Suburban Omnivore

Princessing It Up: Princess Tea Parties

2013-02-10T07:37:00.000-05:00

We hadn't really planned to go all princessy with our two daughters—but thanks to a hand-me-down nightgown, they became obsessed with all that the Disney princesses had to offer. We've tried to focus on the more modern princess tales—Tiana, Mulan, Merida and Belle all have some positive messages to offer, and don't just sit around waiting for their prince to come and save them.

And each girl, for their kindergarten-era birthday, opted for a princess tea party for their birthday. I was pleased, if only because the parties were easy to pull off at home, involved inviting only half of their classes (no princes or pirates allowed), and they were a whole lot of fun to put together.

Each girl chose a different princess as the inspiration for their theme—my oldest, Princess Tiana, and my youngest, Disney's newest princess, Sofia the First (who seems pretty in the spirit of the spunky modern-era princesses that I like).

Over the next few posts, I'll share how I put together this pair of princess tea parties.

Christmas Activities: Elfing Your Neighbor...

2012-12-02T10:34:00.002-05:00

We want to teach our girls that giving is even more fun than receiving. And so one day of our advent calendar is dedicated to deciding which charities we're giving our money to (they like to pick ones that give toys to kids, build houses, and share food with our neighbors), and one day is dedicated to Elfing.

Elfing is similar to ghosting—we put together a sweet treat (lately, we've been doing homemade hot chocolate on a stick with marshmallows) and we head out at night to sneak them onto our neighbors' and friends' doorsteps. My girls ring the doorbell and run, which thrills them to no end–they plot out great ways to sneak so they're not discovered. We put a little note with it that says simply "You've been elfed! We hope you have a very, very Merry Christmas!"

Of course, we end the night with hot chocolate (made with a few extra hot chocolates on a stick)—and talk about what awesome "secret agents" the girls would be. They're already asking when this year they can do their Elfing rounds—so watch your doorsteps for something yummy!

Prepping for Christmas: Advent Calendar Ideas

2012-11-17T15:12:00.000-05:00

We have a neighbor at the end of the street who posts a sign this time of year, where they count down the number of days until Christmas. I'm sure that they think it's very festive, but for me, it's just a constant reminder of all of the things I still have to do (make Christmas cards! buy gifts for teachers!) and the dwindling amount of time I have to do them.

I'm spending this weekend figuring out everything to put in our advent calendar. This year, there will be some (homemade) pierced earrings, since the girls got their ears pierced this summer. Little pieces of candy, of course—I'm going to break out the molds and make some Harry Potter chocolate frogs, and maybe a chocolate Han Solo trapped in carbonite for my husband, too. And for many of the days leading up to Christmas, it's a little slip of paper with an activity we're set to do that day: making gingerbread houses, watching The Grinch, or "elfing" our neighbors (more on that later in a later post). We aren't big on "stuff" as gifts (our daughters only get a very small memento for their birthdays, along with a special day with one parent), so we like to remind our kiddos that life's about more than toys—it's about spending time with the people you love.

Thinking of filling your advent calendar with more than just trinkets? Here's a sampling of our daughters' favorites from years past:

Walk around our neighborhood to see the Christmas lights (and have hot chocolate with marshmallows afterward).

Make and frost a gingerbread house. (This usually ends with a frosting fight.)

Make Christmas cookies and candies.

Watch It's a Wonderful Life. (We also have watching parties for Charlie Brown, The Grinch, and our new favorite, Prep and Landing.)

Celebrate St. Nicholas Day (December 6th we do our stockings).

Visit Santa.

See the Christmas lights at our local zoo.

See the Nutcracker.

Let me know you decide to do!

Phineas & Ferb Birthday Party Menu: Jeremy's Slushy Dogs

2012-09-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

If you're a big fan of Phineas & Ferb, you know how big a deal slushy dogs are for their crew—and that Candace's beloved Jeremy serves them up as his summer job. So of course, I wanted some for my daughter's birthday party. Those were a huge hit—we went through all 16 of them in a matter of seconds. Here's how to make them:

16 hot dogs
2 packages of crescent roll dough
8 slices of American cheese
16 bamboo skewers

Slice the American cheese slices in half on the diagonal. Lay out a triangle of crescent roll and place the American cheese slice triangle on it. Roll the hot dog in it, starting at the wide end until the dough is wrapped completely around the hot dog. Insert the skewer into the end of the hot dog, then bake at 375 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes—when the bread is baked to a golden brown.

