Crochet Play Food

I had made several scarves and headbands to give as gifts when I realized, crochet can be so much more than boring blankets and scarves. Everyone does those and I wanted to do something different, something interesting.

My daughter loves to watch and pretend to cook when she sees me or my husband preparing food. That’s when it struck me – I would crochet her some play food so she could “cook” along with us! I went online and couldn't believe the number of patterns that are available to make almost any food you can think of out of yarn!

I found most of these very easy to make, although it did force me to learn several new stitches such as the half double crochet, triple crochet, and front post crochet. Some of these are a bit difficult for a novice such as myself but I found that by watching a few videos on youtube, I was able to quickly get the hang of these new stitches.

Hope you enjoy the finished products. I found them to be so fun and cute - I'm definitely planning to make more!! For links to the patterns, please follow my 'Crochet - Food' board on Pinterest

Embrace your inner old lady

I have recently found a new hobby (aka obsession) – Crochet! In February, my mother in law came to visit and she was crocheting a dress for my daughter. I once attempted to learn knitting several years back and failed pretty miserably. Nonetheless, I asked her to show me how to crochet. She showed me how to do a basic chain and a double crochet stitch and within a few days, I had completed my first scarf! You could say I was hooked (pun intended).

Over the next few weeks I made my mom and sister some scarves and made a bow for a friend's baby. A couple days later, I was home sick and I thought I’d try my hand in making a bunny hat. It was really easy since I watched a video tutorial (links included below). I loved the finished product! My daughter… not so much, she wore it for about 10 seconds and hasn’t worn it since. I couldn’t even get a decent picture of her in it.

I find crochet to be a very relaxing and very rewarding hobby. The repetitive motions are soothing and focusing on a simple task helps me decompress and forget about the stress of the day. If you are
interested in learning crochet, I’d recommend watching some youtube tutorials. There are tons out
there. Here are a few tutorials that I watched and enjoyed.

B. Hooked Crochet: lots of beginner video tutorials, teaching you the basics from the absolute beginning including explanations of hooks, yarn, and basic stitches.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrSuS969matU--vDkBYh1Tg

Wooly Wonders Crochet: Tutorials on making hats, blankets, etc. – the videos are very easy to follow
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyToSTyaK64TeKwkST6a7AQ

Melanie Ham: Tutorials on how to make easy crochet projects
https://www.youtube.com/user/iheartstitching

Here are the videos I watched for the bunny hat:
Pattern and tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFccsjOKGd8 (part 1) and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i7lQMBVZjg (part 2)

Hope you find these videos to be helpful! More crochet posts to come...

Oatmeal Apple "Cookies"

I recently discovered Oatmeal Apple "Cookies" - a very simple, very quick recipe for a toddler snack (although I have eaten a few of them myself). Luckily my daughter doesn't know what cookies actually taste like so she's quite happy eating these and calling them cookies. 

You only need 3 ingredients and a few minutes to make them. This recipe is toddler and mom approved! 

1/2 cup applesauce (I used homemade but store-bought is fine)

1 cup quick oats

1/2 tsp of cinnamon

any other add in ingredients you like (I used dried cranberries, but you could add nuts, chocolate chips, raisins, etc.)

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix well. Roll into small balls and pat them into circles on an ungreased cookie sheet. They can be very close together since the cookies don't rise. Bake at 325 for 10-15 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving. 

These remind me of granola bars but they're soft enough for toddlers. If I made them smaller bite-size pieces, I think a baby could eat them too. Hope you enjoy this healthy kid friendly snack!

Making hummus is easy...

I've always heard that making homemade hummus is easy. Recently I found out that making hummus actually is easy... assuming you have the right recipe and the right tools. I found a recipe online that was supposed to be easy and delicious. I got all of my ingredients, put them in my little immersion blender and started to blend. I first noticed that there was definitely not enough liquid for everything to blend properly. It was just a chopped up chickpea mess. So I added more olive oil and lemon juice. Still not enough liquid. I kept adding more but it wasn't working out for me. 

