Blood and Eyeball Soup

I'm not sure how Halloween got this way, but it's like the whole week gets roped in with regards to SUGAR.
I admit. I love sugar. Probably the only reason I'm noticing it at all is because I vowed not to eat sugar (except on my birthday and Thanksgiving) until Christmas. So I'm walking around with a chip on my shoulder and I'm ready to bite your head off if you offer me Halloween goodies.

Amaya only just learned the word "goodie" this week, so you can imagine the melt-downs around our house.

I decided I had to satisfy some part of her sweet tooth without giving up entirely. I made this blood and eyeball soup and she spent a good half hour polishing off her bowl of dessert, thrilled with the idea that she was eating eyeballs, and didn't ask for any goodies for the rest of the evening.

Blood and Eyeball Soup

1 C large tapioca balls
4 C milk, divided
1 C water
2 C frozen strawberries
1/4 C agave syrup
20 drops red food coloring
garnish with grapes, cherries or pomegranate seeds

1. Soak tapioca in 2 C milk overnight.
2. Put mixture into saucepan. Add rest of (2 Cups)milk. Bring tapioca to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer and stir occasionally. Cook until balls are translucent and no longer gritty (about 20-25 minutes). Don't overcook or it will become too goopy.
3. While mixture is simmering, puree frozen strawberries with 1 C water in blender. Add mixture to the saucepan when the tapioca is finished cooking.
4. Add agave syrup and red food coloring. Garnish with desired round fruit item. (I also left a few chunks of strawberry and said it was "guts".)
note: you may want to use green food coloring and call it slime and eyeball soup.

Jewels, Stars, and Persimmons

Since it's Halloween this week, I had to pull out all the stops to get some nutrition in my house.

Amaya just picked up a huge bag of candy at preschool (???!!!!) and I had to distract her from it when we got home.

Any time I can make food seem like a treat she will pay attention, and certainly, when I get out some exotic fruits she has never seen before, she's all over it. After I tried to scrub off her face paint, we chowed down on some after school treats. She especially loved the pomegranate and recognized that they were seeds. I asked her what other fruit they were like, and she named grapes and cherries, which I think is a pretty good association.

We made faces, talked about colors, tried to describe their new tastes, and in a fit of genius I threw the fruit in plain yogurt. I'm always trying to get Amaya to eat plain yogurt because I'm pretty disgusted by the amount of sugar in flavored yogurt. She won't touch plain yogurt usually. I was surprised when she dug right in. I'm convinced she ate it because I had convinced her that the fruit was special enough to be a treat.

I hope we can survive Halloween week nutrition-wise.

Raspberry Dulce de Leche Popsicle

 

 The plastic popsicle molds I got at the dollar store this summer was one of my best purchases thus far. We used it all summer long. Most days we would just made popsicles out of apple juice but on other days we got a little fancier. Either way, it never took us more than 5 minutes to prepare and it was always a good bribe (shhh...pretend I didn't say that) to have around for dinner time.

This week we got some raspberries and golden berries. I'm guessing our berry season is coming to an end but until tha end comes we'll still be making popsicles.

Raspberry Dulce de Leche Popsicle

(makes 6 big popsicles and 12 small ones)

• 2 cups plain yogurt 
• 4 ounces washed Raspberries
• 2 tablespoons dulce de leche

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender and mix on high until it is creamy and well incorporated.
2. Pour into Popsicle molds and freeze.
   

Yogurt on Soup

One of Enzo's favorite things to eat is plain yogurt. He usually has it with honey and fruit but recently I discovered that he likes it on savory things as well. It's usually a challenge to get him to eat soup but if I put a spoon full of yogurt he'll eat it right up.

The yogurt also helps cool down the soup if it's too hot.