It started at Christmas time with dough from a tube, but then one day I really wanted cookies and didn’t want to get dressed and go buy a tube of dough, so I figured it would be less work to actually make them… from scratch.

And you know what? It was totally, crazy easy. And they were SO good.

So then I thought, hm… what if I make my own frosting? And I did. And it was GOOOOOOD, and also less work than getting dressed to buy some at the store.

Listen, I am NOT in love with anything that happens in the kitchen. I don’t really enjoy cooking or baking, and, of course, I despise doing dishes. I take the easy way out whenever I can. So when Kendall asked me if we could use a heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out the cookies, I told him that would take so, so long, and he wouldn’t get to eat any cookies until the next day.

I mean, just look at my favorite sugar cookie recipe by Alton Brown. Two hours and twenty four minutes? No bueno. But if you just make the dough, roll it up into balls and smash them on the cookie sheet, it only takes 24 minutes, which is much more my speed, not to mention I don’t want to deal with throwing flour all over my  counters and rolling dough out.

Being the not-horrible mom that I am, though, I still wanted to come up with some heart shaped cookies for Kendall, and I remembered this old play-doh trick.

Pull off enough dough to make one cookie, then divide it in half and roll into two balls.

This is me French kissing my 50 1.4 lens for making my dirty kitchen look all blurry and… not dirty. 

Now roll the balls into tear drop shapes, with one end coming to a soft point.

Smoosh one tear drop

Then line the other tear drop up with it, matching the points, and smoosh it.

Be sure you really smoosh the two pieces together and seal the seam, or you’ll end up with a broken heart.

You can have them in the oven MUCH faster than 2 whole hours later this way.

Those odd shaped ones are “mittens” that Kendall made all by himself. 

Oh sure, they aren’t prefect, but who has a perfect heart anyway?

We frosted these with cinnamon cream cheese buttercream (this recipe with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon added).

Voila! Valentine’s cookies for the super lazy! And, of course, I’m sure you could achieve this with dough from a tube for the ultimate in lazy cookie making.

We use purees around here for a few things. Leyna still eats them (she actually prefers them to solid food at this point) and I like to throw them into things like bread and pancakes. This puree is what I like to call semi-homemade babyfood (a nod to the drunk cook Sandra Lee there). It’s ridiculously easy to make, and there’s no cutting or steaming involved.

I start with:

1 can pureed pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

(If you want to go the really homemade route, you can always make your own applesauce, and I like the Pioneer Woman’s method for pureeing your own pumpkin.)

Combine them all and you’ll get a fragrant, lightly sweet, perfectly fall-ish puree. Leyna gobbles this stuff up.

I’ve teamed it up here with some Greek yogurt, mixed with baby oatmeal in her Dandelion natural tableware (stay tuned for a giveaway for these dishes made of corn at the bottom of this post).

While Leyna eats mostly purees at this point, she is slowly transitioning to table food, and the rest of the family loves pancakes, so we all get to enjoy this next part.

Turn your Pumpkin-Apple-Smash into Pumpkin-Apple-Pancakes by mixing together the following:

2 cups of your favorite pancake mix
1 cup of Pumpkin-Apple-Smash
1/2 cup of milk
2 eggs

Cook them as you usually would your pancakes. I like to make them small and refrigerate them for snacks (though they rarely last longer than a day).

There you have it! A handful of super-simple ingredients makes every member of our family something delicious to get into the fall spirit. (The house smells amazing right now, by the way.)

As I mentioned earlier, Leyna’s food is in her Dandelion natural tableware. It’s an awesome alternative to traditional plastic bowls, plates, and utensils for babies and toddlers because it’s all made from corn (meaning it’s BPA, phthalate and PVC free). We’ve been using these for a couple months now, and have enjoyed them. I don’t ever put them in the microwave, but I have put them in the dishwasher a few times (though Dandelion advises you not to). The dishwasher warped one plate just a little bit, but it’s not a big isssue. I hand wash them most of the time now.

Dandelion wants to give the winner of this giveaway their choice of 3 natural tableware products. The winner needs to have a US mailing address. All you have to do to enter is:

1. Comment below telling me what your favorite “fall” food is.

For extra entries, you can do any or all of the following:

2. Follow @DandelionEFGoods on Twitter
3. Follow @BabyRabies on Twitter

Please leave a separate comment for each thing you do, and allow time for moderation. I’ll use Random.org to draw a winner Friday, October 7th.