Serve it up with ketchup and mustard—and expect rave reviews!

Phineas & Ferb Party: The Menu

2012-09-01T12:54:00.000-04:00

The default meal for most kids' birthday parties is pizza. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's relatively cheap, almost all kids love it, and you can just order it the day of and have it delivered at the appropriate time. Problem solved.

But there are some (almost as) easy alternatives that will turn your party into something more memorable.

For the Phineas & Ferb party, I decided to do some themed sandwiches, named after our favorite characters. Making them was a cinch—I bought a bunch of big baguettes at the store, slapped on the ingredients, then sliced them into eight pieces. I made one of each type of sandwich listed here, plus the crowd favorite—slushy dogs on a stick (more on that in the next post!)—and we had plenty to cover 17 kids and multiple parents. Here's what I served:

Isabella Mozzarella Sandwich: Fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil, with a drizzle of good olive oil.

Baljeet's Curried Chicken Sandwich: Curried chicken salad from FreshDirect (basically chopped chicken, apples, celery and raisins, with mayo and curry powder).

Agent P's Peppers, Provolone & More Meat Sandwich: Salami and sopressata, provolone cheese, and roasted red peppers.

Ferb's Thanksgiving-on-a-Sandwich Sandwich: Turkey with a generous slathering of cranberry sauce.

The Candace Sandwich: A little turkey and a lot of cheese (based on Candace's love of cheese sandwiches).

We also had slushy dawgs on a stick (see the recipe tomorrow), and on the side we had a basic potato salad and a veggie-pasta salad.

Dessert was the birthday cake, plus the "Sundae-inator," where we served a scoop of ice cream and let kids go wild with a variety of toppings—M&Ms, colorful chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, and whipped cream.

Phineas and Ferb Party: Activities

2012-08-30T11:17:00.000-04:00

My daughter's birthday party was a pool party, but we also wanted to plan a few activities that featured Phineas and Ferb's trademark creativity.

As we waited for all the guests to arrive, we had the kids build a creation at our "Inator" Station. (Named in honor of all those wacky creations that the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz builds!) The station was loaded with plenty of recycled materials (toilet paper tubes, bottle caps, old favor toys, etc.), some paper and pipe cleaners, and plenty of glue and tape. The kids all came up with cool creations that did everything from trap monsters to catch fish.

Next, we played a scavenger hunt called "Where's Perry?" We hid my daughter's Perry the Platypus stuffed animal in our neighbor's yard, and had a series of clues that led them to various grownups at the party, into our house, then around into the neighbor's yard to find Perry. The mob of kids nearly knocked over our neighbor's gate in their eagerness to find Perry, but they definitely had a ball.

We planned a few additional activities—a Phineas and Ferb trivia game and a showing of Phineas and Ferb Across the Second Dimension—in case the weather didn't cooperate. But as usual for my daughter's birthday parties, the weather was picture perfect. And the kids had an absolute blast.

Phineas and Ferb Birthday Party: Favors

2012-08-29T08:45:00.000-04:00

You can't get away with not giving a favor bag at birthday parties anymore. But while my kids like those little plastic toys and doodads (for at least 15 minutes), I'm not such a huge fan. We end up with tons of clutter and a lot of waste.

And so I've been making a conscious effort to choose favors that are useful or edible. At my younger daughter's dinosaur birthday this year, the favors were cute dinosaur soaps and chocolate dinosaur lollipops, stashed in paper bags that could be recycled. And for the Phineas and Ferb birthday party, I knew I had to come up with something clever.

I hit Party City and picked out colorful paper bags, and loaded them with fun erasers, rainbow-striped lollipops, and a homemade creation: s'mores on a stick. (It seemed like something Phineas and Ferb would dream up!)

They are super easy to make. You simply put marshmallows onto lollipop sticks, give graham crackers a few good whirls in the food processor, and melt up some good chocolate (chocolate chips could work, too). Dip the marshmallows into the chocolate, then into the graham cracker crumbs, then set them on waxed or parchment paper to set. I bagged up two per guest, and they were a HUGE hit with everyone.

