Delaware's Caribbean Fiesta!

Delaware!  The Diamond State. Jamal Bin-Yusif is the winner of the 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge with his creation of "Caribbean Fiesta!" We got to meet Jamal and his mom a few times while waiting to meet Mrs. Obama.

He was interviewed a few times by radio and TV broadcasts about what inspired him to create this dish.  WDEL 101.7FM and PRI's The World covered Jamal's recipe via radio broadcasts.  

Delaware is the second smallest state and has only 3 counties.  We picked up "From Sea to Shining Sea: Delaware" by Amy Miller and "America the Beautiful: Delaware" by Ann Heinrichs to learn more about the First State (it was the first one to approve the US Constitution!)

There is a lot of water in Delaware - about 8% of its land area is covered by wetlands.  They specialize in fresh seafood due to its long coastline.  The Pennsylvania border is called the "Twelve-Mile Circle" since its border is a perfect arc!  Our current Vice President Joe Biden is from Delaware.

Since we are big fans of the National Parks, we found the "First State National Historic Park" and above is a picture of the historic Dover Green.  Since it's getting close to Halloween, we found out that Rehoboth & Dewey Beaches host a Sea Witch Festival, which looks like so much fun:

Now - onto Jamal's Healthy Lunchtime Challenge award-winning recipe: Caribbean Fiesta!  The flavors of this recipe were inspired by his Jamaican born grandparents.  First, we assemble all the ingredients.  We had both green & orange bell peppers that are hiding in our fridge (I forgot to add them to the picture!)

And it was a simple cook of the chicken & chop of the veggies - it was a super fun, simple and healthy recipe.  We decided to create a nacho bar where the kids could add their own healthy toppings:

And zap it in the microwave to melt the cheese a little and voila!  We have a delicious, fun meal for our family.  The best part were the leftover, chopped fresh veggies to add to our morning eggs and other various healthy recipes.  Thanks Jamal for creating this award-winning recipe.  We will serve it up for future make-your-own-nacho parties!

Connecticut's Springtime Lunchtime!

Connecticut - the Nutmeg state!  Although it's not springtime - in fact, we are entering into our favorite season: fall!  Today, we are making Kalaya Moody's award-winning recipe from the 2016 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge.  We met Kalaya, her mother & grandmother several times while we were in Washington DC.  In fact, without even knowing it, we rode on the same United Airlines plane from Hartford, CT to DC!  They were also our neighbors at the Westin Georgetown Hotel.

There is a cute video that the Hartford Courant put out that shows Kalaya making her recipe. Other media outlets also focused in on this creative chef:  Fox 61, the Windsor Patch, and WFSB.com are just a few articles that featured Kalaya.  One of the big sponsors of the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge was the Newman's Own Foundation, which is located in Connecticut.  Kalaya recently visited their headquarters and made a few healthy meals with them!

As a family, we have visited Connecticut a few times.  Last year we met up with good friends at the Portland Agricultural Fair and we regularly fly out of the Bradley International Airport in Windsor, CT.  Even though Connecticut is only a hop, skip and a jump away from us, we still want to learn a little something more about its history.  We checked out "N is for Nutmeg: A Connecticut Alphabet" by Elissa D. Grodin.  There's lots of rich history in this state - for the literary fans, we learned that Mark Twain settled in Hartford, CT and wrote the famous Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.  Uncle Tom's Cabin was written here by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Prudence Crandall is Connecticut's state heroine because she allowed an African-American girl (Sarah Harris) to be educated in her school way back in the 1830s.  And for our next venture to Connecticut, we hope to visit Dinosaur State Park and learn about these prehistoric creatures!

Now, onto Kalaya's award winning Springtime Lunchtime recipe!  First, we gather all of our ingredients:

Then onto the re-creation of this yummy recipe!  There were several parts to this so we created the Egg Birds Nests first:

We had added help with our cute little neighborhood friend - it was a full kitchen with many hands helping out!

For the French Toast Flowers, we didn't have a flower cookie cutter so we used a variety of holiday cut-outs.  The kids had the most fun with this process:

Kalaya serves up this recipe with a fruit smoothie so we decided to do the same:

Here are the variety of plated up meals:

And now we get to dig in!  Yummy Kalaya!  Thanks for getting into the kitchen and being so creative with this recipe.  We loved it!