President's Day Activity: Food Faces

It's President's Day here in the US, celebrating the births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I decided to have a little dinnertime activity where we made faces of these presidents using our dinner.  We were eating mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and grilled chicken.  Here are the results:

Washington, using potatoes, corn, lima bean, and green bean

Lincoln, using potatoes, chicken, lima beans, and green bean

Washington, using mixed vegetables and chicken

We're not sure what this is.  My two-year-old didn't specify...

Lincoln, using potatoes, chicken, lima beans, peas, corn, and green beans

Washington, using chicken, potatoes, and mixed vegetables

Which do you like?  And what creative things do you do with your food?

Valentine's Day Pancakes

Look at the sweet pancakes my fantastic husband made for Valentine's Day!  Isn't he great?

If you'd like my great pancake recipe (minus the food coloring!), it's here:

Buttermilk Pancakes

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
2 T sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 T butter, melted
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (NO SUBSTITUTIONS)

In a medium mixing bowl, combine all the dry ingredients.  Add the wet ingredients and mix until combined (may be slightly lumpy).  Heat your griddle over medium heat until water drops dance on top.  Use about 1/4 cup of batter for each pancake.  Cook until edges are dull and a few bubbles have popped on the surface of the pancake, then flip and cook 30 seconds on the other side.  Serve hot.
Makes about 12 pancakes.

Homemade Fortune Cookies

I was looking around the Internet for some fun and easy things to do for Valentine's Day and saw this one on the ourbestbites.com blog.  It isn't too difficult but does require a little time.  Since I loved the look of it and had all the ingredients on hand, I thought I'd give it a try.  The first batch disappeared in no time, so the next day I made another double batch and packaged them up to give to the kids teachers  and some special friends for Valentine's Day.  I even had the kids help me write the fortunes and do the dipping and sprinkling.  You could, of course, do this for any event, since you write the fortunes!  You could dip them or not, as you like.

The recipe below is their recipe, but with all my comments and everything I learned while making so many of them!  Enjoy!


Homemade Fortune Cookies
adapted from Cooking Light

Ingredients:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract (or you can use 1 tsp of vanilla and skip the almond)
2 egg whites (or you can substitute meringue powder, just follow directions on package)

Place all ingredients in food processor and blend to combine.  Place in container, cover, and chill for 1 hour or more.

Prepare fortunes, and have folded fortunes, a thin-edged metal spatula and a bowl close to the oven.

Preheat oven to 400F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat mat (or use a non-stick pan). Whatever you do to your pan, afterwords spray it lightly with cooking spray.  Believe me, this is essential. 

Using a teaspoon, spoon 1 teaspoon batter onto the baking sheet.  Spread into a 3-inch circle.  It will be very thin, almost like icing.  Repeat until you have 5 circles on a sheet (Even though you can fit more on your sheet, you won't be able to fold them fast enough before they get hard if you cook more than that at a time.  Trust me on this one!).  Bake at 400F for 4 1/2 to 5 minutes.  They should have brown edges but the middles should still be white.  Remove from oven and count to 15.  Using a sharp-edged spatula, carefully and quickly remove one cookie.  Flip over, place folded fortune in the middle, then fold cookie in half.  Hold edges together and pull the ends of the cookie down over the rim of a bowl to get the traditional fortune cookie look (see picture).  Hold for a few seconds until set, then move quickly on to the next cookie.  Repeat with remaining cookies.

You should really pinch with both fingers, but then I didn't have a hand to use the camera.

If desired, you can melt chocolate, almond bark, or candy melts and dip part of the cookie in.  Top with sprinkles, nuts, or bits of toffee for a more festive look.

Makes about 35 cookies.

We checked out this book from the library:

(Image from Amazon.com)
These lovely Dutch authors have several similarly-food-themed books, all of which we've loved.  Inspired by their creations, the kids wanted to make some mushroom men.  Here's what we came up with:

And the red pepper car:

Everyone together:

And what do you do with all these mushroom men when you've finished with them?  You fry them up and eat them, of course!
(Don't worry, those were food-coloring markers we used)

Here they are, feeling a little less put together:

Amazingly, the kids were eager to eat them.  J never got one as far as inside his mouth, though.  E dug right in and gave them an enthusiastic two thumbs up, which shocked me to no end!  Babycakes was hesitant at first, but ate a few in the end and seemed to enjoy them.  Mushroom men--YUM!