Chick-fil-A Cow Appreciation Day 2012

Every year I think, we should really dress up and get free food at Chick-fil-a for Cow Appreciation Day. And then it comes along every year and we don’t go. This year I decided we were going to make it happen! I printed the first page of Chick-fil-a’s costume kit which included ears and noses/mouths. I taped the ears to hair clips for easy use. Next we cut out black spots from construction paper. We taped those onto white shirts. I also made Little Monkey and Little Monkette each a sign similar to the Chick-fil-a cow’s sign.

Eat Mor Chikin or Frys and Frut!

Since Little Monkey can’t eat chicken, I made him a special PKU friendly sign for fries and fruit. Who knows, maybe we’ll help Chick-fil-a start a new PKU friendly marketing campaign!

They were very excited to meet the cow!

Shortly after we sat down to eat our food, the Chick-fil-a cow came out. The kids were SO excited. They hopped right up from the table to meet him. They got hugs, high fives and a photo op! The cow hung around for awhile, greeting people outside, going through the drive thru line, sneaking up on people eating or waiting in line, taking orders, handing out orders in the drive thru and sitting with other people who were eating. Every time Little Monkette saw the cow she would wave and often he would wave back (except when he was outside and she swore he did see her though!)

There were a few people eating in the restaurant (we got there about 4:15 to avoid the dinner crowd-turned out to be a great idea!) that were not aware of Cow Appreciation Day. One guy even asked me if something special was happening today. I told him about the event and assured him that we didn’t regularly dress like cows (Yes I was dressed like a cow too! Hello! It was FREE food!)

I would say dressing up for Cow Appreciation Day is worth it. We had fun and got to have great food for free. We didn’t spend any money on our costumes. Everything we used was stuff we had on hand. I’ve entered the kids picture into Chick-fil-a’s Cow Appreciation Day photo contest. Once I know the link of where to vote, I’ll post it here so you can go vote for them!

Update! I got the link to vote for the kids!! Please go give them your vote! Click Here! Thanks.

Our Take: Jolly Rancher Lollipops

A while back, I pinned this idea of Jolly Rancher Lollipops on Pinterest. I thought they would be a fun summer activity because they are phe-free, making them perfect for Little Monkey.

Pinterest Jolly Rancher Lollipops

The directions said to put the Jolly Ranchers on parchment paper and cook at 200 degrees for 5 minutes.

We put the Jolly Ranchers in sets of three onto the parchment paper.

Little Monkey unwrapped and selected the colors to go together for each lollipop.

Then we put them into the oven for 5 minutes at 200 degrees. Only problem, they didn’t melt. So we put them in longer. We ended up cooking them for about 12 minutes. As soon as they came out of the oven, we put the lollipop sticks into them.

Little Monkey pushed the lollipop sticks into the melted Jolly Rancher.

We probably could have cooked them a little bit longer but it worked out. I would also recommend using smaller lollipop sticks. We used these because we already had them on hand.

Little Monkey approved!

Little Monkey liked the project and it was quick and easy. Little Monkey was even more excited about the project when he found out that not only could he have the lollipops, but they are also phe free! Yay for a fun summer project for my little pku-er!

Teacher Appreciation Week-Day 3

For Day 3 of Teacher Appreciation week, it was suggested that we bring in some sort of baked good, either homemade or store bought. Since we had been going to the gym a lot, doing the 24 day challenge, we were trying to keep baked goods out of the house. We picked up some small chocolate chip cookies (Little Monkey’s teacher’s favorite cookies) from Target’s bakery and put them into a ziploc bag. I found some clip art of a chocolate chip cookie and added the sentence, “Thanks for making me into a smart cookie.” We printed the label on card stock and stapled it to the top of the ziploc bag.

Little Monkey’s Cookie present

First Blueberry Picking of 2012

Little Monkette and Little Monkey hard at work looking for dark blueberries.

We tried out a new blueberry patch this past weekend with Mimi. Our ‘regular’ patch hasn’t opened up yet but the one by Mimi’s house was ready for picking! After doing the Kids’ Run, we headed over to the patch to get some blueberries.

Little Monkette took a little bit of teaching because she tried to just pick any berry she saw. Once we got her to look for the dark berries, she did great. Little Monkey did well too. We ended up filling a bucket with blueberries. It was almost 6lbs of berries! Even better, it was $15 for all 6lbs! That is quite a deal if you compare it to the grocery store. We will be getting more blueberries…once all of these are eaten.

