Freezer/Cupboard Cleanout = Good, Cheap Fun!

My very first post - and what a way to start!

This morning I thoroughly vacuumed and mopped the kitchen and breakfast area. (I won't say how long it had been since I had mopped.) 15 minutes of cleanliness followed - and then Madelyn decided that she needed some more Cheerios - lots more Cheerios - and immediately.

So her big brother came into the kitchen and decided that it was time to remedy the situation the best way that he knew how. I mean, hey, the floor was really, really clean, right? The two of them shared this moment in the floor together (which was, in all honesty, really, really cute). But then I got really grossed out at the sight of them eating Cheerios out of the floor and asked Richard to sweep up what was left.

[I love that they're both wearing their caught-in-action faces in this photo.]

So once we got the Cheerios cleaned up, Taylor decided that he wanted to "cook." What this meant was that Taylor wanted me to clean out our freezer and cupboard and pull out any food that was past its date (or past the point of being an appealing option for a meal) and let him cook it into an icky concoction on the stove.

Today, I obliged, and we came up with quite the cast of characters for Taylor's culinary masterpiece: the flat remainder of a two-liter of Coke, a large wedge of cake that was far past its prime, an aged orange, some pureed squash that his sister had refused to eat (on multiple occasions), and a good-sized container of shredded carrots (that I'm sure were destined to become baby food but never made it that far). In addition to these, I added an assortment of spices and a partially-used packet of Italian salad dressing  mix.

He was thrilled with the options, of course, so he got right to work - and it was really fun to watch. He would pause to offer commentary that was very television-esque - i.e., "This is really going to bring out the flavor!" (I'm sure this was due to the fact that he and I have recently taken to watching Food Network's  "Chopped" together.) It didn't take long for him to run out of usable ingredients, though - so he soon pulled some red plum jam out of the fridge and tried to convince me that it was out-of-date, too. (It wasn't - but since there was only a little left in the jar, I let him add it to the mix.)

Then he decided that he wanted to cook something "real," so he whipped up some toast and smeared some butter on it - and showed it to me and asked, "Doesn't this look so good?!" He decided that it was so delicious, he needed more - so he dashed away to the toaster again. And then he presented me with two mugs, a gallon of milk, and a bottle of strawberry Nesquik and said that he needed me to make some strawberry milk to go with the toast. (And yes, I then realized that this was becoming a real-life If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.)

I think the toast ended up being a bigger hit than the pot of hodge-podge because he was actually able to eat it. I realized this when he announced, "It's good, and I feel like such a man - cooking my own dinner!" (No, it wasn't his dinner.) He offered other wise words, such as, "Did you know that grains are good for you? Grains are at the bottom of the food pyramid. The bottom is good, and the top is bad." He was also quite the food critic, I discovered, when he sighed and said, "Ah, I burned the edges a little on this piece." :-)