Win a LaLa Lunchbox Lunchbag!

Cute, eh?

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We're giving away three of them! Why? Because LaLa Lunchbox wants to make your New Year's Resolution to pack a better lunch a reality. 

Here's how you can win one of them: 
  • Like us on Facebook and post your favorite packed lunch to our wall (or your child's favorite) OR
  • Follow us on Twitter and tweet your favorite packed lunch (or your child's). Please include #lunchbagFTW

Easy peasy.

Enter until Tuesday, December 18 at 8pm EST. One entry per person. Tell your friends and family!
We'll pick three lucky winners via random drawing on December 19. Stay tuned!

Happy Holidays and best wishes for a healthy, happy new year from LaLa Lunchbox!

Newly Dairy-Free... Need Recipes!

Here's the bad news: both my husband and I have allergies and because of that, apparently our children each have a 70% chance of developing some sort of allergy. I'm an optimist at heart so I'm all about that 30%. Here's the good news: if any of my children has some sort of food allergy, they've come to the right house. I've been through a lot with my life-threatening allergies to nuts and fish and that makes me pretty well equipped to help others navigate those waters. For now, it appears that my oldest daughter and my son are allergy free. Phew! 

Here's where I need help: my new little baby, now 8 weeks old, spits up all the time and is completely distressed by gastrointestinal issues. She's gaining weight beautifully, so I'm not concerned in that regard but I wonder if there's something in my diet causing her such agita. On Monday, I decided to give up dairy for a month and see if it has any impact on her. I've read that dairy proteins take 2 weeks to leave the body so I'm patiently waiting. But 'tis the season to be baking and, well, dairy free is new to me.

Baking Powder Biscuits with Apple - Look gross! Taste just okay. I'm a dairy-free rookie...

Baking Powder Biscuits with Apple - Look gross! Taste just okay. I'm a dairy-free rookie...

Today I looked in a food allergy cookbook called What's to Eat? The Milk-Free, Egg-Free, Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook, by Linda Marienhoff Coss. I picked up this book four years ago when my oldest daughter was 2 and a classmate in her preschool had egg and milk allergies. I did a lot of cooking with the class that year and referenced this book for recipes. This morning, my son and I decided to make Baking Powder Biscuits from that book and adapted the recipe to include cinnamon and pieces of apple. They don't look so appealing but they taste okay. Not great. There's plenty out there to eat that doesn't have butter or milk or cheese or yogurt, don't get me wrong. But I love to bake, and I love to cook with my kids so I'm looking for new great vegan recipes... 

Wish us luck and please, send along any spectacular recipes.

In the meantime, here's the recipe that my son and I made this morning, adapted from the What's to Eat? cookbook: 

Baking Powder Biscuits with Apple and Cinnamon

2 c flour (I used whole wheat)

1 T sugar

1 T baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

2/3 c water

1/3 c vegetable oil

1 large apple, peeled and chopped into small pieces

Preheat oven to 450.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Add the wet ingredients and the chopped apple and combine well to form a dough. Knead dough 20 times on a floured board and pat down until it's 1/2 inch thick. Cut the dough into 2 inch circles and place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until tops are golden brown. 

Weekday Weelicious Pancakes

When I was growing up, my mom would sometimes make pancakes - delicious buttermilk pancakes, from scratch - on weekends. Things like pancakes were weekend-only things because with mixing and measuring and whatnot, there simply wasn't enough time before school. 

Recently, my mom, now a grandmother of 5, started making pancakes ahead of time so that she could have homemade pancakes ready quickly when the grandkids slept over. She keeps all of the dry ingredients in a tupperware with a note to self on top that contains specific instructions for adding the wet ingredients like eggs, buttermilk and vanilla. Smart, eh?

Weelicious Apple Vanilla Pancakes

Weelicious Apple Vanilla Pancakes

I took that idea and ran with it (thanks, Mom). I discovered that adding the wet ingredients was just too much for me to deal with on a weekday morning. So I made a batch in advance, in its entirety and voila! All I had to do in the morning was get out my frying pan. I also remembered an article I read a while back in The New York Times about chocolate chip cookies where Maury Rubin, owner of City Bakery revealed a secret to delicious cookies: let the batter rest before baking. Perhaps those same pearls of wisdom applied to pancakes? 

It does! Pancake batter that sits overnight percolating in the fridge turns out flavorful, fluffy pancakes every time. Which brings me to my latest awesome pancake discovery: Weelicious Apple-Vanilla pancakes. Wow. Catherine McCord, founder of Weelicious and author of a new Weelicious cookbook knows food and knows kids and that's a winning combination as far as I'm concerned. These pancakes were super easy to make in advance and I absolutely love that they have apples (I used Honey Crisp apples). Did I mention how happy my kids were about having pancakes for breakfast on a Tuesday morning!? I scored big points on that one. Lucky for my kids, the recipe made more than they could eat for breakfast in one day - my husband and I also had a few silver dollar sized gems - so they can have pancakes twice this week. Twice! 

