What they don't know...

Knit squash found here

...won't hurt them...and it might just make them healthier.
I pulled a fast one over on my oldest tonight.  I sent her outside to watch the littles play, while I defrosted squash to sneak it into tonight's recipe.

Mwa-hahahahahaha!

Go figure, it actually worked for once!  She liked dinner, and didn't once ask what the weird flavor was!  (Aaaaand lucky for me, she doesn't read my blog.)

Unfortunately tonight's experiment did not go over as well with the littles.

I based dinner on a recipe I found on Pillsbury.com for "Fiesta Chicken Taco Cups".  I don't do chicken, and the recipe sounded too spicy for my sensitive-palated monkeys, so I changed it quite a bit.

Here's my version:

Mini Chili Bowls

1 can of Nalley Vegetarian chili (of course, you can use your favorite brand)
1 can of crescent rolls
1/2 package of frozen butternut squash (6 oz, or about 3/4 cup), defrosted
1/2 cup of prepared Mexican rice (I had it leftover in the fridge, and the chili needed thickening...it worked!)
1/2 cup of shredded cheese

Heat oven to 375.
Grease or spray 8 muffin cups
Roll out crescent rolls.  Divide into 4 rectangles, and cut each rectangle in half.
Press dough into cups, really squishing it into the bottom and up the sides.  Do your best to get a complete cup.
Mix chili, squash and rice.
Spoon about 2 tbsp into each cup.  (There is quite a bit leftover.  Stick it in the fridge and use it on nachos later, or set it aside for picky monkeys who refuse to each chili out of a bread bowl...see below...)
Sprinkle cheese on top of each cup.
Bake 15-20 mins, until tops are brown.

Now, as I said, #1 actually really liked these! (#2 is visiting grandma's house) #3 and #4 liked the chili...but ONLY after I served it in bowls.  They really didn't like the mini bread bowls.  I'm learning!  A muffin with multiple ingredients is ok, but a bread bowl is not.  Crescent rolls wrapped around tasty ingredients in a spiral or pinwheel are ok too, but only if I bake it thoroughly.  My one complaint with the crescent rolls is that they are TRICKY to bake correctly.  They can look done on the tops, and still be doughy on the bottom.

The good news?  This was my last can of canned dough, so no more crescent recipes for a while!

Here is the official tally:

Home again, home again...

Happy bacon found here

...jiggety jig!

It really is nice to be home again.  

However, my absence has not changed my children's opinion of my cooking.  They still like pancakes, bacon, and hate spinach.

My husband was nice enough to make the pancakes and bacon for their breakfast, which they loved.

I should mention...I'm a vegetarian.  I still serve meat to my kids, but I don't generally cook it.  Sure, I'll bake chicken nuggets, but I draw the line at frying bacon.  Which of course makes my husband much more popular at breakfast time.

For dinner tonight, I thought I'd try a twist on something that had worked before, by making spinach-bacon pinwheels.  I included the bacon for two reasons: 1. There were two pieces left over from breakfast.  2. If I made the pinwheels with bacon, I wouldn't eat all of them!

Here is my recipe:

Spinach-Bacon Pinwheels

1 tube crescent rolls 

1 pkg frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained

4 oz cream cheese

1/4 cup cottage cheese

1 shake of garlic powder

2 shakes of italian seasoning

2 pieces cooked bacon, cut into small pieces

Heat oven to 400 degrees. 

Mix cream cheese, cottage cheese, garlic and itailian seasoning.

Spray cooking sheet with cooking spray.

Roll crescent rolls out onto a cooking sheet, pressing seams together.  (Or cheat like I did, and buy the seamless dough roll!)

Spread cheese mixture on dough.

Spread spinach over cheese mixture.  (Alternatively, mix the spinach with cheese mixture, and spread together...I think this would have helped the end result go over better, since the spinach wouldn't have been quite so obvious, or so easy to pick out!)

Sprinkle bacon over spinach.

Roll into a tube.

Cut into 8 slices.

Bake 14-16 minutes.

Finished product:

The verdict was mixed!  #2 (of course!) was the one picking out and avoiding the spinach.  The littles sorta ate theirs.  My husband was the one that really liked them, probably because I included the bacon!  

The official tally:

Oh, yeah, that's right...

Felt play spaghetti found here.

I remember now why I named this blog: My Kids Hate My Cooking.

I tried not one, but two new recipes tonight, both mostly original mash-ups of my own creation.


The first: baked spaghetti.  I knew this was risky, because #3 has been iffy about spaghetti for a while, and #2 usually refuses to eat spaghetti with tomato sauce.

No surprise, #4 took two bites and said "blech", #3 wouldn't touch it, but #1 loved it and SURPRISE, so did #3!  So, baked spaghetti is a moderate success!

Here's the "recipe":  cook spaghetti, mix with marinara sauce, a dash of feta, and pour into a greased pan.  Cover with a little more marinara, shredded cheese, and some parmesan.  Bake at 375 for 30 mins, or until the cheese is melted.

The second part of dinner was a complete failure, in more ways than one.  I mixed cream cheese, chopped red pepper and minced garlic and spread the mix onto flat crescent rolls, then rolled them up, cut each roll in half, and baked them for 10 mins.  The garlic was the start of the fail.  I always forget that minced garlic is much more powerful than garlic powder!  The filling was waaaaay too garlicky.  I didn't even like it, and I like garlic!  The other failure on my part was that my monkeys raced to the dinner table before I was ready, and started eating the rolls before they had cooled down.  #4 bit into one, burnt her mouth, then dropped half the roll onto her bare leg, and burnt her leg with the hot cream cheese!  So, not only do my kids hate my cooking, my cooking hates my kids.  Sigh.

Lessons learned: don't use minced garlic.  Ever.  And, do not put hot food on the table!  Only plate after the food has cooled to a reasonable temperature!

Here is a picture of dinner, for the morbidly curious:

The red pepper was my attempt at a visible vegetable.  The littles didn't eat that, either.

So, two verdicts this evening:

Spaghetti

Crescent roll-ups