June 20, 2024 • 24 mins
My oldest is turning 12 this week and I thought it was the perfect time to round up our favorite family food traditions around birthdays. Some of these have been tradtions since I was a child and I want to continue their legacy and document them in my recipe binder for our family.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hi everybody. I'm Kelsey Nixon and this is Kitchen Prescription,
the podcast you listen to when you don't know what
to make for dinner. Today is episode eighty eight Birthday
food Traditions. It's a big week in my household. My
oldest turns twelve? Twelve? Can you even believe that? I
certainly can't. I'm officially raising a tween and as a result,
(00:29):
hanging on for to your life. All jokes aside. Allie
is such a great, fun, cool kid and I'm so
so grateful to be his mom. Since birthdays are on
my mind, I wanted to spend just a bit of
time today discussing food traditions surrounding birthdays. Do you have them?
Are they important to you? Maybe you make the same
(00:53):
recipes on birthdays, or one of the same recipes, or
maybe you like to always switch it up. I have
a couple of core birthday memories from my own childhood,
and all of them include food. So it feels important
to me that I do my best to offer those
same traditions and memories rooted in food for my own kids.
But before we really get into that, let's do what
(01:14):
we always do on the podcast and start by giving
you three recipe ideas you could throw on your meal
plan for the week. These are all super friendly, very
easy summer meals, all right. First up, skillet Italian chicken. Now,
this is a recipe that's coming from our summer five
ingredient recipe lineup. It is so simple. So what I
(01:40):
did is I love cooking for my pantry during the
summer because if you're like on vacation, We've just been
on vacation, and you come back and you need to
make dinner and you feel like you have nothing. I
like having some recipes on hand that I can rely
on my pantry for and this is one of those.
So the shortcut ingredient includes is Italian dressing. Now can
(02:04):
I make an Italian vinagrette quickly? You bet? You bet?
I can, no problem. But there is something about having
a shortcut Italian dressing on hand for a quick chicken marinade,
to quickly throw on a pasta salad, or in this case,
to make my skillet Italian chicken. The five primary ingredients
(02:26):
are boneless, skinless, thinly cut chicken breasts or cutlets. You
could really use any chicken, some Italian dressing obviously, A
red onion, cherry, tomatoes, and grated palm. If you happen
to have Italian parsley, that's great too. But you basically
put it all on the skillet and leaded zimmer and
it's dealish, especially when you serve it with pasta on
(02:49):
the side, or even like like a Caesar salad mix
or something like that, like just super super simple. I
happen to be partial to the Olive Garden Italian dressing.
I don't know if that is because of some deeply
rooted childhood memories for the breadsticks, salad and soup combo
(03:13):
at Olive Garden. If it is, I'm not mad about it.
But it just happens to be a really good vinegrette
you can buy at the store. Costco also sells it,
and more than anything else, I use it as a
chicken marinate, like a marinad for grilled chicken in the summer,
So skillet Italian chicken. If you're looking for a quick,
(03:34):
five ingredients summer meal that does not require to turn
your oven on for try it. It's also very pretty.
It's very colorful, okay. Next the heat is with tomatioguacamoli.
This is a recipe and recipe club that you can
either make in a skillet or on a sheet pan.
I love fajetas, especially to kind of mix up our
(03:55):
traditional like Taco Tuesday nights or we like probably have
Mexican once a week, and fajedas kind of take us
out of our traditional go to's. But what really makes
this recipet delicious is the tomatillo guacamole. Now, you could
make traditional guacamole and be fine. You don't even have
to make guacamole with these fajtas. But tomatillos are probably
(04:18):
an ingredient you're not gonna have on hand or biregularly.
You should be able to get them at nearly any
grocery store. But they kind of look like a green
tomato and they are kind of like citrusy. They are
so delicious. It's found in a lot of salsa verites,
would be your favorite Mexican restaurants, and it's just so good.
(04:41):
So this is a recipe I developed for Food Network
years ago, super popular. It's got avocado in it, tomatillos lime,
so yummy. So the fijitas are pretty simple. I can
kind of throw those together with my peppers and onions
in the skillet or on the sheet pan. But making
the tomatillo guacamole just makes it recipe feel extra special,
so give that a try. And then finally on our
(05:04):
plan is pineapple barbecue port kebobs. So I am using
barbecue sauce also for my pantry this week. Could I
make my own? Absolutely, but it's summer and I want
it easy, So I'm going to use the barbecue sauce
to marinate my chicken and to baste my chicken. I
am going to serve that with some pineapple because I
(05:26):
will already have peppers and onions because of the Fijidas.
We're going to use this on the grill as well
and just get a totally different flavor profile so it
doesn't feel like we're eating the same thing. But super Yimmy,
give me the barbecue sauce paired with the pineapple, some
grilled chicken, maybe little cilantroll lime rice on the side. Done. Okay,
they are your recipes for the week. Couple of ideas.
