Yummy Kale Chips-a family affair

We have an over abundance of kale in our garden so we decided to make some yummy kale chips.

L and Granny picked the kale and L washed and tore it into bite size pieces. 

 

Baby J helped to wash.

Spinning the kale together.

 

Adding the dressing.  This was L's least favourite bit.

I put them in the dehydrator for several hours and the result was lovely zingy kale chips.

There are tons of different recipes around the Internet.  We used this one from Soma Studio.  They ended up being really tangy.  

Rainbow Birthday meal

Friday was L's third birthday.  I've been sooo busy the last couple of weeks preparing for everything and now it's finally all over.  We had a fantastic weekend and I think L totally enjoyed herself.

I was lucky enough to time our final rainbow meal for her actual birthday.

We had pesto pasta (L's favorite) for our main course and rainbow veggie and fruit platters.

L and Daddy set the table with candles for each color of the rainbow.

The poor little sausage was sooo tired from all of her birthday celebrations that she barely made it through dinner!

This whole rainbow eating adventure has been such great fun and has given us something to look forward to every Friday.

I would totally recommend tying it out with your little one!

Indigo and Violet...phew!

Things seem to have been pretty hectic around here lately.  I've been busy preparing for L's birthday and birthday party next weekend as well as making her Halloween costume.

I also started teaching two music classes this week and have been looking for other work.

I really wanted to fit in our last rainbow meal this week so we could celebrate L's birthday with a complete rainbow meal with all of the colors.

I decided to combine indigo and violet since really we had a hard enough time with blue to try and do indigo as a whole meal on it's own.

So here we go.  It was actually very successful.  We had blue corn chips with hummus and red(which is actually totally purple!!)cabbage coleslaw with raisins and cashew nuts.  We also tried a Chinese eggplant which I fried up with some garlic, onions, mushrooms and green pepper.  It was totally yum!

L also had to have olives which are her favorite!

 We had blackberry and elderberry juice to drink and plums for dessert!

So there you have it.  Indigo and Violet.  We have  now managed to eat all the colors of the rainbow!! Woohoo!

I'm so looking forward to next week when we will eat all of the colors of the rainbow in one meal!

Stay tuned for that plus tons of upcoming posts on birthday preparations and celebrations!

Singing the blues for blue week

I think L summed up our blue meal perfectly when I asked her how she liked it this is what she said

"Well, I had fun....but I didn't really have fun."

L got a raging cold half way through last week and then gave it to me.  We still went ahead with blue week even though we weren't feeling that great.

So has anyone else ever considered how many naturally blue foods there out there(keep in mind we still have indigo and violet still to go)?  There are seriously hardly any!!

I though I came up with a brilliant plan by finding a recipe for natural blue food dye!! I added it to some leek and potato soup and viola mildly blue soup.

Yup that's all we had.   L declared she didn't like it and just ate the pita bread.  In the end because she was sick we cut up an assortment of veggies for her which she enjoyed a lot more.

For dessert we had blueberry muffins which we'd made earlier.  After the meal I felt sick and had to lie down. 

All in all I'd say blue meal =FAIL

Hopefully next week will be more successful.  I have a few ideas in mind.

To end on a brighter note.  Here is a picture of the fruit bouquet we made for the family potluck at L's school.

It went down a treat!

Going Green

I've been looking forward to green week in our Rainbow Eating Adventure since the beginning.  We finally got to it and it was a great success.

We started off by making our famous "green" smoothies.  These are something we usually have in the morning but we made an exception for this occasion.

First a banana and some generous handfuls of yummy spinach.  L then puts in hemp protein powder and almond milk.  Usually we add a bunch of whatever fruit we have on hand(this is actually a picture of a different smoothie)but this time to keep the green color for our meal we didn't add any blueberries.  Add a little ice and you're good to go.  A great way to get leafy greens into your child's diet!

For our main course we had L's all time favorite pesto pasta.  I used spinach pasta for the first time and it went down a treat. 

Along with the pasta we had sugar snap pea pods, cucumber and green pepper.

