Tinker Turns the Page on Another Year

 I turned around twice and this baby is 15 years old! It seems like a heartbeat. Have I even slept? Being a middle child myself, I appreciate that middle children are firecrackers. It's what keeps life interesting! And life with Tinker is definitely always fun and interesting.  (When your birthday is on the last week of school and your mom's a teacher, the news takes a minute to post!)

We just finished another season of softball and she was fortunate again to be drafted onto a team with another great coach who was super patient and taught her a lot. She is in JROTC and it's her favorite thing about high school. She has always  loved school but this is her absolute best thing ever. It's exercise, it's competition, you don't have to be quiet or sit much, there aren't too many girls; it's made for her! 

Don't let your brother cut your hair

Tink's big goal right now is to earn the right to take Driver's Ed next summer. We set up a program so that she can objectively earn it and I promise you, like everything she sets her mind to, she will get there. I'll do a post on what we came up with, program-wise, in a few days.

The girl is learning to cook. It's a miracle. So far, she's made shells and homemade marinara sauce and then, last night, Mediterranean Couscous Bowls. She's doing great!

Scroll down for a couple more snaps of our girl through the years. 

Pasta shells w/ Marinara

 

Mediterranean Couscous Bowls

 

Fun in the Kitchen

So today was "fun in the kitchen" day.  And we did have fun!  Okay -- well actually it was more of a "mindful eating" challenge but you know -- my kids are great eaters!  So we just went for the fun.

First, we made these cool and easy bird feeders.  At least two of these little ones have sensory integration issues so this turned out to be a great exercise for them.  The combination of sticky gelatin and  lumpy birdseed was a good challenge.  The Blitz may or may not have eaten a couple teaspoons of the stuff.  What can I say, it was relatively edible.

Our second project was to mix up a batch of "real" fruit chews.  We have a section in our grocery that sells all this dried fruit I don't buy because it's full of sugar but then I thought, "Why not for a treat? Better than that artiticial stuff they call 'fruit chews'"  So we bought 3 packages based solely on pretty colors.  The kiwis were full slices so I cut them up; they required a sharp, heavy knife.  We mixed them all up with some mixed nuts.

I fogot to photograph the mixing but arent' they pretty?

Finally, before I knew today was cooking day, I had decided to mix a giant batch of meatballs to cook 2 ways.  Pepper had already mixed the meat, so all that remained was seasoning, shaping and cooking.  I knew it was risky but decided to have all the kids help.  I made them promise, promise, promise not to taste it and they had fun, fun, fun!

To make life easier for all of us, I readied a tub of warm soapy water for hand washing afterward.

I like a mix of ground meats for meatballs and I use the leanest available of each type;

• 86% lean Ground beef, about 2 pounds
• Ground pork, extra lean, about 2 pounds
• Ground white turkey meat, about 1 pound
• Italian sausage seasoned ground turkey, about 1 pound

I use about two pounds the mix to make the filling for this stuffed cabbage; it is a really wonderful seasoning so I use one head of Napa to wrap as many as I can, and the rest I just steam as plain meatballs.  They freeze great.  Notes:  I do not use onions (allergic).  You can use chicken stock and they are still great; I always have dashi stock so I use it.  Dashi stock is really easy to make -- Google it. 

The  rest goes for these Crock Pot Meatballs.

In between we had plenty of time for hanging our bird-feeders, playing in the unexpectedly sunny, warm day and saying good-bye to our little foster friend.   For fun, I gave them an all "round" supper; we made the Asian meatballs for tonight, so I made their rice into little balls, gave them a Satsuma orange (peeled of course), and Spinach Knobs.  They were in heaven with their round food.  For some reason it was really funny.

Another great day!  I am richly blessed!

Creative Christmas

Pepper spends most of her Christmas break each year creating.  Here is an early creation;  I did not think to date it at the time, but I'm pretty sure she was 5 or 6 years old when she built it.  I'm thinking 5 actually; that was the year of the Popsicle Viking ship and the Popsicle stick Noah's ark, so that would make age 5 about right. (The mushroom bird was added later.)

For the last several years, she's been in Sculpey mode at Christmas.  Last year she made a lovely kneeling Virgin Mary and a creche with baby Jesus.  The creche suffered an unfortunate collapse this year, though nothing compared to the gingerbread baby-crushing creche from Table for Nine.  Still, Mary is moving, so we posed her by the big nativity after the accident.

This year, Pepper has been on a mission to raise money for her school's art program.  She came up with the idea to make handmade cards and offer them for a donation (a dozen for suggested $10-15 donation).  She's raised $60 so far and had a load of fun.

It's two days before Christmas.  Mom-o-5 has a million things to do but went with Dear Hubby to the gym for a little exercise/stress relief session.  Of course a quick trip to the grocery store was needed on the way home.  We walked in 2 hours later to find she had made dinner.  And what a dinner it was: Chicken Parmesan (all homemade), salad, and fried mozarella for the Littles.  She even made the marinara sauce.  It was fantastic.  I'm so glad she has inherited my love of creating in the kitchen!  Sorry - did not think to take photos.

Oh -- and she made homemade bagels for tomorrow's breakfast (Christmas Eve); she knew I'd be busy.  Merry Christmas to me!