Unfortunately, geography has come between me and the boys.  This means that books are less of a dinner thing and more of a gift in the mail thing.  However, I will continue to plan and test meals that go with books so that when the chance comes around to cook with and for them again, I’ll be ready.

I’m looking for the perfect book to start up again and then I’ll have another posting ready.

Grummy's taking a holiday

I'll be back to reading and cooking as soon as possible.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy, by Oliver Jeffers

 

Skill Level: Intermediate (good shopping skills help)

We so enjoyed Oliver Jeffers’ Stuck, that I started reading some of his other books and came across this one.  The youngest grandchild saw the back of the book and started yelling “IT’S MINE IT’S MINE IT’S MINE” (he didn’t stop after three times, I just didn’t feel like typing the other 739 iterations.) I guess he thinks that anything that he’s licked or has a bite out of it is his. He’s generally right since nobody else wants what he’s licked or bitten.

 

This story is about Henry who loved books.  Like I love ice cream.  As he ate books he became smarter and smarter.  However, because this is a story which ends well, he couldn’t continue to eat them.

 I thought about books. I thought about pages.  I thought about a cover.  I thought about lasagna. Layers of “pages” inside a red (Henry’s favorite books are red) cover.  Luckily, Mr. Jeffers gave me an idea for a side dish … so I thought about broccoli. 

First, I used my handy pasta recipe with a bit of red added.  I took my 2 ¼ cups of flour, 3 eggs and dash of salt and added about a tablespoon of tomato paste.  I mixed this, then rolled it into a ball and set it aside to rest.  The color, by the way, looked like a fine aged red book … sort of orange.

 

While the dough was resting, I had to run to the store for ingredients for my dessert idea.  While there, I made a visit to the salad bar.  I gathered a nice salad of broccoli, cauliflower, corn, peppers, cherry tomatoes, snap peas and a wee bit of ranch dressing.  Perfect  side dish.  It’s already assembled.

 

When I got home, the pasta was well-rested, so I rolled it out thin, and cut some pages.  I made my pages twice the length of my baking dish, but only one times the width. 

 

 

This way, I could fold them over to make pages.

 

 

 

Because I wanted the noodles to steam a bit, I put about a teaspoon of water in the bottom of my dish.  I layered the noodles with sliced provolone, thinly sliced mushroom, thinly sliced white onions and ricotta (note the white theme here?), repeating and “opening” the red covers as I went. 

 

 

 

Technically, I had a lot more covers than pages, but as I told the boys, that happens.  In retrospect, I could have made a half recipe of red pasta and a half of white.  Then I’d have my pages as white pasta.  I’ll know better next time. 

 

I covered this with foil and baked it for about a half an hour. 

 

 

For dessert, I cut some puff pastry into rectangles.  I gave the boys plastic knives and told them to press the handle down the middle so it looked like an open book.  I baked these while the boys were eating, and then served them with some chocolate syrup for dipping.

 

 

Title	The Incredible Book Eating Boy
Author	Oliver Jefffers
Illustrator
Publisher	Philomel
Highlights /Tie in	Books Books Books
Reactions to the Book	·         We eat books Grummy! Only you cook them first. ·         IT’S MINE IT’S MINE, etc. ·         I like green books.  Grummy you need to make me a green book.  Not for the others, just for me.
Meal	·         Books (lasagna) ·         Broccoli salad ·         Puff pastry books with chocolate sauce
Reactions to the Meal	·         Grummy, why aren’t there any noodle pages? ·         Youngest grabbed his lasagna and took a bite, the others ate it in pieces.  Lots of pieces. ·         The puff pastry books were a huge hit.  Page by page by page … dipped in chocolate.  A lot of dripping chocolate.  ·         This meal required more cleanup than I’d anticipated.

 

 

 

Stuck, by Oliver Jeffers

 

Skill Level: Intermediate (some carving skills needed – otherwise, EASY)

When my middle grandson started talking, I think his first word was “Stuck”, or rather “SDUK”.  He would wiggle his way into small places, climb up high, crawl behind, and so forth, but he inevitably got SDUK.  I remember that tiny little voice saying SDUK over and over until someone would find him and help him get UnSDUK.  The title of this book brought back some fond memories.

The story Stuck is about a kite that gets stuck in a tree and just how Floyd goes about getting it out.