Little Monkey showing off most of our blueberries!

Chicken Roll Ups

The other night I was trying to decide what to make for dinner…so I checked my Food board on Pinterest. Not helpful at all. It has 27 pins on it and all but four were dessert! Thankfully I have another collaboration Pinterest board that three other friends also add recipe ideas to. I checked out that board and found this easy recipe for Chicken Roll Ups. The best part was that we had almost all the ingredients already (and I probably could have made it without the item we were missing and been fine). It took me almost an hour to make (including the 30 minute baking time) but you can make the filling ahead of time and just keep it in the fridge. I had to cook the chicken and make the filling before putting it in the oven.

My version of Chicken Roll Ups with green beans.

Basically it is chicken with cheese and spices wrapped up inside a crescent roll and baked with a sauce on top. It was voted a winner in our house, so we’ll likely make it again. The only note I would give the recipe would be that it might need more than 30 minutes to bake in the oven. Some of our crescent rolls were not fully cooked.

For the recipe, please check out this blog post over at Plain Chicken.

Florida Special

The State of Florida or a Grilled Chicken Nugget from Chick-fil-a?

Little Monkette and I found the above gem in our lunch today. I immediately thought it looked like the state of Florida. I took the picture on my phone and then Little Monkette proceeded to pick up the nugget and try to shoot it like a gun. Pow, Pow!

I like to think that Chick-fil-a just really likes Florida, just like we do!

Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken

I ran across this recipe on Pinterest and thought, “That looks pretty good and seems pretty simple. I’m going to give it a try.” So I pinned it to my food board and made plans to make it. The nice part of this crockpot meal was that it could cook either 10 hours on low or 6 hours on high. I think this is nice for people who work during the day because some crockpot meals are 4 or 8 hours and you just aren’t home from work in those time frames.

Santa Fe Chicken from Chef in Training.

I am using the photo from my Pinterest board, because my meal didn’t come out looking this nice, but it tasted great! I got all the ingredients out and measured up the night before because we would be out the door in the morning to head to bible study. Right before we left, I put everything into the crockpot and off we went. When we returned from bible study, the house was already smelling yummy.

Here is the recipe: (I got it from Chef in Training.)

CROCK POT SANTA FE CHICKEN

Recipe From: skinnytaste.com

• 24 oz (1 1/2) lbs chicken breast
• 14.4 oz can diced tomatoes with mild green chilies
• 15 oz can black beans
• 8 oz frozen corn
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 14.4 oz can fat free chicken broth
• 3 scallions, chopped
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper (to taste)
• salt to taste

Combine chicken broth, beans, corn, tomatoes, cilantro, scallions, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, cayenne pepper and salt in the crock pot.

Season chicken breast with salt and lay on top.

Cook on low for 10 hours or on high for 6 hours.

Half hour before serving, remove chicken and shred.

Return chicken to slow cooker and stir in. Adjust salt and seasoning.

Serve over rice.

This is a Weight Watchers approved meal, if you are doing such a program. (We are not, but I thought it was nice to see that it wasn’t horrible for us.) You can get the point counts for it on Chef in Training’s page.

We will be making this meal again. It was easy and yummy. The only thing Big Monkey had to say about it was that I should use more chicken. (I probably used about half of what the recipe called for because it was what we had.) He said it was good but thought it would be better. Apparently I had talked it up too much.

Teddy Bear Biscuits

Little Monkey’s class makes different snacks each Friday as part of their lessons. The idea is to help them learn step by step directions and measuring. The only problem for Little Monkey is that he often can’t eat whatever them make because of his PKU. We came up with a plan with his teacher so that he could still participate and have a snack. At home on Thursday nights, we make a Little Monkey PKU diet approved snack that will be similar to what the other kids will be having. He takes it to school on Friday, makes the snack with the other kids and then eats the snack we made at home.

Today’s snack is Teddy Bear Biscuits made from refrigerated biscuits. Since that wasn’t an option for Little Monkey, I asked on the Cook for Love Facebook group what we could do. Turns out there is a Make ahead Biscuit recipe on the Cook for Love website. We got home late last night because we were helping some family members move, so Little Monkey didn’t get to help out in making this item at home.

Teddy Bear Biscuit!

Little Monkey loved it when he saw it this morning. The only problem was that when I moved it off the cooking sheet, the head and ears all became disconnected. Little Monkey wasn’t too sad about it. He understood how to put it back together for school. I am interested to see how he liked it and how much he ate. We put some cinnamon and sugar on top of it before baking, since the other kids were going to have cinnamon and sugar on theirs too.

