Pumpkin Crunch Cake

I needed a relatively quick dessert I could whip up for company, and had been dying to try this recipe I had found on Pinterest. Good. Stuff. And best of all, super easy:

Pumpkin Crunch Cake (adapted from www.thepickyapple.com)

1 box french vanilla cake mix (others have apparently used spice cake mix and loooved it)
1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 cup butter, melted (that would be two sticks of butter - yeah!)
Ice cream (optional, for serving)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom of 9x13 pan. Mix pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Pour mixture into pan. Sprinkle dry cake mix over mixture and top with pecans. Drizzle melted butter over pecans - be sure the dry cake mix is covered by butter (any uncovered parts will stay as dry mix!) Bake 50-55 minutes. Serve hot, and a la mode!

Stores in refrigerator if the pan is not immediately licked clean.

Pinkalicious Preschool Learning!

Ah, Pinkalicious. I'm so conflicted on these books - I feel as though the lesson is brief and on the last page, and all the bad behavior on the preceding pages isn't quite wiped out. Still, whatever keeps the girls interested in learning and busy during the day is a good thing! We spent about a week doing activities, but there are so many more out there that I think another Pinkalicious week is in the works!

I'm breaking this down into learning activities, just-for-fun activities, and food/snacks:

Learning Activities:

1. Letter P printables

2. Pinkalicious printables  

3. Sing songs about pink! I found a very cute one at Mama Made it For You  - she also has other pinkalicious-related crafts and activities!

4. And even more printables: http://thinkpinkalicious.com/games

5. M&M math - I still have a horde of pink M&Ms I bought around Valentine's Day, and we use those to do addition and subtraction problems - and a right answer results in a mouthful of M&Ms!

6. Read the books with color-coded smoothies - the creative mom at Color Wheel Meals came up with 3 delicious smoothies to go with Purplicious, Pinkalicious, and Goldilicious:

Fun Activities:
1. Make crowns - these are FANTASTIC, but require some prep work:
2. Play with pink streamers and dance to music!
3. Get the day started by waking on and decking yourselves out in pink!

Snacks/Food:
1. Pink pasta lunch - you can either add some food coloring to noodles that are boiling, or you can make pasta colored with beets! Love this one featuring Animal. I had found some pastel striped bowtie pasta at World Market that I used for the occasion, combined with "pink" sauce (a marinara/alfredo mix.)
2. Fruit wands - thread different fruits on a skewer, ending it with a slice of star fruit!
3. Strawberry Cheesecake Crackers
4. Pinkalicious Muffin Tin Meal - so cute!
5. All-Natural Pink Milk from One Hungry Mama
6. And - naturally - make pink cupcakes!

Pirate Day! Preschool Activities and Learning

There's a sliiight chance that I'm having more fun planning these activities than the girls are having doing them, but it's definitely up for debate! I love finding just the right activities/printables to go with each day. I'm seriously lacking in the creativity department myself, so am utterly thankful for all the crafty and imaginative parents out there who share their secrets!

For the printables for Pirate Day, I specifically looked for Jake & The Neverland Pirates printables, since that show is what got my daughter interested in Pirates to begin with. The Disney site has some cute pages.

As does the awesome mom at the 1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1 blog. Her pack is geared towards kindergarten aged children, but I was still able to use several of the pages for my 4-year-old.

We started off the day with my daughter doing some of the activities in the printables, while I prepped for the days activities. We then sat together and had her cut out the pirate patch and bird from the Disney/Neverland Pirate pack. It also helped her establish her pirate name, which was either Big Lani The Kindhearted or Sneaky Lani The Sneaky Snook, depending on whose crew she wanted to join!

After we got her set up with that, we made a pirate hook hand, using tin foil, duct tape, and a solo cup. First I jabbed a thick hole in the bottom of the cup, and covered around the hole with duct tape. I then made a hook out of wadded up tin foil, and put the end of the hook through the solo cup, which I then taped down with criss-crossed duct tape. I've seen some on-line where the cup was painted black, but my kids (and their lazy mom) preferred the red cup, so we went with it!


She already had a compass, a periscope, and a magnifying glass in her playroom, so we gathered all those items and set off for our pirate treasure hunt around our home. Apparently it's super easy to make an authentic looking pirate map. That is, if you budget more than 20 minutes to do it. I poured some tea on a crumped piece of paper, then set it outside to dry - it just came back soggy and dirty looking. Ah well, authenticity is overrated:


Since my handwriting resembles chicken scratch, this is how it went: We left the Great Ship ________ (insert last name) and headed out past the Mysterious Mushroom Patch, and around Baby Butterfly Tree (which consisted of several butterfly hair clips on various points of the tree, and gold bangles underneath and in the branches - treasure!!) We then went around the house to Walk The Plank - a 2x4 I set up behind the driveway. If they were older, I would have set it up on some bricks, but this was about all my almost-2-year-old could handle. They then had to pass the Gate of Riddles - our back gate, where I asked a "riddle".

Why are pirates called pirates? They just arrrrrrrrgh!