He tries throwing many things at it to loosen the kite.  They all get Stuck.  The cat.  His shoes.  A whale. Two boats.  A bucket of paint.  A firetruck and firemen.  Until finally, the tree gets full and the kite falls out.

 I had thought about doing a salad that the boys could add to but then I realized that this was the perfect opportunity for a Stuckasserole. 

 I started by making kites out of biscuits.  I rolled out some canned (refrigerator) biscuits and hand cut them to look like kites, making sure they were large enough to cover most of the bowl.  Then I took a bowl each, wrapped it in aluminum foil and laid the biscuit kite on top, draping it over the edges.  I baked them for about 10 minutes (at 350) then took them out to cool.

 

 

Then I trimmed some broccoli florettes to look like trees.  I know some kids really don’t like broccoli, so maybe you make a tree out of celery stalls.  My grandsons will eat broccoli if it’s in a creamy cheesy sauce so I was hoping to convince them that they’d love this. 

Then, I cut some carrots into little cylinders and hollowed them a bit, leaving a depression that made them somewhat resemble tiny paint buckets.  With a bit of Grummy says these are paint buckets, there was no argument about it.

 

The same for my potato boats.  I sliced my potatoes and then cut them into the shape (close enough) of rowboats and hollowed out a bit of the middle. 

 

I then cooked all of these, the broccoli, carrots and potatoes in separate dishes in the microwave.  I cooked them separately so that the boys could assemble their Stuckasseroles.  I started them out by putting some trees in their bowls, then telling them to put some paint buckets, seashells (tiny pasta shells) (what’s a casserole without pasta?), boats, and cats (cut out of Canadian bacon) into their bowls. 

 

 

Then we played the Stick a Pea In It game.  The boys loved the name, thinking it was almost naughty, but funny because Grummy kept saying it.  I asked them what other things Floyd threw into the tree.  For each thing one of them answered, I’d say “Stick a Pea In It” and they’d take a pea out of the little pile of peas and put it in their bowl.  If they didn’t answer, I’d say “Stick a Pea In It” and they’d take a pea out of the little pile of peas and put it in their bowl.  I’d ask how their day was, and when they answered, I’d say “Stick a Pea In It” and they’d take a pea out of the little pile of peas and put it in their bowl.  I asked if Grummy looked especially pretty tonight, and when they agreed, I’d say “Stick a Pea In It” and they’d take a pea out of the little pile of peas and put it in their bowl.  We played this for a bit.  So much so that the boys started asking questions and saying “Stick a Pea In It”. 

 Once their bowls were full, I topped them with some cheese whales and a tiny bit of milk.  I microwaved them briefly just to melt the whales, and topped the bowl with the biscuit kite.

 

 

For dessert, we had fruit, yogurt and blueberry muffin “casseroles”.  I made a parfait of the fruit and yogurt and topped them with a slice of muffin (cut crosswise to make a circle) and topped the whole thing with more yogurt.

 

 

Title	Stuck
Author	Oliver Jefffers
Illustrator
Publisher	Philomel
Highlights /Tie in	Trees, kites, boats, cats, whales, paint buckets
Reactions to the Book	·         Remember Grummy when O got SDUK all the time?  That was funny.  Maybe he was a kite. ·         My ball got stuck in the tree but it fell over so we could get the ball out. ·         Mommy wouldn’t like it if I threw my shoes in the tree.
Meal	·         Stuckasseroles ·         Broccoli trees, carrot paint buckets, potato boats, cheese whales, ham cats, biscuit kites ·         Dessert of fruit parfait “casserole”
Reactions to the Meal	·         They loved assembling their own Stuckasseroles. ·         They Loved telling each other what to put into them. ·         The LOVED the Stick A Pea In It game.

Snowball Soup by Mercer Mayer

Skill Level: Easy

This week is another I Can Read book: Snowball Soup by Mercer Mayer.  When my daughter was a toddler, Little Critter was her favorite character.  We would read the stories for bedtime, for wake up time, for incentive, for lazy days.  So I thought I’d had my fill of Little Critter stories, but then, 28 years passed and I remembered why my daughter liked them so much.  They’re just stories about a kid, who does normal kid stuff, has normal kid days, normal kid friends, normal kid pets, normal kid problems and normal kid solutions.

