COOKING WEEK

I decided to make the most of the summer by creating theme weeks for my kids. I haven't been a full time mom for very long and I thought it would be fun to really spend some time with them while they were out of school for the next six weeks.

Our first theme of the summer is COOKING WEEK! We had a fabulous time over the past week cooking together. Monday morning we made chocolate zucchini bread and banana bread. This exercise really tried my patience as i sat back and let the kids put in the ingredients. Watching Jaxson crack an egg and seeing it smashed up his hand as he tried to pull it apart, took every ounce of strength I had not to just take over. Putting in the flour without making a mess had its own challenges. At the end of the day, our bread tasted wonderful. The kids did a great job preparing and eating our bread.

Tuesday we went on a tour of Mrs. Fields Cookie Factory. We all had to wear hair nets (We looked gorgeous!) Reagan did not want to put hers on, but by the end of the tour she didn't want to take it off. During our tour we learned many fascinating things about their production, including; 85% of their business comes during Christmas time. They go from a staff of 25 to 250 working seven days a week, from 5:00 AM to midnight. The cookie dough is shipped from California, they have huge ovens which produce about 55,000 nibblers per hour. The kids favorite part of the tour was stepping into the 11,000 foot freezer; which was 14 degrees below zero. They thought that was fascinating. At the end of our tour we all got free samples of Mrs. Fields Cookies.

Wednesday was National Chocolate Day, we started out the day by having a picnic in the park and then headed to the Sweet's Factory to see the production of several different types of candy made right here is SLC. Candy such as: Salt Water Taffy, Orange Sticks, Cinnamon Bears and Jelly Beans to name a few. We got to sample candy during the tour and at the end. We were able to visit their sweet shop and purchase some of our own candy to time home. During the tour we saw taffy being pulled wrapped and sorted. We had sugar coats being produced and how they mold candy with corn starch. They go through so much sugar that it is delivered every week. They have pipes throughout the building with sugar and chocolate pumping through them. Madison thought we should get a chocolate pipe at our house too. After the tour we decided to make chocolate suckers. We colored our white chocolate and made flowers, teddy bears and cars. After they were finished we delivered them around the neighborhood to our friends who went with us to the Sweets Factory tour.

Thursday morning we all got up and made breakfast pizza together. The kids formed the dough, grated the potato's and cheese, cut up the bacon and cracked and mixed the eggs. (Madison took over the eggs, which put me at ease.)

On Friday we started baking sugar cookies for National Sugar Cookie Day, the kids helped roll the dough and cut out the flower shapes; however ran out of time due to the other activities throughout the day. I had a birthday lunch with the girls from the neighborhood at Gardner Village, Jared and Erin were in town and we had a family reunion. So the cookie frosting had to wait until Saturday. This was a two step process due to a bridal shower I was hosting at the house. I frosted cookies before and after the shower. Madi helped with the decorating and sprinkles and all the kids got to decorate their very own cookie, imagine how beautiful they were and that is exactly how they looked. Despite there beauty - they were absolutely delicious!!!