6 Recipes And A Song The Grandkids Will Love xoxo

• 1. Spinach & sun-dried tomato zoodles
• Spinach Fun Facts: Spinach is a cool season crop and belongs to the goose foot family along with Swiss chard and beets. It is low in calories, and is a good source of vitamin C, vitamin A, and minerals, especially iron. Spinach is a native plant of Persia (modern day Iran). It was introduced to China in the 7th century. It was most probably brought to Europe in about the 12th century and to the US in 1806. Reflecting its origin, spinach is still widely known in China as “the Persian Green”. March 26th is National Spinach Day. Spinach is best eaten fresh. It loses nutritional properties with each passing day. Although refrigeration slows the deterioration, half of the major nutrients are lost by the eighth day after harvest. (For long term storage, freeze while fresh.) When fresh, it has crisp leaves. As they deteriorate, the leaves turn limp. There are many varieties of spinach, though they mostly fall into three distinct groups: Savoy (Dark green, crinkly and curly leaves. Commonly found in supermarkets.), Flat/smooth leaf spinach (Most commonly used for canned and processed spinach products, though “baby spinach” also fits in this group. Easier to wash and clean than Savoy.), and Semi-savoy (Hybrid variety with slightly crinkled leaves. It has the same texture as savoy, but it is not as difficult to clean.) “Florentine” is a common part of names of recipes where spinach is a significant ingredient. Florence in Italy was the home town of Catherine de Medici, a lover of spinach, who married the King of France in the 16th century. In the 1930’s U.S. spinach growers credited Popeye with a 33% increase in domestic spinach consumption – a welcome boost to an industry during the depression era. The spinach growing town of Crystal City, Texas, erected a statue of Popeye in 1937. ‘Birds Eye’ was the first company to advertise frozen spinach. It did so in “Life” magazine in 1949.....READ MORE HERE:
• 2. Vegan lemon cheesecakes
• The thing about trivia is it's, well, trivial. Unless they're cake savants or dairy aficionados, most people aren't going to care if the decor at Cheesecake Factory looks like the Eye of Sauron. They'll never ponder the um, sweeter, applications of cheesecake-flavored lube. Luckily, this list isn't for other people. It's for you, reading this website, on National Cheesecake Day, wondering why on earth there's a National Cheesecake Day, asking who comes up with these food days anyhow, debating whether you should go get some cheesecake later on now that you know the occasion, deciding yeah okay maybe you will, and finally, realizing that even if it wasn't National Cheesecake Day, you'd still be procrastinating online with something, so you might as well do it with something relevant. Like an article on random cheesecake facts, may haps. So, without further adieu, may we present this year's round-up of 11 Mildly Interesting Cheesecake Facts for National Cheesecake Day? (Plus a reminder to grab half off cheesecake slices from The Cheesecake Factory today and tomorrow, because you know it's way too expensive otherwise.) Cheesecakes supposedly originated in ancient Greece and were even served to athletes at the first Olympic Games. Evidence of early cheesecakes can be traced to the Greek island of Samos as far back as 2,000 B.C., though the oldest existing written recipe is credited to Roman politician Marcus Cato around the first century B.C. This version was also called "placenta" because of its resemblance to . . . you know......READ MORE HERE:  
• 3. Garlic hummus and roasted vegetable grilled flatbread 
• National Garlic Day may be a holiday best celebrated alone—or with a hefty box of breath mints and a very charitable loved one—but few foods are as deserving of their very own day of recognition as the amazing, edible bulbous plant (okay, “bulbous plant” might not sound super appetizing, but it’s certainly accurate). Celebrate National Garlic Day on April 19 with your favorite garlic-laced meal and a few fun facts about this delicious, flavor-packed add-in that can do almost anything, from reducing your cholesterol to keeping vampires at bay. YOU CAN EAT MORE THAN JUST THE STANDARD GARLIC CLOVE...When you think “garlic,” you inevitably picture garlic cloves, but despite the ubiquity of that particular image of the plant, it’s not the only part you can eat. Hard-neck varieties of garlic produce “scapes,” green shoots that can be especially delicious and tender when they’re young. Think of them as garlic-flavored scallions. They also make a wonderful addition to pestos, soups, and butters. CHINA PRODUCES THE MOST GARLIC...Garlic is native to central Asia and has long popped up in European and African cooking, too. But it's China that currently holds the record for most garlic grown. Per a 2012 study, China grows a staggering two-thirds of the world’s garlic, believed to be around 46 billion pounds per year.......READ MORE HERE:
• 4. Mini blackened salmon sliders
