Eating the Alphabet: E and F

I just discovered this fun monthly link-up called Eating the Alphabet over at Meal Planning Magic.What a great way to try new foods and recipes together! This month's letters are E and F.

E -

Eggplant! We went to a talk on nutrition hosted by the Pacific Science Center, where they had brought several fruits and veggies from around the world to let the kids try. The horseradish and eggplant were not cut up, for obvious reasons. So at the end when Z went up and said she wanted to try the eggplant, they let her take it home. So I attempted to make Eggplant Chips made Eggplant fries.

Elk! My dad likes to hunt. And then we all get to eat it. Yay. Since Hubby and I don't cook much (until recently...) we usually pass on the meat, which means more for my siblings! One sister made elk burgers at our family Easter party. And the other brought some elk chili for me to take home! I ate my elk burger. Pretty tasty. (Hubby ate some fancy chicken sausage he had brought. And Z had a hot dog.)
I've been eating the elk chili on dark sweet rolls we brought to the Easter party that didn't end up getting used. Deee-lish! It has a variety of beans in it, ground elk meat, onion, and green and red chunks I assume are peppers of some kind.

F -

French Toast! I haven't made French toast in years. Maybe even a decade or more! I'm not really a fan of it; I prefer pancakes. But the whole point of Eating the Alphabet is to try new foods, and this would be new for Little Z! But... I don't remember the recipe! Rather than scouring the internet, I asked my bento buddies for recommendations. Myra from Mommy + Me Lunchbox suggested this overnight Cream Cheese French Toast Casserole. Shannon from What's for Lunch at Our House shared her Caramel French Toast (also an overnight casserole.) Both look sooooooooper delicious, but I was looking for a more traditional recipe. In swoops Karen from What's In John's Lunch Bag? And although she French-toasted a PBJ sandwich, she has the egg mixture recipe that looks familiar.

So I made "regular" French Toast, but I used a cupcake sandwich cutter to make her bread a fun shape, then fried it up! Her recipe made enough dredging mixture for 3-4 slices of bread. I gave her powdered sugar for sprinkling and syrup for dipping.

She ate every last bite! I just put a little powdered sugar on mine, but I still prefer pancakes. I don't like the mushiness. Maybe I'll try one of the casserole-style recipes and see if they are less mushy...


Fondue! April 11th is National Cheese Fondue Day, so for a few days around that time, The Melting Pot restaurant offers free cheddar cheese fondue in limited numbers at all participating locations! Since Hubby was out of town for the night I had made our reservations, I invited my mom to join us. After our free cheddar fondue appetizer, we decided to stay and split a "Surf and Turf" broth fondue entree as well as a dark chocolate dessert fondue. Yummmm.

Little Z loooooooved the cheese fondue. It came with assorted veggies (carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli,) tart green apple chunks, and assorted bread chunks (something white, something brown, and something with herbs baked in.) She did her darnedest to hog all the bread and apple chunks, but was thwarted when they brought us seconds on the bread. Even she couldn't eat them all fast enough.

The broth entree came with chunks of chicken, filet mignon, and shrimp, as well as potato wedges, broccoli, and mushrooms. Since the foods cook in the broth, we each had skewers with different colored handles, to keep track of whose food was whose.The broth was spicier than my mom and I would have liked, so I didn't push Z to eat too much from the entree. She had a chicken chunk and a shrimp. Which was actually an entire protein serving for someone her size. She had eaten some raw carrots from the cheese course, so I didn't push her on the broccoli or potatoes. She doesn't like mushrooms, but she tried one. I don't like them either, but I ate most of them, since at these prices, I didn't want anything to go to waste. And my mom was saving room for dessert!

With the dark chocolate dessert fondue, we got chunks of bananas and strawberries, mini brownies, rice crispy treat bites, graham-cracker-crumbed- and chocolate-cookie-crumbed-marshmallows, and a mini-slice of cheesecake (which we split.) They gave us seconds on the strawberries and bananas. We licked that bowl clean!