We’ve made a lot of friends in the blogging world, and we savor each of their stories. Take Tricia, for instance. As she explains it, Tricia forsook life in the drive-thru lane for the road home. She’s saving bucks and her sanity with the frugal recipes and sock-it-away strategies of her Southern roots – in hopes of keeping tummies full at her home, which includes her husband and their five children. She rolls the kids into the mix and calls it cooking fun, often making a SunButter® recipe at least once a week. Here, Tricia shares her story and her delicious SunButter® balls recipe. We guarantee you’ll enjoy her perspective. Thanks, Tricia!
This morning the children and I made SunButter® balls. Our family is a bit different in that we are homeschoolers and I make a point of including the children in the mixing and cooking. SunButter® has been a life-saver since two of our children have nut allergies. SunButter® allows us to still enjoy so many of the treats we love – that the rest of the world takes for granted. I’m all about practical. Plus, it’s fun!
I saw a peanut butter balls recipe a while back from Christy at Southern Plate. I immediately thought, “We can do that with SunButter®!” And, so, this morning, we finished up school and that’s exactly what we did.
Cooking with kids
I set all the ingredients out after breakfast so it would be easy to turn our attention to some cooking fun.
With the large amount of dry ingredients, I found that some stirring by hand was in order.
But that’s okay because there were three children taking turns being handy action stirrers.
Middle girl added the two cups of SunButter®. Which meant she could lick the spoon after adding it.
After stirring a bit more by hand, I was able to pulse the stand mixer and spread the ingredients a bit more thoroughly. Then, all that was left was rolling the mixed ingredients into bite-sized SunButter® balls. Plenty of help for that stage.
Now I had an entire cookie sheet full of SunButtery goodness. Easy to pull out for on the go, an afternoon snack, for breakfast, for any reason.
Freezing SunButter® treats for later
We often double SunButter® recipes and freeze the results for convenience. With two children allergic to nuts and the rest of our family SunButter® fans as well, doubling is a necessity. Especially since we go through two, 5 lb. buckets of SunButter® each month!
But I’ll be honest. Since we made this late in the morning and tummies were already growling, we had SunButter® balls for lunch! We just added a side of sliced apple. That definitely brought on the smiles!
Tricia blogs about life toting two epipens for their kids with allergies and homeschooling. She is also a contributing writer for $5 Dinners and you can follow her on Twitter.
Are you a parent or caregiver of a child with allergies? Do you cook and bake with your kids? What’s your story? We’d love to hear about your experiences. Feel free to comment here.
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A dad’s perspective: Steve discusses his favorite SunButter recipes
In honor of Father’s Day, we’re featuring a guest blogger who’s also a dad! Steve (@hodgepodgedad), husband to Tricia (@hodgepodgemom) and father of five, keeps busy with his family and a job in information security. He also has a second job as principal of the Hodgepodge homeschool. We so appreciate dads like Steve who juggle so many responsibilities. Thanks for sharing your story, Steve, and Happy Father’s Day to you—and to all dads of lucky little ones.
Alissa’s SunButter® Granola Goodness
My co-workers are really shining in this SunButter® challenge I introduced a couple of weeks ago. Today’s challenger, Alissa, made up her own granola recipe! I tend to believe if Alissa was born a generation ago, she would have definitely been a flower child, so granola is very appropriate from her kitchen. She’s a SunButter® rookie—never tried it before, so let’s see how she did. From Alissa: “My mom always makes granola with ‘a little bit of this, a little bit of that.’ So going from memory, I tried to duplicate her granola using SunButter. My goal was to emulate the taste of peanut butter granola bars.”
Tags: nut-free recipes, peanut-free, SunButter, SunButter tips and tricks
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