We had kiwi and green grapes for dessert but I absent mindedly erased the pictures from my camera before I put them on the computer.  Oh well I'm sure you all know what a kiwi and grapes look like!
So that was green.  L ate so much that when she had her bath afterwards her round stomach looked like a little Buddha belly.

Yellow

This week was yellow in our Rainbow Eating Adventure and it was the perfect color to brighten up a dreary, rainy Sunday.

L helped to husk the corn on the cob. Yum!  She also helped to crack and whisk up the eggs for our scrambled eggs.

Even my mom's friends are getting into the spirit lending us this fab yellow table cloth and napkins.

The new thing we tried was polenta.  It wasn't our favorite but at least we both tried it.  When we were grocery shopping L insisted on yellow tomatoes.

For dessert we had custard and bananas.  One of my favorites.  L took one bite and declared she doesn't like custard.  I've decided I have an odd kiddo who always chooses fruit and vegetables over anything else.  She ended up just eating a banana.  Granny was happy to eat her custard!

This trying out new things backfired on me last night when L and her daddy were eating some olives(which I can't stand).  L asked if I would like to try one and I said no thank you.  She says "well you have to at least try it"  Arg  what can I say to that when I use that on her all of the time!  So I tried to look enthusiastic as I gave it a small nibble and then tried to suppress a large gag! 
Check out what others are eating over at Sunbeams and Sanity.

Orange you glad we're not on blue week!

This Friday we had our Orange meal in our Rainbow Eating Adventure.

We started off with lentils which are called red lentils but as all can plainly see they're orange!

This led to some interesting discussion.

L peeled the sweet potatoes or yams as they're called here.

We don't have a completely orange table cloth so we used this African one my sister brought back from her travels. It was so much better because it has elephants and rhinos and other animals on it!!

We were happy to have Daddy join us for this meal, especially since he is such a huge carnivore!!

We dined on lentils, sweet potato, carrot (pita bread for dipping)and orange juice to drink.

For dessert we had mango and nectarines. Yummy! We were also going to have cantaloupe but when I cut into it unfortunately it was rotten : (

L helped to cut the nectarines which led to her first cutting incident.  It was my fault really as I gave her one of our new knives which are super sharp.  She just shaved a small piece of skin off her index finger and there was "blood" which is always exciting and called for a band aid(even more exciting).  Once the band aid was on she was as good as new.
This meal was fun but not quite as much of a success as the red one.  L loves lentils but like me she's not a fan of the sweet potato.  At least we both tried it.
We're looking forward to our yellow meal next week.

If you'd like to participate in the Rainbow Eating Adventure you can link up your posts over at Sunbeams and Sanity.
Happy Eating!

Rainbow Eating Adventure

We are participating in Sunbeams and Sanity's(formerly Making of a Montessori Mum) Rainbow Eating Adventure.

Basically each week you eat one meal of each color of the rainbow, take a pics and put them around your rainbow.

This week we're starting off with red. 

After coloring in her rainbow L and I thought up all different kinds of foods that are red and I wrote them down.  Then we went shopping.

I decided to make quesadilla's with a filling of dark red kidney beans, red onion and red pepper.  We used red tomato tortillas.

L made us some red strawberry smoothies with almond milk.

Here is our main course along with tomato and wild rice soup.  We set the table with a red table cloth and candles.  The only red napkins we could find were the Christmas ones!lol  We even put on red tops for the occasion.

For dessert we had watermelon which is one of our favorites.

Our first color has been a blast and both L and I got totally into it.  L ate so much of everything and kept saying thank you for making the quesadillas mommy and this is such a great meal!  Who can argue with that.
We can't wait for next week and are already planning what we are going to have.
This meal didn't challenge us too much as we already both eat all of the foods we used but in the coming weeks we're hoping to try out some new things.

If you'd like to participate in this magical rainbow eating adventure just hop on over to Sunbeams and Sanity  link your post with the rest and we'll all form a bloggy rainbow food connection! : )