Making Treasure Triangles

I am always looking for good things for my toddlers to eat and I did find this great cookbook called The Toddler Café which was written by a mom like me for moms like me to try and get the kids to eat. The treasure triangle recipe works well as kids can help and also it has that novelty appeal like a Pizza Pocket or Pop Tart. Only this recipe is high in protein and very nourishing. It contains beans and bananas so the potassium level is high as well. Best of all they are delicious and my kids love them.

All treasure triangles really end up being are puff pastry with fillings inside. The kids can help by brushing egg white on the dough. If you explain to them that the better they do this the shinier the triangle will be they are happy to do it.

One thing about a treasure triangle is that you can put anything it and a kid will eat it even if the kid won't eat the food 'naked' on his or her plate. So they are a great way to sneak some nutrition into the diet.

To make Treasure Triangles you need two tablespoons butter, two bananas sliced in rounds, a can of black beans and some diced onion. You will also need egg wash, frozen puff pastry and some cheddar cheese.

First you sauté the bananas in butter in a flying pan and then move them to a bowl. You do the same thing with onions, which you also add to the bananas. You then add a can of beans to that and you season it with salt. Mash this entire flat with a potato masher or use the back of a fork.

You can then preheat the oven to 425 and begin to unfold the pastry sheets on a floured cutting board. You can put one tablespoon of cheese in the center of each square and then put one tablespoon of the red bean, onion and banana filling inside. You then fold up the dough just like it was a nappy and arrange the triangles on a baking sheet. Bake them until they are puffed up and golden brown which usually takes about twenty minutes.

If you put the raw dough triangles for five minutes before folding the filling up in them you will get a Triangle that is shaped a little nicer.

Although the banana and red bean combination sounds odd it actually isn't. It is very flavorful and it is a great way to sneak some protein into your kid's diet. It is also a very soft food so it is good to serve teething types as well as older types who may be missing teeth.

You can also experiment with other fillings as well. I had some success with applesauce and yams together inside the pastry as well.

Parenting Tips
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Tips For Taming Rowdy Kids

The Barrie Journal in Canada recently printed an interesting article about how to keep those rowdy kids in line. The tips actually come from Alan Kazdin who is the director of the Yale Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic, and he’s president of the American Psychological Association. Still I couldn't help but think his tips were pretty academic, as they sound good in theory.

Here is a condensed version of what I learned in that article. I actually tried a few of these tips to see if they work and unfortunately my conclusion is that they would work on a kid that was a good kid in the first place and not one that had ADD or a real resentment problem.

First of all, the doctor tells us we are supposed to think in terms of the 'positive opposite.' For instance the next time my teen daughter treats me like I am invisible and ignoring me I am not supposed to be negative. Instead of taking the approach that “It drives me crazy when she doesn’t listen,” I am supposed to take a more positive attitude as in “I want her to listen to me the first time I say something.'

I say wanting is one thing and having it happen on the other. It isn't much use practicing 'The Secret' on kids. They like to do the opposite all of the time. I don't think this particular tip is going to be very effective.

His second tip is to use lavish praise on your child. I have actually tried this one. Now I have a very conceited teen who thinks that she should be lavishly praised all of the time. She is still rowdy too. She thinks she is the Queen and flirts too much with men. I try not to criticize her but I think there is such a thing as raising a teen that is too cocky.

Another tip from this book which is called the Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child is to not punish the child. I think I do agree with this one if you have a defiant teen. The reason is that punishing them whips up their adrenalin and makes them even more rowdy. When it comes to these types of kids, what you resist seems to persist.

Furthermore punishment really does seem to affect these defiant kids because they are so sensitive in the first place.

So what do you do exactly if you do have a defiant kid? My police are mainly to try and praise a little more and punish a little less to see if I can achieve a little balance. The problem with this book by Alan Kazin is that it simply does not take into account that my daughter might not even want my approval. The assumption that children do want your approval all of the time is the great flaw that is in that work.

Parenting Tips
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