Kid Food:
Homemade Jello Fruit Snacks - My kids love fruit snacks. Love them! But I don't buy them very often. Partly because they're crap food and if I'm going to give my kids crap it's going to at least be something like Chips Ahoy cookies or Hostess cupcakes (read: crap that I'll eat too). But mostly because, with four kids, it doesn't make sense to buy any sort of individually packaged snacks. They go through them so fast! When I pinned this recipe, I knew it was something we had to try.
1) They don't taste good. They have a . . . waxy, I guess . . . taste to them. My boys, however, were both fond of them. And, for what it's worth, I used sugar free Jello to make mine.
2) The texture isn't like Jello -- it's not slimy or anything. But it's also not like a traditional fruit snack. I don't really know how to explain it.
3) You're only using a third a cup of water so, obviously, you're not getting very many. I think I got 16 the size in the above picture.
So, basically, they don't taste good and they're not anymore cost effective than buying a box of Phinneus and Ferb fruit snacks. There ya go.
Frozen Yogurt Bites - My kids LOVE yogurt so as soon as I saw this one I KNEW we were going to have to make them. And right away. They were a huge hit! The boys and Z loved them. Karis wouldn't try them but that's nothing new with her these days. We will definitely be making these more as the summer goes on. One more thing -- if you don't like yogurt, you're not going to like these. Take it from me, the "ewww, yogurt" person.
Pizzadillas - You know what? 15 years ago, TGI Friday's wasn't everywhere. I can still remember when the town closest to me got one. They had the "pizzadilla" on their menu and it was soooo good. (As a total sidenote, I can't believe I actually ordered one. Those were during the days when I pretty much only ordered a burger or a club sandwhich. No matter where I was eating. Steakhouse? I'll have a burger!). I had long forgotten the pizzadilla until I saw this pinned. My kids love tortillas and they love pizza so I figured it was a match made in Heaven. And, well, kinda. Jaidan ate them. He eats everything. Karis ate one and Kyan picked the pepperoni out of his. If this were a test and I was grading the pizzadilla, I'd give it a firm B. We'll probably make them again but it won't go down in our list of Most Loved Recipes.
Yummies:
Cheesy Potato Fries - Weird: before I got pregnant with Karis, I didn't really care for ranch dressing. In fact, I knew I was pregnant when I started craving ranch. These days I can't get enough of it. You know the scene in Patch Adams where the lady takes a bath in Jello? Yeah. Me. Ranch. This recipe was like all my favoirte things in one dish: carbs, bacon, cheese, and ranch. It was good. Very good. Vedddy vedddy good. My only complaint would be that the sauce was - believe it or not - too much! I used four potatoes (the recipe calls four 4-6) and had wayyyyy too much sauce. Next time I'll probably cut the sauce recipe in half. But, believe me, there WILL be a next time for this recipe!
Secret Sauce for Burgers - This is actually a burger recipe with a secret sauce. But I have a tried and true burger recipe that the whole family loves. I'll stick with it for now. I knew the sauce was something Jaidan and I would both like and I was right! The only issue I had was I used a little too much soy sauce (boo!) and had to try to balance it out with the other ingredients. It was good. I'll have it again. But it also didn't blow my socks off and make me proclaim that I'd never again eat a burger without it.
Homemade Cookie Cake - I love cookie cake! Good stuff! This one was pretty good. It doesn't have any white sugar in it so be sure to add plenty of M&M's (I used two of the king sized packages in mine) to make up for the missing sweetness. We thought it was best straight from the oven with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
Chicken Tortilla Bake - I was approxomately 30 seconds into making this (easy, five ingredient) casserole when I realized "Duh, this is Mexican chicken!" My family loves Mexican chicken so I pretty much knew it would be a hit . . . and since it doesn't have sour cream I knew it would make the hubs happy. I added taco seasoning to the cream of chicken soup/ Rotel combo and an extra layer of cheese rather than just putting all the cheese on top of the casserole. My family tore it up! Karis especially enjoyed it -- to the point that she was literally licking her plate. Definite hit!
Summertime!
Water Bottle Sprinkler - Seriously? A sprinkler that took approxomately three minutes to make and used things I already had in the house? AWESOME. I used the pin to give me an idea but I did things slightly different (read: I rednecked it up).
I took a water bottle and cut slits in it. Then I took the bottle and DUCT TAPED it to the water hose. DO NOT SCRIMP ON THE TAPE. Use the heck out of that stuff!
Bubble Snakes - Apparently I'm all about the upcycling this week! This is such an easy activity. Old water bottle, a sock, duct tape, and a little bit of dishwashing soap. It was so much fun!
Jaidan and Karis both loved it and had a lot of fun blowing the bubbles (well, Karis had more fun playing in the soap/ water mixture). Kyan was being a turd. All in all, it was a fun little activity.
Real Talk:
