Now that we’re officially getting the ball rolling with our site, there are lots of exciting things coming up at The Inspired Parent! I’m fine-tuning some travel articles that will be published here very soon. One series involves traveling with your kids. We’re big believers in immersion travel — be it here in the U.S. or abroad — so we’ll have some fun tips & ideas for you.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite photos from a trip we took to Acadia National Park — it will be the focus of an upcoming article or two.  🙂
Apparently today is National Italian Food Day, but being part Sicilian, I tend to lean toward the camp that everyday should be Italian Food Day. When I think of Italian food, one name immediately comes to mind: Chef Lidia Bastianich.
Confession time…we are addicted to Lidia’s cookbooks. We own all of them, use them regularly, have given them as gifts throughout the years and haven’t been disappointed in a single recipe we’ve tried. We’re long time fans of her various cooking shows on PBS and love how she still keeps things fresh with her current production, Lidia’s Kitchen. Over the years, her educational cookbooks and television broadcasts have changed how we cook. Simple tips such as toasting tomato paste and peperoncino in olive oil before incorporating it into the sauce makes such a difference!
We had the pleasure of meeting Lidia when we attended a cooking class & tasting she held at Eataly Chicago. The class was a birthday gift for my husband and we were lucky to sit front-row, center. I’ll fill you in on the wonderfulness that is Eataly in another post but wanted to share a few photos here, too:
Lidia prepared a few different courses (including dessert!) during class and they were all awesome!
While dessert was served, Lidia held a Q&A – she was informative & charming as always.
After class, she spent one-on-one time visiting with everyone, signing books & taking photos. Usually the one behind the camera, I was happy that my husband took a pic of me with Lidia that evening.
On to the Ziti, Sausage, Onions & Fennel details…
One of our all-time favorite recipes of Lidia’s is quite the tasty one. I can’t even begin to count how many times we’ve made this over the last 10+ years and it is perfect for National Italian Food Day! The recipe was memorized moons ago & when our daughter is an adult she’ll look back at it, fondly, as being one of her favorite recipes since childhood.
Our well-worn, well-loved, used-more-times-than-we-can-count copy that we’ve had since 2004.
The recipe is simple, but don’t cut corners as you caramelize the individual ingredients when adding them to the pan – a simple matter of timing, but oh so important to enhance the flavors. While we highly recommend getting your own copy of Lidia’s Family Table (tons of wonderful recipes), you can also view the recipe for her Ziti with Sausage, Onions & Fennel online at: Lidia’s Italy. It makes a lot, so you’ll need a large skillet – and if you have any leftovers, they heat up beautifully for lunch or dinner later in the week.
We were looking for a game to play during the 1st grade Valentine’s Day party at school and decided on a version of Valentine’s Day Bingo. I printed out blank grids (created them in Photoshop but they can easily be made in Excel or other programs, too) then went old-school and finished them by hand since that seemed a bit more fun for the little kids. Our daughter helped come up with the ideas for each square.
The kids had a blast playing Valentine’s Day Bingo during the party at school.
The numbers on the bingo card were the answers to simple math problems (2+2, 5+5, etc.) and it was fun hearing the kids shout out the answers when the math problems were called out during our game. We used heart-shaped candies as the bingo “pieces.”
I picked up a couple of puzzles and some coloring books from the store and those served as our prizes. This was a great addition to our school festivities! We collected the cards afterwards and are using these at home and at next year’s classroom party.  🙂
One cool thing about taking a hiatus from working full-time in corporateland is having a little more time to work on some arts & crafts projects with my first-grader. We always made homemade Valentines in the past, but we were in less of a time crunch this year. Since the wee girl is getting older, she’s much more interested in helping out with the designs of our projects, too, so that added an extra layer of fun this year.
I picked up some 4″ x 6″ pastel card stock & some adorable papers by Doodlebug Design at the art supply store, as well as some Valentine’s stickers — hearts, owls & forest animals — for our little animal lover. I also pulled out our containers of stamps so she could pick a few to use.
The card design our 7-year-old came up with was fairly straight-forward — she wanted strips of the patterned paper to act as  a branch going across the bottom section of the solid card stock. We adhered those strips to the paper using double-sided craft tape.
I helped her cut wavy edges – she can do it herself now that she’s older but it takes her awhile and since we were making 30 cards or so, I pitched in.
After that, she started applying the various animal stickers & added some stamps (mostly butterflies, moons & cats) and used a “Friend” stamp on all of them. For the cards that she felt needed an extra-special touch, she drew some stars and hearts.
Simple, yet super cute!
I also showed her a stamping technique where we used markers to color the stamps instead of the stamping ink pads — this way she was able to make a multi-colored stamp or “fade” as she called it. She liked using this method on the “Friend” stamp.
Using markers instead of a stamp pad gives an extra zing when using stamps. A simple technique that young children can do.
Best part of this project was how proud she was of the cards she made. This was a great winter-weekend project that even some of the youngest school-age kids can tackle.