Phineas & Ferb Birthday Party: The Cake

2012-08-27T08:31:00.000-04:00

One of our absolute favorite Phineas and Ferb episodes is Roller Coaster: The Musical, when Phineas and Ferb rebuilt the roller coaster from their first episode, but this time, with dancing and singing. So when I saw this cake, I knew what I had to do—put my own spin on it.

You need two cake mixes to build the cake. The original creator made them all round cakes, but I went with a stacked square cake for the base, and a pair of rounds to craft the roller coaster. You deck and frost the square cake as you please, then cut the rounds into 1/4 to 1/3 to create curves, and connect them to the cake with wooden picks or straws, cut down so that they don't stick up out of the cake. Frost the curves to look like a roller coaster, then use wafers and M&Ms with plenty of frosting to make the roller coaster cars and attach them to the roller coaster. Tiny Phineas and Ferb characters were made by cutting paper and attach them to the wafers with frosting.

The cake was a huge hit with everyone—especially the birthday girl.

Phineas & Ferb Birthday Party: Getting Started

2012-07-20T17:27:00.001-04:00

After last year's foray into Hogwarts, we're going a bit more relaxed this year—a pool party centered on Phineas and Ferb, our family's favorite cartoon. While there's not quite as deep a mythology there as Harry Potter has, there's plenty of raw material for putting together a pretty darned cool party.

The main focus of the party will be swimming in our pool (my daughter and her friends are finally tall enough where we don't have to make sure that we have enough swim vests to go around), but we're planning to play a few games, have a cool cake, and a menu loaded with references to P&F's capers.

Amaretto Cheesecake Ice Cream

2012-07-16T07:08:00.001-04:00

My future husband tried to stop me from buying an ice-cream maker 14 years ago. He imagined it'd gather dust in the back of the cupboard, and waste money we could be putting toward our wedding. But every time he's enjoying a scoop of ice cream from it (which is quite regularly, I might add), he happily admits to his error in judgment.

The only downside to making homemade ice cream is that many of the recipes require you to cook the ice cream liquid to give you that thicker, custardy consistency, which means that you can't get instant gratification. So one of my favorite recipes is this classic cream cheese ice cream from Gourmet. You can whip up the liquid in under 5 minutes in your blender, and have fresh ice cream in about 35 minutes. The finished product tastes like cheesecake—and I've regularly poured it into a graham cracker crust and served it as a "frozen cheesecake" to rave reviews.

I wanted to serve that again to some friends of mine a few weeks back, at our inaugural new backyard bash. But it felt like they'd all had it a few times already (not that they were complaining). So why not mix in a little of the amaretto that was sitting out on the counter, and serve it up with some mascerated berries? The end result was so good that one of my guests said it was the best thing she ever tasted—and I was inclined to agree.

Amaretto Cheesecake Ice Cream
1 block of neufschatel cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups of skim milk
2 tsp. amaretto
1 tsp. almond extract
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Topping
2 cups berries (whichever you prefer)
sugar to taste

Mix together all of the ice cream ingredients in the blender, then pour it into your ice cream maker. Run the maker until the ice cream reaches a thick consistency. About an hour before you're ready to serve the ice cream, mix together your berries and sugar to taste, to give it time for syrup to develop.

Serve, and rake in the compliments!

The World's Easiest Strawberry Pie

2012-06-12T18:19:00.001-04:00

My younger daughter went strawberry picking with a good friend of hers last week, and we reaped the bounty—a massive pile of tiny, crazy-sweet strawberries, with more flavor packed into each one than there are in a whole quart of those giant monstrosities from the grocery store.

While we ate some by the handful, I felt a treat of this magnitude deserved to be elevated—and so I pulled together a super easy strawberry-lemon galette. I based mine on the last-minute strawberry-basil galette from the excellent boys at Beekman 1802. I'll write up what I did here, but it's worth heading to their site to read their take on the recipe. I giggle every time I make it.

This treat can be pulled together in less than 45 minutes, which makes it great for last-minute company.

