If you’re looking for a sure-fire, easy to fix dessert for your holiday parties, this Cranberry Pie recipe is foolproof.

I love anything with cranberries in it. That sweet-tart flavor of cranberries is pure bliss in cakes, crisps, cookies, even granola. I always buy a few extra bags of fresh cranberries during the holiday season and freeze them for later in the year. They’ll keep their flavor for a year. Of course, I make my own cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. (more…)

You might also like:

Grandma Amelia’s Charoset Recipe One of the best ways to pass on your family heritage to your grandchildren is to cook with them. I spent...

Green Princess Cookbook Recipes Are Healthy and Fun For her last birthday, my six-year-old granddaughter, Juliet, received the Green Princess Cookbook. As...

Grandma Amelia’s Stewed Fruit Do you have a favorite food your grandma used to make? On a recent trip to the Farmers Market I sampled...

Thanksgiving Evokes Memories of Favorite Sweet Potato Recipe It's time to get out my trusty Thanksgiving folder and start organizing this year's Thanksgiving celebration....

My toaster oven died yesterday. Actually, it’s been a slow death that began a year ago when the oven function stopped working. Then yesterday, while I was making my toast, the top heating element flickered and sputtered some bright orange sparks. I knew I was going to have to face reality: do some research and buy a new one. (more…)

You might also like:

Green Princess Cookbook Recipes Are Healthy and Fun For her last birthday, my six-year-old granddaughter, Juliet, received the Green Princess Cookbook. As...

Cranberry Pie Recipe is Foolproof If you're looking for a sure-fire, easy to fix dessert for your holiday parties, this Cranberry Pie recipe...

Don’t Forget to Phone Your Mother I grew up in a family of phone talkers. In the '50s my mom talked to her mom every morning. My dad called...

Home Safety Tips for Grandmothers Summer time is a popular time for the grandchildren to visit. As you plan for their favorite foods, toys,...

For her last birthday, my six-year-old granddaughter, Juliet, received the Green Princess Cookbook. As we looked through each page together, she kept repeating, “Ooh, let’s make this one.” I love to cook with my family. I’ve cooked with my grandma and mom. Now I’m cooking with my daughter and two granddaughters.

I enjoy looking at recipes and have been collecting them for four decades. The color photographs in Green Princess Cookbook look yummy. There’s a photograph for each of the thirty recipes. They’re divided into categories of drinks and ice cream, dips and chips, bigger bites, breads and spreads, and sweets and treats.

These recipes are healthy and fun. Subtitled Sweets and Treats to Save the Planet, the book is part of Barbara Beery’s series of cookbooks for girls that “encourage them to participate and celebrate the joys of cooking.”  I like recipes that are easy, and these are definitely easy, as well as kid-friendly.

Author Barbara Beery has a degree in elementary education, three children, and founded Batter Up Kids Cooking School eighteen years ago. Her mission is to bring children, families, and communities together to make a positive health-conscious difference in our next generation of cooks.

Beery believes that children are the key ingredient in changing the way Americans eat. I completely agree and we moms and grandmas have a great opportunity to teach them. In the short introduction, called “It’s Easy Being Green,” Beery explains what’s organic and why buying local is good for the environment. She also explains farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and community gardens. She suggests that you make all the recipes in her book with organic and local ingredients whenever possible.

Juliet understands organic and local.  She and her parents and sister have a bountiful vegetable garden. They’ve harvested pounds of sweet cherry tomatoes, several dozen of the sweetest cantaloupes I’ve ever tasted, and gigantic cucumbers.

We decided to make the Cinnamon-Maple Crisps recipe. It required only three ingredients and could be made in ten minutes. We had so much fun. We didn’t make our crisps heart-shaped like the photo, but they still tasted delicious. Juliet did all the steps by herself. After we cooked them, we did a taste comparison. She preferred the honey flavor over maple syrup.

We can’t wait to cook together again. Juliet wants to make “Baby Butterfly Cupcakes” and I want to make “Cornbread in a Recycled Can.”

