Valentines Day!

So many days I am so ashamed of my frustration, anxiety and bad behavior and wonder if I will ever get better. And then I see how far we have come... My son wrote a lovely note to his teacher, sewed a valentine; I make lunches, and even a fruit tray for my daughter and class because she is allergic to everything. While it may seem standard mom stuff, I use to barely even be able to get out of bed. We are healing, we are moving forward, and I am so very grateful to those who love us unconditionally and have helped us gain strength.

I love Valentine's Day. It is just such a happily pink day that we get to make cute crafts and have fun parties in the classes. I dressed up today and was told by another mom I looked like a Valentine Fairy... where are my wings! 

For my son's class I made these raw brownie bites, but I made them really thin and cut them with heart cutters, they were a hit in third grade! 

Gluten free cupcakes with coconut milk and berry whipped topping "frosting" inside secret hearts! 

Oh and of course the lunch! An inside out sandwich with heart shaped turkey, beef, and rice cheese. Side of cupcake, yellow peppers, cinnamon sugar apples, and tomatoes. 

And for dinner, we have pasta, with a big turkey meatball heart. I made little gelatin hearts with pomegranate juice and knox gelatin. 

Smitten Salad

Heart Salad:

Heart shaped eggs, here's how.

Heart Tomatoes

Heart Carrots

Heart Cucumbers

Heart Strawberries on the side  

Strawberry Jelly

Teff Bread from New Cascadia Bakery , with a heart cut, showing the strawberry jelly. Heart pick, heart cut apples. Such a treat for the kids to get bread!

Some roses for you, my dear

I love roses and pink. I'm such a girly girl and those things make me happy. After my grandmother passed away, I went to go live with my grandfather and there was so much pink and rose accents everywhere, I finally figured out where my love for pink and roses came from!

Bacon roses, linguini with beet juice, rice cheese hugs and kisses cut with the alphabet cutters. Heart carrots, tomatoes, cut apples, and a tangerine. 

I Heart You

Hearts made with rice and beet juice, faces with nori and the face punches.

You are beautiful

Hot Dog Hearts 

Love Birds

These were so much fun! Hard boiled egg love birds on a bed of mixed rice with broccoli... Nori eyes with the face punch, carrot beaks and wings. Heart carrots, cut apples, cashews, green peppers as sides. 

Hearts

When I was a kid, my mom always had me make the green salads for dinner. I could never make them plain and boring, just chopping up the carrots like a normal person. I made them into shapes, my favorite was always hearts.

February, a new beginning

It's been awhile since I've done any playful food.  There are times in my life I think the next stop will be the psych ward. I cease creative activities and cite my ever growing stress and frustration as the reason to stop doing what I love. Then, I realize... I'm stressed,  I *have* to go back to doing what I love~ pouring creativity into our world. Happy February. 

Rice with turkey bacon heart, with sides of cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, raisins, hearts and apples. 

Valentine's Day Foods

I absolutely love celebrating Valentine's Day with the three little loves of my life, they bring me such joy and it's always fun to do something together to celebrate our little family.

My oldest decorated some hard boiled eggs with the rice cheese and the alphabet cookie cutters.

While I was in the shower, my kids cut out these letters out of apples and rice cheese for me, and put them by my coffee, so I would be sure to see it! 

My little one always needs a snack at Pre-K so I made her some heart shaped hearts and carrots, complete with valentine picks. 

The youngest is allergic to beef and there was some ground buffalo on sale and I thought we would try it. I made some small, heart shaped mini meatloaves for dinner. I made up the meatloaf, then used my rice mold to make the hearts and then cook them up! I also made more heart carrots and Roma tomatoes, cut on the diagonal and put together as hearts. My son is very into presentation and fancy drinks and desserts so he insisted we have our sparkling strawberry cider in our pretty glasses with blueberries, all on top of a white tablecloth. What a fun treat! 

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love this one... my favorite Valentines one.

I used beet juice to color the pink rice, and spinach to color the green rice, then put them in my heart rice molds.

I used rice cheese and my Alphabet Cutter Set (which I totally love!) to make the letters on the hearts to make conversation hearts!