The biscuit recipe was pretty easy to make and we also have other biscuits in the freezer ready to bake whenever Little Monkey might want some.

Cookie Decorating Day

At the beginning of December, Little Monkey had some friends over to have a cookie decorating day. We met one of the other families at a PKU event and another family online through Facebook. Turns out one of the families lives about 15 minutes down the road from us. We were very excited to all get together and decorate cookies and let the kids play.

We talked to our dietician and she was able to get us connected to a person at Cambrooke who generously sent us some wheat starch that we need to make the cookies. Wheat starch is the one odd ball ingredient in the cookie recipe and it isn’t cheap. We were thrilled that Cambrooke was happy to send us some for our little party.

Before the party we cooked up a bunch of cookies, decorated for Christmas and made aprons for each little guest. We also planned to make some cookies once the guests arrived so that we could show them the recipe. Little Monkey decided that we needed a sign in the yard so that people would know where to park. Mimi tried to convince him that wasn’t necessary but he wouldn’t give up. They ended up making a sign and putting it on the back of my car. While making that sign, they also made two signs for the door. Little Monkey did all the writing and then hung them up. Apparently this special animal tape was all he could find.

Welcome!

We set up two tables for cookie decorating but ended up only needing one. We used the other to collect all the finished cookies. We laid out all the aprons for the guests, but Little Monkey decided that just their first initial wouldn’t be enough. So he labeled each apron with their names too!

Appliqued aprons for the guests.

Once all the little chefs arrived, we had some pku friendly foods for everybody to eat. Once their bellies were filled up on good stuff, we got to the fun part! We pulled out all the cookies and lots of icing and some phe free decorations and let the kids go at it. It was a fun crazy time with lots of icing covered fingers and candies and cookies being eaten.

Concentrating on decorating cookies!

Even Little Monkette had fun decorating cookies (and eating them).

As cookies were decorated, we moved them over to the other table to make room for more decorating. Each family had their own section and we filled up some cute storage buckets with all their creations and more undecorated cookies to take home. We’ve been enjoying snacking on our cookies for most of the month. Amazingly, the cookies keep pretty well. We also took a plate of cookies to Little Monkey’s nurse and deitician. They shared the cookies with the office and everyone was surprised at how yummy the cookies tasted. (Lo pro foods have a bad rep for not tasting too great.)

A small collection of the decorated cookies!

A great time was had by everyone and we hope to have another cooking day in the new year. Our deitician has also asked us to consider putting together an event for our entire clinic (pku patients and families) next year. By the time Christmas comes around, the new Nemours Hospital should be open and they are going to have a big teaching kitchen that we could use to hold our event!

 

Fried Pickle Chips

My mom recently went on a trip with my dad and some friends on a road trip to a few restaurants from the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives show. They had some yummy fried pickles apparently. A few days after they returned, my mom posted on her Facebook status that she really wanted some of the fried pickles. I decided that since I was going to go spend some time with my mom for a few days, I would make her some fried pickles and take them to her. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I didn’t get them made before we got to the beach, so we made them today. Aunt K was over and I brought all the ingredients with me so we got to work during nap time.

I found this recipe online at CopyKat. It is supposed to be a copykat of Hooters Fried Pickles, which is not where mom and dad had them but I figured the recipe would probably work okay.

Ingredients:
8 cups vegetable oil
2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon red pepper
11 ounce jar hamburger dill pickle slices (I bought the wrong kind of pickles!! Whoops!)
2 cups buttermilk

Heat 8 cups of vegetable oil to 350 degrees in a large pot. (Next time I plan to do this in the deep fryer, but we don’t have one at the beach house.)
Drain dill pickles in a colander and then place in a medium sized bowl with the 2 cups of buttermilk.
Place all dry ingredients into a bowl and mix well.
Take a few of the pickles out of the buttermilk and dredge into the seasoned flour.

Buttermilk dip and flour dredge

Shake off excess flour and place pickles into hot grease.

Pickles cooking in the grease.

Don’t cook too many pickles at once or they won’t fry up crisp.
Fry pickle slices until golden brown.

Finished Fried Pickle Chips

Had I bought the right kind of pickles…these may have been better. Mom said they were okay…well actually I think she said something more like, ‘they aren’t horrible,’ but that’s alright. Aunt K liked them and it was a fun little afternoon project in the blah beach weather.