PKK & New Year's Eve all in one

In light of the busy holiday season, this Princess Kaitlyn Kitchen has photos included with New Year's Eve. I honestly do not have a story for this cooking adventure, but more will follow in the new year!

For Princess Kaitlyn's kitchen, we made cucumber cream cheese sandwich stars and tuna salad sandwich triangles. Kaitlyn ate both of them for lunch and declared that the tuna salad was her favorite.

Princess Kaitlyn (in her new Belle dress from G'ma Laurie) trying to score the cucumber skin to make it look pretty.

Princess Kaitlyn slicing cream cheese for the bread.

Princess Kaitlyn spreading the cream cheese on the bread.

Princess Kaitlyn grating carrot for the tuna salad. This is the first time we let her use the grater. She was very careful and did a great job.

Princess Kaitlyn putting some tuna salad on the triangle bread.

Cucumber Cream Cheese Sandwich

• Whole wheat bread - use a cookie cutter to make it a fun shape
• Cream cheese
• 1/2 cucumber (or less)

Cut the bread into the shape that you want to serve it. Spread on cream cheese and add thin cut cucumber slices. Place in refrigerator until ready to serve.

We adapted the kid friendly tuna salad recipe from Whole Foods ipad/ipod app:

• Tuna fish
• 1 1/2 T mayonnaise (whole foods used 1/2 cup cottage cheese instead of mayo)
  
• 2T grated carrots
• 3T sliced almonds
• 2T raisins (we used golden raisins)
• a dash of pepper (optional)
• lettuce (for on the bread)
• whole wheat bread
  

Here are fun pictures from New Year's Eve:

Our two different kinds of crab cakes - one is almost all crab with some seasoning and one has bell peppers, capers, onion, etc. in it.

Mommy and Daddy's NYE dinner after Kaitlyn went to bed. A tomato salad (sauteed yellow bell pepper, red onion and garlic along with olive oil, parsley and balsamic vinegar). We decided that we like Ina Gardner's crab cake for a dinner cake with the capers, bell peppers, seasonings, etc., while the Cook's Illustrated crab cake would work well as an appetizer (it's much easier to make and still tastes very good).

Kaitlyn Makes Madelyn Laugh

Here is a fun video of Kaitlyn making Madelyn laugh.

Fun Christmas Pictures

We're going backwards in time....

Kaitlyn at Christmas dinner

Grandma Laurie and Uncle Tim at dinner.

Kaitlyn making her a personal pizza on an English muffin for lunch.

Madelyn and her gifts...

Kaitlyn and her gifts...

Madelyn relaxing on Christmas Eve.

Madelyn as our little elf for Christmas Eve.

Grandma Laurie and daddy have some Bailey's in ice shot glasses (yes, the shot glass are made out of ice, not glass).

Uncle Tim is pretty comfortable - at least Madelyn thinks so!

The brothers making pizza.

PKK: Sweet and Salty Popcorn

Well, we all have bad days in the kitchen and while Princess Kaitlyn did not realize it. The recipe we had for the sweet and salty popcorn needed major revisions, such that I can call it our recipe now. Kaitlyn chowed on the salty cheese coated popcorn, but the sweet popcorn had so much salt in it that it completely overwhelmed your taste buds. Most of the popcorn was thrown away.

You by now should know how the Princess Kaitlyn stories start, so going from the introduction lines...Princess Kaitlyn decided to go to the fantastically fun playground one day. As she ran through the grass field's on the castle property to get there, she kept hearing a popping sound. Princess Kaitlyn finally turned around and much to her surprise, a bunch of bubbly, white flowers with golden centers had 'popped' up in the field behind her.

Princess Kaitlyn wondered if her footsteps had created this plump, bubbly flowers behind her. So, she took a step forward while looking backwards and 'pop!' a flower appeared when she lifted her foot up. Well, as you can imagine, Princess Kaitlyn thought creating a field of poppy flowers was so much fun that she stayed in the field running, dancing, jumping and twirling until she created an entire lawn of white poppy flowers.



