Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Peek-a-boo, I love you!

Welcome to the Festival of Food Carnival. In celebration of Valentine's Day, we're sharing recipe ideas for "love foods" or foods to share with loved ones. Hosted by Diary of a First Child and Hybrid Rasta Mama, you're welcome to join us next time, or if you have a previously published recipe you'd like to share, add it to the linky below. ******


Well, I've misplaced my heart-shaped cookie cutter, so my pumpkin one will have to do.  This meal can change as the seasons and holidays do, as your cookie cutters permit.

My kids love what we call Peek-a-boo eggs, and they're made with love in several ways.  I choose the best ingredients I can, they're made for any meal (the kids are involved with meal-planning and they can choose so-called breakfast foods for dinner, if they want), and the kids help make them.  It's a simple recipe,  very similar to one-eyed jacks, but we put a fun little twist on them.

First the kids put butter on both sides of a piece of bread.  For several reasons I'm not going to go into here, I think butter is a healthy fat.  :)


Then they use a cookie-cutter that doesn't have too many corners and skinny bits (pumpkins, hearts, and ghosts work well; snowflakes do not) to cut out the center of the bread.




Both the outline and the cut-out bit go into a heated pan (medium heat works well for us, we like our eggs over-easy.)  Rainbow and Cloud have both been cooking near a hot stove for quite some time, so they place the bits in the pan and I'm not too concerned, although I'm still vigilant.  If Cloud starts to get rambunctious or if they start bickering, their involvement in the cooking part ends.


Each of them, for their own bread, cracks an egg and hands it to me.  I open the egg and put it into the center of the outline.  After a few moments we salt and pepper the egg.  It cooks for a bit.  Then the kids flip the outline-with-egg piece (with my help), and they use tongs to flip the cut-out bit.  Tongs are something we use regularly as part of our homeschool-preschool activities, fulfilling part of the manipulatives category, and I've found them and the kids' proficiency in using them to be quite helpful in the kitchen.  



Wow.  This picture really does not want to move to the center for me.  Oh, well.



Then the outline-and-egg bit goes onto a plate, the cut-out bit gets some jam, and the cut-out bit goes on top of the egg, like the egg is hiding.  Rainbow thinks it's great when a bit of the egg can be seen from under the cut-out.  After putting the meal on the plate, I just take care of the cast iron real quick.


PEEK-A-BOO! 




We don't eat much sugar, so the jam is considered a special treat, and we only use about a teaspoon of jam. The kids love this meal, they love how involved they can be in its making, and they hate to jeopardize their involvement by fighting or being crazy around the stove.  I like using sprouted bread--I'm not sure if it's that much healthier, but we don't get hungry as quickly after eating it as we do when we eat regular flour bread and I don't get heartburn.  I think feeling that much better must mean something.  I love how excited the kids get when we make this meal.  We find locally-made and no-sugar-added jam.  We find the local-est eggs with the darkest yolks possible.  :)  I try.  I also have a budget and have never met the chickens to give me my eggs.

This meal drips love, explodes with love, leaks love in our house.  One time I quickly made myself a fried egg and ate some bread with it; the kids were so disappointed...I won't be doing that again.  I like participating, feeling their excitement, and sitting at the table, waiting for the inevitable, "Peek-a-boo!  I love you!"


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Please take a moment to visit the blogs of our other Festival of Food participants. The links in this list will be live by the end of the day, as participants are all in different time zones.
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5 comments:

  1. How I miss eggs - we're off them since my nursling has a sensitivity. I hope she grows out of it! These look yummy.
    ~Dionna @ CodeNameMama.com

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    1. I wonder if you could use a cookie cutter and cut out of a sausage pattie some shape out of both pieces and then place that in there. Peek-a-boo sausage! I hope she grows out of it, too. Does she have a sensitivity to the yolks as well, or just the whites? I've read that whites sensitivities are much more common, and this could be done with yolks easily. :)

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  2. Pumpkin and Valentine's Day is a natural fit in my book! :) This looks like a great recipe! Thanks for joining in on the Carnival!

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    1. Thanks! I'm new to carnivals, but this is fun!

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  3. Those are so, so sweet! I love it :) Also think you're right about sprouted bread. I'm busy reading a book at the moment and one of the things it talks about is sprouted grains and how much better they are for us. Can't for the life of me think what it's called though. I'll post it on the Festival of Food Facebook page when I remember! Thanks for joining the carnival!

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