Yes, you would think after our adventure of two weeks ago at Mead Orchards in Tivoli (chronicled here) that we would be done with apple-picking for the season. But we went again this past weekend! That’s because the Journal News invited employees for an apple-picking outing at Wilkens Farm in Yorktown Heights. We all received a half-bushel bag to fill. (Thanks, boss!) We also enjoyed some sugared doughnuts and cider (and had to flee from the very active late-season bees while we were at it).

The good news: We have consumed or given away about three-quarters of the apples we picked on our first outing. Even better news: I found a bunch of great apple recipes that I’ll share. Also: Here are some tips for storing apples that I found in my research:

• Don’t wash them before you store them.
• The key to preserving apples for storage is choosing to save only perfect apples. If there are any bruises or nicks, put them in the fridge to eat right away.
• After sorting, wrap the apples individually in newspaper to prevent the gas of death (otherwise known as ethylene gas) to spread among the apples. Yes, it’s true: One bad apple can spoil the rest. Also: Don’t use the colored pages of the newspaper for food.
• We put our apples in a big diaper box in our foyer, which is on the ground level and stays much cooler than the rest of the house. We hope that will be a good place to keep them for a while.
• If you haven’t gone picking yet, you’re actually in luck because the late-ripening varieties of apples actually store the best. (That means I’ll just have to go again!)

Once again, Pumpkin was the chief apple picker on our outing. She had a lot of fun. “Me pick apple,” was heard frequently. We met a couple of other families with small children, including a couple from the Bronx who had a month-old baby in a sling happily sleeping as the family gathered apples. Here is a photo of Pumpkin busy with the apple trees:

As lovely as the orchard was, I do have to say that Mead probably has the edge if you have a mixed party of tiny tots and older folks. The dwarf trees were easy to reach for people whose height still hasn’t reached 3 feet, and the level lanes were easy to traverse for my mother-in-law, who was recovering from foot surgery. It was definitely hilly and bumpy at Wilkens Farm and took a bit more stamina. Pumpkin, for instance, was saying “Up” by the end of the outing.

Now, for the recipes:

Julie’s Apple Pie

7-8 apples, peeled and sliced
Lemon, halved (to rub on peeled apples to preserve color before slicing — it also adds a brightness to the flavor of the pie)
1 cup sugar (more or less depending on the sweetness of the apples)
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch allspice
Pinch nutmeg
1/4 cup roughly chopped crystallized ginger (my secret ingredient!)
Pie crust (Your favorite homemade recipe or Pillsbury)

Pre-heat over to 400 degrees. Combine apples and other ingredients in a big bowl. Place bottom crust in 9-inch pie pan (I like Pyrex), pour in apple mixture, cover with second crust and pinch edges. Cut away a leaf pattern in center to let steam escape. Cover edges either with tin foil or a crust protector. (I cannot emphasize enough what a good investment this is. If you’ve never seen one, click on this link.) Bake for one hour or until golden brown and bubbly.

Julie’s Apple and Carrot Soup

2 pounds carrots
2 apples, diced
1 onion, diced
1 2-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 cup Arborio rice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 32-ounce can chicken broth
2-3 cups water
Salt and white pepper to taste

Heat oils in large soup pot. (I like to use an enamel-covered cast iron Dutch oven from Le Creuset because you never have to worry about your soup or sauce burning on the bottom.) Sauté onion and ginger for about five minutes, until soft and slightly translucent. Add carrots and apples and sauté for a few minutes more. Add broth, rice, soy sauce and water. Simmer on low heat for about a half hour, until the carrots are very tender. Blend until smooth using an immersion blender or a traditional blender. You may need to add more water if the soup is too thick. Enjoy!

Note: I adapted this recipe from a great book titled “Saved by Soup.” The book gave me the idea for the Arborio rice as a thickener. I added the Asian touches, like the sesame oil, ginger and soy sauce. I also like this soup with a half-cup or so of orange juice in place of the apples.

Pork chops with spiced sweet potatoes and apples

This is a great main course from Bon Appétit’s March 1999 issue that I found on Epicurious.com. Here’s a link to the original recipe, which I modified slightly.