(05:48):
You can find and print them all in Recipe Club
individually or in our weekly meal plan with an easy
to follow shopping lists broken down by recipe Recipe Club
is an ad free recipe experience, so you'll never see
any banner ads, long blog posts, or drawn out stories
on our site. Every recipe includes a short how to video,
usually under two minutes. It includes nutrition information. The ingredient
(06:12):
amounts are all incorporated into the method, making that experience
as easy as possible. We offer parent and picky eater
plate suggestions, and so much more. It's no surprise to
you guys that I'm a fan of cooking from a
printed recipe rather than my phone. I love having printed
copies of the recipes that I love and make most
often in my recipe binder. If you feel similarly, make
(06:37):
sure you check out our recipe Binder, which is the
perfect foundational piece for creating a place where you can
store and cook those recipes that you're making most often.
You can find more details about both Recipe Club and
the Recipe Binder at Kelsey Nixon dot com. And don't
forget that you can save twenty bucks when you bundle
those two items together. Okay, let's jump into the back
(06:58):
half of the podcast into discuss birthday food traditions. Like
I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, my oldest
has a very big birthday this week. Because he's my
oldest sometimes I stress that I'm screwing him up and
not doing things how I had hoped, because I'm still
(07:20):
just trying to figure it all out, and I'm hoping
other moms out there can relate. I've never been a
tween mom before. I don't know what I'm doing. But
then I try and extend myself from grace that it's
never too late to start a tradition or make a memory.
In fact, I think that many of the things he'll
remember from his childhood will come from this next chapter
(07:41):
of his life. One of the reasons I feel so
passionately about food and cooking is because of the connection
that comes along with it. In fact, I care way
more about the connection than I do the recipes or
how the food tastes. Now obviously want the recipes to
be good and the food taste delicious, I really do
care most about the people that I'm sharing those meals
(08:03):
with and the rituals that we're making part of our
family culture. So when it comes to birthdays, that feels important.
I've been thinking about this a lot this week, and
the traditions that we have in place and if there
are any other birthday traditions we might want to start.
Whenever I have feelings like this is a mom where
(08:27):
those feelings start creeping in where I'm not doing enough
or I wish I would have done this, I ask
myself this question, what is important to me about this?
And maybe why is it important to me? Having birthday
traditions might not feel that important to you, And if
that's the case, great, you get to decide what's important
(08:47):
to you. So when I ask that question to myself,
there's it's definitely feels like, yes, this feels important to me.
I desire to have some sort of birthday food tradition.
Not only do I want to play them out, but
I also want to write them down and keep them
in a place that's easy to reference. If we determine
(09:09):
some of those traditions as a family now, then that
means one less decision I have to make on actual birthdays,
which I'm all for. Reduce all the decisions I have
to make, and I think it will feel a little
bit more sentimental and meaningful, and I know that's going
to fill my cup as a mom. So the first
(09:30):
suggestion I have regarding birthday food traditions is to ask
your family now if they can define any traditions around
birthdays or if they'd like to make any traditions. Ask yourself,
ask your people. Are there things you look forward to,
things that they have memories of doing. So I did
this exercise, ask my own family, and this is what
(09:51):
they said. The first thing that came up was this
chocolate cake. And it's a chocolate cake that my husband
always requests on his birthday because it's the chocolate cake
that his mom made for him, and my kids love it.
And I'm gonna be real, vulnerable, open and honest about
this cake. Ay, it is delicious, but guys, this is
(10:12):
a cake that comes from a box. This is essentially
a doctored up boxed cake recipe. Now I have nothing
like I have no problem with that. It's a chocolate
pudding cake. It's really delicious. We put raspberries on top.
It's so good. But I am a food person and
(10:32):
I feel like I am capable of doing something beyond
a box cake. But guess what, it doesn't matter. That's
not what it's about. Just like I said one minute ago,
it's not the recipes that are the most important. It's
the tradition, it's the memories, it's it's the connection that
happens because of those recipes. So I need to stop
(10:52):
resisting the chocolate pudding cake and enjoy that delicious chocolate
pudding cake that comes from a box. Anyways, that was
the first thing they said, and it was a good
lesson to me as a mom that like, yes, Kelsey,
that is the signature birthday cake in the family. That's
what people want. Okay. A couple of other things is
my cute daughter Nora said, when you make the chicken pie,
(11:17):
she meant chicken pop pie with my name on it.
So this is such a this is such a fun thing.
But when Nora was born, oh, this is gosh. I'm
trying to decide how deep we go to this story.
