Sweet Cornbread Recipe and Crowded Toy Box relief

 Sweet Cornbread

Winter means chili and soup at our house. What goes with chili better than cornbread? Nothing. This recipe is not only very easy to make but it's really good. I don't fault my parent's too much but for the longest time i thought cornbread was supposed to be dry and rather flavorless. Our go too was like many, the box of Jiffy was cornbread for us. This recipe is not Jiffy it's moist and very flavorful.

You can make this in a standard 9 inch cake pan, a rectangular carousal dish or muffins. Since our little one still drinks whole milk that is all I use for baking.  We have used skim for this recipe in the past and the bread turned out just fine. I also usually use corn oil instead of vegetable oil as I believe it helps the flavor. Like anyone else who blogs about a recipe this is not my original creation it comes from allrecipes.com and the original can be found here corn bread recipe.

You'll never buy Jiffy again

Ingredients

1 Cup All-purpose flour                         3 1/2 Teaspoons  Baking Powder
1 Cup Yellow Cornmeal                        1 Egg
2/3 Cup Sugar                                        1 Cup Milk
1 Teaspoon Salt                                      1/3 cup  Vegetable Oil

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 deg. and grease pan
2. Mix flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder.
3. Mix in egg, milk and oil 
4. Mix or whisk until no lumps present then our into pan or muffin tins.
5. Bake for 20-25min or until a toothpick can be inserted into the middle and come out clean.

 Toy Box relief and Rotation

Now that Christmas has passed and the house is getting back to normal you may have noticed that your kids have a ton of toys. This issue is compounded at our house since both or our children have birthdays right after Christmas. Last year we found ourselves overwhelmed with crap. Their aunts, uncles, grandparents, great grandparents, ext. are exceptionally giving so it is certainly on the good problems list but it did create some issues. The biggest issue we noticed was a lot of toys were not getting played with or ended up forgotten about in the dark depths of the toy box.  The mess was out of hand and clean up time required heavy equipment and qualified as an EPA Superfund Site. Instead of tossing or donating those old toys rotating them was our solution. It's worked great for a year, the kids love it and the toys get used more. A couple of boxes or plastic bins and a little space is all you need to clear some room and get those toys played with.

We have learned a few lessons over the past year that might make your rotation a little smoother and easier than ours. 

• Split the toys into either 2 or 3 equal parts.
• Do it while they are sleeping. Nap time is your friend, they had forgotten about that toy until you reminded them of it.
• Leave at least one favorite out at times. 
• Don't give them the option of when it happens or how much stuff is rotated.
• If the toy storage is in the garage, get some plastic totes instead of card board. Mice love plastic and make a mess anywhere they call home. 
• Don't have a set schedule of when you do the rotation. Do it based on need or for stay at home parents for sanity.We tend to swap them more frequently in winter due to the time they spend inside playing  being much higher that time of year.
• If it's world ending to do swap out all the toys, try doing a box or two every few weeks.

Our play area is still a disaster some days but nowhere near as bad as it would be with out switching out toys. Find what works for your family but I can promise it's worth the effort. The kids now love when we rotate because it's like having new toys.