Breakfast made by all

October 15 & 16, 2013

The kids were out of school yesterday so I put them to work. I raked leaves and they helped me pick up the piles. We worked for 3 1/2 hours. There was no way that I was going to cook dinner afterwards so I looked through my coupons. I found a buy one get one free pasta dinner. Perfect. The kids and I shared the two meals for just over $9. Score! Then I took them to go get free ice cream cones. You can't beat free.

I finished up the leftover stuffed pasta shells for lunch. The fridge is looking bare. Today should have been my shopping day but I am waiting until tomorrow. Tomorrow will mark one year of doing my challenge. I can't wait to see what my year savings are!

I decided to have a cooking day today. First up was to hard boil some eggs. Next, I made cookie dough hummus. My son has been asking for it for weeks. Chocolate Covered Katie's recipe is amazing but I wanted to alter it just a bit today. I used a dash of salt, dash of baking soda, about two cups of garbanzo beans, 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and 1/4 cup of peanut butter. Here is where I did a little altering. Her recipe calls for 2/3 cup of brown sugar. I always just use 1/3 cup. However today I wanted to try making it with even less. I filled my 1/3 cup measurer (is that a word?) and then only put in half of it. Not enough. I ended up using 3/4 of it. I normally make it with 1/4 cup of regular milk (cow). Today I tried it with rice milk. I put all of that in the food processor. I chopped and stirred in some chocolate. Her recipe calls for 1/3 cup but I usually add more.

The next item on my agenda was to make muffins. I looked in the freezer and saw 7 bags of bananas. Really? I guess it's a banana muffin day. My daughter got home from school so I taught her how to make them. I even let her use the mixers for the first time! My son got home from school and my daughter taught him how to make her famous deviled eggs. She even got out her recipe for him to look at. So cute! Meanwhile, I made French toast and served it with my father in law's homemade maple syrup. I also opened a jar of my home canned maple applesauce.

Breakfast for dinner was so fun. It was neat that each of us contributed to the meal. My son ate about half of the hummus after school and guess what.... He didn't even notice that I had reduced the sugar or used rice milk. He finished dinner and then got the hummus back out again! My daughter's muffins were delicious. It was so cool to see them both so proud of their creations!