Blog Posts by Sarah Lipoff

Sticky Monkey Bread

With Mother's Day right around the corner I have been finding myself thinking about food. Honestly? I think about food pretty much all the time. Lately I've been thinking about the things my mom made when I was young that have stuck with me over the years. With my own tot at home, I want to start great cooking memories with her - just like my mom did with me. The theme for this month's Shine Supper Club also fits right in - making your mom's best recipe!

I absolutely love my mom's homemade Sticky Monkey Bread. Sure, you can follow the recipe found on the side of the biscuit can, but this is the original version straight from the 1970's church cookbook of my midwestern town. This is the stickiest, gooiest version of goodness out there. While growing up, my mom would hand my sister and I our own plastic baggies filled with cinnamon and sugar to shake-shake the bits of cut canned biscuits and then toss into our well-used bundt pan. After a serious coating of butter, more sugar

Spring blossomsIt seems everywhere I look there are blossoms, blossoms, blossoms. Spring is officially here, and with it, tons of flowers. While out for a nice walk, the tot and I couldn't help stopping every few blocks to check out the colorful beauties, which reminded me of amazing Chinese blossom paintings. Full of bright pinks and reds, traditional blossom paintings are delicate and pretty and then lined with black lengths of tree. Blossom trees welcome spring in Asia and are also a large part of Chinese New Year celebrations as decorations.

After we returned from out outing, I pulled out the tissue paper and glue. While I cut several circles of pink, red, and fuchsia tissue, I enlisted the tot to mix together equal parts glue and water in a small container. If your child is old enough to cut with scissors, she can be in charge of cutting tons of different sized tissue circles.

Once there's a nice pile of tissue circles get out a sheet of white paper and invite your child to sprinkle

Orange chickenI love sweet, savory and spicy Asian food. Every once in a while we order from this awesome local place, but lately we've saved the cash for other things. Delivery can run upwards of $30 for an appetizer (got to have cream cheese wontons), two entrées, and don't forget tip. Now that it's spring, I'm also trying to lighten-up our dishes. The Shine Supper Club Challenge this month is all about spring cleaning your dinner so light recipes have really been on my mind. Last night I needed a sticky rice fix something fierce and happened to have all ingredients needed for one of our all time favorites.

Orange chicken.

This is a nice and light version with lots of bright orange flavor that happily serves two - with leftovers for lunch the next day. If you love lots of sauce, you might want to double the ingredients. I like a nice, thick coating of sauce on my chicken, not a big pool of it leftover on our plates. Adding a touch of grated orange peel really kicks the orange flavor to

Hand-painted Easter egg cookiesWith Easter right around the corner, I wanted to make something special with the tot to celebrate. When I think of Easter memories of candy, cookies, candy, a few Easter egg hunts, candy, and more cookies come to mind. Vanilla, lemon, sugar, whipped cream, and chocolate top my list of Easter goodie must-haves. We had some lovely fresh lemons, which were perfect for tossing together these wonderfully tangy cookies. And we topped them in a really special way - by hand-painting them with vanilla flavored edible paints.

Adorable.

This is just about the easiest cookie recipe to put together (resulting with about 24-28 oval goodies) and inviting the kiddies to slather tangy egg-shaped cookies with edible paint is a perfect way to spend Easter together. Not up for the baking part? Simply pick up a roll of store-bought refrigerated sugar cookie dough and you're good to go.

Ingredients

1/2 c room temperature butter, cut into small cubes

1/4 c powdered sugar

1/4 c sugar

Spring with Monet
The weather outside is definitely no longer frightful. The blossoms are blossoming, bulbs are popping flowers, and the grass sure seems a lot greener. While out on a walk with the tot the other day, she got caught up admiring the dandelions adorning the sidewalk. She picked several, positioned a few in her hair, and then proceeded to squish the rest of them up.

Oh, to be three.

When we got home, she was determined to paint a picture. While getting out the paint I had a flash of those dreamy, romantic paintings by Monet. I grabbed the trusty laptop and pulled up a few images for the two of us to check out. Claude Monet is a mega artist - pretty much everyone has heard of him or seen his art at some point. He is considered the Big Daddy of French Impressionism, which was all about capturing the light and impression of a scene or object through small brushstrokes of color. In fact, the style was named after his painting titled, Impressionism, Sunrise 1872.

I shared a few

fried chicken
I'm afraid of making fried chicken. Really. I love it, and often enjoy it when others prepare it. But, to make it at home? Nope. I had salmonella as a tot. I don't remember any of it, but, according to my mom, it wasn't pretty. Supposedly, the wonderful sick came from eating undercooked home-fried chicken (not made by my mom). I ended up in the hospital and everything. So the idea of frying my own chicken freaks me out a bit. Especially with my tot at home.

The other day I came across a new foodie idea over at Shine Food - The Shine Supper Club. The first assignment was to tackle cooking something you've always a bit intimidated by but always wanted to try.

I knew I had to tackle fried chicken.

I did some research, checked out a few recipes, and then did a bit of adjusting. Lots of recipes suggested letting the chicken sit overnight in buttermilk - and I just don't have the patience for that. I came up with a short-cut idea that turned out wonderfully tasty and super

healthy dark chocolate brownie bites
While we were gone on vacation our neighbor was nice enough to check in on our cats. He's got two cats of his own, which makes it a pretty good deal. When he goes out-of-town, we take care of his cats. And when we go away, he makes sure ours haven't eaten each other. But I still try to find a way to thank him, which usually includes making something sweet as a special thank you treat.

The other day when I saw him he was pretty insistent on not wanting any tasty goodies, complaining that he needed to cut back on all the sweet and salty snacking.

Challenge on.

I'm quite familiar with the brownie mix you can get from one of my favorite stores, which is low in calories and made with yogurt instead of butter or eggs, and figured I could make my own - but with less sugar and flour. I played around with the ingredients and came up with something really dark and rich without all those big calorie and carb players. Because these little goodies are low in sugar and flour, they

Sand painting with Robert Smithson

While on vacation (and staring at the beautiful ocean last week) I was reminded of a few really stellar outdoor installation artists and the amazing natural materials that can be used to get creative. The tot spent hours and hours finding sticks to use for drawing in the sand, and the last day of our vacation, really got into collecting rocks, checking them out, and then giving them a toss into the big collections rocks around the beach.

(which was okay because there was seriously no one else on the beach otherwise throwing rocks would have been a big no-no....)

Since we've been home, no one's been really excited with our "real lives." The beach was awesome, and who doesn't love spending hours and hours on a desolated stretch of beach lounging about while chatting and reading and watching the tot do silly dances while loudly chanting the A,B,C's? So the other afternoon during what should've been nap time (but had turned into toddler tantrum time) I got out the trusty