6 thin-sliced boneless pork chops
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 yams, peeled and thinly sliced
1 onion, sliced into rings
2 apples, peeled and thickly sliced
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup water
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in frying pan over medium-high heat. Sauté pork chops until brown, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to plate. Add onion and potato to pan. Reduce heat to medium and sauté until onion is golden and softening, about 7 minutes. Mix in apple and cinnamon. Place pork chops among the vegetables. Add water. Bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer about 10 minutes. Watch it closely because the potatoes can get overcooked easily. Salt and pepper to taste.

I’ve made this three times now, including once for dinner guests, and it was a big hit with everyone. (Except my mom, who dislikes sweet with her savory dishes.)

Apple Meat Loaf

OK, you’re thinking, “What?!” That’s what I thought, too, when I saw this recipe from the New York Apple Association. But, I’m nothing if not adventurous in the kitchen, and decided to give it a try. It was pretty good! Very moist, as you’d except. It was a BIG hit with Pumpkin, who normally isn’t too fond of ground beef. I think it might even be better with a mix of beef and ground lamb and some nutmeg, but I’ll leave that for you to decide. One warning: I was lazy and didn’t chop the apples finely enough and my meatloaf was slightly crumbly. I would recommend giving them a quick turn in the food processor (just don’t make applesauce).

2 cups apples, finely chopped (really, really finely)
2 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 1/2 cups stuffing mix
1 large onion, minced
3 tablespoons horseradish (to be honest, I thought this was too overpowering — I’d use two next time)
3 eggs
3/4 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Shape into loaf on greased baking pan. (Don’t go right to the edges because this gives off a fair amount of juice.) Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I served it with mashed sweet potatoes and green beans. It was very nice.

And if you need another reason to go pick apples — besides family camaraderie and a feeling of connection to the harvest — food scientists at Cornell University have found that apples can actually ward off breast cancer. If that’s not a family friendly reason to go apple-picking, I don’t know what is.

My sons—ages 13 and soon-to-be-9—like eating out. Most times, my younger son is happy with a well-cooked burger smothered in ketchup, spaghetti or chicken fingers. (Although he’s in love with a Peruvian chicken and rice dish that’s made at Cholo’s Kitchen in New Rochelle.)

My older son has more champagne taste: Present him with a menu that offers baby lamb chops, lobster, tenderloin, scallops or squid, and he’ll order one of those meals. And he’ll actually eat it. And enjoy it. While he can also chow down on burgers and fries, when he’s in a “real” restaurant, it’s fancy food that he wants.

Apparently, according to a recent news story, he’s not alone: There are a lot of kids who actually enjoy eating upscale. And I’m lucky enough to have one of them. It’s basically OK with us, except on those occasions when we’re hoping to grab a quick, cheap meal, and our son wants Lobster Thermidor.

My son may have acquired his love of fine food from me: When I was a teenager, my friends and I formed a club called C’est Chic, and mostly, we visited fine restaurants in Manhattan. We did rollerskate every now and then (at former The Rink in New Rochelle, which is now the site of my church, New York Covenant, if you can believe that!), but mainly, we ate. Rather, we dined. Exquisitely.

Are your kids into fine dining? What do they enjoy most? And what restaurants are their favorites?

This week, my sons are in a daily basketball camp, which is good in many ways: They’re both in the same place; they have to wear a uniform shirt every day (no last-minute wardrobe changes in the morning!); and the camp serves lunch. There’s also no swimming, so I don’t have a load of towels and swimsuits to wash.

But come next week, they’ll return to their regular day camps, where the biggest problem for me is that there is no lunch. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if my boys liked homemade lunch, but they are pretty boring when it comes to sandwiches. They limit themselves to turkey bologna, salami or turkey. They don’t like standbys like PB&J or cheese or tuna.  (No, they’re not allergic, just picky!) They don’t like condiments. And forget those ideas of giving them pita and hummus or anything “fancy.”

Last week, my 13-year-old didn’t make his sandwich (this is his job) the night before and a few minutes before the bus came, he was throwing Rice Krispie treats and applesauce into his lunchbag for a snack. When I asked him about his sandwich, he said he didn’t have time to make it. As a veteran sandwich-maker, I started to hustle into the kitchen to make him something, because after all, he was going to be out in the sun all day and he would be hungry and what if he passes out and the nurse calls me and it will be all because he didn’t have a sandwich?

My husband, bless his heart, stopped me and said, “Don’t make him anything. I used to do the same thing, when I was his age. And I’m still here, right?” His reasoning was that if my son was hungry that day, he would remember to make his own lunch the night before, as we’ve asked him to do.

