Happy Birthday Grandma!!!

We had a surprise party for my Grandma's 75th birthday. I made her a slot machine/gambling cake. What a project! I would have not finished if my parents and Nick didn't help me either with the cake or keeping Brooklynn occupied. It turned out really nice and it tasted good too! The best part is my Grandma had a great time! It is always great to show those who do so much for us how much we care, love and appreciate them!

OH BANANAS!!!

Today was very productive so far. Brooklynn the last two nights has been waking up in the middle of the night. I do not know what is up. I think I am going to try to get her in bed by 9:30pm - she has been staying up until 10pm. Hopefully that works! Anyway so on to my productive morning - Up at 5am, worked for an hour, went to the gym and worked out, went grocery shopping at Woodmans, fed Brookie breakfast and worked a little more.

So since I was ahead of schedule today,I decided to bake a banana bread and not waste my brown bananas. Brooklynn being the helper she is wanted to help me. So I pushed a chair up and she helped me puree the bananas and cauliflower (BTW the banana bread I made has pureed cauliflower in it - anything to get more veggies in Brooklynn)So after pureeing the bananas I put them in a bowl. I turned to get the flour and when I turned back - Brooklynn was trying to dump all the pureed bananas into the measuring cup. AHHHH! My first instinct was to get mad - but I realize she was trying to help. SO I didn't yell at her but I did put her on the ground until I got it all cleaned up. Needless to say I had to use the bananas that were all over the counter. I just cleaned my counter so I think it will be OK - it isn't like I am giving the bread away as a gift or anything.... So I will let you know how this bread turns out and if it is good with the cauliflower in it.....
The recipe is from Deceptively Delicious
**** Update: The bread was good. I would say it wasn't the best banana bread I have had - but it was really good considering it was made with whole wheat flour and cauliflower!

It's Lemon-licious

The lemon coffee cake was very good. Everyone seemed to like it (or didn’t have the heart to tell me it wasn’t good). Only thing I am changing, if I ever get bit by the Martha bug again, will be too leave out the slices of lemons in the cake. Instead I will just add some lemon juice to the cake batter. The slices with the rinds were weird in the middle of the cake and too tart for my taste. I guess I am not used to "gourmet".

On another baking note… I am on a mission to find finger food that I can make for Brooklynn that are healthful. She LOVES the Gerber graduate raviolis, but I can not feed those to her every night. After scrounging through some books I found a recipe for chicken & apple meatballs. I of course adapted it to be Italian chicken and carrot meatballs. Let’s just say it took a while but after they were done… SUCCESS! Brooklynn loved them and gobbled them up! I have been trying to get her to eat veggies and she gags and will spit them out. But not these hidden carrots, she didn’t even know they were there. Ha Ha.. I knew I could trick her. I am so excited and have all these ideas on other things I am going to try for her. The great thing about these meatballs is they will travel just as easy as the Gerber raviolis. So if anyone else has any healthful finger food ideas I would love to hear them so that I could add them to our “menu”

Here is the recipe for the Italian Chicken & Carrot Meatballs:
2 raw chicken breasts
Steamed carrots
¼ C parmesan cheese
Italian Seasoning
¼ C Italian bread crumbs
¼ onion chopped fine
1 egg beaten
garlic powder
pepper

In a food processor puree the chicken and carrots. Mix together all ingredients ( I mixed all ingredients in the food processor). Roll meatball mixture into small meatballs and roll in flour. Shallow fry them in a pan of hot olive oil until golden brown. If you need to cook them further cook in the oven.

They were actually pretty good, I even liked them.