After struggling to get everything pureed, I decided it was time to drag out the heavy duty food processor. SO much easier! It took about 30 seconds to get the right texture! At least we're on the right track now. But, it tasted overwhelmingly like tahini - which basically tastes like peanut butter, but a really gross peanut butter. I decided to add another can of chickpeas, about 5 more cloves of garlic, and salt to taste. The end product was excellent - much better (and cheaper) than store bought. Even my 18 month old couldn’t get enough of it. This is probably something I’ll never buy again because once you have all the ingredients (and use the food processor), it cannot be any simpler. You literally just have to combine the ingredients and puree them… that’s it!

I used the same ingredients as the original recipe but these are the measurements I actually used:

2 can of chickpeas (drained)

⅓ cup tahini

½ cup olive oil

5 cloves garlic (suggest roasting first, otherwise the raw garlic taste may be overpowering)

¼ cup lemon juice

salt to taste

Combine in food processor and puree. 

Let Me Upgrade You

I love making “Indian fusion” dishes. When my sister and I stumbled upon a recipe for Bombay Sloppy Joes on the Food Network website, we were intrigued. There were dozens of comments raving about the recipe.

From the get go, it wasn’t going well for me. We were making 4x the recipe since we had 4 lb of turkey but, I forgot to get 4x all the other ingredients. I had only 1 can of tomato sauce (not 4) but I did find crushed tomato with basil. Not exactly Indian, but that’s ok. It could be an Indian-Italian-American fusion dish, I was ok with that. We omitted the pistachios, and raisins.

We didn’t start cooking the meat in a pan big enough, so it took forever. Half way through, we put it in our cast iron dutch oven. We were supposed to cook the sauce for a few minutes until it thickened. Except… it never thickened. After an hour of trying to cook it down, we had to go to my husband ask him to save our dish. He ended up scooping out a ton of the excess sauce/water, adding ketchup (what?!) and a bunch of other spices. He was very mad scientist, throwing in various powders and sauces.

The sloppy joes tasted ok, but not overwhelmingly Indian, even though we added way more spices, cilantro, and peppers than the recipe asked for.

Two days later, no one wanted to eat the leftovers, so I decided to transform it into a chili. I added a can of black beans, more jalapenos, more paprika and spices. The chili ended up being a hit! It was really flavorful and the beans helped thicken it. My husband and my 18-month old ate 2 bowls each. You know it’s good when the baby won’t stop eating it :)

In the end the sloppy joes were mediocre, but the chili was a keeper.

Original recipe in case this blog made you want to try it (although I wouldn't if I were you): http://www.pinterest.com/pin/419749627745179913/

Chalkboard mugs

I wanted to get my daughter’s teachers something cute as a holiday gift last month. I needed 6 teacher gifts but I didn’t want to spend $60+ on teacher gifts alone. In the spirit of trying to do “homemade” gifts, I scoured pinterest for options and finally settled on doing chalkboard mugs. They were a sort of success and a sort of failure.

First I gathered all of my supplies:

• white mugs from the dollar store - they actually looked nice! I wish I had bought smaller ones given how much paint was required for each one.
• porcelain chalkboard paint - important to get the porcelain kind not just regular chalkboard paint (it will be dishwasher safe supposedly). I bought mine on amazon.com - it’s a very small bottle, so I should have bought two bottles since I needed to make 6 mugs
• small paintbrush
• painters tape
• newspaper or cloth to keep underneath

This was a bit of a trial and error project. The first mug had a few mistakes. I started using a sponge instead of a brush - it did not work well at all. I switched to my brush, which was too big to fit in the little paint bottle, but I made it work. I learned that you need to do two coats. The first coat looked streaky and you could see all the little lines from the bristles. The second coat was a bit thicker and it no longer looked streaky.

I had planned to put tape along the top and the bottom of the mug so just the middle part would be chalkboard. I found it annoying and just took the bottom tape off. My mugs weren’t completely round due to the style I bought, so the tape didn’t perfectly hug the sides of the mug. There were a few spots where the paint got underneath the tape. Not a huge deal but next time (if there is a next time) I will make sure the mugs are completely round. I also hadn’t planned to paint the mug handle but because my brush was so big, it was too difficult to paint around it. I ended up just painting the handle, which looked nice in the end. It was hard to make sure I didn’t smudge any paint with my fingers since the only place I could hold it was at the top where the tape was.

