Cooking Camp

For the past two years I have taught cooking camp at school for two weeks during the summer.  It is a lot of work and preparation but it is so fun to watch kids try new foods and get involved.  I wanted to post some pictures of the precious kids and yummy foods.  We made a lot of homemade things! Posting the recipes would take a lot of time and space so just let me know if you want a recipe for something!

If you don't have these books yet and you have kids or just love to bake you should get these!

We started with vanilla cupcakes.

Put a thin layer of tinted vanilla frosting (Tinted with yellow food coloring and cocoa powder).

We put the frosting in a gallon size bag and snipped the corner to create noodles.

Messy but fun!

Keep going...

Unwrap a package of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. 

Coat the chocolates in strawberry jam to look like meatballs and place them on the pile of "spaghetti."

Looks so real!

Almost there.

Now add the parmesan cheese white chocolate.

The finished platter of spaghetti cupcakes.  

The kids loved this- they all wanted to save them to show their parents.  

These books have so many great ideas.  Last summer my family made the Family Tree cupcakes, it was so fun!

My brother drew a large tree for us to place the cupcakes on.

Me, Andy, and Poncho.

The whole family tree!

We also made cake pops!

Strawberry

Chocolate

Melted candy coating to dip cake pops in

You win some, you lose some...

Pretty cute for being made by a bunch of kids!

The sprinkles made them look finished!

We made homemade strawberry jam!

Each child took a jar home

We even made homemade POP-TARTS with our strawberry jam.

We added an orange glaze to the top.  Delicious.

We had a day of Mexican food and started with sopapillas.

Cinnamon sugar-yum

We made half with cinnamon sugar and half drizzled in honey

Roasted veggies for our salsa

Finished salsa

Guacamole

Homemade tortillas and cheese quasadillas

The kids loved this day! Everyone wanted seconds, and some of us even had thirds...

On the last day we made homemade biscuits and butter

Sweet campers that wore the aprons I made them for Easter.  

It was a blast to cook with these sweet kids for two weeks. 

Now I have a few days left to relax before a new school year...

Books galore...

I've only been home from Palm Beach for a few days and I already miss this...

I have never been much of a reader.  Sad to say since I am a 2nd grade teacher. The older I get the more joy I find in reading.  Once I started college I began collecting children's books.  I have quite the collection now and am running out of storage space.  I could spend hours in the kids section of Barnes and Noble and LOVE reading to my class every day.  

I have always had a hard time reading at home- I am usually busy after work and then just fall asleep as soon as I read a page.  

I love going to the beach because I am in my happy place and am able to just read and relax.  

These are the books I read on this trip:

tearjerker, be careful

(I thought it was amazing even through the tears)

very interesting read

i would recommend

same author as The Glass Castle

really lets you know more about the characters

this was another sad story but i really enjoyed it

all i could think about during this book was my pup back at home

another tearjerker...

not as good as i had hoped but i'm glad i read it

i just started this book since i have been home

i am not really interested in the rules of the book, i just really love Bethenny.

I have started a wish list of books to stock up on and read throughout the next year.  

I would LOVE any suggestions...