You all know how much I don’t like having to be on lockdown to protect Jax from germs. To be perfectly honest, I’ve been a bit depressed about it this year and I’ve had zero motivation to make it better. The Minnesota winter isn’t helping. With temps as low as 30° below zero, there are literally no options for outdoor play. And since Jax can’t be by crowds of people, the gym, malls, and museums are out of the question.
Although I know that Jax’s lungs need more time to grow and get healthy, there are so many times (already) that I’ve just sighed with a bad attitude and focused only on the fact that we have 3 more months of isolation to go.
Well, today, I decided to shake off my Debby Downer attitude and start having some fun!
As a kid, my mom always let us help in the kitchen, so I thought – what a great place to start! I got out some baggies and started riffling through the cupboards for fun and different textures. I found rice, flour, sugar, Cheerios, chocolate chips, and water. (This idea was inspired by my friend over at Handpicked Miracle.)
I put all the items in baggies and put them all in a metal colander. And voila – Jax’s Sensory Kitchen was born!
OK, so maybe Jax didn’t think it was as cool as I did…
But after a few minutes, he finally got the idea that he was supposed to do something with all this stuff!
So, then we decided to kick it up a notch and do some cookin’. I found this recipe for Lemon Blueberry Bread on Pinterest that I thought looked awesome. So, since I didn’t have some of the ingredients, I decided to put my own semi-healthier twist on it and came up with Blueberry Sour Cream Bread.
Jax loved helping me dump the dry ingredients into the bowl. I let him stir it a bit, but then he decided he wanted to eat it – after one bite of raw flour he changed his mind very quickly about that! (I wish I would have been able to get a photo!)
I found out that Jax does not like the sound of the mixer! He started screaming the second I turned it on. Sorry, kid! So, I finished up our masterpiece while Jax played with his toys in the other room.
So, hopefully this is the start of some more fun, creative lockdown activities for us! If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know!
Blueberry Sour Cream Bread
Ingredients
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1/2 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce (I used homemade)
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups blueberries (12 oz)
- ½ cup sour cream, regular or lowfat
- 1 – 2 TBSP water, if needed
Directions
- Preheat your oven to 350°. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
- In a medium sized bowl, whisk together your flour, baking powder and salt.
- Add the blueberries and toss to combine.
- Cream together the butter, applesauce, and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Stir in the sour cream.
- Add the dry ingredients, mixing only until incorporated and being careful not to crush the blueberries. If batter is too thick, add 1 – 2 tablespoons of water. (One of the hardest parts about baking with whole wheat four is that things tend to dry out a bit.)
- Scoop batter into your prepared loaf pan and bake for 1 hour 30 minutes, or until golden brown and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes before inverting gently onto a plate.
An Early Start 