I have a really unique story about how my daughter
Nora was born. We went through years of trying to
(11:37):
build a family. It was very difficult. We unfortunately got
to the point where it was not safe for me
to carry children, and my doctor recommended that we are
great candidates for gestational surrogacy, and I had a sister
in law offer to carry a baby for us. Guys,
we got to do a whole episode about this that
(11:57):
was a lot in two sentences. I've got some light
bubbles on my Instagram if you're interested, But just know
it was wild. It was so wild. But come with
me to the point. The night before Nora is born. Okay,
my sister in law, Betsy, of Betsy's Best Bets, she
is truly the best, had offered to carry Nora. And
(12:18):
we went through years of trying to get Nora. And
she was scheduled to be induced because of some conditions
she had. And get this, she delivered Nora on her
youngest son's birthday. So Nora and her cousin Max have
the same birthday. I promise this is going somewhere. Hang
with me here. And it is the night before she's
(12:38):
about to have my baby, and we're at her house
obviously because we're there, and she's wanting to do something
special for Max, and so she had made chicken pop
pies because that's what he always likes. And you take
the pie crust, and you take many cookie cutters, or
you could just use a para knick to do it,
(12:59):
and you carve out the name of whoever's birthday is
so for her son, name was Max, and you put
it on top, you bake it off, you pull out
this chicken pot pie and it says Max or Nora
on the front and are on top, and it's so cute.
So Betsy had done this for her son right before
she had Nora, and I thought, you know what, this
(13:19):
is such a fun tradition. And so now on Nora's birthday,
we make chicken pot pie and we put Nora's name
on top. And it's such a fun way for us
to remember, take us back to that night before she
was born, to carry on that family food tradition. And
I love it. I love it. And she's a November birthday,
so it's a perfect time of year to have chicken
(13:40):
pot pie, and so that is one thing she associates
with her birthday. My son Allie also said, you know
when you do the cinnamon rolls and the number, So
I like to do cinnamon rolls, kind of lay the
cinnamon rolls in the number of how old they are,
like on a sheet pan, so they share it'll be twelve.
I love this. I love that they remember these things,
(14:00):
but they aren't written down, and it would be easy
to forget these things. So I want to write it down.
And I want to go even one step further because
this is something important to me, and I want to
add these recipes to our Recipe Club recipe template, which
is really beautiful. It makes a printed recipe look as
if it's a page straight out of a cookbook. Print
them out and add them to our recipe binder behind
(14:23):
our holidays tap, where I keep all of the recipes
that I make for signature holidays. That way, when someone
has a birthday coming up, I know where I can
find the chocolate putting birthday cake, or the chicken pop
pie or the cinnamon rolls. So that's just a couple
of ideas of how I plan to carry on food
(14:43):
birthday food traditions. And I'm totally open to making more
birthday food traditions, but for now, that is that is
something I really want to do. Now, think about it.
Do you have any food memories from your childhood that
you'd want to continue, like Robbie, my husband, the pudding cake.
In fact, it's very sweet as mom passed literally right
(15:05):
before Alie was born, so almost twelve years ago, and
every year I search in my email for when she
sent me the recipe, and that is a really touching
thing for me to think about my mother in law
passing on that recipe. I would hate it if that
recipe somehow, you know, fell off the phase of the
(15:27):
earth and we forgot about it. So I'm going to
print it and put it somewhere special that I know
it exists. There are other things, like I think when
I was growing up, I'm almost certain that whoever's birthday
it was, you got to pick a restaurant for dinner
that night, and we didn't go out to eat that often,
so that felt really special. That's a great tradition. Once again,
don't get so hung up on the recipe that you
(15:48):
ignore the connection piece that could happen. Maybe it's something
that you do at the table, so regardless of what
you're eating on that person's birthday, we all go around
and say our favorite thing about twelve year old Ali
or thirty nine year old Kelsey, like whatever it may be,
(16:08):
all right, you're a few other ideas. Maybe you have
a signature family cake recipe, It's okay if it's from
a box. I have a delicious, delicious yellow birthday cake
recipe and recipe club that w'll knock your socks off.
Maybe there's your birthday breakfast request. Maybe you let the
birthday person pick breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the day.
And if it's your four year old and they pick
(16:30):
lucky Charms for breakfast, mac and cheese for wants, and
chicken nuggets for dinner, you just do it because they
are in charge for the day. Another thing we've done
in the past that we haven't done it consistently is
I make these sheet pan nachos, and you could take
two sheet pans and do them in this shape, like
arrange your nachos in the shape or name of sorry
(16:52):
in like the first letter of the person's name for
their birthday or their number. So we could make sheet
pan nachos this week in the shape of the number twelve.
That might be kind of fun if we want to
take food totally out of it. Here are some other
ideas for birthday memories or connection. A birthday interview on
camera is so fun if you just pull out your
(17:12):
phone and you ask them a couple of questions on
their birthday about who their friends were at that age,
their favorite memories from being that age. That's always really fun.
You could do a birthday questionnaire. You could send your
kid an annual letter or email on their birthday. I
love the idea of taking a portrait on their birthday.
My sister does that, and it's such a beautiful tradition.
(17:34):
Even something as simple as writing down what they receive
for their birthday that year. Just think about it. This
is a great time to kind of reflect on that
it's something I'm doing, all right. Finally, let's finish with
our weekly Gimme Five. I share five things that made
my life easier or more enjoyable every week, and I've
got a good list for you this week. So first
(17:55):
on this list is my summer break calendar. I've mentioned
this before, it's worth mentioning again. There's a small business
that I love called The Essential Calendar co. I share
them often. I have a code with them, Kelsey ten
gets you ten percent off. But my summer break calendar
arrived this week. I was a little late in ordering it,
but it's never too late. But it arrived and I
(18:18):
did not waste one minute digging in and filling it out.