 The boys proved me correct in my assessment.  Look Grummy, he has a hat just like mine.  Look Grummy, Dog jumps up just like OurCricket and OurBeasley do.  Their mommy made them put on boots too.

The title of the story really set the menu.  Snowball Soup is about a normal kid day playing in normal kid snow.  Little Critter and his sister make a snowman and fix some snowball soup for him.  Unfortunately, Dog finds he likes snowball soup.

 

So we start with soups that have white orbs floating around in them.  Ok, maybe it sounds better if I say a white bean chili.  Well, beans aren’t really that round, so maybe we’ll add some ground turkey meatballs.  I started with some instant grits, an egg and ground turkey.  I added a small amount of chopped green onions, about 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, and some salt and pepper.

 

 

I spent about 3 seconds wondering if I could have the boys help roll the meatballs, since just about any age can roll a ball.  But then I remembered that this was raw poultry, and there was no way I could keep the youngest from trying to eat it.  So made the meatballs, rolling them pretty small.  About the size of an olive so that they would cook up quickly in a nice vegetable broth.  I added some canned navy beans which I'd rinsed.   My sister convinced me that my leftover stellini and pastini (the little pasta stars I’ve used for other story meals) would make great snowflakes, so we added some of those near the end of the cooking since they’re so tiny they cook quickly.

 

I decided to make biscuits in little balls of three graduated sizes.  Perfect for stacking as snowmen.  I wasn’t sure if they’d actually stay stacked, but I figured that the boys would laugh a lot at the biscuits rolling off of the stack if they fell.  It turned out that because they had a slightly flat bottom, they stacked beautifully, but if you’re worried, you can put a dab of cream cheese or butter in between them.  The best part about making these biscuits is that it’s something you can have the kids help with.  Nothing toxic about biscuit dough, not even a raw egg.  You can find recipes all over the Internet for biscuits, you can use pre-mixed biscuits or even refrigerator biscuits.  And if they don’t turn out perfectly shaped, you can always say they melted a bit in the oven!  Just be aware that you’ll usually have one that had a finger stuck into the middle of it, one that might have been flattened by an older sibling, or one that was licked before it ended up on the baking sheet.  We had some discards.

 

Remember when plating this dinner that you want a very small bowl for the soup (less mess to clean up), and you can sprinkle some of the (pasta) snowflakes on the plate.  Then just put the snowmen on and serve it up.

 

 

 

For dessert, more snowballs.  This time, I just dampened some grapes in a mixture of white corn syrup and water and rolled them in shredded coconut and put them in the freezer.  You can always substitute egg whites for my corn syrup mixture.  The neat thing about these is that they’re a combination of textures and freeze really quickly.

 

 

 

Title	Snowball Soup
Author	Mercer Mayer
Illustrator	Mercer Mayer
Publisher	Harper Trophy
Highlights /Tie in	Snowballs, Snowman, Snowflakes
Reactions to the Book	·         They really liked the story and found a lot of things with Little Critter that were just like with themselves. ·         The boys pointed out when Little Critter was nice to his Little Sister and told me that you need to be nice to little sisters.  (They don’t have any)
Meal	·         Snowball soup – Ground turkey meatballs, vegetable broth, navy beans and some stellini and pastini (to look like snowflakes) ·         Snowman biscuits ·         Frozen grape snowballs
Reactions to the Meal	·         They stuffed as many of the meatball snowballs into their mouths as they could.  The youngest one won the game. ·         It took some convincing to make them “see” the snowflakes in the pasta stars, but they let me slide on that point. ·         The snowmen were a hit.  They tried several configurations; small snow ball on the bottom, all the same size snowballs, etc.

 

Still cooking, still reading.

 

 

The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch

Skill Level: Intermediate

Finally, a chance to do another book and dinner.  The book this week was The Paper Bag Princess.  This is the story of a princess, a dragon, and a prince.  In this story, the Princess defeats the Dragon and rescues the Prince.  She does this wearing a paper bag since the Dragon had burned all of her princessly clothes.  Unfortunately, the Prince feels that the Princess is exhibiting a lack of style. 

 

This led to a few discussions about what’s ugly and what isn’t. Remember Grummy, when I thought you wrapped my birthday present in the newspaper? Remember when it was a CLOCK for me to learn to tell time with?  It was a clock in a newspaper. 

