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The Denver Post announced its Kids Cooking Contest Winners. The children’s recipes showed imagination, and a love of cooking. The honorable mention recipes also looked delicious. I especially like the "Best Use of an Animal in a Recipe Title" recipe for porcupine meatballs.

Porcupine Meatballs
Gretel Skelton, 14, Littleton

My love of cooking stems from my love of art. Cooking is art with an added dimension. It is beautiful to see like a painting and fun to feel like sculpture, but best of all, you can savor the taste as you dine on your creation with family and friends. Serves 6.

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 cup brown rice
2. 1 cup water
3. 1 1/2 pounds ground turkey
4. 1 onion, chopped
5. 1 teaspoon salt
6. 1 teaspoon celery seed
7. 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
8. Oil
9. 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
10. 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
11. 1 tablespoon brown sugar

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, bring rice and water to a boil over medium heat. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and continue cooking for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.
2. In a large bowl, combine ground turkey, onion, salt, celery seed, garlic powder and cooled rice. Shape mixture into walnut-sized balls and cook in a large skillet with a little oil over medium heat until brown.
3. In a small bowl, combine tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar, and pour over the meatballs.
4. Cover the skillet and continue on low heat for 40 minutes.
5. Serve and enjoy.

(Picture courtesy of The Gourmet Saint who makes his porcupine meatballs with teriyaki sauce and paprika.)

Combine these meatballs with a porcupine themed book:

• A Porcupine Named Fluffy - for babies and preschoolers, this book is about a porcupine named Fluffy who is happier with his name after he meets a similarly misnamed rhinoceros, Hippo.
• Mr. Fine Porcupine - Shunned because of his sharp quills, a good-natured porcupine is distressed until he meets someone who shows him that he is lovable, quills and all. Baby to preschool age.
• Ben and the Porcupine - When his dog Ben tangles with a porcupine, Christopher fears for his pet’s safety until he thinks of a way to pacify the porcupine. For ages 4 to 8.

Border’s just sent me this:

What do you think?

My post about dog biscuits got me thinking about all the wonderful things you can do with cookie cutters. You can take a cookie cutter - lets say a heart - and cut out the middle of a sandwich. Then take the leftover sandwich and cut it into four pieces. Then you have a puzzle sandwich that you can reassemble and eat. I got this idea from FamilyFun Cookbook from the folks at FamilyFun magazine.

FamilyFun Cookbook calls the sandwich a "Peanut Puzzler" since they use peanut butter, but you can use banana slices, honey and cream cheese, apple butter, ham and cheese - just use your imagination and have fun.

Another fun way to learn your ABCs is to make letter cookies. Nigella Lawson is coming out with a very attractively packaged letter/number metal cookie cutters set next month. Or you can go to a local crafts store and get Wilton’s plastic letter/number set.

FamilyFun.com has a recipe for gingerbread ABC cookies. In Colonial days, when children learned the alphabet, their families celebrated by making gingerbread letters.

Gingerbread ABC Cookies

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2. 3/4 cup brown sugar
3. 2 eggs
4. 1/2 cup molasses
5. 1 tsp. vanilla extract
6. 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
7. 1 tbsp. cinnamon
8. 1 tsp. ginger
9. 1 tsp. baking soda
10. 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Mix in the molasses and the vanilla extract.
2. In another bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Then add the flour mixture to the butter mixture a little at a time, stirring well each time. Cover the dough and chill for at least 2 hours.
3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. On a floured surface, roll the dough flat to a 1/4-inch thickness. Now your kids can cut out large letters with a butter knife.
4. With a spatula, set the letters on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cookies are set. Yield varies depending on the size of the letters.

Pictures from the Flickr account of chalk sbair.

The Denver Post kicks off their Kids Week features with Getting a read on kid lit by Jenny Deam. She explains how to pick good children’s books - award winners, fantasy stories with good plot lines, sport non-fiction, and biography are all good bets. And stay away from those celebrity-written children’s books!

A terrific cooking idea comes from  Emily Karlzen of Louisville, who entered a recipe for dog biscuits in The Denver Post’s Kids’ Week cooking contest. She makes them with her mom, and donates them to the Longmont Humane Society.

With the recent pet food recalls, many animal shelters are hurting for pet food donations. Baking up some homemade dog goodies sounds like a great family cooking project that teaching the value of donating to charity and helping animals. But call your local humane society first just to make sure they’ll take homemade dog treats.

Dog Biscuits
Makes approximately two dozen doggie biscuits.
These would make great stocking stuffers or presents for those special doggies in your life.

Ingredients:

1. 2 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2. 1/2 cup powdered milk
3. 1 teaspoon salt
4. 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
5. 1 egg
6. 6 tablespoons vegetable oil
7. 8 10 tablespoons water
8. 2 small jars strained baby food (beef, chicken, lamb or liver)

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients together and knead for 3 minutes.
2. Roll out to 1/2-inch thick.
3. Using a dog-bone-shaped cookie cutter, cut biscuits and place the on an ungreased baking sheet. (This four piece dog bone cookie cutter set has cookie cutters of various sizes - great if you’re baking for big, medium and little dogs.)
4. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

(Picture courtesy of Dana Coffield and The Denver Post.)

Dog Books

May I recommend the Walter the Farting Dog series? Yes, they’re irreverant, gross, and naughty but also hysterically funny, wonderfully illustrated, and guaranteed to make the kids laugh. After all, who doesn’t love a good fart joke? For ages 4 to 8, you can also get the books in French and Latin, too.

On the more serious side for older kids ages 8 to 13 is 50 Awesome Ways Kids Can Help Animals: Fun and Easy Ways to Be a Kind Kid. From the PETA folks, the book is full of fascinating facts and more than 100 fun and easy projects and ideas that show children how they can get active for animals.

Panicking about what the heck you’re going to do with the kids at grandma’s, or what happens if it rains and we can’t go to the beach? Plan ahead and have books, craft supplies, board games, puzzles and DVDs mailed to your destination just in case. It may be a lifesaver, especially if you’re stuck somewhere without a car.

Here are some suggested book titles that are both good if you’re on vacation, or spending Spring Break at home:

• Vacation Fun Mad Libs - Kids complete page after page of vacation theme stories by supplying the parts of speech indicated, then read the entirely silly story back and roar with laughter!
• Little Book of Vacation Activies - For ages seven and up, this book is bursting with creative and imaginative activities to keep children busy. You’ll find ideas for a new activity every day: drawing, painting, making things, cooking, gardening and even dressing up. With easy-to-follow instructions and bright illustrations, this handy little book is guaranteed to keep boredom at bay.
• Vacation Things to Make and Do - For ages six and up, this book is full of projects to do at any time of year, this fantastic book will banish boredom during school breaks forever. Easy step-by-step instructions show you how to make a pirate cutlass, fairy wings, bouncing bats and much, much more! The book comes with 800 stickers.
• Vacation Travel Games - For ages four to eght, this book provides travel-related games and activities including word searches, roadside bingo, tic tac toe, word games, license plate games, rebus puzzles, coloring games, crosswords, guessing games, word pyramids, dot-to-dots and more. Games can be played individually or with others.
• Fussbusters on the Go: Strategies and Games for Stress-Free Outings, Errands, and Vacations With Your Preschooler - This guide shows on-the-go families how to make the most of traveling with children whether the parents are running errands or packing up the family for a long vacation. Traveling with children is challeging. This book acts as a survival guide for parents filled with practical strategies, activities and ideas for making family outings successful, safe, and fun.