I’m not sure yet whether playing hardball has worked; my son hasn’t had to make his lunch again yet. But he did mention that he was a little hungry that day. And he apologized for not doing what we asked him to do. So maybe it worked?

Tell me some of the ways you play tough with your kids. And if anyone has any lunch ideas for my finicky sons, I’m open to them.

Someone had a berry-juice stained face this Saturday, and her name is Pumpkin. Yup, we went strawberry picking. And we let her eat berries in the field — it was our primary way of entertaining her! (That and letting her play with a miniature Ernie from “Sesame Street” — who didn’t make it back, by the way.)

I haven’t gone strawberry picking since I was a teenager, but I remember enjoying it (despite once ruining a new pair of Keds my mom warned me against wearing). I didn’t know if Pumpkin was too young, so I asked a mom with more experience, fellow blogger Gayle Williams. She told me she has very early memories of strawberry picking with her family. “I remember sitting in a patch of strawberries, stuffing them into my mouth, and my family cracking up at me. It was a great day.” She gave me sage advice to put Pumpkin in clothes that can take a splatter of strawberry juice.

I searched online for nearby farms and found Jones Family Farms in Shelton, Conn., which is about 35 miles from my house in northern Westchester. The closest New York farms I could find are in northern Dutchess and Orange. If anyone knows of a strawberry field in Westchester, Putnam, Rockland or southern Dutchess, please post it here!

We rode on the outside of a truck to the field. (Pumpkin sat in my lap. I had one hand gripping the railing to hang on myself and another wrapped tight around her. My husband pointed out that it was her first ride out of a carseat and in a conveyance other than a stroller):

She was very well behaved in the fields and even picked a few berries herself. (I say this to encourage other parents of toddlers to give it a go!) We picked almost 9 pounds of berries in about an hour:

After stuffing ourselves on fresh berries and freezing a big bagful, there were still plenty left over to make crumble. (Here’s a link to the recipe. It was delish!):

I was so glad we went, especially after I saw how many toddlers (and even a couple of babies) were out. It was a blissful day. I said to my husband as we were riding the truck out to the field, “So, the living room will be dusty this week. So what?” I’d love to hear from other moms and dads about what day trips you have planned for the summer — and talk about the joy of playing hooky from weekend chores and heading to the farm.

When we asked the Parents’ Place community what you serve your kids, an overwhelming majority — 83 percent — said they opt for a mix of homemade, takeout and prepackaged foods. That’s 71 people out of the 86 who voted.

The next most-popular strategy was “homemade all the way,” with 14 percent of can-do parents cooking from scratch. Two percent of parents said “if it’s not from a box, we don’t eat it.” And just one parent admitted to having takeout on the speed dial.

Thanks for voting! And to those hearty moms and dads who go for homemade all the time — share your recipes! We’d love to know how you do it.

Teaching our kids to love nutritious, healthy food and to prepare it for themselves is one of the best gifts a parent can give. Mixing flour, sugar and eggs and watching the concoction transform into cookies through the oven window can give kids an amazing sense of accomplishment that opening a box of Oreos can’t beat.

Today’s Questions & Parents feature, Q&P for short, is with Suzanne Fromm, a mom of three from Goldens Bridge who knows the pleasures that baking can bring to a family. For years, family and friends raved about her hand-rolled rugelach. She makes it with all-natural ingredients like fruit preserves, peanut butter and walnuts. Three years ago, she started her own rugelach business, Suzanne’s Sweets. Her children, Zachary, 16, Joshua, 14, and Carly, 11, were Suzanne’s first taste-testers and still associate the smell of cinnamon with the days when their mom was baking endless batches at home. As Suzanne said, “If I picked them up at school and they didn’t know I baked, they could tell anyway because they would always say I smelled of fresh ruggies!” Today, she’s sharing her secrets for instilling a love of good food and cooking in kids.

Q: As a baker and mom, how have you shared your talents in the kitchen with your children?

P: From a very early age, I shared my love of cooking and baking with my children. I have always cooked and baked fresh foods, never store bought. I have always made the preparation and actual cooking and baking a fun and enjoyable task and let my children know that nothing is difficult.

Q: How old does a child have to be to help with baking? What’s a good first food to make together?

