Cheeseburger Joes get 2 thumbs up!

Last week the Kraft Food and Family magazine arrived in the mail and it was loaded with lots of good recipes. I've been getting this magazine for a few years now and have found many recipes, but alas they've never been made. Not this month! I tore the magazine apart and placed the recipes in my handy-dandy-to-do-binder. Easy organizing, but unfortunately many a recipe have ended up in the binder never to be seen again. Well it is the second day of the school week and I'm on my second recipe.

The Cheeseburger Joes are basically sloppy joes, but no need for a can/envelope of "joe" mix. All the ingredients are already on hand. I of course had to double the recipe, so here it goes...

2 lb. ground beef - browned and drained
1 cup bbq sauce & 1/2 cup ketchup mixed together
Add sauces to beef, warm and serve on buns with cheese.

Add some cucumber slices and carrot sticks and dinner was served in under 20 minutes ;) That's my kind of meal.

Crazy Food Names

Crabby Patties, Pink Fish and Frog Sauce could be on the menu any lunch or dinner in the Park house. Sound gross? Well don't be fooled by the name, it just takes a bit of creativity to put some excitement into meal times. We started the naming of meals back when Andrew was a toddler and at the time many things were named after The Wiggles. He is now one of my best eaters :)

So for those of you haven't been visiting during meal times and/or may be watching my kids during meals here are some definitions..

Crabby Patties are taken from a Sponge Bob episode, but I believe they were burgers in the show (I'm still trying to figure out that show). Nothing fancy for us, just a chicken patty on a bun with or without ketchup and sometimes with a slice of cheese. We've also been known to use these crabby patties for making "poor-man's chicken parmesan" - layer sauce, crabby patties, slice of provolone cheese, more sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese.

Pink Fish to most people is boring old salmon. The kids will eat baked salmon, but for a quick meal, I take a can of salmon (Costco's is the BEST), add a little mayo and sprinkle with Emerils all purpose seasoning. Spread on Ritz crackers and a meal with a good amount of Omega -3 fatty acids is ready :)

Frog Sauce was born out of desperation for making pesto sauce sound like something the kids would like. What boy wasn't going to get a kick out of frog sauce? It worked and they love it on noodles and tortellini.

I'm A Wonder Poacher

The kids had "silly dinner" tonight, also known as pancakes for dinner. I really wasn't in the mood for pancakes, unless they were pumpkin pancakes and I knew that there would be at least one member of the family that wouldn't have eaten them anyway (if you guessed Ri, you were right). The hubster came home in time to take two of the boys to karate and I took care of bathing the 2 boys left behind. Mary Kate likes to stand outside the tub and terrorize the boys by threatening to turn the shower on (I know she has succeeded when I hear the blood curdling screams).

While waiting for the inevitable scream to beckon me to the bathroom, I figured out what I wanted for dinner. Poached eggs! Random? Yes. I knew we had an egg poacher that I believe was given to me by mom back when we first got married, but getting my hands on it and trying to remember how to use it was a whole other story. Google to the rescue. I panicked when the only links I was coming across involved boiling water and slowly pouring cracked egg into water?? Uh oh, I was now desperate to find my poacher and directions for how to use it. I did find it and saw that it was made by Duncan Hines, I guess they used to do more than cakes and brownies. I finally found directions online for the "perfect poached egg" using a poacher.

Kids were out of the tub and gathering up books that I had promised to read after I ate (I really was obsessed with eating the poached eggs). In under 5 minutes, I had 2 slices of toast with butter and 2 poached eggs PERFECTLY made! Definitely hit the spot, so when hubs got home he was treated to my poaching obsession too :)

A funny conversation while I was eating...
Mary Kate: "zat momma?"
Me: "that's mommy's eggs Mary Kate"
Nolan: "Mommy how old are you?"
Me: I told the truth, not sure why he needed the age though "34"
Nolan: "Mary Kate, when you are 34 you gets eggs too"

SLACO'S.... It's what's for dinner!

Sloppy Joes were on the menu tonight and I knew there would be a struggle getting my second boy (aka WORLD'S PICKIEST EATER) to eat them. However, he does like taco's and will easily eat 4-5 of them in one sitting. So we made a deal, I would put the cheese and sloppy joe meat in a taco shell. He was not buying into it.
son - "Mom, what happens if it's not good"
me - "you are setting yourself up to not like it, you have to think positive"
son - "but what if it's bad"
me - "Hey it's slaco's, it's what's for dinner"!
2 of the other boys joined in on the slaco brigade, one of them even ate 3 of them!

I'm happy to report that my darling picky one did in fact have 2 slaco's! This is HUGE, he may even add it to his "like" list of foods. More on that list later...