We’ve started having bedtime blues tonight because we can’t watch a movie while falling asleep. Mickey is very upset that I wont turn her movies back on. I read her whatever books she wanted and fixed her hair and laid her down with lots of hugs and kisses and promises of ice cream dreams. She’s pissed.
On the other hand, she did eat everything I put on her plate tonight! I cooked some great baked ziti that most kids should love since it’s just like spaghetti but with better noodles and lots of cheese! For mommas baked ziti:
Ingredients:
1 Box of ziti (or any other kind of fun noodles)
2 jars of your favorite spaghetti sauce
1/2lb-1lb of ground turkey or ground beef or even a mix of ground beef and ground Italian sausage!
Shredded cheese
To make said baked ziti:
Heat oven to 400. Place uncooked noodles into large deep pan – no need to cook the noodles they will cook in the oven. Brown your meat and season it with whatever you would like. I like to use virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onions finely chopped. Next drain the yuck out of your meat and add your jars of sauce to your meat. Use one of your NOW empty jars from your sauce to fill it up with water and add that to your meat and sauce mixture. You can add 2 jars full of water if you like it saucey. Mix it very well. Pour the mixture on top of your noodles and stir a bit to make sure all the noodles are covered. Cover your dish with aluminum foil and bake for 45 minutes or until all the noodles are soft. Take it out of the oven and uncover. Go ahead and put the aluminum foil to the side we will use it with a side dish. Add your cheese of choice to the top all over and place it back in the oven to melt and brown. You can melt/brown the cheese as long as you want just make sure you don’t over cook.
For your side dish, which is fabulous, I made zucchini, squash, and carrot bake. I cut the zucchini and squash in to 1/2″ pieces and shredded the carrots over the top. I added olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder to the tops and used my aluminum foil from the ziti to place over it and cook it while the cheese was melting and browning for the ziti. I just made sure the veggies were easy to cut up and eat. When they were at my liking I added a small amount of cheese to the top and melted it. Personally I would have mixed this in with my sauce, but my husband doesn’t like veggies and would complain about it so eh I just made it for a side dish. We also had a small garden salad with our choice of dressing on the side for an appetizer.
I haven’t been a stay at home mom for a while and with our crazy schedules from when I was working, I didn’t have time to cook. By the time I would get home from work it was time to put Mickey in bed. She would eat dinner at her grandparents house so Mike and I would just eat whatever we could find here. It wasn’t healthy at all. Mickey loved the baked ziti and the veggies. My child is not a veggie lover. She does love salad though and I am trying to introduce her to more and more veggies so she can learn healthy eating habits.
This is very important for all parents out there. I’m not saying I am perfect because I am definitely far from perfect at anything. I do let my kid eat McDonalds. I let her eat cookies! I let her drink Sprite. OMG!!! I am not a bad parent for that. I am let my daughter make some decisions for herself. I mean she is 4 years old and she needs to learn decision making. I let her choose from 2 things in all categories in life. Let your kid be a kid. Let them decide. They might not always make the right choice…but when they learn from their mistakes, they will see how proud you are of them. They will be proud of their selves!
Now go give your hugs and kisses to your kids and spouses/significant others and be proud of them no matter what they do. They depend on you! Love them and they will always love you back.
Night fellow mommas and daddio’s in the world!
My life 