OttawaMom

Last week was a busy one around here.  Not only did we have the usual extra curricular activities to attend (soccer, ballet, school assembly, recital etc.) but I had my very first big, non-family, cupcake order to complete and we said goodbye to my son’s best friend and his family.

In fact the cupcake order and the goodbye were related.  Just before Christmas last year, my friend S told me there was a possibility that their family would be moving to Holland, if an opportunity for her husband panned out.  Well as luck would have it for them, it did and takes them away from Ottawa for a year!!

Fast forward to a few months ago, and my friend asked me if I could come up with a Holland themed cupcake. She wanted to have a little goodbye party in each of her son’s classes at school and thought it would be great if the cupcake somehow reflected the country they would be temporary residents of.  Well the parties were last Friday, so I spent my week making chocolate tulips, to go on top of 4 dozen cupcakes.

4 Dozen cupcakes waiting to be decorated

Chocolated, molded tulips

Finished product

Needless to say the cupcakes were a big hit (who doesn’t like cake!!). DD and I attended the goodbye party in my son’s class (she’s going to miss Z as much as my son) and were treated to not only cupcakes, but a short video as well. My son’s teacher is brilliant and found an age appropriate video on Holland, so the kids could familiarize themselves with the country their classmate would be calling home for a year.

So now the parties are over, the goodbyes have been said and Z and his family have arrived safely in Holland to begin their new adventure.  Meanwhile my son and I are learning to adjust without our friends and are thankful that technology will keep them close, even though they are so far away. Oh and we are counting down the months until their return

Heat or no heat the job must get done.  Chocolate tulips for a job I am delivering Friday morning.  Stay tuned for the finished product.

Chocolate Molded Tulips

I have always been a big fan of Jamie Oliver’s, it started in his days of the Naked Chef. When I heard about his new show Food Revolution, I knew I would watch it and I also knew we would watch it together as a family. As much as I try to tell my kids how important it is to eat healthy, I thought it would help reinforce that idea if they watched the show.

As a family, we have taken Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution to heart and are trying hard to eat less processed food and eat more homemade things. We were already avoiding most processed foods but have taken it a step further and are making more things from scratch. I like knowing what is in my food and my kids are much happier with Mommy and Daddy’s cooking rather than boxed things from the store.

Making things from scratch may take a bit more time, but the effort is worth it to see my kids happily tucking in to their food. Even my son’s lunch box is coming home empty which is a huge feat!

The first big change we made was making all our bread from scratch. My husband is a wonderful baker, a trade he learned at the hands of his father. Watching him whip up a batch of homemade bread is amazing and our kids love to help him mix and knead the dough. In fact he loves making bread so much that he has built himself a bread oven for the backyard and sells homemade loaves at our annual garage sale, but I digress.

The next change we have made is to get rid of our boxed granola bars in favour of homemade ones. I thought I was giving my kids “healthy” granola bars, until I read the ingredients list. If I couldn’t actually pronounce some of the ingredients, why on earth was I giving them to my kids! So I searched the internet and found this recipe that is a winner with everyone (including my husband’s co-workers!). I did however tweek it a bit substituting whole wheat flour in place of all purpose, 1/2 tsp of cinnamon (instead of 1/4) and the first time I made it, I used 1 cup of chocolate chips instead of the dried fruit. I love the versatility of the recipe and plan to keep tweeking it to get my kids to try new things.

Homemade cookies, muffins and granola bars

So now we have baking Sundays at our house where we whip up batches of bread, muffins, cookies and granola bars for the week. Now instead of my pantry bulging with boxed, processed food, the freezer is bursting with yummy baked goods. When we need a snack on the go, we just grab a couple granola bars out of the freezer and they are good to go in 15 minutes.

These small changes are just the start of what I hope will be my own family’s Food Revolution. Are you watching the show and making changes too? Would love to know what other families are doing to eat healthier.