 

After some prodding, guidance and outright giving them the answers, the boys accepted that the Princess wasn’t ugly, but the Prince was.  We discussed a few other examples of this.  Some snakes look pretty but are dangerous.  Some food looks good but isn’t good for you.  So the boys ended up learning the word ‘Consequences’, and how you get them in addition to the story's moral about looking beyond the wrapping.

The menu for this story wasn’t nearly as important as the serving vessel(s).  I used brown paper lunch bags to hold the entire meal and to cook the dessert.   I made some bags out of parchment and tape (shaped like those birthday goodie bags).  I even cooked some of the vegetables in “bags” and served the salad in them.

First, I wanted to make beggar’s purses.  And I didn’t want to go to the store.  So I found a recipe for wonton skins and made the dough.  It’s an awful lot like my pasta dough, but here’s the recipe:

 

Wonton Skins:

2 cups all purpose flour, sifted 1 egg ¾ tsp salt ¼ cup water

Sift the flour into a medium bowl. In a small bowl, gently beat together the egg and salt.  Add the water. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour in the egg mixture. Work the mixture until it forms somewhat dry dough. Kneed for 5 minutes. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.

 

 

While the wonton dough was resting, I cut up some chicken into dime sized pieces and started them browning in about a teaspoon of oil.  I then shredded some carrots, diced some garlic and pickled ginger, and added some chopped pecans.  Once in the pan, I added some celery.  You could add whatever you have on hand, remember, I didn’t want to go to the store.

 

 

 

For our vegetable, I chose green beans with almonds and a bit of lemon juice.  Okay.  I added a teeny bit of butter.  I wrapped each portion in a small piece of parchment and cooked them (seam side down) in the microwave for about a minute.

 

 

The salad was a lettuce roll with some of my herbed ricotta, thinly sliced carrots and cherry tomatoes.  I rolled them up and wrapped them in some parchment so they looked like they were in little bags.

 

Now that the dough was rested, I made the beggar’s purses.  I rolled the dough out in thin sheets, working with a small amount at a time to reduce frustration.  Using a pasta cutting wheel that leaves edges that look like they were cut with pinking shears, I cut the dough into squares around 3” on a side.  I put a heaping tablespoon of the chicken mixture on each, then folded them up into purses.  First join opposite corners and pinch the dough, then bring the two remaining sides together and lift the dumpling into the palm of your hand.  Cradle the dumpling while gently twisting the top and pinching off a “neck” in the dumpling to make it resemble a drawstring bag.

I don’t have a bamboo steamer (remember, no visits to the store today), so I used my double boiler with its strainer insert to steam the dumplings.  I steamed them while I assembled the dessert.

 

Dessert was popcorn – in a bag – of course.  I put 3 tablespoons (one for each serving) of popcorn kernels in a brown paper lunch bag and folded the bag over once and taped it.  I put it in the microwave, tape side up and cooked it on high.  You really have to listen to the kernels and when they stop popping for more than 3 seconds, stop cooking.  Once the popcorn was done, I put 1 teaspoon of coconut oil and 1 tsp of chocolate milk powder in the bag, folded it over and shook for a half a minute.  I put each dessert portion into one of the bags I’d made out of parchment paper.

While I was cooking and packaging everything, I had the boys color some lunch bags that I’d already started with the word “Dinner” on them.  Once those were finished, I packed the entire dinner up in the bags, and we had our Paper Bag Princess Dinner.

 

 

Title	The Paper Bag Princess
Author	Robert Munsch
Illustrator	Michael Martchenko
Publisher	Annick Press
Highlights /Tie in	Paper Bags, bandana/napkins
Reactions to the Book	·         Loved tying napkins (bandanas) around their necks like the dragon did ·         She didn’t like the Prince because he thought she looked ugly.  (With a bit of prompting …)He was ugly. ·         Grummy, you know we’re boys, right?
Meal	·         Chicken dumplings (pauper’s purse sort of) ·         String beans, lemon, almonds in a ‘bag’ ·         Salad wraps in a ‘bag’ ·         Chocolate popcorn in a ‘bag’ ·         The whole meal in a brown lunch bag
Reactions to the Meal	·         This is a lot of paper Grummy.  ·         It’s SCHICKEN! I told you Grummy’d make us schiken again. ·         The youngest ate the bag to get the chocolatey popcorn goo off. ·         You had me  color my bag so we’d know that was my dinner, not theirs.