So what's great about this is it's a calendar, and
the way it's organized is you can see the whole
summer on one page and so I'm able to put
all of our vacations, our swimming lessons, our baseball tournaments
are and it just I can see the whole summer
at a glance. And they have really fun accessories with
(18:42):
washy tape and stickers and it's just great. It's I
love it, and I love supporting them because they're a
fantastic small business and they are very beloved by many people.
So that arrived this week. Also, my Golden Coil planner
arrived this week. So this is my favorite daily planner
that I used, and I typically go through two of
them a year because to do all twelve months in
(19:04):
one the way I use my calendar doesn't work, so
I got to have two. It's a custom planner company.
You go on, you build your planner the way you
like it. My second one for twenty twenty four arrived
this week, and I am giddy with excitement to utilize it.
And you know what's so great is I'm such a
devout daily planner user that I'm looking at my other
(19:25):
planner from the first six months of the year and
it's like a memory book, like going back and saying,
oh my gosh, what was I doing in February, especially
because I almost use it like a little journal in
a sense. But Golden Coil is the best. They are incredible.
They've also offered a discount for you guys if you
are looking for a planner to get you through the
(19:47):
end of the year. And it's actually the exact same
code as my essential calendar code, so that makes it easy.
It's Kelsey ten and that will get you ten percent
off through mid July. I believe it's July tenth. So
such a They very rarely do deals or discounts. It
is a premium product. It's beautiful. I love the way
(20:09):
the paper feels, I love the way it looks. It's
just a great, great product. Okay, next on the list,
we're going to move from calendars, says the type a person,
and into some stuff that's more fun, Harry Potter pop
up books. So we visited my sister in Denver this weekend,
and my youngest Penelope, who is only four, for whatever reason,
(20:29):
has really just jumped on the Harry Potter train, although
she calls it Mary Potter, which is so cute and
so funny. But I have a niece, Kate, who turned
nine while we were there, and She also loves Harry Potter,
and I had never seen these. She had these chapter
books that were pop up or almost interactive, and obviously
(20:52):
my four year old is not reading chapter books, and
so she asks us to read her Harry Potter, but
she wants the story to go faster because of her age,
and so we're usually, you know, kind of summarizing each
chapter as we flip the pages. But these books are
so cool. There's like little interactive elements, like things you
can spin and things you can pop out. I was
(21:13):
so I cannot believe I didn't know about these anyways.
Harry Potter pop up books so cool. Definitely ordered them
and I'm excited to read them with Penny and my
older kids. It's something we can all do together. Okay,
Next is SIPs Club. You guys, this is so cool
a new company that just launched. They were nice enough
(21:34):
to send me a box so that I could try
out the product. They have created kind of like a
daily digestive drink for kids. It helps keep them regular.
It replaces juice, but it feels exciting because it looks
just like the little powdered stuff Mom adds to her drinks.
I love my better Greens and I use those daily,
but the reason I don't share them with my kids
(21:55):
often is many times I use a caffeinated option, or
I use like a better hormones. I'm not exactly sure
I should be giving my kids the hormones. So I
love that SIPs Club is specifically designed for kids. They
have both a protein option and a veggie option, which
is so great because I'm constantly trying to get more
protein in my kids because they're just picky enough that
(22:15):
it feels a little challenging. The most impressive part they
taste so good. I could not believe how delicious they
taste it. So they're new club. Check them out. You
know I love a club. Recipe club SIPs Club here
for check them out on Instagram. Check out their site
it's just sipsclub dot com, and I once again cannot
believe how delicious these things taste. If you've got kids
(22:38):
who are super picky, don't like veggies, have a tough
time getting protein in them, this could be a great
option for you. Congrats SIPs Club on such an awesome launch,
brilliant product, and I just love anyone who's trying to
solve a problem. Okay, finally number five on the list.
This is not something healthy like SIPs Club. These are
my favorite candy right now. I don't know if you
(22:59):
guys know this about me, but my biggest indulgence is
like gas station candy. I love candy. And there's a
new candy out that I can't quit. It is Mamba.
So we've heard of Mamba before. They have the sticks,
they have their regular choose, and now they come in
strips like think of like miniature airhead shaped candies that
are Mambas. Oh my gosh. Who knew that the shape
(23:22):
of a candy could change the experience so much? I'm obsessed.
I love them. You can get them on Amazon. I
hide them from my family because I like them so much.
Mamba candy strips. I'm here for it. All right. That's
it for today. You guys, make sure you subscribe to
the podcast so that you never miss an episode. This
podcast is meant to be a quick twenty to thirty
minute listen while you map out your own wheels for
(23:44):
the week and help support you setting up your own
simple dinner system. Next week, I'll be doing my monthly
Kitchen Office Hours episode, so send me your questions. You
can send me an email at Hello at Kelsey Nixon
dot com, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.
