One of my favorite things!

One of my favorite things from my childhood is Fondu'. I have really fond memories of doing this on special occasions with my family. I even had a really fun Sweet 16 birthday party doing this. When I married my husband, I started doing this as a romantic dinner for us. Then when kids came we started to include them. Now we do Fondu' once in November for our Anniversary, on New Year's Day, and sometimes on Valentine's Day. This year we did a party for our daughter for her birthday. All the girls had so much fun learning how to do Fondu'. So buy a fondu pot, cut up some vegetables, and have some fun!

Our Favorite Menu
1. Steamed Rice
2. Cut up Carrots, Mushrooms, Zuccinni, Artichoke canned hearts, Yams, fresh pineapple
3. Chopped up steak, shrimp
4. Sauces
5. Peanut Oil
6. Box of Tempura (found in baking section of store. It is a mix, You dip stick in tempura with veggie on and then dip in oil)
7. Depending on if you have an electric Fondu' pot or not you might need Sterno to heat the oil. It can be found in the camping section of a grocery store.

For Sauce Recipes, I just make up my own. I don't know how much of each ingredient. Sorry.

Sauce 1 (for meat):
catsup
mayo
parsley
tabasco sauce
worshiresauce

Sauce 2 (veggies)
Parm. Cheese
Cream Cheese
A little Milk
(Soften cream cheese before mixing)

The best part of Fondu is that it forces you to spend time talking with each other. So if your family needs more time communication go buy a fondu' pot and get started.

Happy New Year!

So I am so sorry that I haven't been posting much. Christmas and Family got the better of me. I will try to do better. Anyway my idea for today is making New Year's special. So here are some of our traditions that you can do with your little ones. The first thing we do is on New Year's Eve we get together as extended families and play games and eat appetizers all night. We sometimes make it to 12 and other times we move all the clocks forward and tell the kids its 12. Then the next day with just our little family, we do Fondue'. Haven't heard of it? Its fun. You can buy pots in a cooking section. You can do cheese, chocolate, or oil. This one was oil with meat, carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, artichokes, and anything else you want to try.

You can find tons on the Internet about fondue'. After that we do a year plan. We pick two things to do in every month of the new year. We also write down all the fun things we did in the past year. We then have everyone (even the baby) pick out three goals for the following year. we place these in their room so they can look at them. This is how we do it, and it makes it easy for little ones. I think my kids get it when we are talking about all the months and fun things we did and how now we are starting over.

So that's what we do! Fill free to make a comment and tell us what you do. The more ideas the better, so we can have a Very Happy and Successful start to 2009!