Sweet Potato French Toast Recipe

 
 













I love every opportunity I can get to sneak veggies into my kids' food.

Now, I won't proclaim that this recipe is super healthy. I mean it does have both syrup and brown sugar. But, this French toast does include a veggie and it tastes yummy. My girls gobble these up!

I usually buy canned sweet potato at a health food store, but you can also make your own. Click here for directions on how to bake sweet potatoes. Once they're cooked, you just need to let them cool enough so that you don't burn yourself, then tear off the peels (they should come off easily) and mash.

Here's the recipe:
3/4 cup pureed sweet potato
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs, beaten
10-12 slices bread (I use brown)

Preheat a non-stick frying pan on the stove top at just below medium heat. Mix the sweet potato, milk, cinnamon, vanilla & eggs in a shallow dish. Quickly dip both sides of a slice of bread into the mixture and put into the pan (you don't want to let the bread soak in the mixture, just dip to coat). Cook about 2 minutes, flip, then cook for about 2 minutes more. As you take the toasts out of the pan, move them to an oven-safe dish and keep them warm in the oven at 200 degrees F while you cook up the rest of the French toast.

Serve with margarine, a drizzle of maple syrup and a sprinkle of brown sugar (trust me, the combination of syrup and brown sugar is fantastic!)

Dinosaur Birthday Party

I love planning birthday parties for my kids. And it always helps to have a little inspiration, so I thought I'd share some of my ideas with you here. Today's theme is dinosaurs!

 1.     

1.       Set the Scene:

•  Let the birthday boy or girl help you draw dinosaur foot prints and hang them around the house. 

• Make a mini dino world to put on the party table. Fill a container with dirt, scatter rocks over top, tuck in a few small branches for trees, and add some plastic dinosaurs.

 Plan Fun Activities:

• Have a dinosaur dig! Buy a bag or two of plastic, toy dinosaurs (you can usually find these at a dollar store) and bury them in a bucket of Lego. Divide the kids into two teams and line them up a few feet away from the bucket. Let the teams race to dig up the dinosaurs. The first person on each team runs to the Lego and starts searching. Once he finds a dinosaur, he runs back to his team and the next person runs over to start searching. The team that finds their half of the hidden dinosaurs first is the winner. In the summer, if the weather is nice, you can play this game in the sandbox instead of with Lego. 

•  Play T-Rex hide & seek: Whoever’s turn it is to seek has to roar and stomp like a Tyrannosaurus Rex while he looks for the other kids.

• Make paper plate Stegosauruses: Buy two sizes of paper plates and cut them into halves. Give each child a small half plate for the head and a large half plate for the body. Using double-sided tape, help them attach the head to one end of the body (the dino will be in profile view). You could always have assembled dino bodies ready for the kids to decorate, if that’s easier. Let the kids use foam stickers to make legs, spikes, eyes and ears. They can also color their dinosaurs with markers or crayons.

 
 Have Super Dino Snacks:

• What's on the menu? How about dinosaur eggs (grapes or jellybeans), dinosaur bones (popcorn twists) and swamp water (juice).

•  Set out some fun dinosaur-shaped cookies. Grandin Bakery makes sugar cookies decorated in any colors you like.

 Happy party planning!