1 stick butter (ice-cold, if possible)
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
cold water

lemon zest (about 2 tsp)
strawberries (about 2 cups)
additional sugar if needed (mine certainly didn't!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the butter up into small pieces in a bowl, then use a fork to mash it with the flour and sugar until it becomes pea-sized meal. Start putting water in, a little at a time, just until the dough forms a ball. You can chill it if you want, or just roll it out on a lightly floured surface.

Fold it into quarters, and gently lift it onto a flat cookie sheet and spread it out. Sprinkle the zest over the center of the dough, and pile the strawberries on top, leaving a lip of a couple of inches of dough all the way around. Sprinkle with sugar if the berries aren't so sweet.

Fold 1 to 2 inches of dough over the edge of the fruit all the way around, to help hold in the fruit and the juices.

Bake for a half-hour, until the crust is brown and the fruit is soft. Serve it warm, if you can.

Can You Say Clafoutis?

2012-06-08T10:23:00.001-04:00

My oldest daughter can. It's pronounced klafuti, and it's a fancy French name for a sweet, dense pancake made with fruit—usually studded with cherries. It also happens to be her absolute favorite dessert.

And now that cherries are in season, I can start making it for her again. I've generally made a more traditional clafoutis, which has a sweet almond flavor. But this time, I mixed it up with a great chocolate-cherry clafoutis recipe from Julia Child, which added cocoa to the batter and chunks of dark chocolate sprinkled in with the cherries. This one seemed even easier (you mix the batter in the blender!), and with all that chocolate, it was my kind of dessert.

Here's how you do it:

3 handfuls of cherries, pitted and halved
1 handful dark chocolate chunks
1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
pinch of salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and butter or oil a round cake or tart pan. Spread the halved cherries out throughout the pan (it looks prettiest if you have them all facing with the hollowed out part toward the top of the dessert). Sprinkle the chocolate chunks over the pan as well.

Put the rest of ingredients into your blender, and mix thoroughly. Pour the batter into the pan and over the cherries.

Bake it for about 1 hour. The dessert will be puffed up and firm to the touch.

You can dust it with confectioners sugar for that added touch of ooh-la-la. I like mine warm, with a generous scoop of homemade vanilla or amaretto ice cream. (Recipes to come!)

French Toast: Easy Like Sunday Morning

2012-05-27T07:00:00.000-04:00

When I was a kid, Sunday morning was always "special breakfast" morning. It was when my mom broke out the griddles and pans and treated us to something beyond our usual toast and/or cereal repertoire. Often, it was scrambled eggs and sausage, but on really special weeks, she treated us to pancakes, waffles or French toast.

I've continued the tradition with my kiddos. Pancakes tend to be the go-to choice. We use Mark Bittman's fabulously easy pancake recipe to make pancakes—It's as fast as Bisquick or pancake mix and tastes even better than the boxed options.

But on mornings where we're in a hurry, French toast is awesome—especially as one member of our household is currently gluten free, so we can easily swap out some GF bread for the multi-grain slices that most of our family enjoys. And made the way we make it, it's not the worst breakfast for you. You can top it with applesauce or fresh fruit in lieu of maple syrup, and it's downright healthy.

French Toast
1 egg
1/2 cup vanilla almond milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 slices of your bread of choice (multigrain or whole wheat)
1 tbsp butter

Beat the first three ingredients together in a shallow dish until it's well mixed, while you melt the butter on a griddle or in a large pan. Soak each slice of bread thoroughly in the egg mixture, making sure to get both sides thoroughly wet. Put the bread onto the griddle and cook it until golden brown on both sides, about 5 minutes per side.

Serve hot with your favorite topping—the girls love just maple syrup, but I usually do applesauce and a tiny drizzle of syrup, or fresh strawberries.

Kick It Up a Notch: Thin Mint Brownies

2012-05-25T09:29:00.000-04:00

I never like to go to someone's house empty handed. So last week, when I was invited to a cookout, I knew I had to bring something. But we were desperately in need of groceries, so I didn't have a lot of my usual go-tos for good desserts—no heavy cream and almost out of sugar.

