Cajun Fried Rice (or Quick Jambalaya)

This recipe is for Greta!

I've tried to make Jambalaya from scratch before but it always comes off wrong-- either it takes Forever! Or it just tastes unbalanced.

I had planned another go when my daughter got sick and really didn't want Mommy to be in the kitchen cooking. Of necessity came this quick version.

Cajun Fried Rice

1. In a rice cooker prepare a batch of brown rice. (I used 1 cup of rice with 2 cups of water.)
2. Broil 4 andouille sausages, and then slice.

When those two things are done...
3. Dice one large onion and one green pepper, sauté in olive oil for about five minutes. Add a minced garlic glove (I use a micro grater to mince mine right over the pan).

4. Add sliced sausage and toss together on high.

5. Add 1 cup of water and 1 tbsp tomato paste. Season with Tony Cachere's seasoning.

6. Add rice, stirring to blend until water has evaporated.

And serve!

Family Photo

March

Ok, I look really bad in this photo, but it was a cute moment when we all had off and hung out in our jammies.

Sunday Morning

We have a little tradition around here that my husband lives for: newspaper and coffee.




When Maddie was born my mom gave me her old copy of The Mother's Almanac. In that lovely 1970s book was this awesome pre-reading activity:


Give a child a newspaper and some markers and tell her to find all the A's in the headlines. Maddie likes to choose a different color and use it to highlight each letter.

This captures her attention for hours as we work through the alphabet.

And as for the coffee part... Well, for lent I gave up sugar, milk and wheat. Subsequently I gave up coffee, since I can't drink it straight up. But the other day, I found this Happy Drink recipe. The verdict is still out, but it's better than nothing!

Searching for E-A-S-T-E-R

Easter eggs are not usually a big part of my family's Easter traditions. I have one memory of searching for Easter eggs as a child.

But it's a tradition I thought we could start with Maddie. So last year, I bought some plastic Easter eggs and sprinkled them throughout the house for her to find. She loved them. And kept the empty shells forever.

So when I saw this blog post on activities with Easter eggs, I knew that this would be a great hit, and a great way to kick off spring. I told you, spring started March 1.

To help Maddie work on her letter recognition, I made eggs with the upper case letter on top and the corresponding lower case letter on bottom. I split them all up.


Sometimes Maddie can be a little shy of reading activities, so I added a hook-- I hid all 52 (ok, 54 because I doubled one letter!) throughout the house.

This was all part of my plan for an engaging activity for when I was a little busy. We've been watching my sweet little baby cousin once a week, and I thought this would be a perfect during-bottle time activity. Except the first thing Maddie did that morning was find an egg...

So the whole activity was done before the baby even got here!



After she found all the eggs, she started putting them together. The color matching helped when it came to confusing letters. And putting these eggs together was a nice little motor skills challenge.


The finished eggs went into egg crates. Black Cat is a very big helper.

The whole activity was a huge hit. Maddie wanted to play again today, so I see some repeats coming down the line!