SpongeBob made me do it!

Stop&Shop is giving out colorful activity sheets featuring Nickelodeon characters to promote fruits and vegetables. Each sheet highlights a vegetable or fruit, and includes a "great recipe for parents and children to make together" and "parent tips" on how to prepare the produce and ways to serve it. It's sort of like a culinary public service announcement. The question is: are the recipes any good?

I made the "Tropical Sunrise Parfait" from the sheet featuring Pineapple, and, appropriately, SpongeBob Squarepants, who loves pineapples enough to live in one.

I'll definitely make it again.

This recipe makes 4 servings, but I made it as 2 generous servings, as a small meal.

Buying almonds that are already toasted would make the preparation time even shorter than the 15 minutes the recipe states.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups pineapple chunks or tibits, canned in juice, drained

(This is a whole 20-ounce can of pineapple. I mix the juice with some seltzer and call it a spritzer.)

1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

1 cup low-fat vanilla yogurt

1 medium banana, sliced

1/2 cup dates, chopped, or raisins (I used raisins.)

1/4 cup whole almonds, toasted and chopped

Instructions:

Heat oven to 300F. Put almonds on non-stick baking pan. Place in oven 5-6 minutes, shake pan several times during toasting. Remove from oven, cool, and coarsely chop. While the almonds are toasting, layber the pineapple, raspberries, yogurt, banana, and dates in parfait glasses. (I used tall drinking glasses.) Sprinkle the almonds on top and serve.

I used frozen raspberries, so I made the parfaits a couple hours ahead of time and put them in the fridge so the berries would thaw out before serving.

This is how the parfaits came out. Sadly, the best light in my kitchen is in the fridge. (Though it's nice that I have good healthy food in there, a fridge to be proud of, worth photographing, even.)

The Odd Ball

What a busy month I've had! There was Easter, a trip to Poughkeepsie to see the Flaming Lips in concert, more house hunting, and right now I'm making excuses for not posting to this blog for such a long time.

On April 10, I went to Real Art Ways in Hartford for their costume ball fundraiser, the Odd Ball.

It was a wild time, but let's focus on the food here, the "Twisted Buffet" provided by Ascot Catering. Not only was everything creatively presented, it was all delicious. Here's the run down of the goodies.

Salmon Lollipops: smoked salmon and cream cheese on lavash wraps, rolled into pinwheels, on skewers.

Antipasto on a Stick: Mushroom, tomato, black olive, and a pinwheel of cheese and fatty Italian ham, on a stick, of course.

Gazpacho Shots: Cold tomato-based vegetable soup served in test tubes. Reminded me of a virgin bloody mary.

Ciao Mein: spaghetti and meatballs (absolutely scrumptious, tender meatballs) served in Chinese takeout containers, chopsticks optional.

Mac and Cheese Cakes: Imagine macaroni and cheese casserole, the kind with crumbs on top, but instead of baking it in a big pan, packing it into mini muffin cups to bake. (I'm not sure if this is how they really were made. I ought to try it, though.)

Guacamole or Mashed Potatoes in a Cone: Ice cream cones the size of my pinky finger, filled with either guacamole or mashed potatoes, with cheddar, sour cream, and bacon bits with which to garnish them.

"Sushi": the rolls had rice and nori on the outside, but the insides were unusual. There was "Bbquishi" made with barbeque chicken, "Portasushi" with portabello mushroom and roasted red pepper, and another roll filled with provolone cheese, tomato, and basil.

Pig in a Tunnel: I couldn't figure out exactly what was in this, but it looked like a cannoli shell, with bacon wrapped like a ribbon around the middle, filled with guacamole, dots of mayonnaise, and something else, I think. Whatever it was made of, it was good.

Sausage Sliders: a breakfast sausage patty sandwiched between two hashbrown patties. Awesome.

There were also the big jars of candy: jelly beans, Red Vines, chocolate, chewy balls that tasted like coconut rum, miscellaneous penny candy.

Of course, I have to show you our costumes. I was a tree. Chris was Big Bird.