Congratulations to the winners of our Emily Press Label giveaway: Amanda Jankowski, Jodi Robertson, Heidi Jones, Stéphanie Terry and Courtney Northcutt!

Checkout weelicious next Thursday for another great giveaway!

From the moment my kids discovered ham — particularly prosciutto — there has been no looking back. Whenever we’re in the grocery now, my son asks for it the second he sees it. Recently we were making ham sammies together and I let him decide what toppings would go on his. I offered up a bunch of different options, but I was shocked at what a great idea he thought spinach was. He was so right, it resulted in today’s recipe. Spinach turned out to be the perfect addition, adding a sweet taste, vibrant color and a bit of extra nutrition to a brown bag sandwich that’s easy to love.

Ham, Cheese & Spinach Sammies

4 English Muffins, split (I use whole wheat english muffins, but you can use any kind of bread you want)
1/2 Cup Cheese, shredded (I prefer swiss, mozzarella, havarti, cheddar or gruyere)
4 Slices Ham or Prosciutto
1/3 Cup Spinach Leaves

1. Place half of each English muffin on a plate and top with some cheese, a piece of ham, a few leaves of spinach another sprinkle of cheese and the other english muffin half.
2. Place in a sauté pan over medium heat and cook for 3 minutes on each side or until cheese is melted (feel free to use a bit of butter or oil in the pan, but it’s not necessary).
3. Serve.

My parents were around in full force this summer. It was a huge help to me but it also meant my kids were exposed to a whole host of foods that mommy does not want them eating. Let’s see, there was the day that Kenya
innocently told me that my father bought him “some” gum at the car wash (sugar free Trident with Aspartame to be exact). We later found Chloe playing unusually quietly and chewing something. Next to her were 15 empty gum wrappers. When we asked her where everything went that was in the wrappers she said, “in my tummy”. Then there were the times my dad let Kenya order “a drink in a red can that was really sweet with bubbles in it,” but of course Kenya was told to not say anything to me. Are you starting to see a pattern here with my dad and his knowledge
of what is and is not ok to feed kids?

Or how about the day that I made these Blueberry Cheesecake Bites and Kenya said, “Grandpa took me to the Cheesecake Factory. I love cheesecake.” Now, I have nothing against cheesecake — it was one of my favorite desserts as a kid — but I get cavities just thinking about the mounds of sugar that most recipes call for. This version is different and has become one of my kids’ new favorite sweet treats. Since they are bite-sized, contain no refined sugar, have tons of fresh blueberries and even a whole wheat and oat crust, I feel a lot better offering these to my kids for dessert than a lot of the alternatives.

Blueberry Cheesecake Bites (makes 20-25 bites)

Oat Crust:

1 Cup Old Fashioned Oats
1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar
6 Tbsp Unsalted Butter, chilled

Filling:

4 oz Cream Cheese, room temperature
1 Large Egg, at room temperature
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 Cup Sour Cream
1/3 Cup Light Brown Sugar
1 Cup Fresh Blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 300 F.
2. To make the crust, place the first 3 ingredients in a food processor and pulse to chop oats.
3. Add the butter and pulse to combine.
4. Press the crust on the bottom of a parchment-lined 8 x 8 baking dish and flatten evenly with your hands. Bake for 10 minutes to set, then allow to cool.
5. Lower the oven temperature to 250 F.
6. To make the filling, place the first 5 ingredients in a bowl and beat to combine.
7. Fold in the blueberries.
8. Pour the batter on top of the crust and bake for 1 hour.
9. Cool and then chill until ready to serve.
10. Cut into squares and serve.*

*To get clean squares, wipe your knife between each slice.

As many of you know, we’re big on dips in our house. I find that if you put out a big platter of veggies next to a yummy dip for plunging into, the variety of vegetables you can get into kids’ little bodies increases by….well, a lot! Case in point was the day that I made this Avocado Honey Dip. Chloe had just woken up from her nap and was sitting with me at the kitchen counter while I was concocting this creamy spread. She asked if she could try some, so I made her a little plate with baby carrots, sugar snap peas and pretzels. Chloe dipped a few times and then, in the time that it took me to turn around to grab something and turn back, she had her little arm wrapped around the mixing bowl and the spatula I had used to stir it in her mouth. Eventually I surrendered and let her finish it all.