Entries are closed. Congrats to Jennifer @ Also Known As The Wife, commenter #39, as chosen by Random.org.

1. Because I used to be afraid of the Greek yogurt, I figured there might be a few of you who are afraid of it right now, and it’s nothing to be afraid of.

2. Because it’s a small, random tidbit I can blog while my children are down for the first nap they’ve taken at the same time in 5 days.

So yes, we always have Greek yogurt in the refrigerator. Specifically,  we have this kind…

Why yes, that IS a splat of mystery food stuck to the wall of my refrigerator.
Aren’t you so glad I invited you into this little piece of my world? 

Because, while I love this particular brand, many other kinds of Greek yogurt taste like ass to me. This one, though? Not ass-like at all, and it’s very, very thick. Don’t give me your runny “Greek” yogurt and try to pass it off on me, okay?

We’re not just up in here making parfaits every day with it either. Here are 5 ways we use Greek yogurt:

1. In place of sour cream- I’m basically obsessed with tacos right now, and no taco is complete without sour cream. This Greek yogurt, I swear to you, is just as yummy. Plus, then I don’t feel the need to scarf down a whole tub of sour cream before it goes bad. (Since you can substitute Greek yogurt for sour cream, but sour cream parfaits are pretty awful.)

2. To thicken up homemade mac & cheese, or (let’s be real here) add to box mac & cheese- That powdery cheese mix that comes with box mac & cheese is a joke, so I usually add a couple handfuls of real cheese to it and a heaping spoonful of Greek yogurt to give it some more creamy, cheesy goodness.

3. Semi-homeade baby food- I like to mix in either a defrosted cube of homemade baby purees or half a pouch of something like Ella’s Kitchen or Plum Organics purees with a small bowl of Greek yogurt for Leyna. She gobbles it up and it makes her purees last longer.

4. As a mayo substitute in a pinch- I’ve slathered it on bread for avocado sandwiches before and even mixed it in with some tuna salad. Not too terrible.

5. And yes, parfaits- One of Kendall’s favorite snacks for the last 2 years has been Greek yogurt, topped with berries, nuts, and honey. It’s one thing he hasn’t grown out of loving yet.

Yogurt-face Kendall at 18ish months old

Do not be afraid of the Greek yogurt, my friends! It is a versatile, protein packed tub o’ deliciousness. Have any other uses for it to share?

No, this post was not sponsored by Greek yogurt. It was brought to you by my good friend Random Tid Bitty.

I cooked up some homemade teething biscuits this week, inspired by this pin.

Source: babble.com via Jill on Pinterest

This links to several recipes for homemade teething biscuits. I had no idea they were so easy to make! I actually didn’t follow any of the recipes very closely. Instead, I took the general idea and worked with what I had. I wound up with this:

1 cup baby oatmeal
1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup molasses

Mix together, roll out into 1/4 inch thick sheet, cut into squares. Cook at 425 for 15 minutes.

They should dry out and be pretty hardy a few minutes out of the oven. They’re a little messy after some time in a slobbery mouth, but I don’t think they’re nearly as bad as anything we’ve purchased from the store. Best of all, since I didn’t have to buy anything to make them, they’re CHEAP! And I know exactly what’s in them.

As for the rest of the baby food experience, so far we’ve just done coursely mashed bananas and avocados. I’ll probably add sweet potatoes sometime this weekend.

I’m also researching a little more into baby led weaning after so many Twitter followers raved about it last night. I’ll admit, though, the idea of giving my baby a whole hunk of food makes me have a bit of a panic attack. So, please do chime in with your baby led weaning stories. If you’ve tried it, do you love it or does it scare you, too? I think we tried it, to a degree, with Kendall, but I just couldn’t get on board last time around.

Kendall is 3 years 2 months and Leyna is 6 months old

As for Pinterest, I think I fell behind on some invites the last couple weeks because I’m still fighting off the plague (or probably just an ear infection that I need to see the Dr for). If you would like an invite, leave your email below. If you’re still waiting on one from me, I’m so sorry! I’ll try to keep up with them in this post, so please repost here. Thanks!

