Space- The Final FUNtier!

Welcome to Friday Family Fun Night! The Space Edition!

We spent the afternoon watching "Wall-E" and making our very own alien hats!

It is amazing the amount of fun you can have with construction paper, pipe cleaners, markers and glue. In our house, a good stash of emergency art supplies is a must! 

The highlight of our outer space dinner was this very fun "Solar System Salad". We use large naval oranges sliced in circles to make the Sun, slices of Star Fruit for stars, and made melon balls as the moons and planets (we used a small watermelon so they would look like Mars!) My children thought that this was possibly the coolest thing I have ever placed in front of them and it was so simple. This was also the first time they have had Star Fruit. They LOVED it, and why not, it is delicious and looks like stars!

The remainder of our dinner requires a little more imagination to grasp the vision. We served delicious slow roasted pork tenderloin on a bed of whipped sweet potatoes with a baked apple on top. This was supposed to be a flying saucer. Can you see it? The potatoes are supposed to be the steam or smoke coming out of the bottom of the saucer. Anyway, my kids went for it. They love these dinners an get really into the theme and making the food fun. So naturally, we had to cut up the pork and the apples for the kids. My four year old then said "Mom! My space ship crashed into the mud and broke!!" OK, that vision worked. I love my kids. We also served this dinner with a side of delicious green beans. We had an idea to make them into aliens, but everyone just wanted to eat, so for the night we just called them "Alien Tentacles".

Recipes:

Pork Tenderloin (This is not really a recipe... but it is what I did!)

Dust with Sea Salt, Black Pepper and Thyme. Place in a glass casserole dish and bake at 350 Degrees for 2 hours. This for so tender and juicy. We loved it!


"Whipped Sweet Potatoes"

3 Large Sweet Potatoes (Peeled and cubed)
1/4 Cup Coconut Cream
1 Tbsp Ghee
1 Tbsp Cinnamon
1/2 Tbsp Nutmeg
1 tsp Vanilla
2 Tbsp Pure Organic Honey
Salt to taste

Place peeled and cubed sweet potatoes in a large pot and bring to boil. Cook covered until potatoes are fork tender, about 20 minutes. Drain water. Mix remaining ingredients together with the sweet potatoes and mash until they reach desired consistency. These were sweet and delicious... but not the same as those Thanksgiving Dinner Sweet Potatoes all covered in marshmallows. Sweet potatoes are an incredible super food so I have been searching for a way to get my children to enjoy them. This recipe did the trick... or maybe it was that I presented it as part of a space ship, either way, I will take it!

"Baked Apple"

Cut apples in half and removed the core (I actually used my melon baller to remove the core which worked wonderfully). I drizzled just a touch or honey in each apple slice, placed them in a glass baking dish and baked for about 30 minutes at 350 Degrees or until the apple was soft, but not gooey.

There you have it. We wrapped up the evening with a couple episodes of the original Star Trek series, with a clean up break in between episodes. We must start each day with a clean kitchen or it seems as though no one gets to eat!

"Live Long and Prosper!" -Mr. Spock