Fancy family night

We have started to implement family nights into our schedule. My 4-year old daughter had noticed our "fancy" dishes in the cupboard and wanted to use them for the next family night meal. So I thought I would show you a picture of what our meal consisted of.

We don't drink any alcohol around here and these glasses have never been used (a wedding gift). What good are glasses in the cupboard? Let me tell you, my 3 and 4 year olds LOVED drinking ginger ale out of these.

We had one of our favorite hotdishes along with fresh (well, as fresh as you can get in December in Minnesota) green beans. I never got a name for the recipe when I was given this concotion, but it could probably be called "zucchini, carrot, stuffing and hamburger hotdish". It is a good way to conceal zucchini-otherwise known as the imfamous hotdish stretcher.

Zucchini, carrot, stuffing and hamburger hotdish

2 quarts sliced or diced zucchini
1 large onion-chopped
1 cup sliced carrots
1 1/2 lbs ground beef
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
1-7 oz package seasoned crouton (I use a 14 oz bag of stuffing)
dash of poultry seasoning
dash of thyme
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 can cream of chicken soup (I use cream of mushroom and add chicken broth powder)
1 cup sour cream

Grease a 4 quart cassarole dish and set aside (I use a regular 9 x 13
pan)

Cook zucchini, carrots and onion in small amount of water til zucchini
changes color. Drain and reserve liquid.

Brown the ground beef with salt and pepper

Prepare stuffing- I pour the stuffing into a bowl, sprinkle the poultry seasoning and thyme over it and then pour the melted butter and 1 1/2 cup of reserved zucchini liquid over it all. Mix lightly.

Combine soup and sour cream and fold into zucchini, carrots and onions.

Layer it all in pan with ground beef on the bottom, then stuffing and pour zucchini mixture on top.

Place in oven at 350 degrees until hot all the way through, maybe 30-45
minutes.

The desert was my children's doing. I had given my daughter a cookbook last year called Mother's Little Helper Cookbook. It's a neat collection of simple recipes for children ages 2-6. There is a page for what the mother is to do and a corresponding page for what the child is supposed to do. She wanted to make the honey peanut butter balls this time. The recipes are quite healthy, but of course we had to put them in heart-shaped pans and cover them with "sprinkles". You can see the final result on the right side of the above picture.

After the meal, we assembled a birdhouse and a bird feeder from two simple pre-made packages that I had purchased. We were able to relate it to spiritual truths such as...Just as we need to follow directions in constructing things, we also need to obey the Bible as it gives us instructions/directions for life.

The next morning, the new additions for our birds were added to the pole just outside our dining room window. They were delighted when they saw the birds eating out of the new bird feeder.