Cooking with Aurora

So I just heard a crash from upstairs.  I knew it had to be Aurora so I went to make sure she was OK.  Here is what I found.  Her trying to put the pitcher from the blender on the counter next to a can of soup that she got from the pantry.    I asked her if she wanted to go downstairs with me and she said, "poop"(meaning soup).  I asked her if she was trying to make soup, and she said, "yeah!"

Healthy, Easy, Quick meals to make. Is there such a thing?

So I'll admit it, I like to cook, but especially when I have a baby, I don't want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  Because I don't have a lot of time to spend there.
Lately one of my biggest frustrations with food has been lunch time.  Because Cinderella is in half day kindergarten, we go pick her up, and then have lunch.  But because Buddy is only a month old he still eats every 2-3 hours during the day, which means he often wants his lunch at the same time the other kids get their lunch.  So I try to get lunch ready before we pick up Cinderella, but that isn't always possible.  Then we pick up Cinderella, come home, I get the older kids eating, feed Buddy, and then clean up their lunch, and then I feel like I can eat.  But unfortunately lately that hasn't been until 1:30 or 2 which is later than I want to be eating.

My normal tendency for lunches is to make Peanut Butter and Jelly, because it is quick and easy.  But 1.  Cinderella doesn't like peanut butter.  2.  Really that isn't the healthiest alternative and 3.  It gets old rather quickly.

So I've been working with things that I can make ahead of time, but they are time consuming, and I feel like I never get out of the kitchen.  Or I don't have a chance to make them before and then I have Buddy have to wait while I make their lunch.

So I'm asking for suggestions of things that aren't too hard or time consuming to make, that kids like, and that are healthy.  Let me know if you have any.

Cranberries

I remember as I was growing up, Thanksgiving time was the only time that I ever really saw cranberries other than the dried kind or juice kind. And I never really gave cranberry sauce a chance.
In my mind jellied cranberry sauce that had been dumped out of a can, and sliced (how it was served at our dinner), seemed awfully similar to pickled beets. Now I never gave the beets a try either. But pickled beets, were one of those foods that I just figured from the way my cousins would talk about them, that they had to be nasty.

Well last year, my husband wanted to bring sweet potatoes to the Thanksgiving feast we were attending. Well I've never been a big fan of sweet potatoes either. I have a hard time with something that looks like it should taste like a dessert, but doesn't. Anyway I told him I wanted to try a different sweet potato recipe and see how I liked it. We found a recipe that was a crock pot recipe, that had orange juice, cranberries and brown sugar in it. I think it might have had apples too. Well I like cranberry juice, and I like dried cranberries, so I decided I would give the recipe a chance. It turned out pretty good. But only used a small part of the bag of cranberries I bought. Then I noticed a recipe on the bag. Cranberry Orange Bread.

That sounded pretty good, so I decided I would make it. It was yummy. However it called for a cup and a half of chopped cranberries. I started out with the cutting board, and decided that wasn't practical, so I put the in the blender. That did a much better job, except it reached a point that it would just push everything to the outside, and not chop any more. Which left me with some whole berries. I've decided that I need to get a chopper to more effectively make this dish. Then I forgot about the hard part of making it, and just remembered how good it tasted. So when I saw cranberries on sale at Costco, I bought a 3 pound bad, and made my bread yesterday. It still tasted yummy, but was definitely a lot of work. So I'm writing this post to let you know, 1 1/2 cups of chopped cranberries without the right kind of equipment, is a crazy task. It is possible, but quite time consuming. Now that I've written it, maybe I'll remember that little fact myself.