May 8: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

This morning for breakfast we had fruity vanilla oatmeal with fruit kabobs.  The oatmeal was really good, and the fruit kabobs were a hit with the 5-year-old, although he requested no yogurt or coconut flakes on his.  My daughter is so anti-fruit it isn't even funny, so she wouldn't touch these, but she liked the oatmeal.

For lunch, we made cheesy crackers and apple chips.

My adorable little helper here, in his Lego Star Wars underwear, measured the ingredients and mixed the dough for the crackers.  I rolled the dough into a log and sliced, then pressed on each cracker with a fork.

These were awesome!  It's pretty amazing that you can make such a delicious cracker with just three simple ingredients.  The kids and I topped them with cottage cheese which I think complimented them perfectly.

At the same time we were making the crackers, we were also making the apple chips.

I put the apple juice on the stove to start boiling and cut the apples into thin slices.  The instructions said not to worry about seeds because they would fall out during boiling, but that was not the case for us so I would recommend removing the seeds.

After boiling, we layed them on cookie sheets and pat them dry, then set them in the oven at 250 degrees.  We were waiting for them to be "dry and brown," and meanwhile we made, baked, and ate the crackers, and it was still another hour before the apples even looked remotely done.

 And after all that waiting, the kids did NOT like them!  Bummer!  I thought they were okay.  I'm just not a huge fan of dried fruit.  Neither are my kids, apparently.

I decided I really really wanted to try making home made ramen.  I mixed up the dough for the noodles and tried to cut them as thin as I could.

Not very thin, huh?  These look more like soba than ramen!

I cooked them in some homemade chicken broth and added soy sauce.

The result: the broth was amazing, I was chugging it.  The noodles were not so great. :)  I don't know if it was the recipe that was a bummer, or if I am just a terrible ramen noodle maker! ha.

For dinner, I had no idea what I was doing.  I kept searching around for recipes, but I didn't have the right ingredients, or the ingredients were heavily processed foods, and I was so tired I didn't want to put a ton of effort into anything. Waah.  I threw a life line out to my facebook friends, and decided to try taco rice per a suggestion.  Of course, none of the recipes I found were entirely "suitable" so I had to wing it a little bit.  Here is what I did:  I browned 1 pound of ground turkey in my cast iron skillet, then added 1.5 cups of chicken broth, 1 can of tomato sauce, cumin, red pepper, and onion powder.  I let that simmer for awhile and meanwhile had brown rice in the rice maker.  When the rice was done, I added 2 cups of cooked rice and 8 oz. of grated cheese.

It was really good!  The kids and I topped ours with sour cream.   I was simultaneously making these sweet potato crescent rolls, which I highly, highly recommend!  

They are very fall tasting... you know, Thanksgiving-ish.  I guess you wouldn't normally pair taco with sweet potato, but whatever.  The kids liked the rolls.  Nobody complained about the taco rice, either.