I did have one lonely little brownie mix, but that seemed like that wouldn't be fancy enough for my taste. So I scoured the pantry a little more, and found a half of a sleeve of Thin Mints (a miracle that those were still around in my house) and a bag of chocolate chips—and I knew I was in business. The Girl Scouts provided a Thin Mint brownie recipe that I tweaked to make a little fudgier and rich—especially with that yummy ganache frosting.

Thin Mint Brownies
1 brownie mix
12 (or more) Thin Mint cookies
3/4 cup chocolate chips
2 eggs
1/4 cup water

Chocolate Ganache Frosting
1/4 cup skim milk
1 cup chocolate chips

For the brownies, I put the Thin Mints in plastic bags and let my girls go to work breaking them up. I mixed them in with the rest of the brownie ingredients, poured the whole thing in an oiled pan, and baked for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

While the brownies were cooling, I made the ganache. It sounds so hard and fancy, but ganache is really easy to make. I microwaved the skim milk until it was steaming (about 1 minute), then poured in the chocolate chips. Let the chocolate sit and melt in the milk for a few minutes, then stir. (If you still have clumps of chocolate, microwave the whole thing for about 15 seconds at a time until you can get it smooth.)

When you have smooth ganache, simply pour it over the brownies, smooth it with a spatula and let it set. If you need it to set quickly, you can put the whole pan in fridge and it will firm up faster.

Then just slice and enjoy! This was a huge hit, with both the kids and the grownups.

Super Soda: Blackberry-Mint Cooler

2012-05-20T14:13:00.001-04:00

A SodaStream soda maker was under our Christmas tree this year, and it's gotten a good workout. But no matter how much my kids beg, I haven't felt comfortable letting them have much of the soda. I don't like them having all the chemicals in the diet versions, and they definitely don't need all the extra sugar in the regular versions.

So I was excited to find this recipe for a blackberry-sage cooler on Pinterest. It seemed like the perfect soda for everyone, as I'm also trying to scale back on the diet sodas. The only problem? I kept forgetting to put sage on my grocery list.

But my garden has oodles and oodles of mint growing, and I figured that might fit the bill.

Blackberry-Mint Cooler
1 pint blackberries
1 cup water
4 tbsp sugar
1 handful mint leaves
soda water

Puree the blackberries in a food processor, then run the puree through a fine sieve to remove seeds. This will take longer than you expect!

While you're doing that, combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan. Heat until it boils and the sugar is completely dissolved, then add the roughly chopped mint. Take off of the heat and let the mint steep for 15 minutes. Remove the leaves and let the mint syrup cool.

Combine 1 tablespoon of blackberry puree, 1 tablespoon of the mint syrup, and 1 cup of soda water.

The flavor is sweet and fresh with just a tiny bit of tartness. The mint definitely comes through—in fact, I might try it next time with an extra teaspoon of the blackberry puree.

But either way, it was the perfect accompaniment for our Sunday lunch of choice—cucumber sandwiches.

Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to (or is it Cauliflower?): Healthier Potato-Leek Soup

2012-05-18T09:54:00.000-04:00

Leeks are in season, so I picked up two big bunches—and challenged my husband, Mike, to make something great with them. He decided to do a potato-leek soup, but gave it a twist by using cauliflower in lieu of some of the potatoes. It had the same great taste and creaminess, but with fewer calories and a more vitamin-packed veggie.

Here's what he used:

1 bunch of leeks, washed and sliced
4 small potatoes
1/3 of one head of cauliflower
2 cups of almond milk
2 1/2 cups of vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste

After sauteeing the leeks, he put the broth and the rest of the veggies into the pot to simmer, until the potatoes and cauliflower were tender. Then he added the almond milk and used the immersion blender to make it smooth.

The girls adored it, and he made a large pot of it—so we're trying it tonight as the fancier sounding vichyssoise (cold potato-leek soup).

A Spinach Smoothie: It Tastes Much Better Than It Looks

2012-05-12T09:08:00.000-04:00

This isn't the prettiest dish I've ever made, but a spinach smoothie has become my regular breakfast for the past few months. It's a super easy way to get an extra big dose of veggies and fruit into my morning—and it tastes really, really delicious. Even my daughters have become obsessed, so I have to make an extra large batch (larger than this recipe) most mornings, so they can each have a little with their breakfast.

