Divine or Devil's Temptation?

Let me be honest. I am on weight watchers. I started 3 weeks ago and have lost 9.2 pounds. And yes, that .2 is quite important! So...what should happen to me this week to undermine my plans? Girl Scout cookies and Apple dumplings. The deadly duo. But...I have a plan. I am going to ignore weight watchers for the weekend and eat every last cookie. Whatever remains will go to work with Michael on Monday and I can get myself back on track. It's kind of like our policy with Halloween candy. The girls are allowed to gorge for a week...and what is left either goes to work with Daddy...or into the trash. We learned that that was the best option or I still had Halloween pumpkins and candy in my house competing for attention with the Easter candy. This way it's done and gone. And the girls know not to over do things. Trust me, it only takes one day of eating too many cupcakes followed by some prayers to the porcelain god to know that eating too much sweets is not a good idea. They know their limits.

And it just so happens that I discovered Pioneer woman and her cooking blog in the same week that cookies arrived. Why not add a few more (cough, cough...thousand more??) calories to my intake and make those dumplings. I think it's providence. And it looked like it would be a fun cooking lesson for the kids. Lisa over at Koinonia Academy says that spending time in the kitchen with my children would be a good idea (err...exercise in patience - of which I am sorely lacking!). But I don't think that Lisa has tried to cook with my children or else she might not have offered this particular piece of advice.

So last night after a dinner of subs picked up at Publix (because Michael HAD to stop and get vanilla ice cream to go with the apple dumplings - might as well have him get dinner too. As I do not cook on weekends. It's a law. Or something.) we made dumplings. Let me back track for a second. When I shared this recipe with my husband -- and even Cindy in TX -- both had suggestions for making it more weight watcher friendly. Michael suggested diet Mountain Dew. But "hello!!" it calls for two sticks of butter...oh...think of the calories I'll save switching to diet soda. And then Cindy even had the nerve to suggest switching to butter buds - but she didn't want to use Splenda in place of the sugar...so again..."why bother??" We made the recipe just as God intended...or maybe it was the devil's temptation...

First, I gave Madalyn the job of separating the crescent roll triangles.

At the same time, I cored the two apples and Katie peeled them. She had never used a vegetable peeler before and had a little trouble getting it started.Apparently, Madalyn was quick with her task and got bored waiting for additional instructions - and I got busy with helping Katie and taking pictures...so I didn't realized she decided to smoosh all the triangles together into a pancake. Isn't she helpful??

My next task was to attemp to separate all the triangles into usable pieces. This was an interesting process that required much patience and deep breathing.
After I had all the triangles done, the kids quickly rolled the apples into the mangled dough and we were ready to move to the next step of melting the butter for our low cal treats. Next we added the sugar and stirred.

Then we poured the concotion over our dumplings and popped them in the oven. The girls could not believe that they had to be patient enough to wait 45 minutes for the dumplings to be ready. Katie waited ever so patiently by washing the dishes.

And in no time...the timer went off and they were beautiful...mouth watering...and definitely divine.