This weeks open ended art project was pumpkins. I had a bunch of pumpkin stickers and die cuts left over from the bookmark activity we did at his harvest party, so I pulled those all out, added basic art supplies and let him at it.
First he started scribbling all over the page in multiple shades of green. “Those are the pumpkin vines.”
He added pumpkin shapes to the patch.
Finally, he decided it needed embellishment.
The finished product:
He liked making pumpkin patches!
For more great open ended art projects, check out the linkie at Mommies Wise Little Bookworms!
This day was exhausting! My mom comes every other week to spend the day with baby L and let me volunteer at kidlet’s school. Today was thier Harvest Party, and I was running one of the tables (we set up 4 stations and they rotated around to each).Â
I had them making bookmarks. I have SO many scrapbook embellishments from when I was selling pages on eBay, so I gathered up all the halloween and leafy apple-y pumpkin-y ones and took those along with card stock and patterned papers cut to size as well as ribbons for the tops. I have a mini laminator so I took that as well; bookmarks should last a little longer that way at least. They turned out very cute, and every one was so different; the kids were very creative.
Aside from that hour, I also spent another 3 hours at the school, an hour of it working with the kids and the rest while they were in activities out of the classroom (PE, etc), doing some preparation (cutting out die cut pumpkins, changing out bulletin boards, making closets out of construction paper for a monster activity, etc).
Kidlet didn’t eat very much of his lunch today. The harvest party ran until 15 minutes before lunch time. Snack table (they made ghost or pumpkin bagel halves with cream cheese and raisins, and had apples with caramel dip) was the kidlet’s last stop in the rotating around the room, so he just wasn’t that hungry at lunch. So much work for so little eaten!
Ham chunks, overcooked english muffin “mummy” with ham and pepperoni eyes (it wasn’t too done to eat even though it looks awfully black in the picture, just so melted that you can’t tell that there were “bandages” out of cheese on it), bologna, cheese and nori monster, grapes (more under mummy), pear, broccoli, asparagus, carrot and jicama ghosts.
Time taken: 40 minutes total. I did make bologna monster last night, but really he didn’t take very long. Most of that was this morning, making the mummy, (over) broiling it, steaming the veggies, etc and assembly.
Yesterday’s monster was a big hit. Kidlet even  had kids from other classrooms crowding around to look, and they wouldn’t let him eat until they all got a chance to see –  lol!
PB and Banana on whole grain white, strawberries, grape tomatoes, carrot and asparagus. Monster is a piece of cheddar on a piece of bologna, and then I carved around to leave the little fins. Mouth is a sliver of cucumber skin. Overnight it shriveled a little and now he looks almost sad! Eyes are a circle of provolone and  little candy disk things used for decorating baked goods.
Time taken: 20 minutes for the monster yesterday evening, 5-10 for assembly this morning.
Getting a recipe to use this week has been a challenge! For me, when I try to browse the “top 100” recipes for ANY chef, (except for the 8 or 9 they specifically have listed as links), no recipes come up.  I had to spend a bit of time doing “Cat Cora” +Ingedient searches. Just using her name brought up a ton of stuff. AFTER the fact I discoverd that I can use a chef’s name in quotations, and make sure to switch the search box focus from “entire site” to “recipes” and it lists fine.
This weeks Food Netowrk Chefs Cooking Challenge features Cat Cora. I have never seen her on a food network show aside from Iron Chef America, although I have seen her other places. The first time, in fact, was on Sesame Street, although she wasn’t presenting a recipe 😉 I know her style is Greek / Mediterranean, which I enjoy. How can you go wrong with foods like good olives, phyllo, feta cheese, garlic and oregano? I love avgolemono soup when I am sick (chicken broth, rice, slightly thickened with lemon and egg) so when I saw the recipe for shrimp avgolemeno, I knew that was the one.
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Changes: I did not have fish stock, and that’s not something you can buy (at least not around here), so I decided to use clam juice. I also discovered right before cooking that I didn’t have any skewers. I ALWAYS have skewers, I mean seriously, have you seen my bento pick collection? LOL The four inch bamboo ones weren’t going to cut it though, so I ended up skipping the grilling step. The recipe says just to mark them and then you transfer them to the oven to cook anyway, so I don’t think it’s a huge deal. I just cooked them a little bit longer in the oven.
