Barnyard Door Eggs

When my brother and I were little, we loved "dippy eggs". At some point, my Dad introduced us to "Barnyard Doors". This egg is so easy to make, but it is well loved by kids.

Cut a hole that is about the size of a yolk in your bread and place bread in your nonstick frying pan. Your circle does not have to be perfect. I like to leave the part that I took out in the pan so that it can be toasted for dipping when the eggs are done cooking.


Next, break the egg so that it ends up in the center of the bread hole. Fry it on both sides.


That's all! It should only take about 5 minutes to make!


This is my son enjoying his dippy eggs.

Potato Candy!!

I was first introduced to Potato Candy while living in Virginia. One of the teachers made it and I said "Wow, this fudge is really great! How do you make it?" I ended up learning about the easiest to make candy recipe EVER!

Over the past few years, I guess I forgot about it. Something made me think of it recently and I looked up the recipe online. I was even easier than I remembered!!!

Here's some instructions to get you started!

What you need:
small-medium (think size of your fist as small) potato
1-3 pounds of powered sugar
Peanut butter (the amount can vary depending on how much you like peanut butter. If you have half a jar you are better than good)


First, peel, cut, and boil your potatoes as though you are making mashed potatoes. After they have boiled to the point of being soft, put them in a large bowl and start mashing. You do not need to at milk or butter.


Next, you start adding your powered sugar. I added about a cup at a time, but I eyeballed it and then stirred until it was well mixed. When you first start mixing, it is going to look very wet. As you continue it will turn to almost frosting, then pancake batter. Eventually, you will get to the point where it will be stiff and you are able to shape the mixture into balls. That's how you know you are done. For me, I used an obscenely large Costco potato, because I didn't want to see it go bad. Because of the size, I ended up needing about three pounds of powdered sugar to make this recipe! If you use a bigger potato, please remember to use a bigger bowl. I was seriously contemplating moving my mixture into a bigger bowl so that it didn't overflow. Luckily, it didn't.


Here, the mixture is finally starting to set.



After you get your mixture to the point where it is "moldable" you will take it out of the bowl (yoy may need to do this in chucks if you have a ton of it like I did!). Put some down on a baker's mat with some powdered sugar and roll it out flat. Spread the peanut butter, in whatever thickness you prefer, over the mixture and roll it up like a jelly roll.



Sadly, I did not remember to take a final product picture. Sorry about that.


I would suggest cutting off the ends to make it look a little more pretty, but from my experience, if someone knows what this stuff is, they don't really care how it looks....they just want a piece!

All in all, this took about 40 minutes of my time.

20 minutes to peel, cut, and boil the potato
10 to add the sugar and get it thick
10 to get it rolled out flat and then rolled up to the finished product

I am currently freezing a large roll for this weekend. As I hear that it freezes well. I will let you know!

Making baby food

I recently saw a post on one of the couponing sites that I go to about making baby food. I think that there are probably a lot of mothers that are interested in making food for their child, but just are not sure how to start. Here is what I did.

Like so many things, getting started is the hardest part! One you try it, and make just a teeny bit of time for making baby food, it truely is not a big deal.

The simplist, cheapest, easiest thing to give your child when you are just starting off is bananas. My son started with bananas and just LOVED them! Here's how you make baby food bananas...

Baby Bananas

1. Pick a banana that is yellow or even in the early stages of browning
2. Peel the banana
3. Break the banana up into chucks and put them in a small bowl
4. Use the back of a spoon, fork, or any other utensil that is handy and mash the banana until it is very slimy and wet looking
5. Serve it to your little on a baby spoon

Seriously, that one is as simple as it gets. My husband and I would take bananas in our baby bags, because we knew that we could mash them up on the spot, no matter where we were.

Another food that my son ate a lot of in the beginning were carrots. Here is how you cook carrots for a baby.

Baby Carrots
1. Wash and peel your carrots
2. Put a vegetable steamer into a small pot and place water in the bottom. (There should be about enough water just to peek up through the holes of the vegetable steamer)
3. After the water is boiling, place a layer of carrots in the vegetable steamer
4. Put a lid on the pot and let everything good on low heat for about 20 minutes
5. After 20 minutes, check on the carrots. Take one out and put it on a plate. If you can use a fork to cut through the carrot, it is done. If not, cook another 10ish minutes and check again.
6. Take the carrots out of the steamer and put them into some kind of food processor (or you can do this by hand if you prefer). Put your food processor on a puree setting for about one minute. The carrots should turn into a thick mush that is very wet. You can add some water or breastmilk if you are finding that the carrorts aren't pureeing very well or to add some nutrients.
7. Serve to your little one!

Often, I would use three or four carrots at a time and have a lot of leftovers! You can very easily freeze most baby foods and really only take about 1 hour a week to make all that you need.

I would love to share more about my days of making baby food with anyone that is interested.