Ducks gone wild!

Just kidding. Actually they were freakishly tame. They were at Gateway Trail off Medical Center.

A friend of mine showed me this park the other day, so this morning, Jack said "Mother dear, shall we go feed the ducks?" and so of course I said "Yes darling, let us away." So we took a couple of pieces of stale bread and headed out. Let me repeat. We only had a couple of pieces of bread!!

So we get there, and there are like 3 or 4 fat ducks sitting on a rock, and so we start feeding them. And then this happened:

They were EVERYWHERE!! There were like 15 behind me when I was taking this, and like 15 more out of view the sides. Oh yea. And 3 ducks eating crumbs off my FEET! Jack was mesmerized.

Not gonna lie here, when I ran out of bread I was a little nervous. But, they just all stood there staring at me expectantly for a few seconds and then disbanded, as quickly as they had gathered.

Loved it!

Beet "Cookies" and more

So I was getting bored with the standard baby finger food, so I decided to make cookies (read: soft crackers) out of vegetables. My first attempt was beet cookies. It's actually been a week or so since I did it, so I might not remember exactly what I did :/

I started out with a beet, and a reeeeally old banana. Also, in a separate bowl I mixed together 1 c. whole wheat flour and 1/2 tsp. baking powder. But that's boring so there's no picture of that :)

I peeled the beet, and steamed it for like 20+ minutes, until it was tender. Warning! Beet juice is a violent purple color, and you shouldn't wear something that you then want to wear in public when you are messing with beets.

Pureed it in the blender with the banana (I had to add a negligible amount of water)

I then mixed the beet and banana with an egg in my mixer until they were mixed together. Then I added the flour mix. It seemed runny still, so I added more flour (this was a mistake, as I later found out)

Then, I baked them for like 12-15 minutes at 350 til they were done. (Done= no longer wet-looking, and are firm around the edges, but not brown)

The verdict? They tasted OK, they were a little flour-y tasting and you couldn't taste much beetiness. Jack loved them, but then again he loves cat food too, so you can't count on him as having anything close to a refined palette. I think I could have gotten away with not adding the extra flour, I just chickened out.

I ALSO made these http://www.kayotic.nl/blog/vegetable-cookies. I just decided to link to hers because her pictures are better. However, I did 3 main things differently: I used sharp cheddar (who just has gouda laying around the house, really?); I was not generous with the salt, because they were for a baby; and, I did not bake them for as long as stated so that they would be soft. These actually were really yummy, and Jack absolutely loved them. More than cat food!