If that one makes you cringe, here are more (that will most likely do the same).
Past the gate, we waded through Crystal Waters (i.e. our pool) then around the back of the house to the Fairies Hideaway, where X marked the spot. Along the way, treasure (i.e. more jewelry) was to be found at the various spots. Fairies Hideaway was a bush with a gap in the middle, where I hung bead necklaces
 and glittery scarves, and the treasure was a green bowl full of pirate coins I had snagged from Party City:


The treasure was guarded by fairies from the Safari Ltd Fairies Toob (which were new, and by far the hit of the day!) Afterwards, in an unplanned act of piracy, my daughters threw all the gold coins and jewelry in the pool. Skip that activity.

We ended Pirate Day with an appropriately piratey snack inside, goldfish crackers and orange slices with pirate sails. I can't find the link for the printables with the pirate sails, but this one has some great party printables.


Other ideas for snacks include Pirate Jewels - fruit on a stick or one of the cocktail picks that look like swords, and a tropical smoothie.

I had also planned to set up an aluminum foil river, much like this one, but the heat kept climbing on a hot Florida day, and the treasure hunt was all this hot (not in a good way!) mama could handle! Another website has the river and added waterfalls, which I think would be fantastic for next Pirate Day!

Chocolate Chip Muffins with Shredded Zucchini & Apple

Chocolate Chip Muffins with Shredded Zucchini and Apple
Adapted from www.allrecipes.com

Makes 24 mini-muffins along with 3 larger muffins, or 12-14 large muffins

3/4 c. whole wheat flour

3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground flaxseed meal (optional)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 c. vegetable oil (I use Smart Balance)
1/4 c. milk
1 Tbsp lemon juice (1/2 a fresh lemon, juiced)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 medium zucchini, shredded
1 medium apple, shredded
1/2 c. mini semisweet chocolate chips

1. In a bowl, combine flours, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and flaxseed.

2. Combine the eggs, oil, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla. Mix well. Stir into dry ingredients until just moistened. Fold in zucchini, apple, and chocolate chips.

3. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

I refrigerate these, although they would freeze well too.

Bananalicious Bread

I've been seriously craving banana bread ever since we returned from Jamaica a couple of weeks ago - the resort had the BEST banana bread, and the best mangos, so every morning I'd have banana bread and mangos for breakfast. Perfection.

I found this recipe - titled Banana Banana Bread - on Allrecipes, then found a Pinterest link to the blog For the Love Of Cooking, which had an adaptation of it, adding vanilla and cinnamon - winner!!

Banana Bread

Ingredients:

1/2 c butter, softened

3/4 c brown sugar

2 eggs

2 1/3 c mashed overripe bananas (I used 5 small bananas)

1 tsp vanilla

2 c flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp nutmeg

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and coat a 9x5 loaf pan with oil. I whipped out my new cast iron bread pan, which is fantastic! 

In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs, bananas, and vanilla, then beat until well mixed. 

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg, and mix well (by hand). Add flour mixture into banana mixture and stir just until moistened - do not over mix, or the cake will become very dense. Pour batter into the loaf pan, and bake for 60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. 

Super Easy Spicy Chicken & Onions

I love, love, love meals that I can pull together using just fresh meat and pantry staples, and this is one of them. I originally found this somewhere as part of a Chicken Fajitas recipe, but have only ever made the chicken, which I typically serve with rice pilaf. If you can't handle spices, maybe skip the chili powder!

Spicy Chicken and Onions
Serves 4

Ingredients:
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp lime juice (fresh is best - it would be the juice of 1 lime)
1 lb chicken tenderloins, cut into bite size pieces
1/2 onion, sliced

Directions:
Combine all ingredients in a bowl, and marinate in refrigerator for at least 2 hours (can be up to overnight.) Cook on a grill pan until done, adding a bit more olive oil at the beginning, if necessary.

Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken

Mmmm, butter chicken.

I originally found this recipe on www.365daysofcrockpot.com. Next time I'll let it slow cook longer, or may be cut up the pieces of chicken smaller (bite-sized should work well). The chicken wasn't too flavorful inside, but once I broke it apart with some naan and let the delicious sauce work its way in, dinner was gooood :)

Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken
adapted from www.365daysofcrockpot.com
Ingredients
1.5 lbs chicken tenderloins, cut into bite sized pieces
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
One medium diced onion
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp curry powder
2 tsp tandoori masala
One tsp garam masala spice mix
One Tbsp curry paste
6 ounces pureed tomatoes 
15 green cardamom pods
13.5 oz  coconut milk
7 oz yogurt
Salt to taste
Cilantro (optional)


Directions
1. Combine the butter and vegetable oil together in a large frying pan or wok and heat until the butter has melted. 
2. Add the chicken, onion, and garlic, and cook on medium heat for around ten to twelve minutes, stirring constantly.
3. Add the curry powder, curry paste, tandoori masala, garam masala, and tomatoes and stir to combine.
Pour the mixture into the slow cooker.
4. Lightly crack the cardamom pods with the back of a knife or a light pinch between the fingers. To make their removal easier, you can add them into the slow cooker in a cheesecloth bundle. 
5. Add coconut milk, yogurt, and salt to taste, along with the cardamom pods. 
6. Cook on the low setting for 5-6 hours. Remove cardamom pods and garnish with cilantro before serving.


Delicious served with naan and yogurt!