Snack Report #1

As promised, I'm back to report on how my more intentional snack planning worked out. It was a good experiment for sure, but it needs some tweaking. There are some parts I want to keep, some I want to modify, and some that I plan to abandon altogether.

First, I loved having a set time each day. Out of habit, my kids would beg for food around the clock, and it was so nice (and liberating!) to be able to say, "Sorry, it's not time for a snack yet" or, "We already ate. Now you'll have to wait for dinner." For the most part, we stuck to the 9:30 am snack time, but we had to make the afternoon time a little more flexible. I found that if the younger ones could hold out, I preferred waiting until 4:00 when Aaron got home so I could feed them all at the same time. (Can you blame me?)

My kids quickly caught on to the pre-planned snack. I met with very little complaining when I pointed to the calendar and said, "Looks like celery and peanut butter today." If it was written down, they just went with it (and I admit to changing it on the spot a couple of times but still consulting the calendar for show--that's allowed). They got so used to it, in fact, that on Saturday (which was empty on the calendar), Bradley came up to me and said, "Write something on the calendar so we can have a snack!"

However, even though I liked writing the snacks down, I found that I didn't like writing them on the calendar. After a couple of weeks, it started to look so cluttered and messy, and the important things like appointments and reminders got lost amidst the grapes and bananas.

So I made up a generic outline that I just stuck in a plastic sheet protector so I can just use a dry erase marker on it. This will be our first week using it rather than the calendar, so I'll let you know if it's a better fit for us.

And now about the snacks themselves.

I loved the variety, and I loved having a plan. However, I did not love writing out a new plan every week. I'm a creature of habit, and I realized that, for the most part, I prefer consistently having the same snack schedule week after week after week and eliminate the need for decision. Gretchen Rubin said the "real key to habits is . . . the lack of decision making." I don't mind if we have bananas and peanut butter every Tuesday, but if I have to decide to have bananas and peanut butter every Tuesday, then it's probably not going to happen.

The snack planning wasn't all in vain however. As I sat down and planned out our snacks for several weeks, some go-to, favorite snacks emerged (bananas/pb, celery/pb/raisins, and, unfortunately, goldfish crackers. Turns out, we eat a lot of goldfish). This was really helpful and eye-opening for me, and, you can be sure, I'm turning to that data as I plan out our more permanent snacks. With my new outline, I wrote in the snacks we liked the most, and now I'll just change them out here and there as we want/need, but for the most part, they'll stay the same from week to week.

The one bit of variety I liked (and that I'm holding onto) was making a new recipe every Monday and freezing half of it. The freezing part didn't always work out because sometimes we liked whatever it was so much that we gobbled it up in record time, but I loved eating something new and different each week and enjoyed the chance to try out some new recipes I've found. Over the last four weeks, we made Savory Waffles (I love these, and they freeze really well, but unfortunately, they are not my kids' favorite),  Lemon Yogurt Bread (thumbs up--I could make this every week and be happy), Glazed Strawberry Bread (thumbs down; soggy texture = nasty), and Chocolate Zucchini Muffins (I didn't get to freeze any of these, we liked them so much).

 

So . . . I made some significant progress in the last few weeks, but I need to keep up my momentum because snack time is still far from effortless. I know I'm especially going to need to do some tweaking once school gets out. We just bought a share in our little neighborhood pool, so I'm definitely going to need some good portable ideas since we'll probably be spending most afternoons camped out by the water. Consider this the first snack report of many.

What are your favorite summer snacks? Do you have any good snack containers you like to use? (I'd prefer not to single-handedly fill up the landfill with Ziploc bags.) Also, any small coolers you especially like? Share your snacking successes (and failures, if you'd like)!

Summer Fun: Sand Dough

My kids love play dough. I think they'd play with it every day if I didn't mind cleaning up the aftermath. Unfortunately (for them), I usually prefer the less messy activites like, oh say, reading.

But some days I decide to be the fun mom and let them play with playdoh to their heart's content.

