Vegetable Dog Treats for Fussy Boys

Just a quickie tonight as I am wrecked (said the mammy to the daddy...)

I went all Nigella and cooked up some beetroot biscuits in a desperate attempt to get some veggies (and therefore vitamins) down Boy's throat. I boiled up my own beets but you can use the ready cooked kind (not pickled!). You could also replace the beets with carrots, spinach or courgette for different colours and flavours.

The recipe (adapted from Annabel Karmel and www.weelicious.com):

Mix together a cup of plain flour with a teaspoon of baking powder, a small handful of grated cheese and a pinch of salt. Mix in one grated beetroot (I used a zester for a really fine shred) and two tablespoons of sunflower oil. Knead to a dough, adding a little water from the beets if needed to moisten it up. Roll out and cut into bite sized pieces. You could easily use a biscuit cutter for fancy shapes. Throw into a pre-heated oven for 15 minutes at a high heat.

I was quite pleased with the result until my friend came over for lunch and asked why I had made dog treats.

Later, Boy took one bite and looked like I'd poisoned him. I think he was expecting strawberry flavour because of the colour. However when Girl munched hers noisily in front of him he came back for another sniff, so I think I will try him again with these tomorrow.

He only has to eat 20 of them for one of his five-a-day. I should be on the food network channel.

The Pancake and the Pig

Stop! You look like a delicious pancake. Please let me eat you.

My impromptu pancake art for the parent and toddler group this morning consisted of colouring/drawing a face on a circle of paper and sticking on a couple of lollypop sticks for arms (and legs, and hair, in the case of one wee girl who really got into it). And calling it a pancake man helped too.

But the real fun came from the retelling of The Big Pancake, a classic fairy story which happens to be part of the Ladybird 606D "Well-Loved Tales" series of the 1970s. Sadly I own very few of these books for my children to enjoy, and although I wish they could see the wonderful artwork by Robert Lumley and Eric Winter, the stories themselves are fondly emblazoned onto my memory from my own childhood.

The Big Pancake is a tale of a pancake cooked up for seven hungry little boys who end up chasing it down the street. In a similar fashion to The Gingerbread Boy the pancake is chased by various people and animals who want to eat it up but it rolls on down the street refusing to stop until a savvy pig offers to accompany the pancake into a forest. The pancake accepts a ride across the river on the pig's snout, and snap, the pig gobbles him up. If only he'd read The Gingerbread Boy he would have surely seen this coming (though the cunning beneficiary was a fox in that story, I think). As with so many of these stories, the greatest enjoyment comes from the repetition and simplicity that makes children feel like the story is an old favourite from just a few pages in.

If you do look for a copy of this story I would strongly recommend picking up an earlier Ladybird edition as the publishers replaced the vastly superior Lumley illustrations in later editions for some unfathomable reason. Or maybe that's the nostalgia speaking.

In case you were wondering, we did eat pancakes today too. Our lovely neighbour threw a little pancake party, though Girl was only interested in chewing a magazine and Boy spent the entire evening demanding chocolate cake - he'd seen me bring over the remaining cookie cups we made yesterday. I got mine though...and it was a delicious pancake!

Tea Party and Baking Cookie Cups

Last week I picked up a lovely dolls' porcelain tea set for a real bargain. I couldn't wait any longer for Girl to get old enough to use it with her dolls, so at lunch time today I sat down on the living room playmat with Girl, Boy, Upsy Daisy and Teddy and we enjoyed a little sexism-free doll's tea party.

When planning the tea party in my head I had all sorts of fantastic and super creative Enid Blyton-esque ideas for what to serve. Rainbow jelly, home made sausage rolls, cream scones and real cooled tea for starters. But in time honoured tradition, I couldn't really be bothered spending hours on a spectacular tea party at which Boy would likely turn up his nose, and which Girl would need liquidised anyway. So I poured a drop of milk in the teapot and put a pinwheel sandwich (peanut butter and banana) atop a slice of strawberry on each plate.

Well I was pleasantly surprised with how much entertainment this simple spread provided. Boy insisted on pouring cup after cup of "tea" for himself and the dolls, while Girl sat really well and gobbled up the strawberry and sandwiches. We pretended to feed the dolls and made lots of yummy noises. Although a fair bit of milk ended up on the floor, it was a lovely way for Boy to practise his co-ordination and pouring skills, while enjoying the whole social ritual of a tea party.

Once we had finished, Boy gathered up all the dishes unprompted and took them to the kitchen sink (after attempting to put them in the bin, but still). Then he asked to wash his hands. This is usually code for "I want to stand at the sink and see how much water I can direct onto everything within 20 feet." But actually he wanted to continue playing with the little tea set. He filled the cups with water and drank from them, then "washed" them and put them on the drying rack. Over, and over, and over again.

Later, inspired the success of the tea party I went all Nigella and made chocolate cookie cups filled with yoghurt and fruit (and a sneaky spoon of nutella for mammy and daddy) for after dinner. They were so simple to make and looked quite fancy and inviting. And they were pretty tasty too. I used my tried and tested chocolate chip cookie recipe which Boy helped with (flour EVERYWHERE but who cares!) and a muffin tin. We put a ball of cookie dough in each muffin case and poked a hole in the middle, then baked in a hot pre-heated oven for 15 minutes. Once cooled, put a spoon of yoghurt in the middle of each cup and top with a couple of pieces of fruit. Easy peasy.

I hope we have another tea party soon, if not for another chance to use the sweet porcelain tea set, then for another reason to make yummy chocolate cookie cups and serve them to friends. And to encourage all this manly dish washing of course.