High Maintenance Mom

I made my first peach cobbler over the weekend and asked B to help cut out shapes for the topping. We decided it was time to test out the Williams Sonoma cookie cutter letters that have been displayed in the kitchen for a few years as if they were used frequently. It fun to see B get excited about putting words on a food item...

Cutting the letters wasn't too difficult and we ended up writing Cats, Box, and Ben. He also wanted to write Building but our baking dish was too small. B really liked the cobbler and letters but not the real whipped cream that I thought would be an added treat. Little Grab, who may need to be called Little Throw soon since he spends most of his time throwing food from his high chair, didn't like eating the whipped cream either. He did, however, seem interested in how the cobbler and cream made different shapes on the floor when dropped from his tray.

Excited by my first use of the letter cookie cutters and also by B's interest in spelling, I decided to try letter pizza. This evening we rolled out the Trader Joe's almost whole wheat dough and then tried to cut out letters of both kids names. It turned out that the pizza dough was sticky and our experiment took a long time. B remained interested, even after I misspelled his brother's name and had to start again. I ended up using a knife to help and wasn't sure it was all worth it.

Since the cutters were already dirty and time consuming to clean, I cut a B out of a hamburger bun to make B a 'B sandwich' (Oscar's favorite sandwich from the Sesame Street Sing the Alphabet CD). Cutting the hamburger bun and then adding cream cheese and jam was the easiest thing I 'cooked' today.

The easiest way we put letters, numbers, or shapes on our kids food is by drawing with a condiment - like ketchup or honey. B likes his oatmeal topped with honey in the shape of a B. I have also made shapes out of ketchup for dipping foods into. As a child, I liked to make shapes out of cheese slices too.