Thanks so much for listening to day. I'm so glad
you're here. Until next time, happy cooking. I'm Kelsey and
(24:06):
look forward to chatting with you next week
Hi everybody. I'm Kelsey Nixon and this is Kitchen Prescription,
the podcast you listen to when you don't know what
to make for dinner. Today is episode eighty eight Birthday
food Traditions. It's a big week in my household. My
oldest turns twelve? Twelve? Can you even believe that? I
certainly can't. I'm officially raising a tween and as a result,
(00:29):
hanging on for to your life. All jokes aside. Allie
is such a great, fun, cool kid and I'm so
so grateful to be his mom. Since birthdays are on
my mind, I wanted to spend just a bit of
time today discussing food traditions surrounding birthdays. Do you have them?
Are they important to you? Maybe you make the same
(00:53):
recipes on birthdays, or one of the same recipes, or
maybe you like to always switch it up. I have
a couple of core birthday memories from my own childhood,
and all of them include food. So it feels important
to me that I do my best to offer those
same traditions and memories rooted in food for my own kids.
But before we really get into that, let's do what
(01:14):
we always do on the podcast and start by giving
you three recipe ideas you could throw on your meal
plan for the week. These are all super friendly, very
easy summer meals, all right. First up, skillet Italian chicken. Now,
this is a recipe that's coming from our summer five
ingredient recipe lineup. It is so simple. So what I
(01:40):
did is I love cooking for my pantry during the
summer because if you're like on vacation, We've just been
on vacation, and you come back and you need to
make dinner and you feel like you have nothing. I
like having some recipes on hand that I can rely
on my pantry for and this is one of those.
So the shortcut ingredient includes is Italian dressing. Now can
(02:04):
I make an Italian vinagrette quickly? You bet? You bet?
I can, no problem. But there is something about having
a shortcut Italian dressing on hand for a quick chicken marinade,
to quickly throw on a pasta salad, or in this case,
to make my skillet Italian chicken. The five primary ingredients
(02:26):
are boneless, skinless, thinly cut chicken breasts or cutlets. You
could really use any chicken, some Italian dressing obviously, A
red onion, cherry, tomatoes, and grated palm. If you happen
to have Italian parsley, that's great too. But you basically
put it all on the skillet and leaded zimmer and
it's dealish, especially when you serve it with pasta on
(02:49):
the side, or even like like a Caesar salad mix
or something like that, like just super super simple. I
happen to be partial to the Olive Garden Italian dressing.
I don't know if that is because of some deeply
rooted childhood memories for the breadsticks, salad and soup combo
(03:13):
at Olive Garden. If it is, I'm not mad about it.
But it just happens to be a really good vinegrette
you can buy at the store. Costco also sells it,
and more than anything else, I use it as a
chicken marinate, like a marinad for grilled chicken in the summer,
So skillet Italian chicken. If you're looking for a quick,
(03:34):
five ingredients summer meal that does not require to turn
your oven on for try it. It's also very pretty.
It's very colorful, okay. Next the heat is with tomatioguacamoli.
This is a recipe and recipe club that you can
either make in a skillet or on a sheet pan.
I love fajetas, especially to kind of mix up our
(03:55):
traditional like Taco Tuesday nights or we like probably have
Mexican once a week, and fajedas kind of take us
out of our traditional go to's. But what really makes
this recipet delicious is the tomatillo guacamole. Now, you could
make traditional guacamole and be fine. You don't even have
to make guacamole with these fajtas. But tomatillos are probably
(04:18):
an ingredient you're not gonna have on hand or biregularly.
You should be able to get them at nearly any
grocery store. But they kind of look like a green
tomato and they are kind of like citrusy. They are
so delicious. It's found in a lot of salsa verites,
would be your favorite Mexican restaurants, and it's just so good.
(04:41):
So this is a recipe I developed for Food Network
years ago, super popular. It's got avocado in it, tomatillos lime,
so yummy. So the fijitas are pretty simple. I can
kind of throw those together with my peppers and onions
in the skillet or on the sheet pan. But making
the tomatillo guacamole just makes it recipe feel extra special,
so give that a try. And then finally on our
(05:04):
plan is pineapple barbecue port kebobs. So I am using
barbecue sauce also for my pantry this week. Could I
make my own? Absolutely, but it's summer and I want
it easy, So I'm going to use the barbecue sauce
to marinate my chicken and to baste my chicken. I
am going to serve that with some pineapple because I
(05:26):
will already have peppers and onions because of the Fijidas.
We're going to use this on the grill as well
and just get a totally different flavor profile so it
doesn't feel like we're eating the same thing. But super Yimmy,
give me the barbecue sauce paired with the pineapple, some
grilled chicken, maybe little cilantroll lime rice on the side. Done. Okay,
they are your recipes for the week. Couple of ideas.
