Drake eats right!

One of our family pets is a bearded dragon. His name is drake and he is probably one of the most hungry little animals I have ever had to take care of! He is always sitting in his dish waiting and hoping for his meal. Then, when you put his dish with his goodies in his tank he pounces it. OK...so lizards don't pounce their food, but honestly he does do some sort of awkward stumble to his food! His is clumsy to say the least.



Since getting a bearded dragon I make him a daily salad and I have apples that look like this sitting in my fridge! (OoOoooOooH a scary face apple Ahhhhahahh!)




The other day when I was making Drake's salad I thought we could probably learn a lot from bearded dragons and other animals that eat salads everyday. I tear up romaine, kale, carrots, and apples. Sometimes if we have bok choy or other veggies I will share those with him too. The way he eats his little salads so happily...I need to channel my inner Drake and look forward to eating salads the way he does.

Chocolate Zuchini Muffins

My little Lukas loves his muffins. In fact he begs for them like they are candy! It's a wonderful thing because you can manipulate a muffin to give some nutritional value too! I made this recipe a few weeks ago and he loves them! I even made half mini muffins and half regular sized muffins. I did give some away, but Lukas and I ate a lot of them!

Here is the recipe I sort of followed. MuFfInS!

My muffins did turn out a little dry, but I didn't put any oil in them. (Maybe next time I will only substitute half the oil.) I substituted 1 cup of applesauce instead of oil, 1 cup of splenda for half the sugar, and 1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour for half the flour.

Besides being a little dry they were still great! My most important little taste tester loved them!

Mom's Potato Salad and Lick the Bowl Good's Pulled Pork Sandwich

Wow! It's hot out! We aren't used to this much humidity with the heat. It's dragging on and on. I guess they call these days the dog days of summer.

Anyway, I decided to make some of my Mom's potato salad. It turned out great, but it was a little off from the flavor the way she makes it. I will definitely try making it again. Practice makes perfect right?

Here is her recipe for Mom's Potato Salad:

6-8 potatoes diced and boiled until soft
8 hard boiled eggs (4 for in the salad, 4 for on the top)
1 cup or more of miracle whip lite (may need more depending on how big potatoes are)
2-3 tsp. sugar
2-3 tsp. salt
2-3 tsp. pepper

Mix all of it together and then slice hard boiled eggs to top the potato salad. Delicious!

Then to go with the potato salad I made this pulled pork sandwich recipe.

Pulled Pork from Lick the Bowl Good blog.

Making Great Hardboiled Eggs!

There is a blog that I read called Lick the Bowl Good. It is a blog of everything. She posts meal ideas, baking, cooking tips, and neat things she has found. I must say I have tried a few recipes from this site and they have turned out awesome! She posted some summer sandwich ideas a few weeks ago and she had a link on tips for making hard boiled eggs. So of course I am sharing! How to boil eggs.

Another great perk from this site are all the beautiful food pictures! I am in the process of learning how to take pictures of food. Maybe one day I can be as good as Monica at Lick the Bowl Good blog!

Good Morning Saturday Pancakes!

Almost every Saturday I make pancakes for Lukas! He will actually request them when he wakes up Saturday mornings. His favorite is chocolate chip pancakes and I usually split the batter and throw in whatever fruit I have for my pancakes. These are totally dummy proof pancakes made with Bisquick. Use the recipe from the back of the box.

When I split a regular batch of pancakes I throw in 1/2 cup of chocolate chips and they turn out tall and fluffy! I also sprinkle some chocolate chips on top for him. Lukas loves them and the leftovers freeze beautifully!

The fruit I had on hand this time for my pancakes were strawberries! I love strawberries so I felt a little spoiled. I kept some leftover strawberries to top on the pancakes.

Super yummy!

Strawberry & Spinach Salad and SnickerDoodle Cheerio Cookies

A few weekends ago we went camping. I brought a few different things to share with my family.

First I wanted a salad to contribute to the meal. I made this Strawberry and Spinach Salad It was great! It tasted like strawberry jam. I will definitely make it again! When anything is close to 5 stars on Allrecipes.com then you know it's going to be good!

For dessert and snacking I brought these awesome Snicker Doodle Cheerio Cookies! They were just the right texture for a cookie and sugary on the outside. I have made a few different recipes from noblepig.com and all of the recipes have been awesome! My whole family loved them! Except my son...Lukas will only eat cookies that have chocolate in them. I am not even kidding! If he doesn't see chocolate he isn't eating it!

Turkey Tacos

Well the other night we decided we were going to have some tacos. I didn't have any ground meat on hand so I made a few turkey breasts and then ground them up in my food processor. This is the recipe I used for taco seasoning. Taco Seasoning Recipe

Then I diced up zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, red onion, and green pepper, and lettuce. I finished it up with cheddar cheese and some sour cream! They were so good I ate two.

Lukas doesn't eat tacos so I made some Spanish rice (just the Lipton Spanish rice packet) and gave him some taco meat. He ate some of it...but he really isn't a huge taco fan. Oh well...my husband and I loved it!