S is for School Holidays

In Australia our mid year school break is approaching.  While it is winter for us I know many of you are in the midst of summer school break so I thought a list of food related activities for the school holidays might come in handy right about now.

1. Learn to make something new - book into a cookery class or do a swap with a friend. They teach you and your children how to make a favourite dish and then you can return the favour.

2. Plan and make a picnic - indoors if it is cold, outdoors if the weather is warm enough. There is something about a picnic that makes the food extra special so you don't need to go to a lot of trouble. These Iced Chocolates and Strawberry Shortcake Kebabs are good picnic treats and don't take much time to put together.  Visit our Picnic Food Pinterest board for some other ideas.

3. Visit a working farm to see where our food comes from.  Dairy farms are great for kids but you might also have a sheep or crop farm nearby that welcomes visitors.

4. Visit a farmers market or local produce co-op. Many places will have samples for you and your children to try.

5. Host a cookie decorating or cupcake decorating play date for your child and their friends.

6. Try out new ideas for lunchbox items.  Search our Lunchbox Ideas Pinterest board, magazines or kids cook books with your child for possible items for your kids lunch boxes.  Have them help make some things off the list and taste test them for back to school.

7. Bake something together that takes a little extra time that you don't usually have.  Try homemade bread or a rainbow layered cake.

8. Visit your local library and borrow some children's cooking books.  Read them together and choose something to make. We made Gingerbread Cookies after borrowing and reading a Maisy book from our local public library.

9. Take inspiration from your child's favourite book and see if you can come up with a dish to make. Try our Ariel's Treasure Cakes or Cinderella's Pumpkin Doughnuts.

10. Spend the day with grandparents or another elder for your community (if you don't) have any relatives close and make a recipe from their collection.  You can discover some wonderful tried and true recipes this way and chances are your child will remember this time spent together for a long time to come.

To help you plan what to do on the holidays, I have made this activity list into a free printable.  You can read it with your child and mark the activities you want to do. Or use it as a checklist and tick each one as you do it.

Click on the image above or on this link to download the free School Holidays Activity List printable.

Have a safe and happy break.

E is for Easter Fun

I love the rainbow lambs in the top left corner.

 Today we finished painting the Easter Ornaments we made yesterday.  We used this idea for Baking Soda Easter Eggs from The DIY Dreamer.  They are similar to salt dough ornaments but a lot faster to cook and are very white.

The recipe for the baking soda ornaments is from Urban Bliss Life. The only change I would make to the recipe is to leave the ornaments in the oven for longer to make sure they are harder.  Maybe up to 1 hour and 15 minutes.  As long as possible without them going brown.  If you are making these in Australia the oven temperature converts to 80 degrees Celcius.

Tomorrow we will hopefully get time to make marshmallows.  I'll make the marshmallow as its not a kid friendly recipe that children Bear and Bee's age can help with.  Then Bear and Bee can help cut up the marshmallow using our Easter themed cookie cutters.  I will post photos of the results on our Facebook page.  

If you find yourself wanting to use up some of the mini easter eggs try out our Easter Surprise Muffins.

M is for Menu Plan Week 3 Campstyle

Setting up camp

I haven't created a regular menu plan for this week as our family is going camping tomorrow.  Instead I have linked to recipes for some of the meals and snacks we are going to cook this week - some for the first time.

Breakfasts will include cereal and toast as usual but since we are on holidays there will also be pancakes, bacon and egg muffins and scrambled eggs on toast.

With us arriving at the campsite just before lunch tomorrow we will be trying out Tacos in a bag for easy dining.  On other days we will have sandwiches, pita breads and wraps.

I would love to try out some new camping recipes for dinner but many of the ones I am interested in are for cooler weather and wouldn't suit Bear and Bee's tastes at the moment.  So I have bookmarked them for future camping trips.  We are however going to have Meatball Pasta with a salad and crusty bread,  'Gourmet' hot dogs and Chicken Fajitas (on page 32 of the book). 

For snacks we are taking fruit that transports well like apples, trail mix, crackers and vegetables sticks.  For a sweet treat I have packed this Gingerbread and these Malted Milk Chocolate Chip cookies (and are Bee's new favourite cookie) which we baked today.

What are your families favourite foods to take camping?

For more camping food ideas, make sure you have a look at our Camping Pinterest board.

