Knitting Zeal

It's winter, it's oatmeal in the morning

 

 

I've been on an oatmeal kick this month, especially since it's (sort of) winter.  I keep hoping the the kiddo will enjoy it too, but he keeps refusing to try it.  I usually make the old fashioned style on the stove and add a bit of brown sugar and cinnamon, along with raisins or currents.  I like the texture of the steel cut oats, but they take much longer to make, so I often make them overnight in a water bath in the crock pot.  

I started making baked oatmeal last year, adding fresh blueberries and peaches to the mixture before baking.  It is amazing!  I have seen many baked oatmeal recipes online (on Pinterest!) and decided to try a few out with the hopes of enticing the little guy to try it.  I had success with a peanut butter baked oatmeal that he tried and declared yummy.  For that one, I made half the recipe, used old fashioned oats, and added a spoon of homemade strawberry preserves to the top of mine along with a splash of milk.  Kiddo ate it dry, sort of like a cake or muffin.  (Hmmm, which gives me the idea to bake it in muffin tins to see if that will make it more appealing to him.)  We ate the peanut butter version before I had a chance to photograph it!  It was really good!

This week I made a half recipe of blueberry baked oatmeal with a bunch of blueberries I had that were about to get too mushy to eat.  The kiddo refuesed to touch it, but I loved it even more than the peanut butter version. I did use old fashioned oats in this recipe and a kid cup of Stoneyfield blueberry yogurt, because I didn't have vanilla on hand.  I added a splash of milk when serving it.  Definitely a keeper!

 

 

My little EMT at the Please Touch Museum

We stopped by our favorite place this week, the Please Touch Museum, after a couple month hiatus since our membership had run out.  The little guy had been asking to return for a while, so I renewed the membership, and we went this week.  He loves the place and was so excited to check out the remodeled hospital in the museum.  CHOP sponsors the exhibit, which is a model of their ER along with a kid-sized ambulance.  We visited that exhibit at least twice, since he had so much fun "driving" the ambulance.  It even had a little stretcher in the back, along with lights and a radio sounding out calls for help.  He has been talking about it all week.  Thankfully we've never actually been in the real CHOP ER, so I presume it's a mini model of the place.  There was an X-ray machine that could be used on doll patients and an MRI that also scanned dolls.  My guy said he had seen one of those machines on a tv commercial before, so he knew what it was!  He liked working at the admissions desk!  

 

His other favorite exhibit is the transportation room, including a life sized (half) SEPTA bus. The museum wasn't too crowded, so he got to drive it for a while and play with all of the switches, which he discovered actually make bus sounds, turn on lights, etc.  When the place is crowded there isn't enough time to explore all of that, so he really enjoyed this visit.  I told him that his daddy's daddy use to drive a SEPTA bus too, which really impressed him.  His grandfather would have enjoyed his enthusiasm for transportation!  

 

Here he is driving to Philadelphia!

 

One of the cool things to me at the Please Touch Museum is the ever changing toy exhibits.  It seems that each time we visit I discover a new display somewhere, often of toys I remember from my childhood.  This time we saw a huge display of rubber duckies!  

This is one museum that is so worth the cost of membership to me.  We have a blast every time we go and there seems to be something new to explore each time, even though we've been there so many times.  

Wordless Wednesday

Menu plan Monday for the week of January 23, 2012

Both my husband and I have had bad colds for the past four or so days.  Not fun.  I still can't breathe through my nose!  I made a big pot of chicken soup on Sunday to help us.  I keep making it too salty and need to remember to not add any salt next time until the end!  I rescued it by adding more water. It doesn't help that my sense of smell is absent and affecting my taste buds.  I have a lot of shredded chicken left over that I'll use in meals this week.  Last week, before we were sick, we did enjoy the variety of Mexican inspired dishes, especially the shrimp tacos.  I also made the broccoli cheddar soup, but I was sick that day and it was just ok.  I love it at Panera's, but my cold ruined it for me.  