Shrimp in Lemon Sauce: Garides Avgolemeno
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Recipe courtesy Cat Cora
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24 large shrimp, cleaned and deveined
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 cup fish broth
1/2 cup finely chopped tomatoes
2 eggs
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
6 wooden skewers, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes
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Marinate the shrimp in the olive oil, oregano, and garlic 30 minutes. (It doesn’t say whether to leave the tail on or not. I went ahead and took it off just for simplicity for the familes eating)
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Preheat a grill. Preheat an oven to 450 degrees F. Slide 4 shrimp onto each skewer. Place on a hot grill and mark on both sides quickly, not cooking them through. Put them in a baking dish and pour the fish broth over the shrimp with the tomatoes and place in the oven for about 4 minutes. (Because of my skewer snafu, I left in oven for 7 minutes. Six would have been perfect for these shrimp, which were 16-20’s)
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Remove from the oven, take the shrimp out of the baking dish, and place on a platter. In a bowl whisk together the eggs and lemon juice. Slowly pour in the fish broth with the tomatoes and incorporate it until foamy. (Most recipes would warn you right now to be sure to go slowly; pour in that hot juice too quickly and it would probably curdle the egg)
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Season with salt and pepper. Pour it over the shrimp and sprinkle with parsley. Serve warm, as an appetizer.
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What we thought: This is not a WOW! main dish (like last week’s coq au vin), but it’s a good family weekday dish. (It’s posted as an appetizer for six, but we fed 2 adults + kidlet with it as a main dish.) It’s a light, tasty shrimp dish that takes almost no time at all to throw together and cook. Aside from marinating time, it took 15 minutes, tops. It could take longer if you aren’t as quick at cleaning shrimp though.Â
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The shrimp was perfect when I took it out of the oven. It kept cooking though as it sat; next time I would take it out a minute sooner (I cooked it 7 minutes, since I didn’t have the grill time). Still, it was much more tender and succulent than my shrimp turns out when I sauté it.
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This one DH actually ate and not only didn’t he complain about my cooking new dishes all the time, but he spontaneously praised it (even though he was a little late and his shrimp was a little cold and starting to get rubbery I thought). He does love his seafood. Kidlet doesn’t like green stuff on his food, so I actually wiped off all his sauce and just served him the shrimp basically plain.Â
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This post is linked to the FN Chef Cooking Challenge over at I Blame My Mother. Check the linky for more reviews of Cat Cora dishes!
With Halloween just around the corner, kidlet’s class is doing a monster-themed unit this week, so I thought I would try and make monster lunches the rest of the week. Of course I used up two monster ideas last week, doh! Today’s lunch was inspired by a piece of art on flickr.
Peanut butter and honey on whole grain bread, strawberries, golden raspberries, kiwi, celery, carrot jack and purple bell pepper bat. Cheese and pepperoni monster, with a little food coloring to define the gaping maw, and a tiny bit of nori to make the people in the spoon a little easier to see. He won’t eat the people with the nori on it, but oh wel, its an itty bitty scrap of cheese 😉
Time spent: 40 minutes on the monster yesterday. I had to re-do it because the first cheese base was a yellow/white mix and was cut so thinly, it just kept breaking apart and crumbling. So I had to put that in the cheese scrap baggie and start again. 10 minute assembly this morning.
Friday night was fall fun night at Kidlet’s school, and he is really getting pumped for Halloween now!Â
They had two haunted “houses” – one for the little kids and then the other for 3rd grade +. After he went through the young one, he said “That wasn’t scary at all!” and made me wait in a 30 minute line to go through the “big kids huanted house”. The whole time the volunteers are roaming the line, telling everyone how super scary it is, and directing people with small children to the other one.  We saw multiple (older) kids come right back out the front door within a minute of going in. I was really worried.
We finally made it in. They give you a flash light and a glow stick to break if you get too scared or lost and need someone to take you out. Kidlet barrelled in, led the way. We had to crawl at times, through darkness, in creepy fake cobwebs, strobe lit areas with hanging body parts, foam rubber walls with hands reaching through them to get to you, costumed volunteers dripping blood, minching brains, you name it. He was fine! Then we get to the end. Five feet from the exit and its pitch black except our little pencil flashlight, and that is when he said “mommy, you go first!” LOL
Ham and pineapple on ghost skewers, raspberries, pretzel chips (hiding under the skewers), cheese ghosts, broccoli, purple bell pepper bat, carrot jack o’lantern, a couple mango filled cookies (they have fruit roll up cut into features to make them look like jacks too, but that got covered up by the ghosts).
Time taken: 25 minutes. Nothing was done ahead this morning.  Plus I discovered at the last minute that despite all my cutters, I don’t have a decent ghost shape. So I made templates and “cut” them out by hand with a quilling tool.
Did pretty well last week. This week we have a couple new recipes and some old favorites.
