Food Fun for St. Patrick’s Day

Here’s a fairly simple food idea to help celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Leprechauns love Lucky Charms cereal and gold coins, right? So this is a way those sneaky leprechauns can leave a special treat for your kids. 🙂

I found these black pots like the ones leprechauns hide their gold in at our local Dollar Tree store.

You will also need some Lucky Charms cereal.

And you’ll need some mini Oreo cookies and a can of gold food spray.

Lay some mini Oreo cookies out on a disposable plate. (Lay some newspaper down under the plate to catch the overspray.) Spray one side of the cookies and allow them to dry for the time mentioned on the spray can.

While the cookies are drying, fill the black pots not quite full with the cereal.

When the cookies are dry, turn them over and spray the second side. After the cookies are dry the second time, add a few cookies to each black pot.

And your leprechaun pots are ready to serve to your favorite leprechauns! 😉 You can add to the fun by hiding the pots and letting your little leprechauns search for them. I hope this brings some fun to your St. Patrick’s Day! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday – #25 Cornbread

What’s your favorite way to eat cornbread? It’s one of the most versatile dishes there is! Some people like cornbread with a little sweetener added in and some think it’s ruined if you add sugar! I like my cornbread a little on the sweet side. It can be added to other dishes for great combinations…like bean soup and cornbread or chili and cornbread or even vegetable soup and cornbread. Some people make their stuffing for Thanksgiving using cornbread. Whatever your favorite way is, maybe you can find another way to enjoy cornbread today. Let’s look at 6 different suggestions.

The first way we’ll look at is maybe the most popular way to eat cornbread…

#1.) Maple syrup…and milk. This is the way I usually eat cornbread. But I may find a new favorite today.

#2.) Topped with an egg. I actually hadn’t tried this way before but it’s very tasty together!

#3.) Butter and Jam. Pretty good together on cornbread!

#4.) Butter and Molasses. This is probably my hubby’s favorite way to eat cornbread. But not so much for me… 😉

#5.) With some cheese melted on top. Quite tasty!

#6.) Butter, Honey and Cinnamon. This is really good! It might be contending for first place in my book!

If you google ways to eat cornbread, you might see putting chipped beef gravy over it. That sounds wonderful! I also saw a recipe for cornbread pizza, using cornbread for the crust. I’m betting taco ingredients would go great too! However you try it, I hope you enjoy taste testing some cornbread! Let me know your favorite! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday – #21- Oatmeal Toppings

We’re back for the latest episode of Taste Testing Tuesday! Are you ready to see what we’re taste testing this time? It’s oatmeal! Ok, ok, I know oatmeal can be REALLY bland and boring, but it doesn’t have to be! There are many, many ways to liven it up and please your taste buds! We’re going to look at 5 toppings you can try adding to your cooked oatmeal and I’ll mention several other ways you might try it.

Mmmm! Now don’t those look worthy of a taste test?! 😉

#1.) Oatmeal with butter and maple syrup. Those are two of the best ingredients ever, right? I’m guessing you’ve eaten them on pancakes or French toast, so why not on oatmeal?

#2.) Oatmeal with brown sugar and cinnamon. These are two more top ranking foods, am I right?? They are scrumptious on oatmeal!

#3.) Oatmeal with raisins and honey. This is probably my husband’s favorite way to eat oatmeal. If you don’t care too much for raisins, try some other kind of fruit. Think about other dried fruit like blueberries, cranberries, cherries, etc. Or even fresh, frozen or canned fruit. Do your kids have a favorite fruit? Try adding it to oatmeal.

#4.) Oatmeal with your favorite type of jam. This is strawberry jam and it was very tasty!

Do your kids love peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Add some peanut butter to the jam on the oatmeal. 🙂

#5.) Oatmeal with a dollop of yogurt on top. Try your kids favorite yogurt flavor. This one is greek yogurt with peaches. (Though you can’t even see the peaches.)

There you have the taste tests that we did at our house to find some yummy ways to liven up oatmeal. Some other things you can add to oatmeal are nuts or seeds, applesauce, apple butter, chai tea, granola, etc. I read some suggestions to add vegetables to your oatmeal, like pumpkin, butternut squash and carrots. I was surprised to see some suggestions that I’ve never thought of using before like salmon, a fried egg or a soft-boiled egg, avocado, feta cheese or sausage and onions. Oatmeal is so versatile that I hope you’ll give some of these ideas a try and find something new to go in/on your oatmeal. 🙂 Happy Taste Testing!

Taste Testing Tuesday – #8

Hello and a happy Tuesday to you! It’s a GREAT Tuesday for us because 4 of our grandchildren are here staying with us and we are having a super-duper time being together! 🙂 They helped me with this Taste Testing Tuesday but we were having so much fun I forgot to take very many pictures. Oops! So Taste Testing Tuesday #8 is all about tasting different kinds of cheese. We have 6 kinds to try out…Colby, Smoked Swiss, Smoked Cheddar, Swiss, Muenster and American.

We started out with me drawing in the faces on the chart for what we each thought of each kind of cheese. Halfway through the kids took over drawing their own faces to express their thoughts so things got even funnier. 😉

Now for some cheesy grins! 😉 Little Miss said she liked ALL of the cheese.

This guy was not too impressed with smoked cheeses but Muenster was a definite YES! Although when his brother tried to give him Muenster with chocolate powder on it, that was a strong NO!

Middle brother liked some of the cheese, but some he could easily leave alone.

This guy was a good sport and let his Grandma talk him into participating. 😉 His favorite is Swiss.

We hope you’ll take a Taste Testing Tuesday Cheese test too! (Wow, that’s a mouthful!) Thanks for stopping by!