Thursday, April 30, 2009

Hopping for fruit

We consider ourselves quite lucky, because our dear daughter loves fruit. So when I found this adorable Fruity Frog recipe on Family Fun.com, I was very excited: not only is it super-cute but she'll actually eat it :-)

Fruity Frog


Green apple (such as a Granny Smith)
Cream cheese
Chocolate chips
Green grapes

1.
Cut the apple into quarters and remove the core. Cut a thin wedge from one quarter for a mouth. For the eyes, shape cream cheese into two half-inch balls, and set them in place. Insert a chocolate chip, point-side in, into each cream cheese ball. 2. Use the grapes, cut in half, for the legs and feet. Slice four halves to create toes. Arrange the pieces as shown and serve on a paper lily pad--I just used a green napkin.

Here's our girl & her frog:



Saturday, April 25, 2009

Yummy Smoothie Fruit Salad

The year was 1995. The first Zuka Juice smoothie bar opened up in Provo, Utah, the brain child of several BYU students who realized they could make great drinks using real fruit, and make some serious money. The Smoothie movement was born and Zuka Juice was everywhere. Then in 2000, Zuka was sold to Jamba Juice, an inferior chain, in my opinion, and the commercially produced smoothie treat lost its appeal for me. However, my love for the home-blended version was still very much alive, and remains to this day. And I've passed on this love to our daughter, who would eat them 24-7 if she could.

So the other day I was looking for a good side dish to go along with our delicious BBQ pork loin, and realized I had the makings of a great fruit salad, using smoothie ingredients as the base. And it was super easy!!! Best of all, I thought I'd pass it on to you, so here it is:

Yummy Smoothie Fruit Salad

Ingredients:

4 cups of your choice of fruit, peeled, chopped and/or sliced--can also use frozen fruit
1/2 cup of plain yogurt
orange juice

Prepare fruit and place in a large bowl. Place the yogurt in a measuring cup that holds at least 2 cups. Then add enough of the orange juice to the yogurt to bring the mixture to the 1 cup mark, and stir to combine. Add this mixture to the fruit in the large bowl, and toss gently.

Enjoy!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

On being 3...

"I'm NOT sleepy! I don't WANT to go to bed!", said the hysterical, shrieking little girl. This after being sent to her room, not once, but twice during dinner, for repeatedly getting out of her seat, throwing food and being generally naughty.

On days like today, when no sleep happens during rest/nap time, it's a pretty good bet that around 6pm, all you-know-what breaks loose. Unfortunately this also happens to be dinner time, so you can imagine all the fun that that generates. The good news is, when she finally settles down enough to catch her breath, she's usually out in a matter of minutes. It seems sleep IS what she needed after all. And tomorrow is a new day.

Be sure to get out and enjoy the sunshine this weekend!
K~

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Mind your Ps and Q (tips)

Recently while on a cross-country car trip to Wisconsin, for a family member's funeral, we found that if we stayed in motels that also had swimming pools, we could preserve what little of our sanity that we had left, by taking nightly swims. There was a downside to all that swimming, however. Besides our skin retaining that oh-so-lovely smell of chlorine, my poor ears had built up quite the reservoir of water. Finally on the second to last day I couldn't stand it anymore, and decided to take some action.

I grabbed a Q-tip and swabbed the inside of my ear. When I was done, I took it out, and noticed the cotton tip was no longer on the end!!! I looked around on the floor, in my hair, down the back of my shirt, but it was nowhere to be seen. I asked David to look in my ear, on the off chance that it had lodged there, although it didn't feel like it was in there. He looked, and didn't see anything, so I just assumed it had gone flying under a chair or something.

Fast forward to yesterday. My ear kept feeling really funny, not really painful, but just like there was something in there, like wax or something. David felt obliged to suggest it might be a bug like in the Wrath of Khan, which I promptly put a stop to that talk! I even tried putting some rubbing alcohol in my ear, as that used to work when we'd get swimmer's ear from swimming all summer, but with no success. I finally decided to call the doctor and make an appointment.

When I saw the doctor, I sheepishly told her I'd been cleaning out my ears with a Q-tip, after swimming, and that the tip had broken off, but it couldn't possibly be in my ear! She took one look, and said, "THERE IT IS!" So she got to play with her long, skinny tweezers, and pulled it right out.

Needless to say, I felt like the kid with a button up its nose, but at least she was able to get it out fairly easily. And I guess that will teach me not to use cheap Q-tips from now on!