Posted May 4, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 11 Comments
Welcome to our latest Book of the Month: Sabriel, the first installment in Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy! Sabriel was on my TBR for years before I FINALLY got around to borrowing the audiobook from my library last September. It was sooo good! I love Sabriel as a main character, and did I mention that the audiobook is narrated by Tim Curry? So yeah, there’s that awesomeness too. Plus, some of the foods in the book sound SO delicious that I knew I wanted to make a menu for Sabriel here on blog. So here we go!
When Sabriel first visits the Old Kingdom, she must trek through the snowy, treacherous countryside to her father’s house. Her only sustenance: dried fruit and homemade toffee.
I’ve made fruit chips from apples before, but I’d never tried making more traditional dried fruit. Now seemed like as good a time as any to try! Plus, with a new baby taking up pretty much all my time, I could use some healthy, ready-made snacks to save for emergency munchies! 🙂
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Posted April 27, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 6 Comments
What would a James and the Giant Peach menu be without peaches? A travesty, that’s what. Of course, not just ANY peach recipe will do. I wanted to make something special but simple at the same time. After all, this is a kid’s book we’re talking about! Grilled peaches with ice cream came to mind, and I dressed them up just a little by glazing the peaches with honey and making homemade ice cream with the most glorious of all the spices: CINNAMON. The end result was sweet, refreshing, and delightfully simple. The perfect snack after flying across the ocean on a giant peach!
P.S. The cinnamon ice cream recipe included below is for a Cuisinart ice cream maker and is a slight variation on the vanilla ice cream recipe that comes with the machine.
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Posted April 25, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Uncategorized / 8 Comments
I mentioned a few months back that I would post pictures of our book-themed baby room once we got it all set up. And now it’s FINALLY finished! It took ages, but we’re very pleased with the outcome. Three cheers for postpartum productivity! 😀
As you can see from the pictures, we’ve got a bit of a hobbit theme going on. We had a hobbit baby shower and asked guests to bring a favorite childhood book instead of a card, so it seemed perfect to style the Little Mister’s room after Middle Earth. Plus, we wanted something gender neutral, since we didn’t know if we’d be having a boy or a girl. I love how it turned out, and I’m toying with the idea of theme-ing our future children’s rooms after other favorite books (Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, etc.).
As you can also see from the pictures, there’s no crib. We’re co-sleeping, so the Little Mister currently sleeps in a Pack ‘n Play right next to our bed. As such, his “bedroom” acts more as a nursing and changing room, which we’ll gradually phase into a bedroom as he gets older.
But let’s take a look at some of these awesome accents!
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Posted April 20, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
One group of characters often forgotten from James and the Giant Peach is the Cloud Men (perhaps since they were left out of the movie). In the book, the Cloud Men are responsible for creating such atmospheric phenomenon as rainbows, storms, and snow. When James and companions float past a Cloud Man city in their flying peach, they see Cloud families preparing dinners of fried snowballs.
These sounded delicious, so of course I wanted to make them for the blog! And I knew exactly how I wanted to create my own interpretation: mashed potato balls mixed with bacon and cheese, rolled in panko crumbs, and deep fried. Utterly delicious and fun to make!
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Posted April 18, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Reading Kits / 3 Comments
Time for another reading kit! It’s been a while since I’ve done a children’s book, so I had a good bit of fun throwing this kit together. I’ll admit, it was tempting to make everything peach-themed, but I’m proud to say I branched out and managed to include a lot of other iconic things from the book as well. Enjoy! 🙂
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Posted April 13, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 7 Comments
When I was planning this James and the Giant Peach menu, I obviously had peaches on the brain. But while trying to figure out how to include a tribute to NYC in the menu, all I could think of was APPLES! I tossed around a few options until I hit upon the idea of hand pies. I decided to go the savory route and paired them with cheese, resulting in the final product you see here!
These savory hand pies are filled with melted Gouda and apple slices seasoned with thyme. Oooh that cheese—I couldn’t get enough! The buttery, flaky crust toppd with just the right amount of salt brings it all together into a little package with big flavor. Enjoy! 🙂
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Posted April 11, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Holidays / 1 Comment
Easter is just around the corner, and I’m eager to make some spring-themed Easter recipes for my family get togethers this year. But like most holidays, I run into some problems when deciding what to make for Easter parties.
I usually want something festive and easy to pass around, but I still want it to be unique enough that it’s not just a repeat of what someone else is bringing. Luckily, I’ve developed a repertoire of these sorts of recipes over the past few years of blogging. So I thought I’d share some today! 🙂
Here are my favorite go-to Easter recipes! Enjoy!
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Posted April 6, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 6 Comments
Are y’all ready for a new Book of the Month? I’m really excited about this one. James and the Giant Peach is an old childhood favorite of mine, and when I reread it last year, I couldn’t help thinking what a great menu it would make!
For our first James and the Giant Peach recipe, I’m making an edible version of the “magic green things” he encounters at the beginning of the book. After all, they’re such an iconic part of the story, how could I leave them out?
These sour green gummy worms are my version of a blood orange gummy recipe from Steele House Kitchen. They’re quick to make and actually pretty healthy (they’re sweetened with honey instead of sugar). Plus, you can make them without a special mold! 🙂
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Posted April 4, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Teas / 2 Comments
Hi, everybody! Our new book of the month is James and the Giant Peach, and we’re kicking things off with a custom peach tea!
I already have a white peach tea I love (Becky’s Peach Tea from Tom Sawyer), so when it came time to design a tea for James and the Giant Peach, I decided to challenge myself and try something with more oomph.
I’ll admit, I’m kinda picky when it comes to fruit teas. I want them to be light and delicately sweet—not heavy or cloying. As I searched for options, two Adagio teas caught my eye: Rooibos Peach and Honeybush Apricot. Both varieties have what I like to refer to as a “sunny” flavor (bright and somehow warm), so I decided to blend them together and see what I got! I also added some cream tea to make the flavor profile a bit more unique and threw in some dried apricot pieces to make sure the peachy flavor didn’t get lost in the shuffle. The result was a blend with bright peach flavor and just enough cream to mellow things out. Huzzah! 🙂
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Posted March 30, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
In the episode “Jaynestown,” the crew of the spaceship Serenity stumbles upon a poor town of clay farmers (known as “mudders”) who’ve erected a statue to Jayne in their town center.
As it turns out, Jayne committed an accidental act of generosity during his last visit, and the mudders now consider him to be their hero. Now that he’s back, they sing his praises and treat him to unlimited rounds of mudder’s milk—their alcoholic beverage of choice.
Jayne describes mudder’s milk as “all the protein, vitamins, and carbs of your grandma’s best turkey dinner, plus 15 percent alcohol.” Our version is a vanilla protein milkshake blended with a bit of oats, flax meal, and cinnamon—along with a couple shots of hazelnut Baileys. So drink up and get ready to sing another verse of “The Hero of Canton”!
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