P: Old enough to hold a spoon or able to dump a cup of flour or sugar in a bowl. A first food to make together is rolled-out cookies. The cutter is put in the spot and the child presses down. Scrambled eggs are good, too. The child cracks the egg in the bowl and helps mix the eggs. My children learned to cook breakfast very early on, probably in first or second grade. Now with teenagers, our house is known for huge breakfasts during the week or on weekends, which the kids all cook. Their friends love to come over for omelets, bagels, bacon, sausage, pancakes, French toast, etc.

Q: How have you encouraged your children to learn about baking and cooking?

P: The Food Network is always on in our kitchen, and they have grown to love watching many of the programs. I also have a tremendous collection of cookbooks and magazines that I keep in my kitchen. Whenever anyone says they are bored with what I am cooking I always encourage them to start looking for a new recipe that appeals to them in the books, magazines or online.

Q: What’s your favorite treat to bake with your kids? How do they divvy up the duties? And who gets to lick the spoon?

P: Cupcakes, apple cake or birthday cakes. My daughter (the youngest) now makes the cupcakes on her own. Of course, she won’t share the spoon with anyone, but she will share the cupcakes. Whoever asked for the cupcakes or apple cake gets to lick out the bowl! And … whoever has the birthday gets to lick the bowl too.

Q: Does everyone in your house bake? Are any of your kids rebels who like to eat Twinkies?

P: All three of my kids do like to cook and bake! The only outside treat they will indulge in are cookies at Stew Leonards!

Q: How have your children been involved with your baking business? (Here’s a picture of Suzanne’s rugelach at right.)

P: The kids have been great. They do all of my prep work for shipping: putting boxes together, inserting peanuts, placing order and gift cards, closing up boxes and putting the shipping labels on. Of course, they are the biggest taste testers! Honestly, at this point I can barely put a rugelach in my mouth. But, of course, I taste them every now and then. And yes, they are always thinking up new ideas for the special flavor of the month.

Q: What lessons have your kids gleaned from learning to bake that apply outside the kitchen?

P: The most important lesson I have taught them is to enjoy food, cooking and baking. All three are wonderful eaters and really enjoy and know good food! I am proud of this.

Q: What advice do you have for moms and dads to get their kids interested in eating healthy and preparing their own foods from scratch?

P: Start them early eating what you eat. If they have a bad bout of “not liking or wantingâ€? what you serve, remember that you are the parent and set rules. If you succumb to their craziness they will rule you. Make them a part of the process of preparing the meal and give them a job that’s age appropriate. They will be able to do more than you think.

Thanks very much to Suzanne for sharing her knowledge by doing a Q&P! Check back next Friday for another Q&P. If you know any parents who you think would be great to feature, please comment here on the blog or send me an e-mail at jalterio@lohud.com.

I am really getting desperate here. Pumpkin is on a major milk and milk-based food strike. In addition to refusing milk, she now says “all doneâ€? when tempted with yogurt, pudding and ice cream, too! At least she’s still eating cheese—for now! We even went yesterday to our favorite outdoor ice cream stand—King Kone on Route 35.

In my earlier post on this topic, I was upset because my daughter is missing out on fluids and calories, now I think I’m going to have to start counting calcium because there is a limit to how much cheese one person can eat.

I love milk. I drink at least two glasses a day. If someone offered me my choice of Ovaltine, Hershey’s Syrup or Strawberry Nesquik, I’d be in heaven. Not Pumpkin. She is on a milk strike, and I’m fresh out of negotiating tactics.

It all started a few weeks ago when she had a stomach bug. We kept her off milk for several days while the tummy upset was severe. After that, she hit a miserable patch of teething pain when her cuspids started coming in. Around this time, she began rejecting her bottle. When it was time for a feeding, she’d say, “all done,” which means “no” in Pumpkin-speak.

At first, I figured the phase would pass once her tooth pain subsided. After all, she used to love her “ba ba,” as you can see in this photo, at right, from last August. But last Friday, after a week and a half without a drop of milk crossing her lips, I was worried. Those four bottles of milk she had been drinking delivered 480 calories a day as well as 24 ounces of liquid.

My first thought was that maybe this was a way to assert toddler independence. So I tried giving her the milk in her sippy cup. That was immediately rejected. I even went to the grocery store and stocked up on the aforementioned sugary milk additives. Still no go. She refuses to drink anything from her sippy that’s not clear. I believe it’s because we’ve always given her water mixed with a splash of white grape juice in the sippy. But, tell me, what child rejects chocolate milk!?

