Monster or witch repellent

It seems every kid goes through a stage where suddenly their imagination turns to the dark side and in addition to imagining Santa and Easter bunnies, tooth fairies and pirate adventures, witches and other unsavory characters start creeping into their dreams. Sometimes it is not enough to simply tell your child that there's no such thing as monsters. It helps, but they're still skeptical of us grownups who make them eat green things. So it helps to have some magic in your bag of tricks.

Here is a special product that I had to "custom order" for my daughter. She's not afraid of monsters (thank you Monsters, Inc!) and is not afraid of ghosts or vampires but ever since her Girl Scout troop sang carols in an old folks home, she has had reoccurring nightmares about a witch in a wheelchair. I told her that I knew of someone who made a special potion that you spray around your bedroom at night to repel witches. She asked if it worked. I told her it was 100% guaranteed to work or we'd get our money back and that it was just like a bug repellent but made just for witches, who have special big noses. Then I got to work fulfilling the order.

Materials:

• spray bottle
• labels you can custom print on
• water
• few drops of essential oil such as lavender (optional)

I chose to fill the spray bottle with filtered water and a few drops of lavender essential oil. The lavender gives just enough scent to make it smell authentic without ruining rugs or furniture. Lavender is valued in aromatherapy as a relaxant even for children, so it's suitable for bedtime, but any herbal, floral or fruity scent that you can stand could work.

I packaged it and "mailed" it to my daughter because she likes the idea of special ordering it and it appears more authentic to her. Another option is to present this to your child as a printed recipe or potion and ask your child to help you make it in the kitchen. The instructions for use are printed on the back (mine say to spray once in the doorway and once near the bed) and the bottle sprays a very fine mist so we're not soaking the floors, rugs or bedding. So far, we have one happy little girl who fully believes in the power of her "Witch B-Gone" and sleeps much easier now at night, which means I can sleep easier at night, ahh!

Moms and dads, please feel free to copy this or make up your own version if your child has a monster under her bed or a witch in his wardrobe. I hope it leads to more sweet dreams in your household as well!

Pesto is the besto!

I love how easy it is to make a fresh pesto sauce at home. I haven't been able to eat store bought pesto sauce for the past few years now that my taste buds have adapted to the real thing.

Savannah also adores pesto and makes most batches nearly by herself. I should've known at 8 months when she used to crawl around and eat my fresh potted herbs (basil, rosemary and thyme) until there was nothing left of them that she would be a pesto lover too. Savannah won't eat my fresh marinara sauce or my roasted red pepper sauce but she'll eat pesto with a spoon as if it were yogurt. Here's our recipe:

Easy Peasy Pesto Sauce Recipe

1. Wash your sweet or Italian Genovese basil leaves in a colander and use a clean kitchen towel to blot the extra water off (if you accidentally use the spicy Thai Basil leaves, you'll burn your tongue and might swear off pesto for a year!).

2. Add to your food processor:

• 1-3 cloves of smashed garlic (by taste and size of garlic cloves)
• 1/4 tsp to a 1/2 tsp of Kosher or sea salt (by taste - you can always add more later!)
• 4-8 Tb good extra virgin olive oil
• 4-6 Tb of your favorite nut (toasted pine nuts are the most commonly used but we prefer raw walnuts and raw pecans)
  
• and about 2 cups of fresh basil leaves pinched from their stems

3. Pulse together until well blended. Add more olive oil if needed.

4. Add to food processor some Parmesan (about 2-4 Tb or so) or other aged cheese (if you're vegan you can omit cheese altogether, or make it extra cheesy for your kids) and 1 Tb of canola oil (see below). Pulse together, taste for adjustments, and enjoy.

Notes: If your pesto seems to be missing something, try a few turns of the pepper mill.

If serving over pasta, consider adding a side bowl of freshly diced tomatoes when they're in season. The sweetness and juiciness of the tomatoes accents the pungency and saltiness of the pesto very well and gives you an extra serving of fresh fruit and fiber.

If you've never tried it, you might try substituting raw walnuts for toasted or raw pine nuts in your pesto sauce. Walnuts have the best flavor for pesto in my taste buds' opinion. In many Amish communities across America, sunflower seeds are used in place of pine nuts in pesto sauces.


Sara's secrets

When making pesto at home, replace 1Tb of olive oil with 1Tb of canola oil per batch of pesto. The canola oil, while having a higher amount of polyunsaturated fats, will keep your pesto from oxidizing (a natural reaction that many herbs, fruits and veggies have when exposed to oxygen in air) so it keeps its vibrant green color without turning brown.

It took me a long time to discover this and while my pesto always tasted great when I stored summer and fall's bounty in the freezer for winter (or even for just an hour in the fridge before company arrived!) it always turned brown on top no matter how much olive oil I poured over it. Now my pesto is a bright beautiful green without any preservatives no matter how long I store it!

Notes: You could also try using sunflower oil or safflower oil if you're out of canola oil but I don't recommend using these oils based on their fat profiles - extremely high in polyunsaturated fats and extremely low in monounsaturated (aka good) fats. I also don't recommend cooking with canola oil since it easily breaks down into trans-fatty acids when heated.

Christmas Spice Cookies

Savannah still hasn't recovered from the bug she picked up. Last night her coughing sounded terrible and when it became incessant with bits of crying in between I got her out of bed at midnight to try a few home remedies. She drank warm honey water, had some saline solution for her nose and I placed an extra pillow beneath hers to keep her more upright. After I tucked her in again there was no more coughing for the rest of the night. Still, her eyes have blue around the inside corners indicating that she's slightly dehydrated and sleep-deprived.


Today was our day to go to the library to get Christmas books but we agreed she wasn't yet well-enough so we traded in today's Christmas calendar activity for baking cookies, which was not a hard sell! Here's our recipe for Christmas Spice Cookies - kind of a hybrid between spice cookies/ginger snaps and sugar cookies. It's a great one for using up all the colored holiday sugars in your baking cabinet that seem to last for years otherwise.

Christmas Spice Cookies

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease baking sheets with butter or line with baking paper.

• 1c unsalted butter
• 1c packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg (plus an egg yolk)
• 1 Tb vegetable oil

Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy, then add the rest of the wet ingredients and blend.

• 2 1/2 c all-purpose flour (scant)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp coarse Kosher salt (or 1/4 tsp if you use any other kind of salt)
• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 3/4 tsp ground cloves
• 3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• course granulated sugar with or without coloring

Sift together all of the dry ingredients reserving the course granulated sugar for rolling the dough in.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet until incorporated then roll into small balls to dip or roll in the coarse granulated sugar before arranging on the baking sheet. These balls will "melt" like little snow balls in the warm oven to flatten so give them plenty of room on the baking sheets. Bake for 9-13 minutes depending on size of balls. 11 minutes usually does the trick for us.

Notes: The cookies should come out crispy on the outside and slightly chewy on the inside. For a spicier cookie, increase the cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon to 1 tsp each. You could also omit the coarse sugar and bake them plain or drizzle a homemade icing on top. Enjoy them before Santa does!

Here's one happy little Santa's helper, even if she is not yet at 100% today.

Sara's secrets:

In recipes it's rare that you use an entire lemon - both the zest and the juice or even the whole lemon. Save these lemon leftovers (squeezed or hard, dried lemons work too) to clean the microwave with. I place any leftover lemon pieces in a microwaveable bowl filled halfway with water and microwave for 1-2 minutes until the microwave is filled with condensation. Then I wipe it down with a paper towel and all the grease and things that go "pop" in the microwave come right off. I never have to scrub the microwave anymore.