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.

 

 

Mac and Cheese by Sarah Weeks

Skill Level: Intermediate

The story this week is one of the I Can Read books from Scholastic.  This is a beginning reading level so I thought it would be a lot of fun to see just how much the eldest grandson could read.  He did a great job sounding the words and if I had to help with a word, he recognized it the next time it showed up in the book. 

 
Mac and Cheese is about two cats who are so different that you wonder how they ever became friends.  Not only friends, but the best of friends.  By the end of the story, you understand that it isn’t always necessary to be the same, if you enjoy being together, you can be friends.

 The menu was so obvious that I thought I should really try to show the moral of the story with this one.  I wanted to show how mac was good, cheese was good, but together, they were really good.  It worked.

I made up a portion of a recipe of pasta dough (1 cup flour, 1 extra large egg, some salt, about a tsp of water) and set that aside to rest.

 One of the fastest melting cheeses is Velveeta.  I needed a fast melting cheese because I was making Cheese (the cat) out of cheese, Mac (the cat) out of pasta, and then pouring a hot sauce over them to help melt it all together into a friendship.

So I took pre-sliced Velveeta since it’s much thinner than I could ever slice it and then dredged the slices in flour to keep the Cheese (the cat) from sticking together.  Just to add a bit to the flavor, I added some sweet Hungarian paprika and some smoked Spanish (hot) paprika to the flour.  Using a cat shaped cookie cutter, I cut 3 slices of Velveeta cats for each plate. This might be a good activity for your grandchildren, but knowing mine, I know I’d never have any Cheese (the cat) for any plate. They’d eat them as soon as they cut them.

 I saved the “voids” or uncut cheese parts and the dredging mixture for the sauce. 

 

Next came the salad.  I wanted to make sure the boys got a lot of protein so I topped some beautiful red leaf lettuce with some light red kidney and black beans as well as some shelled edamame.  I added some crumbles of boiled egg and topped the whole thing with a very light sprinkling of soy sauce and rice wine vinegar.

 

I wanted a crispy garnish that tied to the story, so I made some baked Parmesan crisps in the shape of cat’s heads and added chive whiskers.  Using my largest biscuit cutter (3” diameter), I filled the round shape with about 3 tablespoons of pre-shredded Parmesan. I added a bit more to shape some ears once I removed the biscuit cutter and then added my chive whiskers.  These baked in a 350 degree oven for about 5 minutes.  Keep an eye on them, though, they burn quickly.

 

 

Now that my pasta dough had rested, I rolled it out as thin as I could and using my smallest round biscuit cutter (about 1” diameter), I cut a bunch of pasta circles.  Then, holding the pasta disc in one hand, I dampened an edge, about 1/3 of the circumference of the circle with water.  I then pinched two ears on that dampened edge.  This leaves a little cup shaped depression to collect sauce, while looking somewhat like a cat (Mac).

 

While the water boiled for the pasta, I started the sauce, melting 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter, adding 3 tablespoons of the dredging mix (safe because it only touched the cheese, no meats), and stirred, creating a roux.  The paprika that was added made this a nice orange/red color.  I then added about a cup of milk and the cheese voids to let those melt.

 

 

Once the Mac (the cat) and sauce were done, I finished the plates.  I added the Mac (the cat) so the Mac (the cat) and Cheese (the cat) were clearly distinct on the plate, but then as I poured the sauce over them and had the boys stir, it all came together in a story.

 

Our dessert was our normal standby – fruit (strawberries, bananas),  nuts (pecans) and pie crust cinnamon cookies.

 

 

Title	Mac and Cheese
Author	Sarah Weeks
Illustrator	Jane Manning
Publisher	Scholastic Books
Highlights /Tie in	Cats, Title (Mac and Cheese), Not the same, but together = GREAT
Reactions to the Book	·         So Mac and Cheese are friends Grummy.  They sit together. ·         That’s like at lunch Grummy.  We sit together at lunch with our friends.  It’s better that way. ·         That’s another blue hat
Meal	·         Mac and Cheese – Pasta “Mac” and Velveeta “Cheese”, beschamel ·         Salad, multi bean and egg protein salad ·         Dessert – Strawberries, bananas and pecans with Cat piecrust cookies
Reactions to the Meal	·         The boys loved watching me pour the sauce over their cats, then they had to mix them ·         SCHEEEEZE ·         The dressing on the salad wasn’t that big a hit (soy sauce and rice wine vinegar), but the beans were. ·         We need a book called Tuna Salad, Grummy.