(05:48):
You can find and print them all in Recipe Club
individually or in our weekly meal plan with an easy
to follow shopping lists broken down by recipe Recipe Club
is an ad free recipe experience, so you'll never see
any banner ads, long blog posts, or drawn out stories
on our site. Every recipe includes a short how to video,
usually under two minutes. It includes nutrition information. The ingredient
(06:12):
amounts are all incorporated into the method, making that experience
as easy as possible. We offer parent and picky eater
plate suggestions, and so much more. It's no surprise to
you guys that I'm a fan of cooking from a
printed recipe rather than my phone. I love having printed
copies of the recipes that I love and make most
often in my recipe binder. If you feel similarly, make
(06:37):
sure you check out our recipe Binder, which is the
perfect foundational piece for creating a place where you can
store and cook those recipes that you're making most often.
You can find more details about both Recipe Club and
the Recipe Binder at Kelsey Nixon dot com. And don't
forget that you can save twenty bucks when you bundle
those two items together. Okay, let's jump into the back
(06:58):
half of the podcast into discuss birthday food traditions. Like
I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, my oldest
has a very big birthday this week. Because he's my
oldest sometimes I stress that I'm screwing him up and
not doing things how I had hoped, because I'm still
(07:20):
just trying to figure it all out, and I'm hoping
other moms out there can relate. I've never been a
tween mom before. I don't know what I'm doing. But
then I try and extend myself from grace that it's
never too late to start a tradition or make a memory.
In fact, I think that many of the things he'll
remember from his childhood will come from this next chapter
(07:41):
of his life. One of the reasons I feel so
passionately about food and cooking is because of the connection
that comes along with it. In fact, I care way
more about the connection than I do the recipes or
how the food tastes. Now obviously want the recipes to
be good and the food taste delicious, I really do
care most about the people that I'm sharing those meals
(08:03):
with and the rituals that we're making part of our
family culture. So when it comes to birthdays, that feels important.
I've been thinking about this a lot this week, and
the traditions that we have in place and if there
are any other birthday traditions we might want to start.
Whenever I have feelings like this is a mom where
(08:27):
those feelings start creeping in where I'm not doing enough
or I wish I would have done this, I ask
myself this question, what is important to me about this?
And maybe why is it important to me? Having birthday
traditions might not feel that important to you, And if
that's the case, great, you get to decide what's important
(08:47):
to you. So when I ask that question to myself,
there's it's definitely feels like, yes, this feels important to me.
I desire to have some sort of birthday food tradition.
Not only do I want to play them out, but
I also want to write them down and keep them
in a place that's easy to reference. If we determine
(09:09):
some of those traditions as a family now, then that
means one less decision I have to make on actual birthdays,
which I'm all for. Reduce all the decisions I have
to make, and I think it will feel a little
bit more sentimental and meaningful, and I know that's going
to fill my cup as a mom. So the first
(09:30):
suggestion I have regarding birthday food traditions is to ask
your family now if they can define any traditions around
birthdays or if they'd like to make any traditions. Ask yourself,
ask your people. Are there things you look forward to,
things that they have memories of doing. So I did
this exercise, ask my own family, and this is what
(09:51):
they said. The first thing that came up was this
chocolate cake. And it's a chocolate cake that my husband
always requests on his birthday because it's the chocolate cake
that his mom made for him, and my kids love it.
And I'm gonna be real, vulnerable, open and honest about
this cake. Ay, it is delicious, but guys, this is
(10:12):
a cake that comes from a box. This is essentially
a doctored up boxed cake recipe. Now I have nothing
like I have no problem with that. It's a chocolate
pudding cake. It's really delicious. We put raspberries on top.
It's so good. But I am a food person and
(10:32):
I feel like I am capable of doing something beyond
a box cake. But guess what, it doesn't matter. That's
not what it's about. Just like I said one minute ago,
it's not the recipes that are the most important. It's
the tradition, it's the memories, it's it's the connection that
happens because of those recipes. So I need to stop
(10:52):
resisting the chocolate pudding cake and enjoy that delicious chocolate
pudding cake that comes from a box. Anyways, that was
the first thing they said, and it was a good
lesson to me as a mom that like, yes, Kelsey,
that is the signature birthday cake in the family. That's
what people want. Okay. A couple of other things is
my cute daughter Nora said, when you make the chicken pie,
(11:17):
she meant chicken pop pie with my name on it.
So this is such a this is such a fun thing.
But when Nora was born, oh, this is gosh. I'm
trying to decide how deep we go to this story.
I have a really unique story about how my daughter
Nora was born. We went through years of trying to
(11:37):
build a family. It was very difficult. We unfortunately got
to the point where it was not safe for me
to carry children, and my doctor recommended that we are
great candidates for gestational surrogacy, and I had a sister
in law offer to carry a baby for us. Guys,
we got to do a whole episode about this that
(11:57):
was a lot in two sentences. I've got some light
bubbles on my Instagram if you're interested, But just know
it was wild. It was so wild. But come with
me to the point. The night before Nora is born. Okay,
my sister in law, Betsy, of Betsy's Best Bets, she
is truly the best, had offered to carry Nora. And
(12:18):
we went through years of trying to get Nora. And
she was scheduled to be induced because of some conditions
she had. And get this, she delivered Nora on her
youngest son's birthday. So Nora and her cousin Max have
the same birthday. I promise this is going somewhere. Hang
with me here. And it is the night before she's
(12:38):
about to have my baby, and we're at her house
obviously because we're there, and she's wanting to do something
special for Max, and so she had made chicken pop
pies because that's what he always likes. And you take
the pie crust, and you take many cookie cutters, or
you could just use a para knick to do it,
(12:59):
and you carve out the name of whoever's birthday is
so for her son, name was Max, and you put
it on top, you bake it off, you pull out
this chicken pot pie and it says Max or Nora
on the front and are on top, and it's so cute.
