Another Quick Note

Yesterday I was handed a bag full of books that had arrived at the kindergarten from Scholastic Books.  I'm so excited.  We have quite a few books to start reading and cooking and eating. 

 

The boys tore into the bag and wanted to start reading, but the littlest one told them "No, Grummy has to read them first."  For the first time as far as I know, it seems the two older ones listened to what the baby said.  At least according to their Momma.

 

Once we get through this new list of books, I think I might do three in a row based on a topic chosen by each of the boys.  This is how we ended up with Smash! Crash! by John Scieszka.   They all wanted Truck stories.  Then we had Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin because they wanted a Dragon story (I'm going to have to recreate this meal in order to photograph it, but needless to say, it involved tacos.  A lot of tacos.)

 

Just to let all of you know, this is turning into a huge deal with the boys.  They look forward to the books and meals, and while I'm not with them, they tell each other the stories over and over.  When they have something for dinner that reminds them of one of the stories, they tell the story to whoever will listen.  I think I've hit upon a way to generate dinner table conversation.

 

I really do love doing this, and even more I love watching and hearing of the impact.

 

Monday is the next book and dinner night and I'm sure it'll be great.  Look for the posting on Tuesday for the details.

Smash Crash by John Scieszka

Cooking Skill Level: EASY

 

John Scieszka has created a world full of trucks.  Trucks of all kinds; trash trucks, monster trucks, cherry pickers, all sorts of trucks, each with their own personality. The best part of this is that it pretty much guarantees that your grandchild will find one to identify with and then they’ll follow that truck through all of the rest of Scieszka’s Trucktown series.

I used props for this meal.  I found three toy dump trucks and used those to serve the beans and rice dish.  What a hit that was – so much so that the boys wouldn’t loan them back to me to take pictures so I got a really cool truck for the pictures.  When they saw them, the oldest said “Scuze me Grummy, next book maybe we should have a story about skateboards and you could give us skateboards.”

 

TIP: search the dollar stores for props that can be substituted for serving dishes and make sure you can clean them both before use and after use.

 

The menu for this book was mini meatloaves shaped like truck tires and a bean and rice dish that the boys love.  For the meatloaves, I used a half pound of meatloaf mix (beef and pork), a half pound of ground chicken, some diced onions and peppers and left over pasta salad.  Trust me, it works.  If the pieces of pasta are large, then just chop them up.  Pasta is mostly flour, so it’s like adding breadcrumbs and it was in the refrigerator.  Really, just use whatever recipe you would normally use for a meatloaf, it’s the pan that really matters. 

I have a bad habit of buying baking pans.  When I first saw the donut baking pans I got one of the large and one of the small.  They’ve made tires for numerous cakes over the years so I guess they weren’t a bad purchase after all. 

 

Even though the meatloaf will produce a bit of grease, I still sprayed the pan with cooking spray.  Remember that the meatloaf mix will shrink upon cooking, so make sure you pack the mix into the donuts and that you really fill each “wheel”. Because these are so small, they cook really quickly so make sure they don’t burn.

 

 

For the rice dish, I take 1 ½ cups of rice – I prefer Basmati because of the smell – 1 medium can of beans – use red, pinto or black – with the juice, diced carrots and onions, frozen peas, 1 cup beef bouillon.  I toss it all into a pot and bring to a boil.  I stir it, cover it and reduce the heat, cooking until most of the moisture is absorbed - usually about 25 to 30 minutes.  I leave it covered, but off the heat while I prepare a scrambled egg.  I take one large egg, a dash of cream and some salt and pepper and whisk it together.  Pour it into a hot skillet with melted butter and stir.  I wanted small curds, so I stirred a lot.  If the curds end up too big, just kind of mash them up with a spatula.  I then stir the eggs into the rice dish.  This is MY version of rice and beans in case you don’t have your own recipe.  The packages of Lipton rice dishes should work just as well, but don’t forget this is a great opportunity to add vegetables.

 

I served this dinner by heaping rice and beans into the back of the truck and decorating a plate with first a dotted line then a double line done in yellow mustard to look like a road and stacked the meatloaf tires on the side.  I gave the boys some cherry tomatoes just to balance out the plate.  They love the seed “caviar” in the tomatoes, so there’s a chance they’ll eat them.

 

For dessert, I used the same small donut pan and baked brownies for the boys.  Again, because there is so little batter in each donut in the pan, these will cook really quickly.

 

 

Title	Smash! Crash!
Author	John Scieszka
Illustrator	David Shannon, Loren Long, David Gordon
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Highlights /Tie in	Wheels, Road, Trash Truck
Reactions to the Book	·         Look at the dump truck, look at the trash truck ·         Why is the Monster truck so scary?
Meal	·         Trash: Rice with Beans and Scrambled Eggs served in plastic monster dump trucks ·         Wheels: Mini meatloaf sliders shaped with a mini donut baking pan ·         Dessert: Little Brownie tires – use mini donut pan
Reactions to the Meal	·         O separated the rice, the beans and the eggs into separate piles, then took some from each pile to make a spoonful … I guess for even distribution ·         Lots of fingers with meatloaf wheels spinning on them (or as close to spinning as they could get) ·         Scuze me Grummy, next book maybe we should have a story about skateboards and you could give us skateboards

 

I’m on a roll, so maybe I’ll get the rest of these written up and posted soon.