And sometimes I decide to be the really fun mom and let them make the playdoh and then play with it.

(This happens, oh, about once a year. I certainly don't want them expecting such entertainment every day.)

A few weeks ago, I saw this recipe for sand dough on Blog Me Mom. It's called sand dough because it has cornmeal in it, which gives it a grittier (i.e., sandier) texture. The gorgeous pictures showed soft balls of dough in summery colors next to a pile of rainbow "sand."

Um, okay, even when I'm being a really fun mom, I'm not five-colors fun. Just to clarify.

So here you get the overly simplified version.

But you know what? My kids still loved it.

To make sand dough, you'll need:

1/2 cup white flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons oil
1 1/2 tablespoons cream of tarter
One koolaid envelope (0.13 oz.)
1/2 cup boiling water

Stir the flour, cornmeal, salt, oil, cream of tarter, and koolaid together.

Add the boiling water (adult assistance required).

Adjust the ratios as needed. After the boys started playing with it, we ended up kneading in some more flour to reach a less sticky consistency.

Squish, roll, cut, smash, repeat.

 

We've had our sand dough for over a week now (stored in a plastic bag), and it's still good and playable. 

(For more of our summer fun, click here.)

Summer Fun: Popsicles

Pinterest is overloaded with popsicle recipes right now, and I've pinned my share of them. But last week, when my kids and I decided to make some, I fell back on the popsicles my mom always made when I was a kid. Turns out, it was possible to be a fun mom twenty years ago in the Dark Ages before the internet.

Jello/Kool-aid popsicles

1 (3 oz.) package jello (any flavor - and you can see I'm not particular about the brand)
2 cups boiling water
1 (0.13 oz.) envelope kool-aid (any flavor)
2 cups cold water
1 cup sugar

First, pour the jello into the boiling water. If you're having small children help you, keep their hands away from the measuring cup. Give it a good stir until completely dissolved.

Then, pour the kool-aid contents into the cold water. Give it another good stir.

Pour the two liquids together. You definitely don't have to use the same two flavors. Here we used raspberry jello and lemon-lime kool-aid (not because we were trying to be creative but because it's what I had in our pantry).

 

Pour in one cup of sugar and stir until dissolved. (One of the reasons I like these popsicles better than, say, just frozen juice is because the jello gives them a slightly softer texture, making them easier to bite into (if that's your thing)).

 

Pour the mixture into molds. With these particular molds (which I think are made by Tupperware--I picked them up at a garage sale for a couple of dollars), I made about two dozen popsicles.



Freeze for 4-6 hours.

Enjoy on a sweltering hot day, and think about what flavor you want to make next (lemon/lemon is one of my favorites!).

Old Black Witch's Blueberry Pancakes

Last night we decided to have pancakes for dinner. We rarely, almost never, have pancakes for breakfast. But pancakes for dinner? About once a month. It is one of the few meals we eat that I don't have to hear any complaints about. Perhaps it has something to do with it being laden with sugar . . .

Since recently reading (and loving) Old Black Witch, we decided to make her famous blueberry pancakes.

In reality, these pancakes are pretty much just your average flour, baking powder and eggs except for the magical chant you repeat three times while stirring in the blueberries:

Gobble dee gook

With a wooden spoon, 

The laugh of a toad

At the height of the moon!

We practiced several times so we could say it without stumbling. And then, while Maxwell stirred, all five of us (yes, even Mike, who was home by then) chanted the magic words. It was quite thrilling. I was reminded that in order to make something special, you don't have to do anything grand or expensive. You just have to act like it's special, and then, magically, it is.

Old Black Witch's Blueberry Pancakes

1 1/4 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup milk
3 tablespoons melted butter
1/2 cup blueberries (thawed or fresh)

Mix ingredients together, and then pour in 1/4 cup amounts on hot griddle. Flip when all the bubbles have popped.

We doubled the recipe, and as we heartily consumed almost all of them, we had to agree they were some of the best pancakes we'd ever eaten.

We're sure it's because of those magical words.