I love to bake. However I am turned off by the clean up. I am constantly talking myself out of baking anything because I HATE the cleaning up afterwards. I am not into the gadgets that have to be taken out, then cleaned, dried and put away again. If you follow my blog you know I am always trying to learn how to do less and not do more. So I have come up with recipes that require little to no clean up. I refuse to take out my big bowl-blender-wisks contraption that requires way too much time to clean up. Here is one recipe taken directly from my Italian mother Elsa adapted for easy clean up by yours truly:

Italian Ciambella (Italian Bundt Cake)
4 eggs
200 grams sugar (7 oz)
3/4 cup vegetable oil + 1 TBS extra virgin olive oil
500 grams flour (16 oz)
1 cup nonfat milk*
1 lemon skin grated
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
1 pinch of salt 
baking soda
1 TBS butter for greasing pan

* you can use any milk of your choice (rice milk, almond milk, etc.)
butter for greasing pan 

1 mixing bowl
1 eight oz. measuring cup 
1 Tablespoon
1 fork for mixing batter
1 bundt baking pan 

Preheat oven at 180 degrees C. or 350 degrees F.
In mixing bowl, beat eggs with sugar until creamy.  Add to same bowl in this order:  oil, milk, grated lemon skin, salt and baking powder. Add flour and mix all batter well. Pour in half of the chocolate chips and blend well. 

Carefully grease bundt pan with butter and pour mixture into pan. Sprinkle remaining chocolate chips evenly on top. 

Place pan in middle of oven and bake for 45 minutes. Use the toothpick test to make sure fully baked. The top of the cake should be golden. Enjoy.

This post can easily be called ""How to Teach Your Child To Just Be" or even "How to Get You and Your Child to Slow Down and Simplify Your Lives."  

When my first child was young I was interested in having him try new activities so my oldest got to take part in all sorts of interesting and not so interesting activities. I thought I was doing him a service by exposing him to music, dance, gym, karate, baseball, art, etc. Then as he got older and my second son was born, I started to tone down the activities. I began to tone these down for a number of reasons: lack of time, lack of money, lack of physical energy on my part.  Then subsequently I began to further tone down the after school activities because not only did I not see the added benefits of more then one afterschool activity, I began to see the negative consequences.

The negative consequences were that my children were not happy having all their free time taken up by activities. They began to be vocal about it and tell me all they wanted to do was play freely. The too many activities had gotten so bad that the entire family had become a victim to try-outs, recitals, training, games, get-togethers. We had no time to just be. We had no time to travel. We had no time to go on picnics. We had no time to just play. We were constantly running from one activity to another ...until we began to say no.

The easiest way to get your child off the fast track treadmill is to have your child select the one activity that he/she really likes and enjoys doing. Your child may even say that he/she does not enjoy any afterschool activity and that is ok too.  You will be amazed how happy your child will be that he / she does not have to go to the umpteenth training session and can go to a friend's house to play or have a friend over to play. 

The changes will not  only relieve your child's stress, but it will also lighten your load as well both in terms of physical energy and in terms of costs. How refreshing that you don't have to drive your children all over the city picking up and dropping them off to all their acitivities. How fantastic that you can spend time with them and they can enjoy free time to just play as kids were meant to do.