Cinnamon-Maple Crisps Recipe

24 (3 1/2 — inch wonton wrappers

2 teaspoons maple syrup or honey

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper or a clean brown paper grocery bag cut to fit pans. Set aside. In a small bowl, combine maple syrup or honey and cinnamon.

Carefully remove wonton wrappers from package, one at a time, and place on a cutting board. Using assorted 2-inch cookie cutters, cut wonton wrappers into various shapes. Place cutouts ½ inch apart on prepared sheet pans. Lightly brush each wrapper with cinnamon-honey mixture.

Place sheet pans in oven and bake for 4 to 6 minutes. Watch the crackers carefully as they brown fast! Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes before removing crackers from pan and serving.

You might also like:

Bunch of Grapes Halloween Costume For Halloween this year I discovered a "grape" idea for my granddaughters' costumes: bunches of grapes....

Help Your Grandchild Enjoy Nature The modern environmental movement was launched with the help of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring....

Celebrating a Baby’s First Birthday with a Time Capsule Family celebrations have always played a significant role in my life. When I was growing up, my mom made...

Are You a Healthy Cook? Columnist Tara Parker-Pope writes a column and blog for the New York Times called “Well.” It's about...

In case my last post gave you the impression that I only eat “healthy” food, let me set the record straight. I have a voracious sweet tooth!

So did my grandmother. And so do my mother and daughter. As I’m writing this, I’m chewing on a Bit-O-Honey, one of my favorite childhood candy treats. I’m certain I developed a sweet tooth from my Grandma Amelia. She fixed me healthy meals but they were always followed by dessert and candy.

Whenever I visited her, I went straight to the white porcelain candy dish on her end table to see what sweets lay inside. Her taste ran towards “junk” candy that she purchased at Woolworth’s: large gum drops, sugar coated orange slices and lemon drops. She also kept a tin of hard candy in her dining room closet. When we went to the movies on Saturday afternoon, our ritual was to first stop at the penny candy store across the street.

My grandma gave me a dime. To an eight-year old that seemed like a fortune. It took about fifteen minutes to select my favorite goodies. I pointed to the display case, and the elderly, wheezing lady who owned the store would patiently fill my paper bag with penny candy: envelopes of Lik-M-Aid (packs of tart powder), red wax lips, candy buttons, Mexican hats, Walnettos, red licorice whips, Kits taffy, Nik-L-Nips (wax bottles filled with a sweet syrup) and spearmint leaves. Then we crossed the street to the Four-Star theater to watch “Spanky and The Little Rascals,” while I savored each piece of candy.

My mom was never a fan of penny candy. She favors dark chocolate and always has her candy dish filled with a selection of See’s candy. When my grandparents visited our house, my grandma would try to sneak a piece of candy from the glass dish. We could always hear the top clink as she placed it back on the dish.

In my last post, I described the four-generation healthy tofu stir-fry dinner that my mom, daughter, two granddaughters and I prepared together. After our “healthy” dinner, I was craving something sweet, but it wasn’t “dessert night.” So we loaded our car and drove home. Ninety minutes later my husband and I stood foraging through my mom’s candy dish, filling our mouths with dark chocolate mallos and chews. My mom laughed hysterically explaining that she would have bet anything we’d want some sweets after all those “healthy” veggies. She was right. We each left with a handful of chocolates to eat on the rest of the drive home!

What I have learned from my grandmother and mother is to eat everything — but in moderation. That way I can have a healthy meal and also have dessert. It worked for my grandma who lived to age 93. My mom’s still going strong at 86 and I’m hoping I’ve inherited their “healthy” genes.

Start a tradition and send photo Christmas cards. “Catch” your grandkids helping themselves to Grandma’s candy dish!

You might also like:

Childrens Nursery Rhymes We take so many pictures of our grandchildren, but it's also fun to capture their sweet voices as they're...

Grandma Shares Camping Adventure with Granddaughters It is the business of grandparents to create memories and the relative of memories: traditions...Ellen...

10 Tips for Avoiding Post-Holiday Blues This past Thanksgiving, after I hugged and kissed my daughter and two granddaughters a dozen times each,...

Are You a Healthy Cook? Columnist Tara Parker-Pope writes a column and blog for the New York Times called “Well.” It's about...