C is for Camping 2014

In a little under 2 weeks some states of Australia are lucky enough to start their Easter school holidays.  Now that we live in the tropical north of Queensland we are going to take advantage of the wonderful holiday locations and, along with our new tent, get to know this part of our home state a little better.

And since I am always looking for ideas on how to do things better I have been scouring Pinterest for Camping Food and Organisation tips. 

Jillian from A Mom with a lesson Plan has a great list of ideas to make camping easier and fun.  I am definitely going to try out the Walking Tacos, number 6 on the list of Yummy Camping Recipes. Although I will probably use a healthier style of corn chip bought in bulk and divided up into small zip lock bags.

It's not food related but placing solar powered garden lights near the tent ropes is a great idea from One good thing by Jillee.   As is the clever camp kitchen organiser.  Check it out!

For more great camping ideas, head on over to our Camping board on Pinterest.  There's a link in the sidebar.

Do you have any sure fire tips or menu items for camping with kids?

P is for Play More Games

Bear and Bee are starting to be interested in playing traditional board and card games like Snakes and Ladders and Snap. I am hoping we will be able to foster this interest while camping this week and have a tv and mostly electronic free few days. With so many wonderful apps for children and educational online games it can be easy to forget about all the great games that don't require batteries.

Teaching children to play games helps them learn many skills such as turn taking, counting, planning ahead, communication and problem solving as well as the enjoyment of spending time with family and friends.

While I can't think of any board games involving food, there are lots of food related party games that you can play with your children. Here are a few of my suggestions.

Kitchen scavenger hunt
Give your children a list of items to find in your kitchen and pantry. For younger children you might like to take photos of the items. For older children you could set a time limit. It would be fun to create the hunt list using the items from a recipe. Once the hunt is finished you and your child can then make the recipe together.

The chopstick challenge
For this game all you need is a bowl of lollies such as smarties, maltesers, m&ms or gummy bears, nuts or breakfast cereal like Cheerios and a pair of chopsticks for each person. For younger children you can get chopsticks that are joined together at the top to make them easier to use. The harder and shinier the objects to be picked up the greater the challenge.

Food memory
This is a foodie version of the classic memory or concentration game. Find pairs of food items such as apples, oranges, baked beans tins etc. Hide them in a grid pattern under some plastic (not see through ones) cups and challenge your child to find the pairs.

Build em up
Using carrot sticks, bread sticks and pretzel sticks your child can try to build the tallest tower. Add in marshmallows and gum drops for flexible joints and watch the super structures grow.

Calling all super chefs
Host your own version of Masterchef, iron chef or ready steady cook. Provide your child with 4 or 5 ingredients and challenge them to create an original snack. You never know what they'll come up with! Set up the video camera or take photos to add to the excitement.

What games do you like to play with your child?

I is for Iced Biscuits

 Spring school holidays are upon us here in Queensland and while Bear and Bee are too small for school it does mean they are enjoying having their older cousin Angel visit for a few days.

We are been to the beach and the park, on a play date with Bear and Bee’s friends and we are going to the movies tomorrow, so today was cooking day.  And while we didn’t technically cook anything the girls did have a lot of fun – and enjoyed the end results.

I decided to go with an old standby of mine – biscuits and icing.  I bought a packet of plain sweet biscuits, made up some icing and set out a few different types of lollies.  The girls did the rest.

These iced biscuits would be a great Halloween party activity for kids.  All you need to do is use orange, white or even grey icing and Halloween themed lollies such as lolly teeth, black cats, liquorice, gummy worms etc.

Scissors are handy for lots of things including snipping marshmallows.

Angel practicing her knife skills.

Mixing food colouring into icing (icing sugar mixture and hot water)

I found the squeezy icing bottles, shown in the photo above, in a discount shop and decided to try them with Bear and Bee.  We have tried the icing tubes available in the supermarkets but the girls don’t have enough strength in their hands to make them work well.  These squeezy bottles are a bit tricky as you need to push down on them but I made the icing quite thin so it came out easily.  This meant that the designs aren’t very clear but they were still a hit and the girls were happy they could do the icing themselves.

Bear was very pleased with her decorated biscuits.

Bee also loved her decorated biscuits.

Angel was happy wither her biscuits too.

A few more decorated biscuit designs.

What is your go-to school holiday cooking activity?