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Monday:Â Â Meatballs with Spicy Lime Dipping Sauce, Pasta lightly dressed in sesame oil and rice wine vinegar, Asian Beans and Broccoli
Tuesday: Garides Avgolemeno  (shrimp in lemon sauce) from Cat Cora for the Food Network Chef Cooking Challenge, Orzo, Green Salad with Feta Cheese and Kalamata Olives
Wednesday: Cinnamon Rubbed Pork Loin with Roasted Apples and Onions, Roast Fingerling Potatoes, Asparagus
Thursday:Â Â Salmon Turnovers, Green Salad, Corn
Friday: Bacon Cheeseburger Wellingtons (with Candi’s changes), Tater Tots, Cucumber and Tomato Salad (Using the salad from this recipe, and adding tomatoes)
Saturday: Halloween – eat out before heading to SiL
Sunday: Sausages, Red Beans and Rice (this is so easy if you use canned beans and tastes almost as good as a long cooking recipe), Green Salad
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For breakfasts we always have oatmeal, cold cereal, scrambled eggs, toast, freezer muffins, yogurt, cottage cheese and fruits to choose from. Â I also keep us stocked with lunch meats, cheeses, fruits, veggies, etc for bentos. Â Â Â Even when not specifically listed, I usually have a mixed greens salad and fruit available for dinner.
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This post is linked Menu Plan Monday at Organizing Junkie. Â Check out the hundreds of other menus posted.
Oh wait, there are six little pumpkins. Drat, I should have used the witch chocolate instead! 😉
A crazy morning again. I need to either get more sleep so I wake up ready to go and stop dragging the first 30 minutes, or find some way to streamline the morning routine. Since sleeping isn’t always a personal choice with my insomnia, I guess I need to brainstorm. I probably could have made this lunch last night since there is no bread to get soggy, but originally I was going to put in some witches hats that I made from the leftover crescent rolls from the mummies the other day. They just came out too big. I guess I needed to cut each triangle into 2 before rolling up the brim. Next time.
Sausage and mozzarella skewers, red and yellow raspberries, red and green grapes, broccoli (it’s under the skewers and chocolate, cucumber and the last of the jicama bones. The aforementioned chocoate, a couple of crescent moon cheese shapes and pasta pumpkins. Low sugar yogurt with halloween sprinkles in the side car.
Time Taken: 15 minutes
Another Halloween bento today. Yesterdays was a big hit, although he only nibbled a little of the cucumber.
PB & J Monster with cheese and grape eyes, crunching jicama skulls and bones, with a little jelly “blood”. Black and green grapes, pepperoni and pasta bats flitting around.
Time taken: 20 minutes all this morning (jicama bits were done the other day). I boiled pasta, tossed with a tiny amount of evoo so it wouldn’t stick and let it cool down while I assembled the rest. I was putting his breakfast together in that same 20 minutes as well.
Speaking of open ended art, I’ve been pretty frustrated at the complete lack of open endedness or ANY artisitc self expression at Kidlet’s school. At least in my son’s class. I’m not sure if that’s standard, or just his teacher. She’s been teaching 20 some odd years, but she taught second grade until last year.  Last year she did a couple hours in the K classrooms a day. This year is the first that she has been a full time K teacher. So I wonder if she is pushing them because she doesn’t have realistic expectations of what 5 and 6 year olds can produce or if she is just that rigid.Â
I’ve seen my son’s K teacher correct kids even during simple art projects, encouraging them to do it “right”. It’s been a real struggle for me to watch, as (especially in art) I’ve always encouraged him to express it as he sees it, that things don’t have to look a certain way, etc.Â
For instance, they were making pumpkins, cutting features from pages with multiple choices of eyes, nose, etc to glue down on thier pumpkin bases, and she was really riding them to cut out the pieces so no white would show on the edges, because the white was “wrong”. It was “wrong” if the nose ended up any place except centered under the eyes, etc. When she was asking them to write thier names on it, she says “what would happen if you wrote your name in big letters across the top? that’s right, it would ruin it. So write your name in small letters at the very bottom,” and so on. Heck, kidlet might actually carve his name across a real pumpkin (assuming he could carve at all); what’s so bad about putting it across his pumpkins forehead?
I can understand wanting kids to get letters/numbers/other academic things “correct” but in art?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to rag on her, because in so many other ways, she is a terrific teacher. She’s been just wonderful working with us, helping kidlet overcome his behavioral challenges (he is high energy, and struggles with transition times, and has had a few major meltdowns). She does seem to have high expectations for the kids, and I actually think that’s been good for the most part. The kids are stepping up to meet those expectations; thier work really has improved dramatically for as little time as she has had with them so far.
I just wonder if I am being oversensitive, and if the push to do things correctly even in art is something they need at this age, or if she is stifling thier creativity and if I should speak to her or not about it.