Pancakes are a favorite breakfast food in the Diva household but for me personally I hate the taste of a boxed mix. It is just so plain and boring so here are a few tips to turn the boring box pancake mix into fluffy, delicious circles of pancake heaven that your family can’t resist.
Here is the recipe I made for the pancakes you see in the photo
1 cup Aunt Jemima pancake mix
3/4 cup water
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp organic sugar
Whip it up and cook pancakes like you normally would. You can adapt this recipe to any of your favorite boxed pancake mixes. Follow the directions on any box of pancake mix and add the last 3 ingredients (egg, vanilla extract, and sugar) to make your pancakes awesome!
Let me know what you think if you make this recipe. What do you do to make your pancakes special? Do you add fresh fruit or chocolate chips? Do you make funny shapes, like mickey mouse? Do you make HUGE pancakes or little silver dollar pancakes? What is your flap jack preference?
One fun fact about the way that I eat my pancakes: I don’t eat pancakes with butter and my syrup has to be on the side for dipping. A soggy pancake is not a good pancake, in my opinion anyway.
While on the road, driving through Atlanta, we saw a bunch of feathers all over the place. We knew a chicken truck had to be close by and low and behold we caught up to it. Now typically I would see a chicken truck and think nothing of it but after trying to convert my diet to vegetarian I have a different kind of heart for these things.
You see that little fellow poking his head through the crate? Poor little chicken. He looked so sad as if he knew he was on his way to be slaughtered. I have this photo on my desktop to remind myself not to eat meat. It is really hard to stick to the fruits and vegetables when you have been eating meat for almost 25 years.
I just can’t get the image out of my mind of those chickens. Most of them looked very sickly, had feathers ripped out of them, some weird thing poked through their nose, poop everywhere…it was just gross. I know that if a chicken is sick I don’t want to be eating it. Seeing the chicken truck first hand has really fueled my fire to stay on my vegetarian diet.
I did a little personal experience with my oldest son Pnut who is three years old and his daily intake of television. I noticed my son had started to become too aggressive and would throw fits at the littlest things. He was just plain angry all the time. I started cutting television out of his daily activities to see if it was the trigger for his rage. For a week straight he watched no television and played occasional educational games on the computer. After a week I noticed his behavior had changed tremendously. He no longer walked around the house with a crunchy look on his face, he began playing well with his little brother, and was overall really nice when you would speak to him.
Now we don’t watch anything bad in this house, we are strictly a PBS household. He would watch shows like Curious George, Super Why, Word World, and all the other favorite PBS shows. I wanted to see if television really was his source of “anger” so the following week I allowed him to watch his favorite show “Super Why” and immediately he reverted back to his mean self. I don’t think it is the show itself that is causing the behavior changes but I do think that the commercials they show before and after might have a thing or two to do with it. Super Why has helped Pnut tremendously so I can’t be hard on them but something about television watching is triggering my son to act out and I don’t like it.
So for now we are turning off the tube. As a “special treat” for being good he can watch Super Why once a week but anything more than that I am really hesitant to allow. To occupy his time he can practice writing his letters during craft time, play education games on the computer, or have some good ol’ play time with his little brother with the bazillion toys that we own.
How much television do you allow your child to watch?
Do you think television can trigger a child’s behavior and to act out?
What do you think about my decision?
What is with that title? “Sumbob Firepants” is the name that Pnut calls “Spongebob Squarepants”. I personally hate the show “Spongebob Squarepants” and don’t really like the kidlets watching it but occasionally when my step-sons are over they play a spongebob game which releases a whole different can of worms. For me I like my children to watch television shows that they can learn stuff from. My favorite show as well as the boys is “Super-Why!”. Pnut has learned so much from Super Why that is absolutely amazing to see him so excited about learning. He often times plays pretend in his room trying to be just like “Super Why”. But for an occasional rainy day “sumbob firepants” would suffice but for everyday learning it is strictly educational television and games at this house.
I am so not the type of person that is into waking up early or doing anything in the morning that is for sure, which is probably why you never see my face in this video. Some of you have wanted to know what I do with all that organic stuff that I bought the other day and here is one of the recipes that I use all that organic fruit for.
What went into it….
1 banana
lots of frozen strawberries
2 organic carrots
organic pomegranate/ acai juice
organic acai juice
orange juice (couldn’t find an organic version so I had to go with the normal stuff)
veg/fruit juice (also not organic, its a kids drink…something harvest)
organic frozen blueberries, raspberries, mangos, blackberries, peaches
organic flax seed (it helps you poop)
organic sugar (I have a sweet tooth, plus it enhances the fruits sweetness)
That is pretty much it, I hope I didn’t forget anything. One thing you will notice in this recipe is that there are no measurements that is because you basically put as little or as much as you want into this smoothie. If you like more peaches than strawberries then add more peaches. One thing to remember is that you need about half as much liquid as you have frozen fruit or it isn’t going to blend well. I also make as much smoothie as possible to yield me two days worth of wake up smoothie goodness. Just put the remainder in the fridge or freezer and drink the next morning. Again this is a lazy trick of mine since mornings are so awful for me.
Also you may notice that this is a non-dairy smoothie, meaning no yogurt or milk products. I am not one that likes the yogurty (is that a word?) tasting smoothies. I want fruit, and I want lots of it.
Got any questions? I’ve got answers.
Special shout out to Plain Jane Mom on inspiring me to make my own smoothie video. She talks in hers, but me not so much…hey I said I didn’t do mornings and I’m sticking to it.
Also, shout out to Brandice for pimping me on Viddler’s Community Spotlight Blog. Many thanks, Chica, You Rock!
I saw the book, Skinny Bitch, mentioned on the Ellen Show last week while helping my family clean up from the tornado damage. I knew this was a book that I wanted to get based on the rave reviews that Ellen herself gave. She talked about how the book changed her life and also helped her lose weight.
Immediately I ran out to the local bookstore and picked myself up a copy. I have never in my life read a book so quickly. It took only a day to read the book cover to cover. I just simply could not put this book down. The book talks mainly about how it is important to go vegan. If you can’t quit meat or dairy totally, it encourages you to buy all things organic. Organic I can definitely do! I am not saying that I will cut meat out of my diet all together, because I love me some roast beef and mashed potatoes but I am definitely looking at the whole meat thing in a totally different light.
So once I got back home, I was off to go shopping. I went through all the aisles of the grocery store and picked up everything organic that I could find. My main focus was to get as much fresh fruits and vegetables that I could find. I could live off of smoothies so I got a bunch of organic frozen fruit to make those in the morning. One of my main struggles will be giving up white pasta and cheese. I love white pasta and literally eat it every day of the week. I picked up some whole grain alternatives but I know those don’t taste the same. It is all a matter of retraining the way I look at food.
My transition to vegetarianism will be a gradual one. It starts with drinking nothing but water and adding more fruits and vegetables into my diet. One website that has helped me a lot in making the transition into becoming a vegetarian is Go Veg!.