Portuguese Rice with Lima Beans

This is a very common variation of Portuguese yellow rice.  It's an easy way to add some vegetables to your meal. In addition to lima beans you could add carrots or peas.

Portuguese Tomato Rice

I've said before that Portuguese rice is an important part of Portuguese cuisine. It makes an appearance at just about every meal (if you're not having rice you're having potatoes). Having plain rice regularly can get boring so it's nice to put a little variety into your rice. I don't enjoy tomatoes, but I like this rice. This is a good way to sneak some lycopene into your or your kid's diet.

Croissant Breakfast Sandwich

A simple breakfast sandwich. This is great for busy mornings. You can easily adapt this to fit your taste. For me,  I prefer the sandwich with a fried egg and no cheese.

Super Mario Birthday Party- Cloud Jello

For a quick treat for my niece's Mario birthday party we whipped up some cloud jello. It's a quick and simple treat that fits the theme of the party nicely. 

Homemade Fudgesicles

This is a guest post by my wonderful sister. She's been pestering me to let her post something so here is her post on some homemade fudgesicles that she made recently. Having been part of the unofficial taste testing panel I give these my stamp of approval. This the popsicle mold used to make these fudgesicles.

Hi There!!!I am guest posting today and I am very excited!! Woot Woot!! I have never blogged before in my life.  So growing up, these were one of my favorite ice cream pops to eat. I am a chocoholic and love anything flavored with chocolate.Any who, as a mom, I try to make anything and everything possible from scratch.  I have made chocolate and vanilla ice cream at home and the results exceed anything store bought.  It's a win win situation when I can make something homemade,  the quality of the flavor can't compare and you know what is going into what you are making.  I first saw these on Brown Eyed Baker, one of my favorite blogs, and I couldn't wait to try them.   I substituted a couple of things because I used what I had in the kitchen.  It was daughter and kid sister approved, it doesn't get any better than that :).

Mario Birthday Party: Chocolate Mario Mustaches

When looking for ideas for my niece's Mario themed birthday party on Pinterest I saw chocolate mustaches. These fit the party theme so perfectly that we had to make them. The problem was we didn't have a mustache mold to make them. So the first thing I did was look online for a mustache mold. I chose this one from Amazon. It had good reviews and a good price at only $4.99.

These are so simple to make, but make a great addition to any Mario birthday party.

First, I made a double boiler using a sauce pan full of boiling water and a small bowl. I melted about 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chunks. Then, I cut some sticks that we had left over from making cake pops so that they would fit inside the mold. I poured the chocolate into each mustache in the mold and put it in the refrigerator to harden for a few hours. Once they had hardened we excitedly popped them out and had fun acting like we had fancy mustaches.

Cinnamon Roll Pancakes

Today is my niece's birthday and as you might be able to tell, she requested a Mario theme. You'll see a few Mario themed posts in the next couple of days, but this post focuses on the start of our birthday celebration: breakfast.

My sister and I wanted to make her a special treat for breakfast and we narrowed it down to either cake batter pancakes or cinnamon roll pancakes. The cinnamon roll pancakes won partly because we were having trouble finding cake batter pancakes appealing and partly because we didn't have the cake mix that we needed. It was a successful victory. Even grandma (my mother, a non-pancake eater) enjoyed these pancakes. And the birthday girl definitely approved of them ... particularly the icing. Overall, it was a great start to a great day.