It’s important to take the tape off as soon as you are done painting, otherwise it might peel off some of the paint when you try to remove it later. Also make sure the surface you leave the painted mug on is totally flat. When I picked up my first mug, there was a little bit of the paper dried on it. I was able to remove it so no harm done.

Once you’re done painting you have to let it dry for 24 hours. Then bake at 300 degrees for 35 minutes (I put the mug on a cookie sheet). After the 35 minutes, I left the mug in the oven with the door open until it cooled. The end result was much better than I expected!

The second mug I made was much quicker now that I knew what to do and what to expect. However, the laziness in me won out because I didn’t feel like making 4 more mugs and I ended up just buying gifts for the teachers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Million Dollar Barf-ghetti

More than a year ago, I found a recipe for something called Million Dollar Spaghetti. Listen to the description that was attached to the recipe: “You will never stop eating it until you EXPLODE. So. Good.”.

Sounded promising… so I thought I'd give it a try. For those of you not familiar with this culinary delight - it is a baked spaghetti dish made with sauce, meat, and various types of cheese.

Spaghetti - good.

Sauce - good.

Meat - Good.  

Cheese - good.  

(If you didn’t read it in this voice, I’m disappointed) ...and it turned out as good as a custard-jam-beef trifle.

The day I decided to make this, I had just come home from work and I was starving. Which is probably why I didn’t read the recipe and immediately realize this would be disgusting. Two of the cheeses I needed were cream cheese and cottage cheese (two things I love, but maybe not the best together in a recipe). The recipe was easy enough to make…. when it was done I took a bite. It was sooo rich and not very delicious. I wish I had pictures to showcase the unappealing nature of this dish (hint: it looked like spaghetti and barf). I piled on extra pasta and sauce to salvage it and since it was late, I ate it anyway.

I just couldn’t bear to throw out a full baking pan of food so I ended up eating this every night for dinner for a week. Every. single. night. When they said "until you explode", maybe they meant until you throw up? I still don't understand how this recipe got so popular. When Mike came home from traveling for work and saw what I had been eating, he officially banned all pinterest recipes…. until the homemade oreos of course :)

Milk's...and Mike's Favorite Cookie

Keeping in line with the theme of cookies that take forever to make - here's another recipe that took me multiple days (and help from someone else) to make: HOMEMADE OREOS!

This year for Christmas we thought for our stockings, we would do homemade gifts ($10 or less). My husband’s favorite cookies are oreos so I thought making a homemade version would be the perfect gift for his stocking.

Day 1: bought all of the ingredients needed to make my cookies

Day 2: too lazy to make them

Day 3: too lazy to make them

Day 4: still too lazy to make them

Day 5: oh shit, it’s christmas eve!

Christmas eve night, at about 10pm, my sister and I started making the dough and the filling. It wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined although I think it would be easier and faster the next time I make these (and I definitely will make these again). The dough was very quick to put together, especially on my kitchenaid mixer (seriously, I love that thing!) Make sure you use dutch process cocoa powder, which for some reason I did happen to already have on hand. It’s different than regular cocoa powder as the dutch processed kind is darker and lends to that oreo cookie taste vs a chocolate cookie.

While I wrapped up the cookie dough in parchment paper (since I never seem to have plastic wrap), my sister whipped up the filling. We used 3 cups of powdered sugar instead of 3/12 and I think next time I would maybe a half cup less assuming it didn’t affect the texture of the filling. Making the dough and the filling took us about an hour.

You’re supposed to chill the dough for an hour in the fridge, but since it was so late we put the dough and the filling in the fridge overnight. The next morning, I had to let the dough sit out a bit so it wasn’t so hard and I would be able to roll it out. Of course, I couldn’t find a rolling pin. I looked in all the drawers and even checked some boxes in the garage. I found a can and I was going to use that. Then my husband walked in with this look like, what are you crazies doing with that can? He suggested we use a wine bottle. I just started using it when my sister opened up our silverware drawer and the rolling pin was there in the whole time. Oops - only like 30 minutes wasted.

We rolled out the dough, cut the cookies, and baked them. To make the cookies crispy, I let them cool in the oven. Then we assembled the cookies - way easier than the samoas I made. For half of the cookies I put peppermint crystals in the filling. The cookies were AWESOME! I loved them and more importantly, my husband loved them (so much that he hid a few of them so that all the guests wouldn’t eat them all). Even my dad, who doesn’t like dessert ate one with ice cream.