 

It feels good to cook the books!

This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

Cooking Skill Level: EASY

Once again we have a book by one of my very favorite authors, Jon Klassen.  He’s so good at what he does.  Again, the story features a hat.  One that doesn’t belong to the fish that’s wearing it. 

The menu for this was just so obvious to me.  Hats, two sizes of fish, crab on a log, underwater plants to hide in and maybe a bit of seascaping (shells).

This is how I built the story:

First, I worked on the underwater plants.  I love to give the boys different lettuces since they grew some the summer before last and they remember that it comes in all shapes and colors.  The little “Artisan” lettuces that you can find these days are so wonderful for landscaping/seascaping a story.  I dressed this with a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar and oil.

 

 Then I added the logs; celery and cream cheese.  I needed the cream cheese to keep the crab’s claws in place.  The claws were made of mostly stripped thyme twigs.  I saved the stripped leaves for later.  For the body of the crab, I cut a cherry tomato in half and stuck it onto the cream cheese between the claws.  Make sure you play with the claws, you can turn them to face the hiding place (lettuce), or have them waving at the kids, or even covering the crab’s face. 

 

Next I placed my two fish on the plate.  The big fish was simply a fish stick.  The little fish was just a piece of a fish stick.  Of course I had to put a hat on the little fish.

 

Orecchiete again for the hats, this time blue.  I found some organic all natural food coloring on the Internet, but decided I’d use what I had for cake decorating.  At first, I used way too much.  Obviously…

 

 So I tamed that a bit and added in some pasta shells so I could use them in seascaping the plate. 

I added some mozzarella perlini, tiny little pearls of cheese, to the shells to look like all the bubbles you see throughout the story.

 

Dessert was some blackberries (which could look like hats if you squint hard enough) and whipped cream.

 

When we sat down for dinner, I got a high five from the oldest.  He was very proud of how Grummy is learning to cook for boys.  They were all impressed that their tongues and fingers turned blue, but it didn’t stop them from eating and talking about the story.  The middle one wasn’t sure whether he liked this story or I Want My Hat Back better.  He definitely likes fish stories, but we didn’t get carrots with this one Grummy.  Fish don’t like carrots like rabbits do.

Making conversation was sometimes a challenge when we started these dinners.  The boys’ attention was often scattered.  With time, they have become experts at discussing books, themes, food, and ideas.  Plus, I know they will always remember these times and hopefully do the same with their own children and grands.

 

Title	This Is Not My Hat
Author	Jon Klassen
Illustrator	Jon Klassen
Publisher	Candlewick Press
Highlights /Tie in	Blue Hat, Fish (one big, one small)
Reactions to the Book	·         The oldest caught on immediately that this was a book by someone we “knew” – “A HAT? Grummy, ANOTHER HAT” ·         Swim practice on the couch – no winners in the race, they pretty much stayed in one place just waving limbs around
Meal	·         Hats: Orecchiete (blue) ·         Fish sticks ·         Shell pasta ·         Salad that looks like water plants (good for hiding)(sort of) ·         Crab on a log
Reactions to the Meal	·         Pasta hats on each finger, old news (old hat?) ·         The big fish stick chased the little one into the salad.  The littlest grandson chewed on the stick of thyme for a while, then gave it to me.  Sharing is nice. ·         A lot of time spent on putting the perlini “bubbles” into the shells

Tips and Tricks - Chapter 3 Continued

Ok, I went to the store today.  I picked up a whole lot of lovely vegetables and fruits and am planning to make a lot of salads after I finish photographing body parts.

Of all times for this to happen, the fancy cauliflower went on sale and I needed the white.  So I bypassed the beautiful gold and purple varieties and went for dull cream colored.  But Grummy, you ask, why does the color matter? Well, I wanted to show how easy it is to make brains.  Then, on the way home, I realized that purple or gold brains would work too.  Ah well, I’ll get the pretty stuff next time.