This week I had a dinner request from the kiddo for burgers.  He saw some leftover buger buns in the back of the fridge when he was raiding it and asked me to make him burgers for dinner.  We don't eat much beef here, so he is used to turkey burgers.  (This means he turns his nose up at a beef burger if we are at a restaurant!)  He also likes sweet potato waffle fries, so if I can find the Alexia brand that we like in the market this week I'll pick them up for him.

 

 

Monday: Baked Buffalo chicken pasta

Tuesday: turkey burgers, sweet potato waffle fries, salad

Wednesday: Grilled Chicken and Pineapple quesidillas (love the Pioneer Woman's recipes!)

Thursday: Ravioli and salad  (thinking of using pesto sauce I froze from the summer basil I grew!)

Friday: Stromboli night, homemade, with salad.  (Discovered that the kiddo will eat it if I leave an end sauce free...sort of like cheesey bread for him!)

Saturday: TBD

Sunday: TBD

Check out the other menus at Organizing Junkie!

Wordless Wednesday

Menu plan Monday for the week of January 16th

Mexican food....that is what has been on my mind for the past week!  It started by a great lunch I had with my sister for her birthday last Tuesday at California Tortilla.  I so wish we had a closer location, as I think it's a place we would go to often!  I had some great chicken tacos that seemed really healthy tasting.  Kiddo ate chips and a PB&J that I brought for him, since he hasn't put kiddie Mexican food on his approved food list, yet!

Then on Saturday night we decided to try out a fairly new Mexican place in the neighborhood for dinner.  I found their kid menu online, and they featured several selections that would be on kiddo's approved foods list for picky four year olds, so we gave it a go.  Mad Mex was great!  It was a sit-down restaurant, with a huge bar, so it wasn't as kid friendly as say Chipolte or Baja Fresh, but we had a great meal and a fun time.  It was packed by the time we left, so getting there for dinner with a kid at 5:30 was perfect timing.  The monkey even tried "something new" according to him, buttered corn.  He loves corn on the cobb, but has refused to eat "cut up" corn until it was served to him with dino shaped chicken nuggets. At least he is branching out!  The tacos, burritos and salsas were great, and the kid's meal came with dessert, which is a plus in someone's book.  The kiddo even ate some of a brownie, finally confirming to me that he really is my kid.  (Up until then, he insisted he did not like brownies, only blondies. really.)

So with all that Mexican food inspiration, I'm planning my menu for this week with a few favorite Mexican inspired recipes.  

Monday: chicken fajitas, rice, salad

Tuesday: Black Bean Soup

Wednesday: Chipolte Lime shrimp tacos with salsa and chips

Thursday: Broccoli Cheddar soup with bread (it's winter, soup weather, and by then we'll be over our Mexican food binge!)

Friday: Pizza night...may change this up though.  Last week's stromboli was a winner with kiddo.  Salad.

Saturday: TBD

Sunday: TBD

This past week I also made a great baked oatmeal dish with peanut butter.  I served it with a bit of milk and a spoonful of strawberry preserves (homemade!) and it was a hit with all.  I'll do another baked oatmeal this week too.  It is a good breakfast for all of us and easy to make.

What's on your menu plan for the week?  Check out the menus over on Organizing Junkie!

For my endless piles of laundry, a detergent review

This winter it seems that I have endless piles of laundry.  Last night I folded three baskets full of laundry.  I had the chance to try out a new laundry detergent from Purex recently and am pleased with the results.  Check out my experience with it on my review page, Knitting Zeal's two cents!

Wordless Wednesday

Progress.

Family date night at the Little Treehouse

My son and I have frequented the Little Treehouse in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, many times over the past three years.  He loves playing there, and even more so now that he can also play in their gym room.  One Friday night we decided to go as a family for dinner and playtime so that my husband could see the Little Treehouse too.  Having never gone on a Friday night I wasn't sure what to expect.  It turned out to be a blast!  