Roses

I saw this done with ham, which is a little more pink, but, turkey will do.

I made little rice cylinders, and cut up sliced turkey into half circles and placed them around the rice to form a rose. I also made some extra turkey bacon,  and rolled them up into roses!

Placed in some greenery of spinach and some craisins on the side.

Spinach confetti

Triangle rice pasta, beef summer sausages that I cut into hearts, and spinach confetti, cut with a tiny heart cookie cutter!

Heart Dog

Nothing says I love you more than a heart dog!

All beef hot dogs cut on the diagonal, and toothpicked together as hearts, over a bed of mung bean noodles with a little spinach on the side.

Sugar high

I had some leftover pizza crust in the freezer, thawed it, cut it into heart shapes, and baked them. I put a little coconut oil and organic brown sugar on them.

I also cut up some strawberries and kiwi into heart shapes which took some time as I was doing it with a knife. I ended up throwing in some cashews and pecans for some protein, but I am pretty sure they just had dessert for lunch!

Heart shaped eggs.

This really happened at my house.

A friend of mine posted this link on Facebook on how to make a heart shaped egg. We don't usually keep eggs in the house, as my youngest is very allergic to eggs, my son breaks out in minor hives and gets a stomach ache, and I also get violently ill for a few days if I have straight eggs, however in baked goods they don't seem to bother me... but I don't bake a lot. My oldest daughter does love eggs though and every now and then I will get some for her and she will make herself over-hard eggs for breakfast, and likes to try her hand at omelets.

After I saw the link though, I knew I just had to try this! So I bought our every few month purchase of a dozen eggs and knew I would have to take more time in this effort.

Step one... I had to google how to hard boil an egg because I don't think I've done that in years. It seems a bit nerve wracking with all the rules and the color change and the shells cracking, but amazingly, they turned out pretty awesome. I had collected the rubber bands and cut my half and half box apart for the molds, and we always seem to have chop sticks around, except mine were square. As you can see by my photo, the round chop sticks would end up with a nicer heart.

So here they are, a bit lopsided and awkward (kinda like me!). It was fun, a great learning experience, and easier than I actually thought it would be!

Cherry Vanilla

This may seem weird (or not, how about you?) but I have never bought canned cherries before. Again, I was scoping the aisles for things my kids could have, things that were pink or red, but without the food dye. I was also getting a bit bored with our standards and wanted to find something a little different anyway.

Well, unbeknownst to me, they come in different varieties of tartness so the kids weren't very happy about the actual cherries... but I did mix the juice in with some gluten free vanilla and the rice for a cherry vanilla flavor, which they did seem to like. I used my flower rice mold to make them into flowers, topped with a little cherry. The rest of the can of cherries went into a smoothie where their tartness was fortunately somewhat diminished.

Share the Love

I really do love my graduated Heart Cookie Cutter Set! We had some leftover gluten free penne pasta leftover from dinner, so for their lunches, I smothered them in honey cranberry chutney. I sliced the apples vertically and then cut them into heart shapes with my cookie cutters, which worked out really well, and the kids had the leftover pieces with their breakfast.

Lunch is completed with pecans, orange slices, carrots and raisins.

Pink

I often use canned beets and it's juice for coloring food, I love it's vibrant pinkness!

I decided to see what would happen if I used the beets too, and cut up some of the beets with the heart cookie cutters, and used some juice to color the Ka-Me Bean Threads, and there it is! The kids weren't really thrilled with the beets and most of the beets ended up coming back home, but the noodles and the rest of the food was gone!

 

Valentines Month!

Starting Valentines month... I love pink and red and hearts!

Not a super fantastic picture, and I was working on "what we had in the fridge" at this time, which was pretty much some beef summer sausages that I cut into heart shapes with a cookie cutter. I cooked some red rice the night before, chilled it in a brownie pan overnight, then cut the rice with a bigger cookie cutter the next morning. Super easy and fast. I also made some gluten free cookies (out of a box, of course) to throw in their lunches. We always seem to have box mixes in their house as I buy them when I see a good deal, but they are always last to get used because I don't even like to bake out of a box, so when I feel like we "have no food in the house" we end up with cookies.