• Salmon are considered “anadromous” which means they live in both fresh and salt water. They are born in freshwater where they spend a few months to a few years (depending on the species) before moving out to the ocean. When it’s time to spawn, they head back to freshwater. Very few other fish can survive in such wide ranges of salinity, and would die if they moved between salt and fresh water the way that salmon do. That’s because when saltwater fish are exposed to freshwater, it can cause their cells to burst. And when freshwater fish are exposed to salt water, it can cause their cells to shrivel, due to a process known as osmoregulation. Luckily salmon have some pretty amazing physiological and behavioral adaptations that allow them to survive in both environments. 2. After living for many years at sea, salmon travel a long distance home to return to the river in which they were born to spawn. Close up of a Sockeye salmon running the rapids when returning to spawn in the lower Adams River, British Columbia. There are many theories about how they are able to do this. Some state that salmon use the Earth’s magnetic field to guide them, while others say they use their strong sense of smell to guide them home. Habitat changes and losses can affect the salmon’s ability to return to their native spawning river, posing a threat to the survival of future salmon generations. Salmon have a really strong sense of smell. A Sockeye salmon, part of the annual migration, in the Adams River, British Columbia, Atlantic salmon can smell one drop of scent in an area the equivalent of ten Olympic size pools! Salmon change colour! Salmon can be three different colours over the course of their life. For example, check out the picture above: juvenile sockeye salmon are light coloured and spotted, and during their adult years in the ocean, they are silvery blue. When it’s time to spawn, the adult bodies turn a brilliant red and their heads turn green........READ MORE HERE:
• 5. Chocolate chocolate chip cookies
• Chocolate Chip Fun Facts: Chocolate chips are small chunks of chocolate. They are often sold in a round, flat-bottomed teardrop shape. They are available in numerous sizes, from large to miniature, but are usually less than 1 cm in diameter. Chocolate chips are a required ingredient in chocolate chip cookies, which were invented in 1937 when Ruth Graves Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts added cut-up chunks of a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar to a cookie recipe. Originally, chocolate chips were made of semi-sweet chocolate, but today there are many flavors. These include bittersweet chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, mint chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, and white and dark swirled chocolate chips. Chocolate chips can be used in cookies, pancakes, waffles, cakes, pudding, muffins, crêpes, pies, hot chocolate, and various types of pastry. They are also found in many other retail food products such as granola bars, ice cream, and trail mix. The chips melt best at temperatures between 104 and 113 °F (40 and 45 °C). The melting process starts at around 90 °F when the cocoa butter in the chips starts to heat. The cooking temperature must never exceed 115 °F (for milk and white) or 120 °F (for dark) or the chocolate will burn. Today, chocolate chips are very popular as a baking ingredient in the United States and the chocolate chip cookie is regarded as a quintessential American dessert...... READ MORE HERE: 
• 6. Savoury herb quinoa pancakes
• Honestly, every day should be pancake day, but today is the day that gets the official designation. For National Pancake Day, here are 10 facts you might not know about the lovely, fluffy breakfast favorites. The Romans invented proto-pancakes from scratch. While some suggest that Ötzi the Iceman was eating einkorn wheat in an early sort of flatbread form, most food historians say that the earliest pancake-like dish, known as Alita Dolcia ("another sweet" in Latin), was made by Romans in the 1st century CE from milk, flour, egg, and spices. They were sold hot from vendors on the corners of the new market squares—the first version of our modern-day crepe stand, you might say. Rather than slathering them in syrup, they'd use honey to sweeten their pancakes. You say pancake, I say pannenkoek. By the 15th century, many European countries made their own types of pancakes from scratch using a wide range of ingredients such as wheat, buckwheat, occasionally alcohol like wine or ale, and herbs and spices like cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg. In 18th-century Friesland (a province in the Netherlands) the traditional wedding breakfast was pannenkoek with milk and honey. Pancake recipes from around the world create various forms, from the wafer-thin, buttery French crepe to the savory, crispier Japanese okonomiyaki......READ MORE HERE:
• SONG TIME:
• Old MacDonald Had a Farm Lyrics
• Old Mac Donald had a farm, E I E I O And on his farm, he had a cow. E I E I O With a moo, moo here, and a moo, moo there. Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo, moo. Old Mac Donald had a farm. E I E I O 
• DID YOU KNOW:
• Farmers will have to grow 70 percent more food than what is currently produced to feed the world's growing population by 2050. Each American farmer produces food and fiber for 165 people annually, both in the U.S. and abroad. Eight percent of U.S. farms market foods locally through farmers' markets and food hubs