B is for Bodacious Bubbles!

We had a blast in our home school preschool today! We are studying the letter B, so today was Bodacious Bubble Day! First I had the girls use straws to blow in a bowl of really soapy water. I just used dawn. We talked about the size of the bubbles when you blow with all your might vs the size of bubbles when you blow gently. My 4 year old really got into it and observed all sorts of things about the bubbles. She loved it.  My 3 year old on the other hand, accidentally sucked the soapy water up the straw and after much tears & sputtering declared she didn't think she wanted to do bubbles anymore. I guess I should have been more specific in my instructions. Sometimes I forget that is she ONLY three.

Next, I made a bubble blower out of a clean toddler sock, a small 8oz water bottle. and a rubber band. There are various blogs that say to cut off the sock & use duck tape to secure the sock to the bottle. I wanted to be able to use the socks again, and since it is just dish soap and water, we will toss the now REALLY clean wet socks into the next load of laundry. The rubber band seemed to keep the sock on just fine for us. If however you are willing to sacrifice the socks, go check out Rainbow Bubble Snakes on the Housing A Forest blog! Totally cool! I might even try the rainbow bubble snakes in the bathtub with the kiddos when it gets too cold to play outside.

Bubble snakes! Even my 3 year old gave it another go after seeing all the fun!

My 4 year old REALLY loved this activity and kept playing for over 45 minutes!

And then we just had fun playing with the big piles of bubbles all over the grass. Good clean fun!

Shhh! They are good for you!

My cousin brought me three zucchini from her garden. 3 GIANT foot long baseball bat thick zucchini!! What to do? What to do? Muffins!! And how about Chocolate in them too?!? YES!!

The first thing I did was grate all of the zucchini. I discovered through looking at over a dozen recipes that you can freeze grated zucchini to use at another time. I ended up with almost 12 cups grated zucchini! Woohoo!!

I mentioned in previous posts that I've been trying cut down on the amount of refined and processed foods we eat. And I am moving our family towards a more gluten free diet (I'm not quite ready to give up bread though!)  So I did an online search and looked at recipe after recipe. I found a bunch of great recipes, but most were complicated or had unusual ingredients. Here is the recipe I ended up creating based on what I have in the house:

Cocolicious Zucchini Muffins
DRY INGREDIENTS:

1 cup old fashioned oats

1 cup almond meal

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp cinnamon 

1 Tbsp cocoa powder

WET INGREDIENTS:

2 cups shredded zucchini (squeezed dry)

3 Tbsp flax meal + 9 Tbsp water (or 3 eggs)

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup raw honey (or use agave if you are looking to make these vegan)

Non- stick cooking spray

Chocolate chips (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

1) Preheat oven to 350* and grease your muffin tin (makes 12 muffins)

2) In a food processor, pulse oats & almond meal until a fine flour is achieved.

3) In a medium sized bowl, whisk all the dry ingredients making sure there are no lumps & everything is combined. Set aside.

4) In a large bowl, combine all the wet ingredients. Then stir in the dry.

5) Divide the batter evenly to achieve 12 muffins. The cups will be 2/3 to 3/4 full.

6) Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted cones out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.

And here are the coco zucchini muffins in all their dense cocoa good for you tasty glory. You'll notice I decided to pile some up with chocolate chips - I put them on right out of the oven so that they are nice and gooey. Try them, I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU! 

Kitchen Experiments - Apple Pie Applesauce!

I was given a few big bags of apples from a neighbor of my Great Aunt Honey. They were not really good apples to just munch on raw. So I cooked them up to make apple sauce, but they still needed help. A little cinnamon & brown sugar to the rescue. Now I have a 1/2 gallon of apple sauce that tastes just like apple pie!  I only used about a quarter of the apples. I think I'll pick up some Granny Smiths to add to the mix for the next batch. Don't be surprised friends if you get some Apple Pie Applesauce for Christmas!!

4 lbs apples, cored and cut into chunks, skin on
3 cups of water
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp cinnamon
pinch of salt

1) Add apples and water to a medium sized pot and bring to a boil.
2) Reduce heat to a simmer and cook uncovered for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3) Add to a blender or food processor in batches and process until smooth.
4) Add brown sugar, cinnamon, & salt. Stir to combine.
5) Cool and refrigerate for up to a week or to can them, ladle into sterile jars and process for 15 minutes. Canned apple sauce can be stored up to 1 year.