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Cooking Rocks Challenge: Week 3 - Meatloaf Muffins with BBQ Sauce & Smashed Potatoes with Cream Cheese

by Charlene Prince Birkeland (Subscribe to Charlene Prince Birkeland's posts)
Feb 10th 2006 4:59PM

2Comments

Filed under: Preschoolers, Activities: Babies, Nutrition: Health, Development/Milestones: Babies

Ahhhh, the first time in the Cooking Rocks Challenge that my son, Nolan, likes the meal and I can't stand it. Who's the picky eater now?

We kicked off the week with Meatloaf Muffins with Barbecue Sauce and Smashed Potatoes and Cream Cheese. We started off with the meat. I chopped up an onion and green bell pepper then Nolan blitzed them into oblivion in our food processor. We added them to a bowl of ground sirloin and then mixed in some milk, an egg and bread crumbs. It got a little messy when Nolan decided he really wanted to help squish all the ingredients in the bowl, especially after we poured in a concoction of salsa, BBQ sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Besides making a mess, when he was done he immediately started shaking his hands to get the meat off. Agh!

Nolan handled the next part...taking an ice cream scooper to drop balls of meat into a muffin tin. And he painted the tops of the "meat muffins" with the remaining sauce mixture.  But then he decided he wanted the muffins to be flat, so took his palm and pressed down on all of them. Flat muffins indeed. We baked them at 450 degrees for about 18 minutes.

While we waited for the muffins I started on the Smashed Potatoes and Cream Cheese. I chopped up some Yukon Gold potatoes and cooked them in a pot of water. When they were done, I drained them and Nolan added half-and-half, cream cheese, chives and seasonings. Nolan had a blast mashing the potatoes up - it was the perfect job for him! After a quick bite I decided the potatoes were too bland so I added some butter to the mixture.

Total prep and cooking time: 37 minutes. We could have saved time if I had put the potatoes on the stove to cook while we were making the meatloaf. But sometimes the fuzzy parent brain doesn't function well with logic!

Nolan thought this was the best meal yet in terms of his involvement cooking the meal and the taste. He loved the Meatloaf Muffins so much he ate two of them. He wouldn't touch the mashed potatoes. Had they been french fries he could have eaten them and asked for more. I've found that there's just something about potatoes being mashed and white - in their natural form - that turns little kids off.

As for the crazedparents, I thought the meatloaf was too mushy and didn't really care for the salsa taste. I liked the idea of the shape - muffins - because Nolan thought it was cute and it was also much easier to pack up the extras for lunch meals. But I've decided that next time I will use another favorite recipe from Martha Stewart Kids and just put the meat in muffin tins.

The potatoes were much better once I added the extra butter. Next time I'll use regular skim milk instead of half-and-half just to reduce the overall fat content.

Next up: Ria's Double-Chips Cookies with Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chips

Tags: bloggingbaby

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