Shrimp and Bacon Zucchini Boats

My newest cooking experiment turned out great!  I was making salmon and needed something to go with it, so I came up with the following recipe for yummy zucchini boats!

I didn't actually expect them to turn out as good as they did so unfortunately, I didn't take pictures as I made them, but I do have a few pictures of the finished product.

Ingredients:

Zucchini
Shrimp
Carrots
Garlic
Onion
Red Pepper
Green Pepper
Bacon Bits
Tomato
Spinach
Mozzarella
Provolone

• Cut zucchini in half and use a spoon to carve out the center area, leaving a "boat" (keep the part you carved out, you'll be using it for the stuffing)
• Grate carrots, garlic and zucchini center (from last step) into a bowl
• Finely dice shrimp, onion, red pepper and green pepper and add to bowl
• Toss everything from the bowl into a pan and saute with a little bit of butter and your choice of seasoning (I used McCormick Perfect Pinch Vegetable).  When done, drain (if needed) and add back to the bowl.
• Finely dice spinach and tomato (de-seed first) and toss in the bowl
• Grate mozzarella into bowl
• Mix well (the cheese should melt and help the mixture to stick together) 
• Spoon mixture into the zucchini boats and sprinkle top with bacon bits
  * Note:  I had extra stuffing so I baked it in a little stoneware ramekin

• Bake at 425 for 20 minutes 
• At the 15 minute mark, pull them out and place thinly sliced provolone to top, put back into the oven to continue cooking for the last 5 minutes

You'll love these!  They went perfectly with our lemon herb salmon, butter parmesan pasta and sweet corn on the cob.  It was an all around hit with everyone from the 2-year-old all the way up to the Grammy (we won't mention her age).  I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Pancake Flower - Breakfast

Breakfast this morning was pancakes and fruit made into a flower shape.  

I started out making petal shaped pancakes (long ovals).  I used Krusteaz Wheat and Honey pancakes and instead of water, we used milk.

Then I chopped up the strawberries and bananas.

Added some vanilla yogurt to a small bowl, sprinkled it with some multicolored nonpareils and added some Yogurt O's (available at Fresh & Easy).

Then I arranged everything on the plate.  Fruit went on top of the pancakes and I drizzled them with honey.  Th yogurt bowl went into the center of the "petals".

Yum!

Fun Snack Tray

The boys were ready for snack so I decided to put together a fun snack tray.  Something like this would be great for those of you who have picky eaters that don't like their food to touch, it's still fun and different but each food stays with it's group.

I started out just gathering what I wanted to give the boys for snack.  We like to do finger foods for snacks so I decided on grapes, carrots, strawberries, apples, ham, waffle pretzels, cucumber and provolone cheese.

First I cut everything into flat disks and used my fondant cutters to punch out shapes from the food.  For those of you who don't know, fondant cutters are like mini cookie cutters, they also do make mini cookie cutters but they are harder to find.  I found both the fondant cutters I used, and these mini cookie cutters (Noah's Ark Set and Romantic Set) at Michael's.

After I punched everything out and arranged it on the tray, I drew on the provolone with Wilton FoodWriter Pens.  I kept it simple: I <3 U, Gabe, Rique and a bunch of smiley faces.  I've used the pens with great success on other foods, but apparently cheese is too soft because it was a lot harder to use them on the provolone.  I think next time I'll just use food coloring and a toothpick or thin paintbrush.

Here's the finished product:

My boys love fun food, even when it's just one of my simple creations.  My favorite part of snack was watching my boys being sweet with each other and sharing their food.

Happy Eating!

Spring Theme Breakfast

The last couple days have been gray, windy and rainy so I thought we needed a nice, colorful meal to remind us that it's spring time.  

The flowers are bell pepper with scrambled eggs poured in and a cheese (cheddar and provolone) center with  a spinach leaf and a chive as the stem.  I got the idea for these flowers from this picture.

There is also bacon "dirt" with a gummy worm and 2 strawberry ladybugs.  Butterfly toast with grape jelly, a banana body and antennae made of two slivers of beef jerky.

Yum!

General Conference

Tomorrow is the 182 annual General Conference for The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints.  Here's some quick info:

If you'd like to know more, please go to Mormon.org or LDS.org 

Baked Mini-Frittatas

This morning's breakfast idea came from this picture I remembered seeing on Pinterest a few weeks ago.  I didn't make that exact recipe this morning (I will sometime soon), but it was the thing that spurred me to think about how else I could bake eggs in the oven.  I am sure there is a recipe for this somewhere, but I was feeling too lazy to look anything up this morning, so this is what I came up with:

Scrambled up some eggs and added some scallions, chopped fresh spinach and a pinch of salt.  I decided to use the mini-muffin tins because my boys love anything mini.

Baked them at  400° for about 15 minutes, or until fork inserted comes back out clean. Obviously, I overfilled the muffin tin so they're a little too fluffy (lesson learned for next time).

They tasted good and went well with the rest of our breakfast, potatoes o'brien and breakfast sausage (the red on the frittata is ketchup, my youngest son loves ketchup on his eggs).

* I made extra so I could have some to toss in the freezer for mornings when I need something quick.
* Don't forget to spray the muffin tins with non-stick spray!
* Next time I'll add some crumbled bacon to the mix, sadly we ate the last of our bacon yesterday!

Cars On A Beach Highway - Breakfast

Today's breakfast:

Ocean: Blended bananas and applesauce (plus 2 drops blue food coloring)

Beach: Kix Breakfast Cereal

Road: Peanut Butter (food colored black) and yellow decorator icing

Cars: Clif Builders Bar, Cheerios, red decorator icing

Grass: Eggs (1 drop green food coloring), spinach and scallions

Both of the boys loved it.  Here's my oldest, Gabriel, hamming it up!  Rique was still feeling too sick to want his photograph taken.