Baking bread together involves him dumping large quantities of flour into the bowl, and creating proportionately large cloud of flour. I tried to do the mixing myself and managed to break a wooden handled spatula in the process (sigh). As soon as we figure out where we're moving next, a red KitchenAid stand mixer is coming into our lives ASAP. Breaking spatulas are a sign from the kitchen gods.

We also made musli. Our version is mainly inspired by this homemade granola recipe. We used rolled oats, flax seeds, whole almonds, sunflower seeds, honey, and raisins. The trick is to make sure it's good and toasty before taking it out of the oven. Last time, it didn't brown enough and went soft too quick. Musli is yum. Stale musli is not.

The last project was pure fun - play dough. The recipe came from a friend. Instead of using food coloring, I used the water left from boiling beets for salad last week. The dough turned out a purple/red color with a very soft consistency. It might have gotten thicker if cooked longer, but thicker dough seemed like it might put the wooden spoon in danger. The dough was a huge hit with Peanut. He spent nearly an hour standing at the counter playing with it. Well - it felt like an hour. That could mean 15 minutes in real time for a toddler mama!

This last picture is awful - but illustrative. Everything in our house, on the street, generally falling into the hands of Peanut is an instrument. Here we have play dough as violin. You never knew, did you?