This past Saturday, I called her bluff. When she refused her morning bottle, I held off on breakfast to see if hunger would make the milk more appealing. The strategy worked and she drank a nice full bottle before her nap. She even drank another bottle later that day. But every day since, it’s gotten a little harder. Yesterday, she took just one 6-ounce bottle. I’ve never heard of this. I looked through my Dr. Spock, my “What to Expect” and other toddler books and found nothing helpful.

Any thoughts? She’s too young to give up milk!

Nothing prepared me for how much food a recovering child can consume in a day, but Pumpkin has become an eating machine in the last few days. She is almost back to normal after a week-long bout with a stomach virus — her first ever. Here is a sample day’s menu: Two slices of whole-wheat toast, two bananas, two bowls of chicken rice soup, a yogurt, some applesauce and a few million Cheerios.

This is definitely a LOT more than usual. Pumpkin weighs in at just 21 and a half pounds, which puts her in the 3rd percentile for her age and height. That means that just about every other child her age is chubbier. What was actually kind of scary in the week she was sick was how much thinner she became so fast. She lost what little padding she had accumulated under the chin and around the middle.

We’ve always tried to get her to gain weight. But usually, despite our best efforts to ply her with full-fat dairy of all descriptions, she doesn’t eat a whole lot every day. But since her sickness, now that she’s finally able to eat and keep it down, somehow her body knows that she has to make up for lost weight. This might seem obvious to other parents who’ve witnessed this phenomenon in their own kids, but it amazes me to see the brilliance of the human body in action.

I’ll be posting more this week now that Pumpkin is feeling better. I’ve missed catching up with you all on the blog.

What would you do if you couldn’t afford health insurance for your child? What if you didn’t have enough money to buy healthy food at the grocery store? What if you had to say no to an afterschool basketball program because it cost too much? These question aren’t just hypothetical for many parents in the Lower Hudson Valley.

As part of my research for a story on the health gap among the working poor, I met these parents. I met a mom who works full time at Mrs. Green’s in Katonah but can’t dream of buying the organic produce sold there — even with an employee discount. Her grocery budget for herself, her husband and baby is $60 a week.

I met Annette Medina of Yonkers, another mom who works full time but doesn’t get health benefits as part of her job. But in Annette’s case, that fact is a bit of an eye-popper because she is a medical assistant. When she received a $1 an hour raise, she no longer qualified for the state-supported Child Health Plus insurance plan. So now her 11-year-old son is without insurance. Her pain over this is great. She also feels keenly the lack of the healthiest organic food and produce in her home. This is how she put it to me: “I wish I could always eat healthy, especially with my son. He’s a heavyset boy, and I worry so much about what I put into him. I wish I could buy whole grains and the salmon and the blueberries and the good stuff.” Here a link to a video of her talking about this in her own words.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have health benefits and don’t have to check the prices before we decide whether or not to buy a bag of salad, this might seem remote. But you might be surprised to learn that some of your neighbors and friends are in the same situation.

When I talked to Nyack resident Georganne Chapin, the CEO of Hudson Health Plan, she told me she’s met a lot of people without health insurance — because she asks about it. She had some electrical work done recently, and when she asked the electrician about his health coverage, it turned out he didn’t have any. The reason so many of us don’t know about this is people are too ashamed to talk about it. “There is such fear and stigma attached to not being able to take care of yourself or your family, and people don’t like to admit they don’t have insurance,” Georganne told me.

Georganne wishes people would pay more attention to the nearly 47 million people without health insurance in our country. While there’s a lot of talk about providing help to children, she wants us to remember the parents, too. “We make it easy for children to qualify for subsidized health insurance. It’s a feel-good thing. But maybe we should cover the parents so they can take care of their kids,” she argues.

I’d love to hear from other parents who might be struggling with some of same problems or have insight into this issue. Also check out other stories in our special report on the “Cost of Health.â€?

Cheerios. Check. Spaghetti. Yup. Bananas. You bet. A year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to put bananas into the “loves it” category. In fact, “hates it” was putting it too mildly, as you can see in the photo at right. I took that picture on Jan. 30, 2006, the first day Pumpkin tried bananas. Both her father and I were disappointed she didn’t like bananas since we both love the fruit ourselves. Plus, it’s so nutritious. (I must say, her Grandma, who hates bananas, took a certain satisfaction in their shared dislike — especially since picking up my discarded banana peels when I was a child grossed her out.)