There’s nothing worse than sending your child to school with a lunch box packed full of fresh veggies only to have them come back home exactly the way you sent them: uneaten. My advice? Add some of this dip and see if it adds to your kid’s fun of wanting to munch and crunch on the good stuff that goes with it!

Avocado Honey Dip (makes 1 cup)

1 Avocado, peeled and pitted
1/4 Cup Whipped Cream Cheese
1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
1 Tbsp Honey

1. Place all of the ingredients in a bowl and mash together.
2. Serve with cut up veggies, crackers, pretzels or even as a spread on toast.

Thanks to over 1400 people who participated in the family feeding survey this week. I find the information extremely helpful in making weelicious an even better resource for families and I thought it would be nice to share the results below. Knowing what is most important to you helps me focus on addressing your specific needs to make meal time as fast, easy, nutritious and fun as possible! Click below on “Read More” to check out the four pie charts and the results!

How many times have you sent your child off to school with new shoes, a cool (and expensive!) water bottle, a great lunch box, a treasured book or favorite shirt only to have him or her return home empty handed, the item in question never to be seen again? Having spent countless hours fruitlessly searching through lost and found bins, I feel like that’s been the recurring story of my little ones’ school adventures! Recently however, I ordered these Emily Press kids labels and they have truly changed my life. One day I ran around the house going label crazy on my kids’ shoes, clothing and so on, ensuring that the next time one of their things disappeared at school, it would eventually make it’s way home to its rightful owner. The labels come in three sizes and are both beautiful and durable, coming in different styles and designs and withstanding the toughest beatings (they are dishwasher and laundry safe).

Emily Press is offering FIVE weelicious moms the chance to win the First Class School Pack or new Cool 4 School Pack personalized with their child’s name on them.

To enter, just leave a comment here telling me the worst thing your kid ever lost. Winners will be chosen at random.

Good luck!

Congratulations to the winners of our Kids Konserve Lunch Kit giveaway: Donna Bessai, Catharine Devigne, Narine Sukyas and Hillary Abbott

Check out weelicious today for another great giveaway!

When I hear the most frequent dinnertime complaints weelicious moms’ have, one of their biggest issues is lack of time. I totally get it. It’s tough trying to get a balanced, nutritious meal on the dinner table when you only have a limited amount of time in which to make it. That is why whenever I need an easy-to-prepare meal I can be sure the whole family will love, I get out my crock pot. From prep to clean up, it is the biggest time saving appliance I own. I’d actually marry it if my husband wasn’t already in the picture.

This Veggie Lasagna is one of my biggest recent crock pot success stories and it only took me a few minutes to put the whole thing together. No sautéing or stove-watching required. Just chop your veggies, mix the cheeses and layer everything into the pot. By the time you get home from picking up the kids at school and an afternoon of errands, this delicious dinner will be waiting for you — just take the lid off and serve.

You may not want to marry your crock pot, but you might consider it after tasting this lasagna.

Crock Pot Veggie Lasagna (Serves 6-8)

2 Cups Zucchini, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Mushrooms and/or Spinach
1 15 oz Container Ricotta Cheese
1/2 Cup Parmesan Cheese, grated
1 Tbsp Dried Italian Herbs
1/2 Tsp Garlic Powder
1 Tsp Kosher Salt
1 Large Egg
1 25 oz Jar Pasta Sauce
1 Box Lasagna Noodles (uncooked)
2 Cups Mozzarella Cheese, grated

1. Place the vegetables in a food processor and pulse to roughly chop.
2. Place the ricotta, parmesan cheese, herbs, garlic powder, salt and egg in a bowl and stir to combine.
3. Pour half of the pasta sauce in the bottom of a crock pot.
4. Place a layer of noodles on top of the sauce, covering the entire surface, breaking the noodles to fit the pot.
5. Layer half of the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles, followed by 1 cup of the chopped vegetables and then one cup of mozzarella cheese.
6. Repeat with another layer of noodles, followed by the remaining ricotta mixture and the chopped vegetables.
7. Pour the remaining pasta sauce on top of the lasagna and top with the remaining cup of the grated cheese.
8. Cook on low for 4 hours.
9. Serve.