So ... brains.  As mentioned, you can use cauliflower.  One of the benefits of cauliflower is that it can be crunchy brains or mushy brains, or anywhere in between brains.  Sometimes that matters.  Crunchy brains and dip might be just the appetizer you’re looking for. 

 

 

Another great brain food (get it?) is pasta.  Just about any shape or form of pasta cooked and drained and left in the colander to cool will look like a brain, but elbow macaroni really works well.  If you have a small cup sized strainer, that would make great individual brains.  If you only have larger strainers, drain the pasta and dish up in small serving bowls to cool, or serve a large family style brain.  Remember, you can always drizzle all sorts of goo on your brain.  Melted cheese makes a good brain goo, marinara too. 

 

 

And sometimes you find hidden thoughts in brains.  If I asked the boys to make their own brains, I’d make sure to have a lot of thinly sliced vegetables and cheese and a lot of cookie cutters so they could cut ideas and stuff them into their brains.  I know the middle one would stuff an awful lot of cars and trucks in his brain.  The oldest would probably cut out some books and maybe a beaker or two (he loves Science).  The youngest wouldn’t bother cutting anything out. It’s food. It all belongs in his brain just as it is. 

 

 

Before we move on to other body parts, let’s talk about caricatures.  Caricatures take a prominent feature and magnify it so that it represents the person being caricatured.  This works for people, things, animals and so forth.  It’s finding the “essence” or what is outstanding about something and using that to represent it.  For example, when we talked about Rapunzel, we focused on her hair.  When we talk about a truck, it could be the wheels.  The idea is to think about the object or person or character from a child’s point of view.  What sticks out to them?  What would be the first thing they say to describe that character?   

When you’re making body parts, it might be a small detail that pulls it all together.  Not all Grandparents were born with equal veggie carving skills or dough sculpting talents, so focus on traits that are outstanding and remember the kids will believe whatever you say if you say it with authority.  Of course, Mathilda that is exactly what happens to the Spider when she tries to walk too soon after painting her toenails.

 

 Consider if you want to make a hand, use one of your grandchildren as a model.  Cut out dough or pie crust around their hand.  Or just make fingers.  If you make fingers, you can roll the dough and then add a sliced almond as a fingernail. 

 

 

How about eyes?  Grapes are a great eye.  You can peel grapes and fill a bowl full of them (my brothers did this to me when I was little) or you can cut them in half if you need them to display as rounded or sliced if you want them flat.  Consider using stuffed olives for eyes.  Again, the profile can be changed simply by halving or slicing the olive or grape.  The long root part of a radish becomes a lovely alien eye stalk.  Cut a cross in the end of a tomato and give it a good squeeze, and you have the worst possible case of pink eye ever.

 

 

One of my favorite ways of portraying birds is by creating pie crust beaks.  You can shape them to be long and pointy, bent, squashed, whatever you want it to look like.  Remember to cut the little nostril holes in the dough too.  That makes it more recognizable as a beak.  You can then place the cooked beaks on the plate strategically to just look like a bird, or you can add them to cherry tomatoes, oranges, kiwis, etc. to make full birds.

 

 

Noses can be done just like beaks.  You can attache them to heads made out of fruit or potatoes, or even out of more dough.  Remember in cooking No, David, I made David heads out of little rolls.  I could have added David noses using pieces of pie crust. 

 

One of the fixatives I like to use is ricotta cheese.  Cream cheese also works, but it’s a bit stiffer than ricotta and not as easy to dab on.  I try not to use toothpicks or inedible attachments.  I figure I want the boys to try everything on the plate, I don’t want to be pointing to certain pieces and saying, oh, except don’t eat that.  I actually made dowels out of mini carrots one time.  Who knows, I might even do some dovetailing on my cucumber slices.  Just try things out.  Don’t wait for the story; play with your own food. 

So these are just some of my ideas for Body Parts.  As I think of more, you’ll either see them incorporated into a meal for a story or in a Tips and Tricks Chapter.   The next time I need to do a Tips and Tricks, I think I’ll concentrate on accessories and clothing.  Mittens and scarves come in handy for winter time stories.  And as the boys told me, I should’ve added socks to their Bath Soup.