The secret is that spinach's mild flavor gets overpowered by the berries and bananas, so you don't even know that the veggies are there—other than the greenish color.

2 cups baby spinach
1 banana (can be frozen)
2 handfuls frozen berries
1 tablespoon chocolate peanut butter
1 tablespoon flaxseeds
1 cup almond milk (plus more, if needed to blend properly)

Stuff it all in the blender (it works best if you put it in in the order above), then hit blend. The best part? Ever since I've started eating this, I feel like I've had a ton more energy every day—so much so that I've been able to break my coffee habit. Give it a try.

In a Jam

2011-09-02T10:33:00.007-04:00

We spent a blissful day last week in the berry patches at Alstede Farms in NJ. In fact, it was probably a bit TOO blissful, as we ODed on blackberries and raspberries (to the tune of 6 quarts for our family of four). And since berries have a notoriously short shelf life, we needed to figure out a way to preserve a little of that berry goodness. Thankfully, I remembered a cool little recipe for blueberry refrigerator jam that had been in a recent Real Simple. I figured what's good for blueberries would be just as good for raspberries and blackberries—and it turns out, I was right.

All you need is some berries, a little sugar, a pinch of salt and a little lemon juice. Mash the berries (a potato masher works great), and cook the whole mess in a saucepan on your stove, stirring frequently, until it's boiled and reduced to a thick jam. Let it cool, then store it in your fridge for up to a month, or your freezer for a year.

The flavor is richer, brighter and more true than even the fanciest jams out on the market. Try it at its most amazing on really good bread, with a slathering of Nutella beneath it. Divine!

We're working our way through some raspberry jam right now, and have some more raspberry and blackberry jams waiting in the freezer. It'll be nice to have that taste of summer during the cold winter months.

Here are the amounts:

5 cups berries (blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries—whatever you have on hand)
1/2 cup sugar (you may want more if your berries are on the tart side)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Bon appetit!

Vanilla Coffee Syrup

2011-08-24T09:24:00.000-04:00

What makes iced coffee even better? Yummy flavored syrup. But you can skip the expensive Torani syrups and DIY it at home. In 15 minutes, you'll have fabulous syrup, at a fraction of the cost of the Torani (you can even pour your homemade syrup in a saved bottle, so it only looks expensive).

Here's what you need:

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of water
2-3 tsp. of vanilla extract

Stir all ingredients together in a medium-sized saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until sugar is dissolved. Let syrup boil and continue to stir occasionally, until the syrup is slightly thickened and is reduced by about half.

Let it cool, bottle it up, and keep it handy for your next coffee fix.

A Coffee Revelation

2011-08-23T20:52:00.002-04:00

I must confess: I make a really awful cup of coffee.

I honestly don't know what I'm doing wrong. This should not be a challenge: Add grounds to filter, add filtered water, and voila! Fabulous coffee. But mine ends up either weak or way too strong (or filled with grounds that made it through the filter). So I've given up and bought the Starbucks Via coffee packs, which are sinfully expensive but make a decent cup that I don't have to be embarrassed to serve (and that makes me feel like I'm treating myself every morning when I have my cup, after I drop off the kids and walk the dog).

But I've found something even better (and cheaper), that's perfect for the summer months. Pioneer Woman posted her method for making iced coffee by the gallonful, and stashing that liquid gold in the fridge for regular refills. It's super easy, too. All you need is a pound of coffee, a container big enough to hold a couple of gallons, some sort of filter (I used paper towels in lieu of cheesecloth), and about 8 hours for the brewing. You simply mix the coffee grounds into the water, let it sit, then filter out the grounds (that part takes a while....and expect to smell like coffee for a while after you squeeze out the liquid from the grounds through your paper towels).

The iced coffee this morning, which I had with a dose of skim milk and some homemade vanilla coffee syrup (recipe coming tomorrow), was simply divine—an equal of those pricey coffee drinks I love so much at Starbucks. I may try making my own frappuccinos with that tomorrow.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms

2011-08-09T16:37:00.004-04:00

What's cooler for two little flower girls than the opportunity to actually eat a flower? So when I saw squash blossoms at my grocery store, I just had to bite.