But now, a little over a year later, Pumpkin loves bananas. It’s one of the snacks that gets a hearty “Yum!” every time. Go figure.

What about the rest of you moms and dads — what foods are your children’s favorites, and which ones did they have to grow into to like?

I am officially a bad mother (or a real mother, depending on your perspective). I just bribed my child. To be good. We were leaving the grocery store and she was having a meltdown because A.) she didn’t want to leave; and B.) she hates getting in the car. I said: “If you quiet down and let mommy get you in the car seat, you can have ice cream when we go home.� And she did.

This is amazing to me on several fronts. I can’t believe she understood such a complex exchange of ideas. (She’s really growing up!) I also can’t believe she even remembers ice cream that well. She has only eaten it a few times since the summer. I just happened to pick up some tonight. Lucky me!

So, what do you think? I am irredeemably on a path that will lead to me buying her a car in exchange for not turning into the 2021 equivalent of Paris Hilton? What about the rest of you: Have you ever bribed your child?

(And, in case you are wondering, I came through with the ice cream. I keep my shady deals.)

Tonight, when I made dinner for Pumpkin, I sprinkled parmesan on her whole wheat elbow macaroni and tomato sauce and watched the cheese get all melty and gooey. Then, as I do before every meal, I tucked her plate in the freezer for three minutes to remove any vestiges of warmth from the food. Pumpkin decidedly does not like hot food. Even slightly warm food gets a “hot, hot” and a face. If you dare to put something very warm in her mouth, she opens wide and lets it fall out.

She eats everything at room temperature or with a slight chill, including oatmeal, chicken soup and sweet potatoes. Her preference doesn’t bother me, but it drives her Grandma a bit bananas. She simply can’t believe that scrambled eggs can taste good cold. She keeps trying to introduce Pumpkin to the joys of warm food — so far without success.

So, is my child just quirky, or is this typical toddler behavior? What weird food preferences did your wee ones exhibit in their early years?

Incidentally, I got the idea for this post after reading my colleague Katie Ryan O’Connor’s new blog about feeding your kids without losing your sanity. It’s called “Ice cream is not for breakfast.” (A statement I’d like to heartily dispute!)

I think I like to bake. I say “I think” because sometimes, I really do like to bake.

But as I sit here at 12:19 a.m., waiting for the oven timer to signal the end of baking a batch of cupcakes for my son’s third-grade class, I’m not so sure that I like baking.

I volunteered to bake cupcakes for the class’ Valentine’s Day party, which is tomorrow. (Uh, that would be today, since it’s now after midnight on Thursday.) I typically don’t mind doing this, except that I forgot all about the cupcakes today, until the thought struck me at about 11 p.m.

I remembered the task well on Sunday afternoon, when I stood in Stop and Shop, looking at a package of 24 beautifully decorated cupcakes, already perfect in a ready-to-carry case, for well under $10. I picked them up. Put them in the cart. Then remembered my son’s words: “I can’t wait to make the cupcakes with you, Mom.” So I put back the pretty, ready-made, easy-to-carry, reasonably priced cupcakes. Instead, I picked up some pink and white sprinkles, cake mix, canned frosting (there is no reason in the world to make cupcakes from scratch for 8-year-olds) and headed home.

Tonight, my son had nothing to do with the baking of these cupcakes, since I  started them long after his bedtime. But since he has a two-hour school delay tomorrow, I’ll save the frosting and sprinkling and we can do that together after he gets up. He’ll be happy. I’ll be sleepy.

But as I sit here, waiting for the timer to ring, I’m really thinking of the beautifully decorated Stop & Shop cupcakes. With the awful weather, I bet they’re still there. My husband even offered to go out and buy them. But no. I promised my child I’d bake for his class, so I’m baking.

Am I crazy? 

Boing Boing, one of the Web’s most popular blogs, has some funny posts about food packages for children that are supposed to teach science, but instead spread misinformation. I like this gem from Pomodoro pasta: “Mars is the closest planet to the sun, but it’s not the hottest — Venus is!”

(Incidentally, the way I memorized the planets’ order was this mnemonic: Many Very Early Men Jerked Sodas Up Near Pluto. Alas, since Pluto is not a planet anymore, this no longer works. Any suggestions for a new one?)