Yummy to My Tummy: Sizzling Flounder

*This delicious fish, from the March 2010 issue of Southern Living, was dinner tonight, along with Carmelized Green Beans. (Thanks, Rachel!) It was a crowd pleaser & was really easy. I used frozen flounder fillets that had the skin removed & were pretty thin, so I cooked it a couple of minutes less than directed. Enjoy!

Sizzling Flounder

1/4 C grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp paprika
4 (6-oz) flounder fillets
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 C butter
2 T fresh lemon juice

Place one oven rack 5 inches from heat; place a second rack in middle of oven. Combine Parmesan cheese & paprika. Season fish with salt & pepper.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Heat butter in a broiler-safe 9x13 baking dish in oven 8 minutes or until butter is melted & beginning to brown. Place fish in hot butter, skin sides up.

Bake at 450 degrees on middle oven rack 10 minutes. Carefully flip fish, basting with pan juices. Sprinkle with lemon juice & Parmesan mixture. Bake 5 more minutes or just until fish flakes with a fork. Remove from oven; increase oven temperature to broil.

Broil fish on oven rack 5 inches from heat 2-3 minutes or until bubbly & golden brown.

Arts & Crafts

On days that we're at home, the kids need projects to break up their day of playing, especially when it's just too hot to stay outside all day. So lately, we've been doing some paint with water...
making red, white & blue bead necklaces...& painting original masterpieces.

Jake informed me that his is a picture of a skunk:Mal's, in case you can't tell, is a portrait of her Daddy:

Fashionista

You have to be really cute to pull off this look. Luckily, she fits the bill. And she's surprisingly talented at walking in Mommy's wedge heels!

Best Seats in the House

I walked into the kitchen the other day to this scene:
My little rebels decided that they were plenty big enough to climb up onto the bar stools by themselves & enjoy their drinks from a higher vantage point. Obviously, they're almost three years old, so it's not surprising that they are able to do this, but up until now, they hadn't tried. Mallory already fell off once, mid-dismount. I see injuries in our future.

Is Your Green Light On?

This is a frequently asked question in our household these days, & it all stems from possibly the best thirty dollars I've ever spent.

A couple of months ago, Jake & Mallory suddenly began waking up much earlier than they had been previously. They also shrunk their afternoon nap down from a solid 2-3 hours to an hour, tops. I know that I've been blessed with awesome sleepers & that not everyone is so fortunate, but their extreme crankiness led me to believe that they did, in fact, need those hours they were missing. When they showed up in our bedroom at 5:55 one Saturday morning, we'd had enough.

Enter the Onaroo OK to Wake alarm clock, aka "my little lifesaver!"It glows green whenever it's okay for the kids to get out of bed, either in the morning or after nap time. We have it set to 7:00 for mornings & use a two-hour timer on it for naps. Our explanation to the twins was that it was okay for them to be awake early, as long as they stayed quietly in their beds until the green light came on.

We've had our rough days, but this has drastically improved the amount of sleep they're getting & cut down on all of those early ventures out of bed. I think it just helps for them to have some tangible reason for staying in bed, other than just the fact that Mommy said so. Luckily, they're three-year-old brains haven't yet grappled with the idea that the green light's authority is ultimately determined by the time Mommy sets for it to light up!