This one is definitely a win.

Check it out here: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/419749627745173287/

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5 Minute Curls

Today I have a rare success not a disaster (yay!): the 5 minute curl, which can be found here: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/419749627745173295/

When the flat iron, stick straight hair trend was happening, it was the best thing ever for me. My hair is more or less straight, so I could let it air dry for most days and it would be straight enough. Or if I was going out, I only needed to straighten a few unruly pieces in the front. This whole thing usually took me 5 minutes or less- I can’t be bothered to do much more maintenance than that.

Now I always see girls with perfect curls and I’ve attempted to do myself so a few times. I’d curl the front but I’d get so hot from having all this thick Indian hair -and add to that a burning hot curling iron. Also I’m lazy - my arms would get too tired by the time I was finished curling the front , leaving the back to be incongruously straight. (Side note: I should probably pin some bicep/tricep exercises). Seriously though, how did girls have patience to curl all their hair every day??

I have a baby-free weekend get away coming up that I wanted to do something nice with my hair for. I saw this tutorial and it looked pretty easy (but then again, don’t they all, ha). I tried it out this morning and was pleasantly surprised! It actually only took 5 minutes and all of my hair had curls. My only mistake is that I don’t own any hairspray so the curls fell flat shortly after that but my hair still looked really good all day. I took a bunch of selfies like a teenager and my friend even commented that my hair looked “luscious” (which is far more appealing than my usual look which could be described more as "lucius malfoy" than “luscious”). I’m quite happy with the 5 minute curl and plan to buy some hairspray so I can do this look more often!

Gestational Diabetes for All

I would be remiss if I did not recount my most infamous pinterest attempt to make everyone’s second favorite girls scout cookie, the Samoa. This was about two years ago, when I was pregnant. My friend Anna and I would hang out several times a week and attempt to cook. Mike would be travelling out of town on business and it was much more fun for me to cook with Anna rather than trying to cook for just myself. One day we thought it would be cool try this recipe for samoas . It looked doable - we would just have to make the cookie, cover with the coconut caramel topping and then dip the bottoms in chocolate, and drizzle a bit over them. Prep time: 2 hours including chilling and cook time of 15 min.

Only 2 hours… riiight. It started out all well enough, we bought all of the ingredients. First off, we had no idea what type of caramels to buy. Apparently there are multiple types of caramels and we had no idea what the difference was and which was best. Maybe that should have been a warning to not attempt this recipe. Anyway, we just grabbed one and went on our way. We got home and after dinner we made the dough (which took forever because we no baking skills) and put it in the fridge to chill. Of course, we also didn’t have cookie cutters, so we just cut the dough into squares and baked them. They turned out ok that way. They didn’t quite look like samoas but that didn’t matter.

Then we had to toast the coconut, melt the caramel and spread the mixture on the cookies. Sounded so simple but it was terrible. It was so sticky and messy and took FOREVER. I think this process alone took us two hours to do. We were so tired and cranky and after a while just started half assing this part.

Ok - halfway done with the recipe. We thought about calling it a night but by this time, we had gone so far, we figured we might as well finish it. Next step - dip the bottom of the cookies in the melted chocolate. Did I mention we had like 50 cookies? Hand dipping 50 freaking cookies in chocolate is exhausting - there go my dreams of opening a bakery (called Babycakes of course). We drizzled chocolate over the top of the cookies - yay, an easy step - and then let them cool.

After several hours of hard work - we could finally try the cookies… and they were AMAZING! So, so, so good - they actually tasted like the girls scout cookies. We were so happy and proud of ourselves for making these and I couldn’t wait for Mike to get home and try them.

In walks Mike, tired from his flight, so what better to cheer him up than some home made samoas. Right? Right? WRONG. He refuses to eat one and is furious that we made them because eating these is going to cause me to get gestational diabetes (ps. they didn’t). Anna and I are shocked of course. We packed up the cookies, shared them with our co-workers and later that weekend with Mike’s family. Everyone loved them. Eventually Mike had tried them and ended up eating his words - and several cookies. This recipe for gestational diabetes cookies, while absolutely delicious, took forever. From now on, I’ll stick to buying them.