It Tastes Like Joy

 So for his 11th birthday this year, Calen's "Grandma With Glasses" (my mom, as he's named her since he was 3) gave him a monthly kid's cooking subscription. Every month has a theme and comes with 3 recipes and a new cool kitchen tool, some of which Mom might have confiscated because they're so cool. 

This month's theme was....drumroll please....FALL! Because who doesn't love fall? And all fall things, especially fall eating things. 

No? Disagree? Well, haters gonna hate, and you should probably steer well clear of my house from September through like....December. 

Naturally we were all really excited about this month's kit. This morning we dove in and began making the recipe we were all waiting for, the cu de grau of fall harvest food....apple...cider...donuts. 

Ahhhhh, I can picture myself holding a steaming bag of them at a wooden stand in the middle of a pumpkin patch as we speak. 

The kit came with these neato silicone donut molds, so the kids (Camden couldn't help but involve himself in this one too) mixed up a double batch of donut batter and after they baked, had a "dip in butter and smother in cinnamon sugar" assembly line. 

And it somehow, magically, requested in this week's homeschool curriculum that we pick a US state that we've studied and choose a meal that originated from that state, preferably in the early settler period. We studied Massachusetts and Connecticut. Guess where apple cider donuts come from? Massachusetts. 

Oh look, it's now history class.

They tasted like heaven. Warm, sugary, appley, buttery heaven. 

Calen and I got the first ones. Camden had run outside and didn't come home at 5pm like we told him to, which means Calen and I get first dibs! As he and I ooze over the deliciousness in the kitchen, Calen says through a mouthful of donut:

"This reminds me of something. How do I say it? Joy. These donuts taste like joy."

You couldn't be more right, kiddo.

Joy, in the form of a donut

Calen's cooking adventures weren't over for the night, as he promised to make one of the other recipes for dinner tonight. On the menu: roasted chicken with fresh herbs!

Except, I couldn't find a whole chicken anywhere on this stupid island. Anywhere! Not Safeway, not anywhere. What's with the discrimination of whole chickens in Alaska? Alaska even has a TOWN named Chicken. Toss some on the barge and get them up here!

But I digress. 

So because Kodiak has some whole chicken shortage, we resorted to cornish game hens, which is just as well because they cost about the same and they're like little personal pizzas, except they're chickens. We named them Walter and Wallace, because little chickens need names, even when they're dinner.

Calen stuffed them with fresh rosemary and thyme and as they roasted in the oven it literally smelled like Thanksgiving. Not that we have chicken for Thanksgiving, but isn't it basically all the same anyways?

So we had a delicious dinner of roasted Wallace and Walter and donuts and watched the Incredibles 2. A perfect fall day!

And no, there are no donuts left. 

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