Spring Cleaning

So did you ever open a pantry door and have food tumble down on you?  Well, that is what inspired this lunch.  :)  We had a serious amount of open boxes of pasta that had just a little bit left in them. So for lunch we had an eclectic mix of pasta, which my daughters gladly ate.  In fact, whenever they smell pasta cooking, they run to the kitchen yelling, "noodles, noodles!"  So clearly, this simple lunch was a big hit.  Now, I'm off to organize the pantry because simply getting rid of the pasta boxes didn't quite do the trick.  :)

"Spring Cleaning" Bento Lunch - pasta and meatballs, strawberries, and crunchy raw green beans

Kids Cook - Eve's Sweet and Sour Chicken!

My daughters cook and bake with me all the time, but I've never given them very much responsibility other than dumping, stirring, etc.  So when we fount a kids cookbook at the library (called Mom and Me Cookbook by Annabel Karmel), Eve was pretty excited to become the "chef."  I basically only cut up the chicken, did the reading (and handing her the right measuring spoons), and the actual cooking on the stove.  Other than that, she did everything by herself...from making the batter for the chicken, the sauce, breaking up the veggies into smaller bite sized pieces, and dipping the raw chicken into the batter before cooking.  Here's a picture of the girls snapping the baby corn and green beans in half.

They loved doing the work and Eve was so proud of what she had accomplished!  I was skeptical of the recipe only because it was so simple, but it actually tasted really good!  We will definitely be making this again!

Eve's Sweet and Sour Chicken Bento - sweet and sour chicken, baby carrots, baby corn, green beans, white rice, and apple stars on the side