Let's Get This "Long Term" Ball Rolling

I recently asked Charlie to pick a recipe out of C is for Cooking. He went with Ernie's Fruity Frozen Fun Pops. I like the idea of these a lot more than either one of us enjoyed the outcome.

Blitz banana, canned crushed pineapple, plain yogurt, and a little sugar in the blender. Fill an ice cube tray with the mixture. Put them in the freezer, and when they're half frozen, stab them with straws.

These were annoying to eat, because the second they get a little melty, they fall off the straw and make slow-eating 4 year olds scream. Also, the straws that I used weren't sturdy enough to support the weight of the cube, so they bent. Refer back to the screaming 4 year old.

My biggest problem with this, though, was that the texture of the cube was unpleasant to eat. There weren't fruit chunks, but there was a lot of fiber from the pineapple, so you almost had to chew it. Not ideal.

Charlie barely ate his first one, and never wanted another. I felt the same way.

Conclusion: Dislike.

My first two forays into Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays have been delightful.

First up: Sticky Cherry Cake, from her Valentine's Day section. This cake uses canned cherries in the batter, and then the syrup from the can is cooked down with sugar and butter, and poured on top of the cooked cake.

Holy moly. This thing was rich, sweet, and delicious. The chewy, caramelized edges were the best part. For me, a little went a long way, and my family didn't eat much of it on the day I made it. However, our friends and their kids came for dinner the next day. We demolished the rest of the cake. One of the kids may have licked the pan clean.

Conclusion: Loved it. Sometimes you need something this decadently sweet.

The Chipotle Chicken Chili from the section for "The Big Game" is, hands-down, the best chicken chili I've had. I think that the element that sets it apart from other recipes I've tried is that, in the last few minutes, you add a mixture of beer and masa harina. This provides that nice, earthy, corn flavor, and also thickens the chili beautifully. I'm also a huge fan of the flavor that chipotle peppers in adobo give to any recipe, so this wins points for using them.

I realize this looks like a pile of cheese, with no chili.

Conclusion: I loved it. Matt loved it. Charlie ate an English Muffin.

Pain in the Ass

Remember when I said that Charlie specifically requested that we make Cowboy Elmo's Fastest Mac' n' Cheese in the West? Meaningless, in terms of his willingness to actually try it.

The Commissary only had white American cheese, so that's what I bought. With that one decision, I sounded this meal's death knell. You see, our pasta turned out to be white instead of yellow. The picture in the book was yellow. Because ours was not yellow, Charlie refused to taste it. Not even one bite.

He has been banished to his bedroom, and I'm quite sure I'm in for a long night.

I'm certain he would like it if he tasted it. I actually thought this was good. It's more like out-of-the-box mac n cheese than any other version I've made. It's just a bit of milk, a bit of oil (I used olive instead of vegetable), add the cooked pasta and broken up American cheese, and mix it all together until it's saucy.

Had I realized that the color would be such a problem, I would have shredded some cheddar to add to the mix. More cheese never hurt anything.

As far as the cooking goes, Charlie counted out eight slices of cheese, broke up two of them, then said that I should do the rest. He scooped the pasta out of the box, and he added the oil, milk, and cheese to the pot. Seems like an okay level of involvement to me. There wasn't much else to it, except for the parts that involved boiling water.

Not really sure how to judge this. I think I need to make a Wouldn't Taste It category.

I was in a good mood before we started cooking. I'm currently seething. The joys of parenthood. Sha na na naaaaa!

Update: After an hour, he came out of his room and ate his cold, congealed pasta. Going to call it a "Liked it." 

Long Term Project: C is for Cooking

The Easter Bunny brought Charlie a Sesame Street cookbook: C is for Cooking. I've bought kid cookbooks before. They're usually pretty underwhelming, either because they're aimed at older kids, or because the food is flat-out lame. I'm sorry, but I can make all the raw vegetable smiley-faces I want. Charlie isn't going to eat it.

I ordered C is for Cooking without seeing it first, and it looks decent. Not that these will be award-winning meals or anything, but they are easy recipes with clear steps. I also like that they specify which steps are kid-appropriate and provide little counting games and such to do while you're cooking.

Charlie likes to look through his cookbook while I look through mine. Yesterday he pointed to the mac n cheese recipe and asked if we could make it. Heck yeah, we can make it! It's on tonight's menu. Figured that I should make this book a long-term project so that I don't forget to use it with him. My judgments for how successful a recipe was will be based on whether or not Charlie ate it, not if I liked it, and how much he can actually participate.