:o) 

OneHungryMama and the Delish Skillet Cookie

I'm a cookie person. I'd give up every other dessert out there for cookies.  I wonder why anyone would ever choose something like cake or cupcakes or pie when there are cookies to be had. 

After browsing through @OneHungryMama's Ultimate List of Thanksgiving Recipes (drooling, admittedly) I showed it to my husband who continued perusing and, upon finding the Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie recipe, declared it "one we need to make immediately!"

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He was right. As luck would have it, we had all of the ingredients in the pantry ('tis the season to have pumpkin). Hooray! Stacie's recipe calls for a 12 inch skillet. I only had an 11 inch pie dish. She wrote "[t]he smaller the skillet the thicker and more cake-y this treat will be."

Something had to be done to prevent this delicious sounding cookie recipe from becoming cake-like. And so I made a half dozen cookies so as to leave less batter behind for the pie dish.  Success! My kids and I loved the cookies! Once the big skillet cookie was done baking and cooling, we tested the final product. Awesome texture: crispy edges, softer center. Great flavor. 

Assuming we can stop nibbling, I'm bringing the rest of it to our Thanksgiving festivities to share the wealth. 

Special thanks to Stacie, whose recipe is below - this is a keeper! 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie
(can be shared with kids 12+ mos)*
Makes one 12″ skillet cookie**

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree (homemade or plain canned; not pumpkin pie filling)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg, room temperature
1 1/2 cup (9 oz) chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, and salt; set aside. Using an electric mixer, cream butter and both sugars until mixture is light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

2. Add pumpkin, vanilla and egg; mix until they are fully incorporated. Add flour mixture and beat until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips by hand.

3. Transfer dough to a 12-inch ovenproof skillet. Press to flatten, covering bottom of pan. Bake until edges are brown and top is golden, about 35 minutes. Be careful not to over bake, especially if you like your cookies a little gooey. Remove from oven and allow pan to cool completely. The cookie best served warm (and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!).

* Note: While there is nothing in this recipe that is unsafe for younger children, I recommend it beginning at 12 months due to the relatively high sugar content. No matter how older your eaters, be sure to serve age appropriate portions. A little of this sweet treat goes a long way for young children.

** Note: The smaller your skillet, the longer the cookie will have to bake. The following is a guideline, but you may want to use a toothpick to check for doneness (it is fully baked when the toothpick comes out clean). Just keep in mind that the cookie will bake further once out of the oven. If you want a gooey cookie, leave the very center just a little “raw.”

– 10″ skillet, approx 40 min
– 9″ skillet, approx 45 min
– large cookies on a cookie sheet, about 1/4 cup of dough, approx 15-17 min

– smaller cookies on a cookie sheet, about 1 tablespoon of dough, 10-12 min

The Sweet Smell of Butter Cookies Wafting Down the Hall

Someone should figure out a way to make "scratch and sniff" digital images because my house smells so awesome right now and if only I could capture that in a photo... 

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Holiday decorations are up all around and it makes me think of cookies. My mom always made dozens of cookies around Thanksgiving to have on hand for the holidays and give as gifts to others or just for family treats. No store bought cookie can compare to something homemade and my mom has perfected many cookie recipes over the years. The cookies that I made this morning are one of my mom's favorites. They're called Fannies – after my mom's great Aunt Fanny who baked them all the time. These are straightforward butter cookies with a jam center and they're utterly delicious. 

There are three things about Fannies that make them a truly phenomenal thing: 

1. There are 7 ingredients and nothing unpronounceable.

2. They're meant to be small. I don't know why companies, bakeries and restaurants keep making cookies the size of my head but I find it absolutely absurd.

3. They have a lovely balance of sweet and salt.  

If you're looking for a cookie recipe for the holiday season or to bring to your Thanksgiving table, give these Fannies a try. They're easy (I make them with my two year old) and delicious but as an added bonus, they are an incredible air freshener.

Fannies
½ lb. butter
½ cup sugar
½ tsp. salt
2 cups flour
2 egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla
Jam

 

Preheat the oven to 350. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Combine the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat with a mixer until they become light and fluffy. Add the flour slowly and mix to combine. Add the egg yolks, salt and vanilla extract and mix together until the dough forms. 

Shape the dough into 1 inch balls and flatten them slightly with your hands. Using your thumb, press a bit in the center to make room for the jam. Add a dollop of jam to the center of each cookie. Place the cookies about an inch apart. Bake for approximately 25 minutes.