I was scouring some of my cookbooks recently trying to find a peanut butter and jelly popsicle. Oh yeah, I said it PB & J pop. Nothing. Ziltch. How was that possible. Ok, maybe there’s one out there, but I didn’t find it and I couldn’t get the thought of making them out of my head.

Cut to me finding a box of 100 Dixie cups in the bathroom cabinet that day. When did I buy these? They must have been there for over a year, but I not a single one had been used. Ahh ha.. I could make the PB & J popsicles in them!

I headed down to the kitchen mixing a little of this and a little of that until I came up with what seemed like the perfect mixture and began layering and then freezing the popsicles.

Cut to Kenya opening the freezer when I was looking an hour later and accidentally dumping the tray of cups over and watching my little experiment poured all of the freezer (if you’ve ever tried cleaning peanut butter out of a freezer I’m sure you can imagine this wasn’t a ton of fun). But after we made another batch and let them freeze (check out the image at the end of this post) you had two kids (and a mom) who happily devoured a batch of PB & J pops loving every last bite.

PB & J Pops (Makes 4 pops)

1/2 Cup Peanut Butter, smooth
2 Tbsp Honey
1 Cup Milk, divided (any type of milk will work)
1/2 Cup Your Favorite Fruit Preserves (I used Raspberry)

1. Combine the peanut butter, honey and 1/2 cup of milk in a bowl and whisk until smooth.
2. Whisk the preserves and the remaining milk in a separate bowl to combine.
3. Pour both mixtures into 2 separate liquid measuring cups for easy pouring.
4. Pour 2 tbsp of the peanut butter mixture into each Dixie cup, followed by 3 tbsp of the fruit preserves mixture.
5. Freeze for 30 minutes.
6. Pour the remaining peanut butter mixture on top. Pok a popsicle stick in the middle of the cups.
7. Freeze for at least 6 hours or more.
8. Serve.

Don’t rub your eyes when you look at the dish pictured above. That is in fact calamari you see and yes, it’s here on weelicious. Now you’re probably thinking:

a. What IS calamari? (Answer: squid.)
b. How the heck do I cook it? (Answer: it’s one of the easier types of fish to prepare.)
c. There’s NO way my kid will ever eat it. (Answer: Don’t be too sure about that.)

Trust me, the recipes that show up on weelicious are never some type of challenge that I offer parents to try and get kids to eat a host of foods they’re never going to enjoy. Quite the opposite, in fact. I have a 2 year old who constantly surprises me with her love of the most unexpected dishes to prove it. The first time Chloe tried calamari we were at one of our favorite Italian restaurants. I had ordered the grilled calamari and she scarfed every last piece of it off of my plate. Minutes after it was all gone she was screaming at the top of her lungs, “MORE CALAMARI!!! “The people at the table next to us looked over as if we were C-R-A-Z-Y! We now hear this familiar refrain from Chloe almost every time we are at a restaurant (whether they serve calamari or not!). Her demands for it became so frequent, I started making it at home and you’d be amazed by how quickly this child can put it away.

To remind you again, we’re talking here about calamari, not chocolate cake or vanilla ice cream, but they way my whole family enjoys it now, you’d think I was offering dessert.

If you’ve never tried calamari before, it’s time to give it a try because this unbelievably easy-to-make recipe is packed with protein and flavor, is inexpensive and unbelievably scrumptious no matter how old you are!

Calamari Rings (Serves 2-3)

1 Lb Calamari
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 Garlic Clove, minced
1/4 Cup Sherry Wine
1/2 Tsp Kosher Salt
1 Tbsp Lemon Juice

1. Rinse, drain and pat calamari dry.
2. Cut calamari into rings and pat dry again with a paper towel to remove as much excess liquid as possible.
3. Heat a large skillet over high heat, add 2 tbsp of oil and immediately add the calamari rings sautéing for 2 minutes.
4. Remove calamari to a bowl.
5. Add the minced garlic, sherry wine, salt and lemon juice to the same skillet over high heat and allow to boil for 1 minute.
5. Add the calamari back into the sherry lemon sauce to heat through for 20 seconds.
6. Serve.