I used a variation on an Epicurious recipe to produce wonderful squash blossoms, stuffed with ricotta, dredged in egg and cornmeal, and fried up.

Stuffed Fried Squash Blossoms

8 squash blossoms
Oil for frying

Stuffing
3/4 cup of ricotta (we used low-fat)
2 tbsp fresh chopped mint
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives
1/3 cup shredded romano cheese
dash of salt and pepper

Coating
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives
dash of salt and pepper
2 eggs, beaten

1. Mix filling ingredients together, and carefully stuff into the blossoms (I used a small measuring spoon to scoop it in and gently push it in).

2. Batter up the squash blossoms by dipping them into the egg, then dredging them into the mixture of cornmeal, chives and salt and pepper.

3. Place squash blossoms carefully into a pan with hot oil. Cook for a few minutes each side, until golden brown.

4. Put on paper towel to remove excess oil, then eat and enjoy!

Harry Potter Party: Sourcing Materials

2011-07-28T07:55:00.003-04:00

Here's where I got most of the goodies for the party:

OrientalTrading.com: Aragog pinata and pinata candy, black and gold star paper plates, gold cake plates, rainbow lollipops for the "puffapods"

A.C. Moore: Black felt, dowels, oven dried clay

IKEA: black cocktail napkins, glass bottles and vases

Target: Puffapod planters, black flat sheet

Zazzle.com: Hogwarts crest stickers for invitations, and house crest pins for sorting

Etsy.com: Cute cake toppers from CraftyRosy

Online sources for labels & ideas

Dirt & Sunshine offered inspiration and a ton of great labels and signs for download

It's the Life for fabulous inspiration

Poppytalk for cute labels for favors and potions

Gray Sparrow for cute vintage labels

Fantasy Jr. for some great Potter-themed potion labels

Harry Potter Party: Favors

2011-07-28T07:47:00.005-04:00

All good things must come to an end, but at least our guests got parting gifts to keep the party going. (Most guests left after the cake and ice cream, but we had several who decided to stay for our screening of Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets.)

Our guests went home with:
Their house crest pins (Hufflepuff, Gryffindor, Slytherin or Ravenclaw, from Zazzle.com)
Their wands and "Magic for Muggles" class books
Their puffapod plants
Chocolate Frogs (though I forgot before many of the guests left!)
And their pinata loot

I already know I'm doing a repeat of this party in January, when my youngest turns 5. Should be a breeze, right?

Harry Potter Party: Group Activities

2011-07-28T07:38:00.004-04:00

We did combine the houses for our last few classes: transfiguration, defense against the dark arts, and broom racing.

Transfiguration was basically charades. The students turned themselves into an animal, and the rest of the class had to figure out what it was. (The big stumper? My daughter, the hippogriff.)

For Defense Against the Dark Arts, Aragog (a spider pinata) presented itself. The students had to take turns whacking it with their wands. (And yes, got more candy!)

Broom Racing was simple—we took the whole gang down the street to the playground and let them expend a little of that sugar on the playground equipment, then ran a relay race with the kids running with brooms. The kids had so much fun that they didn't stop at just one turn with the broom, and every team was declared a winner.

Next up? Party favors!

Harry Potter Party: Care of Magical Creatures Class

2011-07-28T07:35:00.000-04:00

How do you teach a magical creatures class when you don't actually have too many magical creatures at your house? Improvise!

We had two overturned milk crates for cages—one was empty, the other had my daughter's toy dragon in it. I went into detail about the "Chinese fireball" dragon, and told them that we need to feed that baby a combination of chicken's blood and brandy every half hour. (The boys loved the gross factor!)

The other looked empty, but it turned out it was filled with "gnargles," the magical creatures Luna Lovegood claimed stole all her stuff. We learned that eating flobberworms, though, would keep gnargles away from us. The kids all eagerly ate from a big jar of gummi worms. (And yes, I'm aware that the kids each walked away from this party about a pound of sugar heavier!)

I had placed an old baby gate off to the side in the yard, and said that they could go see the hippogriff. Imagine my surprise when it had escaped!

As the final (and most fun) aspect of the class, each house designed their own magical creatures—most featuring dozens of eyes, odd numbers of feet, and wings.