The New Sloppy Joe in My House

Hello All,

Apologies for the extreme delay in posting anything new.  I appreciate everyone hanging in there and surviving on the increasing old posts I have already added.

I am pleased to announce that Tasty Toddler has added a new member while you have been waiting.  We welcomed our little girl, Charlotte to the world in September and we are all consumed with her loveliness.

As of the day before yesterday all of my baby helpers have left and I am forced to make dinner on my own again - can you hear the groan?  However, I found a recipe on pintrest.com over the weekend that made me groan just a bit less. 

While surfing the site I came across - White Trash Sliders (found through Pintrest on South Your Mouth).  Though the name is not exactly appetizing the ease of making this little dinner and the taste more than made up for it.  This recipe was fat, simple, easily modifiable for taste and health content and almost everyone in the house ate it - woo hoo!!!

I did not even bother to consult the recipe when I made these beauties - they were that self explanatory.  To feed two adults and two toddlers (my son had a friend over) I used:

1/2 lb. lean ground beef
6 breakfast sausages
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 block of velveeta (2% milk)
3 hamburger buns

I simply cooked and chopped the meat together, mixed in the Velveeta and added salt and pepper.  The cheese helped everything stay together unlike Sloppy Joes and it was a quick and easy meal when served with a vegetable side.  I was thinking I could further and some nutrition by chopping up some veggies into the mix, using whole wheat buns, turkey sausage or meatless sausage, etc.  This recipe is that easily customizable.

Result: Parents enjoyed them - SUCCESS! Toddler enjoyed them - 50% SUCCESS! (One toddler is currently not eating anything lately and the other complimented me that it was yummy)

Food Crafts for Toddlers

It is very rare that you find a craft that your kids love, is easy to do for parents and adults and you have all of the materials on hand but I found one!

I was surfing Pintrest.com the other day, shocking I know and found the image of this great looking craft or better named learning activity for toddlers. The child pictured was simply using spaghetti noodles that were pointing straight up from dough and threading cheerios on them.  I thought; I have cheerios; I have spaghetti noodles; I have play dough.  I should try this.  So that very afternoon around my sons snack time I sat him in his high chair and decided to give this a try.

Besides being handy and easy to assemble I found that my child loved this little game. He could eat the cheerios on his tray or put them down the spaghetti sticks. If a noodle broke it didn’t matter because it offered varying lengths to play with and I of course had plenty more. I played with him for a while and would add cheerios to sticks making “O” sounds when one made it down the noodle which brought on giggling from Will. Will was also happy playing with them himself.

I kept the dough in the cup to spare the mess. I also did this in a high chair so there would be no play dough accidents on the carpet.

All-in-all Will played with this activity for about 30 minutes. I highly recommend it as a cold or rainy day activity or maybe while you are trying to get something done without little ones under your feet.It seems very open to substitutions of other snack foods, homemade dough, straws instead of noodles – whatever you may have on hand. I really enjoyed that if he ate anything from this craft they were mostly food items and non-toxic. In future, I think I may try to use real food dough instead of play dough so that it is a food product as well.  I have seen a few recipes on Weelicious.com for kid dough.

Result: Parents enjoyed them - SUCCESS! Toddler enjoyed them - SUCCESS!

Healthy Breakfast Muffins with Vegetables

Sweet Potato Muffins
[Weelicious.com]

Hello parents of picky eaters,

I apologize for the long delay in posting something new to the site.  Life seems to be getting in the way of my blog and I haven't been keeping up with it as I should.  However, I have not been completely idle and I have been researching new recipes and plan to be much better with posting new items for everyone to try and experiment with in your own homes with your families.

This week I realized that I was out of breakfast muffins and really needed to get cooking.  I serve Will (my 20 month old) a lot of different varieties of toddler breakfast muffins and he loves them.  I have yet to find a variation that he does not gobble up with plenty of audible – mmmmms.

I decided, I wanted to find a new recipe to try to see if I could introduce some more vegetables into Will’s diet.  As you all know he is a picky eater so getting him to eat vegetables and meats is always difficult.

In choosing a new recipe to try I went to my tried and true favorite kid recipe site – Weelicious.com.  I actually found quite a few recipes I plan to try but this week I attempted Mini Sweet Potato Muffins.  They were fantastic!  I made them exactly as the recipe suggested without any substitutions.  The timing was perfect.  The muffins were moist and delicious and contained less sugar than my current favorite toddler breakfast muffins.  I am definitely keeping this in my weekly rotation.  My only variation is that I may add some dried fruits – raisins, cranberries, etc just for some more flavor combinations.

Recipe: Mini Sweet Potato Muffins [Weelicious.com]

Recipe result: Parents enjoyed them - SUCCESS! Toddler enjoyed them - SUCCESS!