So Betsy had done this for her son right before
she had Nora, and I thought, you know what, this
(13:19):
is such a fun tradition. And so now on Nora's birthday,
we make chicken pot pie and we put Nora's name
on top. And it's such a fun way for us
to remember, take us back to that night before she
was born, to carry on that family food tradition. And
I love it. I love it. And she's a November birthday,
so it's a perfect time of year to have chicken
(13:40):
pot pie, and so that is one thing she associates
with her birthday. My son Allie also said, you know
when you do the cinnamon rolls and the number, So
I like to do cinnamon rolls, kind of lay the
cinnamon rolls in the number of how old they are,
like on a sheet pan, so they share it'll be twelve.
I love this. I love that they remember these things,
(14:00):
but they aren't written down, and it would be easy
to forget these things. So I want to write it down.
And I want to go even one step further because
this is something important to me, and I want to
add these recipes to our Recipe Club recipe template, which
is really beautiful. It makes a printed recipe look as
if it's a page straight out of a cookbook. Print
them out and add them to our recipe binder behind
(14:23):
our holidays tap, where I keep all of the recipes
that I make for signature holidays. That way, when someone
has a birthday coming up, I know where I can
find the chocolate putting birthday cake, or the chicken pop
pie or the cinnamon rolls. So that's just a couple
of ideas of how I plan to carry on food
(14:43):
birthday food traditions. And I'm totally open to making more
birthday food traditions, but for now, that is that is
something I really want to do. Now, think about it.
Do you have any food memories from your childhood that
you'd want to continue, like Robbie, my husband, the pudding cake.
In fact, it's very sweet as mom passed literally right
(15:05):
before Alie was born, so almost twelve years ago, and
every year I search in my email for when she
sent me the recipe, and that is a really touching
thing for me to think about my mother in law
passing on that recipe. I would hate it if that
recipe somehow, you know, fell off the phase of the
(15:27):
earth and we forgot about it. So I'm going to
print it and put it somewhere special that I know
it exists. There are other things, like I think when
I was growing up, I'm almost certain that whoever's birthday
it was, you got to pick a restaurant for dinner
that night, and we didn't go out to eat that often,
so that felt really special. That's a great tradition. Once again,
don't get so hung up on the recipe that you
(15:48):
ignore the connection piece that could happen. Maybe it's something
that you do at the table, so regardless of what
you're eating on that person's birthday, we all go around
and say our favorite thing about twelve year old Ali
or thirty nine year old Kelsey, like whatever it may be,
(16:08):
all right, you're a few other ideas. Maybe you have
a signature family cake recipe, It's okay if it's from
a box. I have a delicious, delicious yellow birthday cake
recipe and recipe club that w'll knock your socks off.
Maybe there's your birthday breakfast request. Maybe you let the
birthday person pick breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the day.
And if it's your four year old and they pick
(16:30):
lucky Charms for breakfast, mac and cheese for wants, and
chicken nuggets for dinner, you just do it because they
are in charge for the day. Another thing we've done
in the past that we haven't done it consistently is
I make these sheet pan nachos, and you could take
two sheet pans and do them in this shape, like
arrange your nachos in the shape or name of sorry
(16:52):
in like the first letter of the person's name for
their birthday or their number. So we could make sheet
pan nachos this week in the shape of the number twelve.
That might be kind of fun if we want to
take food totally out of it. Here are some other
ideas for birthday memories or connection. A birthday interview on
camera is so fun if you just pull out your
(17:12):
phone and you ask them a couple of questions on
their birthday about who their friends were at that age,
their favorite memories from being that age. That's always really fun.
You could do a birthday questionnaire. You could send your
kid an annual letter or email on their birthday. I
love the idea of taking a portrait on their birthday.
My sister does that, and it's such a beautiful tradition.
(17:34):
Even something as simple as writing down what they receive
for their birthday that year. Just think about it. This
is a great time to kind of reflect on that
it's something I'm doing, all right. Finally, let's finish with
our weekly Gimme Five. I share five things that made
my life easier or more enjoyable every week, and I've
got a good list for you this week. So first
(17:55):
on this list is my summer break calendar. I've mentioned
this before, it's worth mentioning again. There's a small business
that I love called The Essential Calendar co. I share
them often. I have a code with them, Kelsey ten
gets you ten percent off. But my summer break calendar
arrived this week. I was a little late in ordering it,
but it's never too late. But it arrived and I
(18:18):
did not waste one minute digging in and filling it out.
