Jlogged

Today is reserved for making candy cane cookies.  Making these cookies with my mom is one of my earliest memories. Rolling out the snakes of cookies dough and then twisting them up made me feel kitchen savy and cleaver (still does.)  I was probably four or five in my first memory of making candy cane cookies with my mom and brother.  They are made from my favorite food groups too: butter, sugar, flour, and fd&c red # 5.   Yummers.

Candy Cane Cookies

• 1 cup real butter
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
• 1/2 cup peppermint candy canes, crushed
• 1/2 cup white sugar for decoration

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. Divide dough into halves. Color one half red by mixing in the food color. Roll a small amount of each dough into a 2 inch long worm. Roll them together in a twisted rope and curve the end like a cane. Place onto prepared cookie sheets.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. In a small bowl, mix together the crushed candy cane and remaining white sugar. Roll hot cookies in the sugar mixture.

Merry Christmas!!

Today, we are conducting the operation toy sweep in my children’s room. Three piles: 1.) keep 2.) throw away 3.) give away.  This is a yearly tradition.  We strip down to the bare bones of what my kids, love, play with, and wear.  Everything else goes.  My mom always thought getting rid of my kid’s toys was “mean,” so I started sending the boxes of excess to her house.  She understands now.

It took me an hour just to sort through the mounds of stuff my kids came home with after this years Christmas parties at school.  I have encouraged family members who are purchasing gifts for my children to give them consumables like chuck-e-cheese tokens, gift certificates to pump-it-up, or clothes.  They have a surplus of junk already. This is eggshell territory because one must not rob a person of the blessing of giving, and one can sound very high and mighty (without meaning too) by asking for certain items to not be gifted to her children.  I struggle with this issue, and often feel like a Scrooge.  How does one ask in a nice way for the world at large to stop giving her children land fill fodder?

*Edit*  The boys and I just hauled a box of nice toys to the curb and put a hand written (in crayola) sign that says Free Toys to a good home…Merry Christmas!

photo credit: mfrascella

Lately I have been obsessing, Obsessing over our family lunch box situation.  If you were to come over, and open my cabinets while innocently looking for a glass, there is 50% chance a lunch box will jump out and bop you on the head.  Aaron used to collect them, so we have an absorbent amount of the tin variety stashed about our home. It’s ridiculous really that I am having a down right lunch box crisis at the moment, but I am.  Here’s why:

Do we go vintage, but non-space efficient?

The tin lunch kits only fit a plastic thermose (which kill your kids slowly you know…you DO know this right?  Come, to the neurotic dark side with me.  Please?!  It’s lonely here.) They are too small to fit reusable sandwich and side containers.  I’m not down with plastic sandwich bags either.  They Cost a lot, and cause massive amounts of non-biodegradable waste.

So, then there is the bento by laptop lunch.  It’s attractive to the eye, reusable, and was brought to fame by vegan lunchbox, and even has it’s own groupies, but…

I’m just not, not, N-O-T, going to spend 100.00 on kits that have a 99% chance of getting lost sometime during the school year and don’t even come with drink bottles.

There are these Vinyl bags, but they get gross, smelly, are hard to clean. Also, they kill my kids slowly with lead. Some boast “lead free” and “safe,”  but how can I ever trust you again lunch bag manufacturers?  Fool me once…

So, we settled on these:

Cons:

They are made of plastic

There is no place for a drink and they won’t fit in a traditional lunch bag (I’m gonna have to sew some up I think.)

Pros:

I don’t have to ever use baggies again.  Everything has a compartment.  No more plastic landfill waste.

I can lay them all out and quickly make an assembly line of healthy lunches without having to fiddle with multiple containers, or bags.

They were 3.00 each at Target

They have a neat utensil holder on top

I get to experiment with the yummy and aesthetically pleasing world of bento lunches:

Sending lunches for my family is important to me because school lunches are:

a)  Overly processed, freeze dried and reheated, genetically modified, junk

b.)  Served on Styrofoam, non-biodegradable trays

c.)  Insulting to children and food