Lilo and Stitch The Official Cookbook

Celebrating 626!

Happy 626 Day!!! Tonight’s recipes come from Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook. The main course was one of my favorite recipes in the book…Kiki’s Special Saimin Noodles, which has an amazing broth infused with lots of ginger! Our drink was Hapa Kine Strawberry and Basil Cooler Companions. In addition to the strawberries and basil that give the recipe its name, there was also lemon juice, honey, and lots of ginger syrup…one of the best drinks I’ve ever made! For dessert, I made the Guava Celebration Cake, which is a strawberry cake with a whipped cream cheese frosting, and a guava filling and topping.

The best celebrations include fashion of some sort, and today I wore my Disney Store Lilo and Stich dress with a Hula Lula Tiki Girl brooch from Miss Fluff for Lipstick and Chrome plus a Rocklove Jewelry “Tell Your Tale” Stitch Aloha enhancer and a stack of tropical Splendette Duchess bangles. I’ve also been carrying my sparkly Stitch Loungefly bag all week!

Happy Stitch Day!

17 (Going on 18)

Today is Ladybug’s 17th birthday! She got up extra early this morning so we could get a start on celebrating, especially opening presents, before Moose left for school!

I was so excited about our gift to her…she received her first dirndl!

A lot of her birthday ended up being Lilo and Stitch themed (with a good helping of Tron Legacy and Star Wars: The Bad Batch thrown in).

She asked for pineapple salsa from the Lilo and Stitch Cookbook for lunch:

She picked dinner recipes from cookbooks that reflect her various interests…honey lemonade from The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Online Cookbook, spinach salad with shallot vinaigrette from Destiny: The Official Cookbook, and 626 Experimental Fried Rice from the Lilo and Stitch Cookbook.

Her birthday cake, a guava celebration cake, was also from the Lilo and Stitch Cookbook:

We had a really fun day, and I loved having a chance to celebrate another year of this beautiful life for my daughter!

First Day of School 2023

I decided to do something different this year, and start the new school year on a Friday, so we could spend a day doing only the fun, first-day-of-school stuff, and not worry about diving into the work until next week. Last night, I made sure the school room was ready to go…I made a few minor changes this year, but for the most part, our setup is the same as it has been:

I also got the Schultüte assembled:

After we look through our materials for the year, pictures are always a priority:

I decided we needed a fun outing to kick things off, so we drove all the way to Livingston, IL (about 40 minutes away) to the Twistee Treat Diner at The Pink Elephant for ice cream cones. It’s on Historic Route 66, and we’ve driven by it every time we’ve gone to Chicago, and I thought the time was finally right to check it out!

Would it even be the first day of school if we didn’t build a Lego set? I decided the Disney Villains Icons set would be a nice bridge from our fairy tale themed summer school…it’s a very clever set, and the girls let me build the Sleeping Beauty part. We’ll just ignore the hard time they gave me over the VHS tape build!

A (poison) apple for the teacher!

Ladybug requested a special dinner from Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook. She really wanted to try the Pelekai Sweet and Sour Pork, and it was excellent! I also made a super decadent, super chocolatey cheesecake for dessert.

I really liked starting the school year this way…it was nice not to have to immediately get started on our actual work! I think we just might do it this way again next year (which will be Ladybug’s last first day of school with me)!

Tasty Tuesday–Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook

One of our cooking projects this summer has been making recipes from Lilo and Stitch: The Official Cookbook. There are still plenty of recipes we haven’t tried, but here’s a look at the ones we’ve made so far:

  • Kaua’i Sugarloaf Pineapple Salsa
  • ‘Ohana Fruit Salad
  • Blue Hawaiian
  • Dawn Patrol Loco Moco
  • Pā’ina Haupia Cake
  • Pleakley’s Pink Stuff Frosé
  • Braddah’s Baked Spaghetti
  • Luki’s Shaved Ice
  • The Green Flash
  • Easy-Kine Kālua Pork
  • Mahalo Hasagawa Matcha Brownies
  • Island Grilled Lemonade
  • Nani’s Spaghetti Salad
  • Comforting Butter Mochi
  • Gantu’s Galactic Brew
  • Black and Blue Seared ‘Ahi with Experimental Sweet Potato Mash
  • Guava Celebration Cake
  • Pudge’s Peanut Butter, Jelly, and Banana Sandwich
  • Rock-a-Hula Açai Bowls
  • Hapa Kine Strawberry and Basil Cooler Companions

We have definitely been introduced to some new flavors (guava was a huge favorite!), cooking techniques (I’ve never grilled lemons for lemonade before!), and even culinary science (butterfly pea tea has some very interesting properties!), through these recipes, which I love, and most of the recipes have been big hits!

Tasty Tuesday–Stitch Day!

Yesterday was a most anticipated day…it was Stitch Day!

In case you’re unfamiliar with this holiday, it’s a day in celebration of Experiment 626 (which is why it is celebrated on June 26), otherwise known as Stitch, of Lilo and Stitch fame. Last year, we just happened to be at the Magic Kingdom on Stitch Day, and it’s hard to top that, but Disney did just release Lilo & Stitch: The Official Cookbook last month, so I planned a special day of meals to celebrate our favorite alien-dog.

We started with ‘Ohana Fruit Salad, which had pineapple, lychees, pear, green apples, strawberries, and tangerines, and was tossed with coconut yogurt and served in a hollowed-out pineapple. It was really delicious!

Next was Kaua’i Sugarloaf Pineapple Salsa, served with plantain chips…I can’t wait to serve this with our next Mexican dinner, because it too was delicious!

Funny story about the drink I made…it’s called the Blue Hawaiian. Does it look blue to you? No matter how much of the blue vanilla syrup I added, I couldn’t get the pineapple and lemon juice based drink to change colors, not even to green! Even though the color wasn’t right, the drink itself was tropical and refreshing!

For dinner, I made Dawn Patrol Loco Moco. I’ve been wanting to try this Hawaiian dish of a hamburger patty served on rice and topped with gravy and a fried egg for a while, and we weren’t disappointed!

For dessert, we had the Pā’ina Haupia Cake, which had a lovely coconut filling. Bunny drew an outline of Stitch, and Ladybug copied it in royal icing to make the decoration for the top of the cake…they did a fantastic job!

We had a really fun time celebrating Stitch Day, and I can’t wait to try more recipes from the cookbook!