You don’t need a popcorn machine or expensive prepackaged bags to make popcorn at home. All you need are popcorn kernels (I buy them in bulk for super cheap) and a paper lunch bag.

It’s soooo easy. Just take a handful of kernels (about 1/4 a cup) and pour them into the bag. Fold the top of the bag three or four times and cook them in the microwave until the pops are one second apart. The “popping time” will vary depending on your microwave’s power. For my microwave 1 min and 30 seconds is the perfect time. DO NOT USE THE POPCORN BUTTON.

Other options:

Lightly Buttered Popcorn: Before placing the bag in the microwave, drop a pat of butter into the bag with the kernels. Most of the butter will end up on the bag, but the popcorn will have a buttery aura. Yum!

Caramel Corn: Melt 2 Tbs of butter and mix in 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Chill the mixture in the fridge until it’s solid (about 30 minutes). Place this with the kernels in the bag and pop for slightly less than the above method. For my microwave this is about 1 minute and 15 seconds. Some kernels will be left unpopped, but if you do it for the full length of time the caramel will burn. If it burns, it will taste very, very bad. When in doubt, under cook it.

Why DIY popcorn?

Making your own microwave popcorn is cheap and easy. Also most prepackaged microwave popcorns contain TBHQ (or a similar preservative). In small doses TBHQ has no observable side effects, but in larger doses it is linked to stomach tumors and all sorts of other nasty stuff.

Will eating a bag of store bought popcorn give you stomach cancer? Probably not. But these added ingredients have no nutritional value and making your own microwave popcorn isn’t any more difficult than throwing a store bought bag in the microwave. So why not skip the mystery ingredients all together?

Happy snacking!

Easter is an important holiday for our family. We like to keep it simple but significant.

But we also like to have fun. We’ve developed a few kids friendly traditions that remind us of the reason for the season.

The first tradition is egg knocking.

My husband first learned this game while serving a mission in Bulgaria. We play it by giving each Easter dinner guest a red hard-boiled egg. The first player says, “He is risen!” To which the second replies, “Yea, verily He is risen!”

Then the two players knock eggs. Only one of the eggs will break. The player with the unbroken egg continues around the table until only one person is left with an unbroken egg.

The last person with the unbroken egg gets the honor of serving up our second Easter tradition– Lamb Cake!

There a little bit of skill and luck involved in winning the egg knocking contest. One year my 28 year-old brother won the prize and the next my three-year-old son won. My three-year-old loooved serving the cake!

LAMB CAKE

• two frozen rectangular pound cakes*
• one unfrosted cupcake
• butter cream frosting
• a bag of miniature marshmallows
• 2 jumbo marshmallow
• 2 M&Ms (for the eyes)
• rope licorice (for the mouth)
• colored sprinkles (for the ears and nose)

*Family-sized pound cake rectangles are available at many stores. If you can’t find them, you can do what I do and bake pound cake in two large bread loaf pans. You need an extra cupcake anyway and baking your own cakes means you can pour the extra batter into cupcakes. BTW, It has to be pound cake, not white cake or chocolate cake, because only pound cake has the structural integrity to make a cake like this (with the odd overhanging piece).

Happy Easter!

Next Wednesday may be the first day of spring, but I can already feel the turn of the season in the air. The trees on our street are budding. It had me in the mood to write something springy.

NATURE’S ALARM

Speaking of alarms, I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner the other night when a bell went off in my head. At the time I was staring at four red bell peppers, trying to figure out how to conjure them into dinner. Stuffed peppers seemed like the obvious choice, but I’ve never been a fan of meat and rice slathered in pasta sauce. Then I thought, why not substitute the meat for beans and corn and change the pasta sauce into taco seasoning. Suddenly stuffed peppers sounded delicious.

They were good. And besides the yum factor, I also liked it because the kids could easily help with the preparation.

Vegetarian Southwest Style Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

• four large red bell peppers
• 2 cups cooked rice
• 1 15oz can black beans (rinsed and drained)
• 1 cup salsa (you choose your spice level)
• 2 cups shredded cheese
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 1 Tbl lime juice
• 1 Tbl chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 tsp cumin

1. Preheat the oven to 375º F.

2. Remove the stems and membranes from the peppers and cut them in half lengthwise. Place them face size up in an ungreased 9×13 inch glass dish or casserole pan, like so…

3. Set one cup of cheese off to the side. Mix the remaining ingredients together in a big bowl. (Go ahead and let the kids just dump them all in and stir!)

Note: I didn’t think the mix needed any salt or pepper, but now would be a good time to check that this is seasoned to taste.

4. Fill the peppers with the stuffing and top with the remaining cheese.

5. Cover the peppers tightly with foil (or the casserole dish lid) and bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.

6. Once the peppers are tender, uncover the peppers and bake for an additional 10 minutes until the cheese on top is nice and bubbly.

Bell peppers really make for an excellent taco. Yum!

Today, I have a snack you can whip up in less than a minute. It’s the Peanut Butter Hedgehog Snack:

What you’ll need:

• A tablespoon of peanut butter
• A handful of stick pretzels
• Three raisins

Place a dollop of peanut butter on a plate. Balance a few pretzels in the peanut butter (you might want to break the pretzels in half). Don’t forget to put two pretzels along the sides for legs. Use raisins to form the eyes and nose. Ta da! You’re done. Consider serving it with a side of sliced apples for added healthy deliciousness.

In the next few weeks, I have a bunch of upcoming posts that I’m super excited about, including:

• Another round of paper dolls
• Ideas for an aviation themed birthday party
• A post that’s so top secret I can’t tell you about it…

Don’t want to miss a post? Follow along on Facebook or Pinterest.

Two years ago, twin girls joined our family.

Now my wee girls are busy toddlers.

On the outside, my girls are mirror copies of each other. They look so much alike that they still don’t “know” their own names (People are always mixing them up, so they get a lot of name confusion.)

However, they don’t need to know their names to know who they are. They’ve always had distinct personalities. One of my twins likes to walk around the house with me, chatting away in her half-speak. My other girl prefers to sit and look at the pictures in books. Give her a chunky puzzle and she’ll be entertained for most the morning. Of course both my girls love being read to, played with, and taken on walks. But watch them for more than thirty seconds, and it’s not difficult to figure out who is who.

If having twins has taught me anything, it’s this– genes may shape a person, but they don’t make one.

So for their second birthday, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to make them separate cakes or one cake. I mean, two cakes is a lot of cake! In the end, I decided to make two separate but connected cakes. I call it the yin yang cake:

1. I took this recipe for marble cake, but instead of marbling it, I poured the chocolate and vanilla batter into separate nine-inch cake pans. I also adjusted the baking time from 50 minutes to 25 minutes.

2. After the cakes cooled on a wire rack, I cut each cake into the yin-yang shape. I did this by tracing the bottom of the cake pan onto paper, folding the paper in half, and making sure my yin and yang signs were well balanced.

3. I made one batch of vanilla butter cream frosting, divided it into two bowls, and mixed 1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa into one bowl of frosting. I ended up with one bowl of vanilla frosting and one bowl of chocolate frosting. I stacked and frosted each side of the cake separately.

4. Then I brought the two cakes together (using spatulas) to have one yin yang cake.

It’s a cake with something for everyone. You could have a slice of vanilla cake or a slice of chocolate cake… or a little of both!