banana salad

We do meal planning around our house.  If I'm lucky, we pull the plan together and I shop for the coming week on Sunday mornings.  Every week, I ask the people of the house what they want in the coming week.  And almost every week, I get a request for breakfast.  So...most weeks we have breakfast for dinner at least once.  We vary it up.  Sometimes it's pancakes (with or without bananas, chocolate chips and/or peanut butter and/or strawberry or 'purple' jelly on top).  Sometimes it's waffles with eggs and/or bacon.  Other times its quiche or egg based casserole, frittata, etc.  So this week, when I asked what we wanted for dinner - I put breakfast on the list because I wanted to try out these 2 ideas from one of my current favorite food blogs - Cookingwithmykid.com  First up:

Bacon, Egg and Cheese Biscuit Muffins

picture respectfully borrowed from cookingwithmykid.com

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of ours because we gobbled them up too quickly.  They are yummy and you should try them.  The recipe is here.  They are perfect for little and big hands and I see lots of easy ways to vary this up.  When I purchased the can 'o biscuits, I got 2, so I think I'm going to treat us to an actual Sunday breakfast but using spinach and a bit of onion in lieu of the bacon.

To accompany our biscuit/muffins, we had banana salad.  I figured Em would love this concept, and it turns out, I was right.  As I picked her up from daycare last night, I told her that we had to go home and help Felicia make dinner.  She asked what we were going to make, and I told her 'banana salad.'  It got a great reaction and she thought it was super silly, as only a 3-year-old would.

So we got home and made our version of the salad.  This was another idea I took from cookingwithmykid and to give credit where it's due, the recipe is here. I decided to document our adventures in making it, because Emily was having such a good time.

First we cut up the bananas ('on the orange plate for halloween' - says Em)

She got really excited when she actually started cutting the bananas completely in half.  By the third one she totally had it down.

Next, we added the bananas to the bowl:

Then we added the Craisins:

See that smile?  That is a smile of a child who loves craisins. At this point it was like the child had won salad lottery, and believe it or not, she actually has been known to eat the green variety.  To have bananas in a salad was silly, but to have craisins is divine.  Must remember this for the next green salad.

Next step is the pecans:

This container is the last of once was a 5 pound bag of pecans that Heather's mom gave us last Christmas.  Do you freakin' have any idea how much a 5 pound bag of pecans is?  It is a lot.  I've given co-workers bags, we've made countless things and here we are - almost a full year later with just a little bit left.

From here, I drizzled just a little bit of honey, and added my own secret ingredient to the mix - cinnamon.  Just a little sprinkle.  Our photography skills are not the best, but here's the final result, which we all loved:

I won't name any names, but one little person had seconds of everything on her plate.