Snowed-In Thanksgiving

This year, our Thanksgiving was smaller than usual. And that's saying something, because five is a pretty typical crowd for us. We had to cancel our Thanksgiving pilgrimage to family on account of snow, which meant trying to make it still feel like Thanksgiving while not overdoing it for the two and a half eaters in our house. And keeping a toddler happy. With approximately two days' notice from not-cooking-anything to cooking everything. I'm pretty satisfied with the menu we ended up with:

glazed ham

mashed potatoes

gingerbread cookies (recipe from my old school Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and epic selection of cookie cutters from Amazon)

chickpea, avocado and feta salad (from Two Peas and Their Pod)

mini raspberry turnovers (modified from my blackberry turnovers)

So today I'm thankful for my toddler who loves to bake with me, my husband for holding the baby so I can, and my Kitchenaid stand mixer.

Toddler's Favorite Ice Cream

Learning should be fun, right? And food should be fun, right? So how about using food as a tool for learning? Yes, please!

My little guy is great at helping me measure ingredients (learning about math and following directions in a recipe). And we just took our ice cream game to a whole new level of little kid awesome.

We made it blue.

After we'd measured and mixed our 1/2 cup of cream, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 1/2 cup of milk and 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla, I gave him a bottle of blue food coloring and let him go crazy. He'd squeeze a couple drops of blue into the ice cream mixture and whisk it in. Then he'd decide it wasn't blue enough and do it again. And again. Blue ice cream was basically the only thing he talked about all day. And you can use it to teach primary and secondary colors (red+yellow=orange; red+blue=purple; yellow+blue=green) and tertiary colors if you want to get really advanced (the blue greens and variations you kind of remember hearing about in an art class once). When my little guy is a bit older, I'm excited about the possibilities of using different flavors, too. There are the mint and almond extracts you can find in the grocery store, but there's also a whole rabbit hole of food extracts and flavorings available on Amazon. Purple brownie batter ice cream? We just might have to try it...

Happy learning!