Sad thing is I’d seen these signs before. Hell, I’d even seen the booths set up outside before as I quickly walked past to get to Carters for their awesome sale on PJs. I never once put 2 and 2 together to figure out that this was EXACTLY the place we needed to be shopping. I never realized that I could get grass fed, locally grown, responsibly raised meat and eggs here.  In fact, before we drove past the mall I was telling Scott that we needed to plan a trip out to a nearby farm this weekend to talk to them and try out some of their meat. Ha! Turns out we were able to do just that without the 1.5 hour round trip drive, just by swinging by the Four Seasons Market.

Granted, it didn’t have a huge selection. There wasn’t much produce to speak of, but, as advertised, there was local cheese and yogurt and bread. Better still, there were two farms represented, selling grass fed meat and eggs. We had a nice long chat with the couple who runs Sloans Creek Farm about how much we miss living in Virginia and how awesome Joel Salatin (of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Food Inc. fame) is. They told us he’d be speaking at Plano’s Live Green Expo in April, which thrilled us like they’d just told us Joel McHale was coming to town. They even invited us out to their farm for a celebration they happen to be throwing this year on Kendall’s second birthday. I think we just might take them up on it.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have any chicken or eggs, so we headed to the other booth occupied by a local farm, Truth Hill Farm. Turns out we arrived too late in the day to pick up any eggs from them, too, but we were able to snag the last whole chicken they had in the freezer. I was so excited I asked the kind man to pose for a picture. I blabbed something about my “parenting blog” and how our “life is changing” and “you know, Food Inc?”, and I’m positive it all sounded Greek to him, but he kindly obliged my request.

With that major purchase out of the way, I headed to the Lucky Layla Farm booth to pick up some cheese and drinkable yogurt for Kendall. (I gave him some of that today, and he liked it so much he chewed the nipple off his sippy cup to suck every last drop out of there. Perhaps I should look into a straw next time.) The man, wearing a very broken in OU hat, was the picture of jolly, and more than happy to answer the string of questions I had about how and where his products were produced.

I was tempted to pick up some yummy smelling spices from Kurry King, but considering I don’t know what the heck to do with them, I figured my money was better spent on some basic food for now. So I spent the last bit of my $40 on two loaves of bread, a whole wheat loaf from the charming family that runs Rosey Ridge Farm, and another rustic white loaf from a young, nice girl who bakes all the bread for her WeMe Bread micro-bakery in East Dallas on her own.

Notice how I can tell you a little bit about each of the producers I purchased from? How simply amazing is that?I have never come home from the grocery store with a bag full of food and a head full of stories all about where and how that food was produced. I’ve never been able to put a face to the name on the label of my bread. I’ve never been able to visualize the actual farm my chicken was raised on. Simply amazing, and yet amazingly simple. Farmer raises meat, brings meat to market, you meet farmer, farmer tells you about his farm.

Okay, I will admit that I didn’t bring home as much “food” for my $40 as I would with a trip to a traditional grocery store, but that’s only if you consider “food” to be anything edible. What I did do was bring home what I believe to be a bag full of nothing but REAL food, no fillers, no junk, which is incredibly hard to find at a grocery store.

Here’s a picture of my “haul” (I laugh as I type that because my friend Michelle just introduced me to these “haul” videos on YouTube, and I am COMPLETELY CONFUSED by them. These people are going on and on about their Walmart and drugstore purchase for some reason I’ve yet to figure out, and NONE of them can read a receipt. For a lobotomy, click here and see what I mean.)

Breakdown of cost:

4.25 lb chicken $16.94
San Pedro block of cheese $10
2 drinkable yogurts $3
1 loaf  rustic white bread $4
1 loaf  whole wheat bread $5

Total= $38.94

Next week I hope we get there early enough to get a couple dozen eggs ($4/dozen) and some freshly made whole wheat linguini ($6/lb).

I’m so happy we found this place! At least between now and getting a deep freeze/placing a bulk order for meat we can hit the market up weekly for our meat, egg and cheese purchases. Now, I just need to find a produce solution. I happened to grab a copy of  Edible Dallas & Fort Worth while I was there, and lo and behold there is a whole article dedicated to CSAs and Co-ops (pg. 25, Winter 2009). Squeezepenny is highlighted, and was also recommended by a reader, so I think I’m going to start there.

So that’s where we stand as of now with our commitment to changing how we eat. What about you? Have you done anything? I have to say I am so excited and inspired to be hearing from so many of you about the changes you have been making and are starting to make. Thank you so much for sharing with me!

Kendall is about a week shy of 21 months old.