My son loved showing my husband his favorite parts of the play area: the kitchen, the train table and the market stand.  The "boys" played together while I got the chance to sit and knit without much interruption, while also surfing the web on my iPad with the free wifi.  It really was nice having dad there so that I could not be on the lookout the whole time!

We ordered a great dinner of pizza and salads. Our only issue with eating there is that my picky son hates their kid's menu.  I have to investigate to see if they will make a sauce-free pizza for him the next time we are there. The kid's menu really does have great choices, except if your kid only eats chicken and hot dogs!  We probably could make up a meal for him from thier snack options by combining a yogurt with fruit and a pretzel.  He'd happily eat that!  

I learned something new that night: the Little Treehouse is a BYOB!  There were several small groups of parents/friends enjoying bottles of wine while their kids played merrily.  How brilliant!  Hubby isn't a drinker, but I decided that the next time we want to get together with our friends we will have to go for a date night at the Little Treehouse so that the moms can share a bottle of wine and put the dads in charge!  What a fun way to get together with friends and their kids in a fun and safe environment for the kids.  Definitely a goal of mine for this year: plan more family date nights!   

After dinner we went downstairs to the Treehouse's gym room so my son could run around and do what he does best: act like a monkey.  He loved playing on the balance beams and the mini trampoline.  We left with him exhausted after a fun evening of food and play.  It was a great way to spend some family time in an environment that was completely kid friendly.  And since we had dinner there, playtime was included in the cost!  

The Little Treehouse offers a great deal on membership that offers many benefits. A monthly membership includes a weekly class along with unlimited playtime.  See their website for a full listing of memebership benefits as well as the different levels of membership that will fit different budgets.  If you live nearby, membership is an awesome deal, especially in the winter when kids tend to get a bit stir-crazy (and parents!) from being indoors all the time.  This winter, the Little Treehouse is featuring a variety of birthday party entertainers each weekend.  Check out their schedule to see who is on tap for entertainment before you go.

 

Disclosure: While I have been a Little Treehouse customer for years, I am now also a TreeHouse Mom. I received one month of membership to try out and I attend bi-monthly get togethers with the other Treehouse Mom bloggers.  Unfortunately illness and the holidays prevented us from using our free month of membership, but I still believe it's a great deal for locals.  No monetary compensation was received for this blog post and we did pay for our own meal on our family date night.  I truly love and support this great local business.  I wish every family had such a great resource for their kids to play and learn.

Menu plan Monday for the week of January 9th, 2012

So my breakfast plans for last week were ignored.  Instead I baked loaves of Amish Friendship bread in two varieties: cranberry orange and cinnamon.  I've had this starter for a bit over a month and every eleven days (or so) I bake two loaves of bread and then try to give out three batches of starter.  I've run out of people to give starter to, so this time I baked two batches, four loaves, kept one starter, and froze one as an experiment to see if it would keep that way.  I'd hate to have the starter die, but it's getting to the point that we may grow weary of the same breakfast bread.  (However I've managed to vary the flavors.  So far the cranberry orange and banana chocolate chip were my favorites!) I'll have more starter available in about a week, so if you know you live nearby, let me know if you want some! I will get to the peanut butter oatmeal soon!  It didn't help that last week I had a mild to moderate sinus headache all week. It finally left Friday afternoon after caving in and taking a handful of painkillers combined with a sudafed.  I'm sure our unseasonably warm January weather contributed to it!

This week I have plans to make some soup, some winter comfort food (pot pies and meat loaf) and to figure out how to fit roasting that turkey into my schedule.  Of course I need to find a turkey breast too...that never happened last week either!  That may become my Sunday plan.  We'll see!

 

Monday: Manicotti and salad

Tuesday: Sticky Chicken for Chicken pot pie

Wednesday: Chicken Tortilla Soup, with leftover sticky chicken

Thursday: turkey meatloaf, veggies, mashed potatoes

Friday: Stromboli and salad

Saturday: TBD

Sunday: TBD

What's on your menu for the week?  Check out the other menu plans at Organizing Junkie!