Our Recipe for Sweet and Cheesy Popcorn:

• 1 large bag of microwave popcorn (unbuttered) or 1/2 cup natural popcorn and 1/3 cup canola oil to make on the stove
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• 6 T butter, melted and divided in half

Pop the popcorn. If making on stove, you need to heat the oil before adding kernels and shake the pan often once kernels are adding. When popping slows to about five seconds, remove from stove. Divide popped popcorn into two large bowls. Pour half the butter on one bowl of popcorn and mix it up to cover the kernels. Do the same to the other bowl. Use one teaspoon of salt and sprinkle over each bowl as well.

Now for the fun part...sprinkle the powdered sugar over one bowl and the Parmesan cheese over the other bowl. Mix. Spoons work, but clean hands work better. Bon appetite!

PKK: Buttermilk Biscuits

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Princess Kaitlyn. She lived in a beautiful castle by an enchanted forest, a magical lake, and a fantastically fun playground.

One day as Princess Kaitlyn played with her friend Sookie the fox in the enchanted forest, they noticed a small stream of white water. Upon touching this stream, it was not light and thin like water, but silky smooth and creamy like milk. Curious as to where this stream led, Sookie and Princess Kaitlyn followed the stream deep into the enchanted forest.

After walking for what felt like forever (really just ten or fifteen minutes), Princess Kaitlyn and Sookie came upon a milkyfall. They started to rush towards the milkyfall, but stopped in their tracks when three cows stood in their path. The three cows shared their names (duiry, doiry and deiry) and told Princess Kaitlyn and Sookie that they protected the milkyfall so that no animal or person drank all the milk. (Granted, drinking all of the milk from the milking fall would give anyone a belly ache.)

Princess Kaitlyn asked the duiry if they could take a sip of milk from the milkyfall. Duiry nodded and two ice glasses made of frozen milk appeared instantly. Doiry instructed the pair to dip each glass into the milkyfall. Princess Kaitlyn and Sookie drank the deliciously creamy, rich milk. Deiry gave them permission to each take a glass home, but cautioned Princess Kaitlyn and Sookie that the ice glasses would melt shortly after leaving the enchanted forest, so they must either drink the milk or make something with it before it spilled on the ground.

Princess Kaitlyn and Sookie decided to make buttermilk biscuits with their special milk from the milky fall. They combined the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) with some butter and buttermilk (milkyfall buttermilk of course!) to make their dough. They rolled out the dough and cut it into biscuit pieces.


Princess Kaitlyn put the biscuits in her oven and watched them slowly rise and turn golden on top.
When the biscuits were cool enough to handle, Princess Kaitlyn and Sookie added some strawberry preserves and had a wonderful snack along with a fresh glass of leftover milk from the milkyfall.
The end!

PKK: Chicken Pot Pie

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Princess Kaitlyn. She lived in a beautiful castle by an enchanted forest, a magical lake, and a fantastically fun playground.

One day Princess Kaitlyn skipped down to the magical lake for a play date with her friend Mariana the mermaid. Mariana used her magical shell necklace to give Princess Kaitlyn the ability to breath and swim underwater and so the fun began.

While playing underwater tag, Mariana and Princess Kaitlyn tummies started grumbling. Mariana suggested that the two of them make mermaid potpies for dinner. They collected ingredients for the filling from a special underwater farm like seaweed beans, seashell peas, coral carrots and oyster onions (instead of a pearl, you get an onion when the oyster opens).



Mariana and Princess Kaitlyn used the sand mixed with water and some butter (of course) to make the pot pie shells.
They used lobster shells to roll out the dough before placing the stuffing inside. Once they added the stuffing, they asked a friendly starfish to cut off the top.



And viola! Princess Kaitlyn and Marianna had delicious potpies to eat for dinner.

Kaitlyn Tracing Letters

Kaitlyn spent over an hour tracing letters tonight. She did not want to stop. It was pretty cute that it kept her occupied for so long.



The rest are random photos over the last week or so...

The first snow this fall at home.

A sugar cookie Christmas tree that mommy had fun making using a bunch of different size star cookies.
This is a different shot of the one previously posted (see outfit), but she's just so darn cute!