weekend cooking round-up & meal of the day

this past weekend my friend traci held a bake sale to benefit barack obama's campaign. when she reached out for help, i was psyched to pitch in. i decided to make my favorite cookies and some sugar cookies. at the last minute i whipped up some lollipops because they are just so fun and so cute! plus the fact that my little partner here is always game. i ended up frosting the sugar cookies with peace signs. i was excited to have an excuse to use my all natural food coloring. what a treat!

i was pretty thrilled to see everything all bagged up. it looked pretty and felt good to be contributing to such a good cause.

as an aside, bee was curious about all this planned baking when i was discussing it. here is the conversation we had:

bee: why are we baking cookies?

me: it's for a bake sale?

bee: why is there a bake sale?

me: it's so we can get a good president.

pause

bee: mommy, do we have a bad president?

me: yes.

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another bit of culinary success over the weekend was spinach popsicles! now i know that this is the type of thing that our kids are going to be laughing about with friends when they are my age, kicking back with a beer and complaining about how crazy their respective parents were. but oh well! at least they'll have something to talk about!

my friend tipped me off to this idea. her son's only reason for living is tractors, specifically john deere's, so this was a hit with him. green! for hers she just blended up fresh spinach, pear juice and applesauce. it was the end of the week here so our selections were slim. we made due with cooking up an apple and a peach and popping them in the blender with pear juice, fresh spinach, yogurt and a bit of maple syrup.

the verdict was a unanimous thumbs up! both kiddies loved them and bee even asked for one first thing this morning. this has my mind racing about when other healthy treats we can "sneak" into a pop. beets? peas? it's a whole popsicle revolution!

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and finally, meal of the day.........
there's some cooked cole slaw there: napa cabbage, onion, carrots, snap peas and garlic scape with some sesame oil and some leftover tropical teriyaki sauce. i sauteed some shrimp and put them on top with a sprinkle of sunflower seeds. i sliced up a nice local tomato and put a little sea salt on top and gave everyone one corn tortilla to do with what they chose. 

we almost never have shrimp but bee was very convincing at the grocery store. "mommy, i love shrimp. i have to get some. i will eat them tonight." so, here is her plate:

it's about the cutest thing ever. i love those tiny portions of real food. did she eat it? some, but she ate what probably amounted to too many "appetizers" before the food was ready. we saved the rest for lunch. we'll see!

phew.