So what's great about this is it's a calendar, and
the way it's organized is you can see the whole
summer on one page and so I'm able to put
all of our vacations, our swimming lessons, our baseball tournaments
are and it just I can see the whole summer
at a glance. And they have really fun accessories with
(18:42):
washy tape and stickers and it's just great. It's I
love it, and I love supporting them because they're a
fantastic small business and they are very beloved by many people.
So that arrived this week. Also, my Golden Coil planner
arrived this week. So this is my favorite daily planner
that I used, and I typically go through two of
them a year because to do all twelve months in
(19:04):
one the way I use my calendar doesn't work, so
I got to have two. It's a custom planner company.
You go on, you build your planner the way you
like it. My second one for twenty twenty four arrived
this week, and I am giddy with excitement to utilize it.
And you know what's so great is I'm such a
devout daily planner user that I'm looking at my other
(19:25):
planner from the first six months of the year and
it's like a memory book, like going back and saying,
oh my gosh, what was I doing in February, especially
because I almost use it like a little journal in
a sense. But Golden Coil is the best. They are incredible.
They've also offered a discount for you guys if you
are looking for a planner to get you through the
(19:47):
end of the year. And it's actually the exact same
code as my essential calendar code, so that makes it easy.
It's Kelsey ten and that will get you ten percent
off through mid July. I believe it's July tenth. So
such a They very rarely do deals or discounts. It
is a premium product. It's beautiful. I love the way
(20:09):
the paper feels, I love the way it looks. It's
just a great, great product. Okay, next on the list,
we're going to move from calendars, says the type a person,
and into some stuff that's more fun, Harry Potter pop
up books. So we visited my sister in Denver this weekend,
and my youngest Penelope, who is only four, for whatever reason,
(20:29):
has really just jumped on the Harry Potter train, although
she calls it Mary Potter, which is so cute and
so funny. But I have a niece, Kate, who turned
nine while we were there, and She also loves Harry Potter,
and I had never seen these. She had these chapter
books that were pop up or almost interactive, and obviously
(20:52):
my four year old is not reading chapter books, and
so she asks us to read her Harry Potter, but
she wants the story to go faster because of her age,
and so we're usually, you know, kind of summarizing each
chapter as we flip the pages. But these books are
so cool. There's like little interactive elements, like things you
can spin and things you can pop out. I was
(21:13):
so I cannot believe I didn't know about these anyways.
Harry Potter pop up books so cool. Definitely ordered them
and I'm excited to read them with Penny and my
older kids. It's something we can all do together. Okay,
Next is SIPs Club. You guys, this is so cool
a new company that just launched. They were nice enough
(21:34):
to send me a box so that I could try
out the product. They have created kind of like a
daily digestive drink for kids. It helps keep them regular.
It replaces juice, but it feels exciting because it looks
just like the little powdered stuff Mom adds to her drinks.
I love my better Greens and I use those daily,
but the reason I don't share them with my kids
(21:55):
often is many times I use a caffeinated option, or
I use like a better hormones. I'm not exactly sure
I should be giving my kids the hormones. So I
love that SIPs Club is specifically designed for kids. They
have both a protein option and a veggie option, which
is so great because I'm constantly trying to get more
protein in my kids because they're just picky enough that
(22:15):
it feels a little challenging. The most impressive part they
taste so good. I could not believe how delicious they
taste it. So they're new club. Check them out. You
know I love a club. Recipe club SIPs Club here
for check them out on Instagram. Check out their site
it's just sipsclub dot com, and I once again cannot
believe how delicious these things taste. If you've got kids
(22:38):
who are super picky, don't like veggies, have a tough
time getting protein in them, this could be a great
option for you. Congrats SIPs Club on such an awesome launch,
brilliant product, and I just love anyone who's trying to
solve a problem. Okay, finally number five on the list.
This is not something healthy like SIPs Club. These are
my favorite candy right now. I don't know if you
(22:59):
guys know this about me, but my biggest indulgence is
like gas station candy. I love candy. And there's a
new candy out that I can't quit. It is Mamba.
So we've heard of Mamba before. They have the sticks,
they have their regular choose, and now they come in
strips like think of like miniature airhead shaped candies that
are Mambas. Oh my gosh. Who knew that the shape
(23:22):
of a candy could change the experience so much? I'm obsessed.
I love them. You can get them on Amazon. I
hide them from my family because I like them so much.
Mamba candy strips. I'm here for it. All right. That's
it for today. You guys, make sure you subscribe to
the podcast so that you never miss an episode. This
podcast is meant to be a quick twenty to thirty
minute listen while you map out your own wheels for
(23:44):
the week and help support you setting up your own
simple dinner system. Next week, I'll be doing my monthly
Kitchen Office Hours episode, so send me your questions. You
can send me an email at Hello at Kelsey Nixon
dot com, or you can send me a DM on Instagram.
Thanks so much for listening to day. I'm so glad
you're here. Until next time, happy cooking. I'm Kelsey and
(24:06):
look forward to chatting with you next week
Host
Kelsey Nixon
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