Cooking Camp....starring the "fancy pizza cutters"

• Apple Berry Salsa with Homemade Cinnamon Chips

This is one of THE BEST refreshing summer dishes e.v.e.r.!! And how fortunate that we get to use our fancy schmancy pizza cutters---a gift from the ever thoughtful Cousin C.

So, the homemade cinnamon chips are made from flour tortillas. Start out by finding you 3 cooking camp kids and 3 pizza cutters. Vital ingredients.

• First things first....add in a touch of art class by letting them "paint" their tortilla with water. Which creates an instant invisible Picasso!!

• And of course you will be needing some of this. How clever they are for producing this hot commodity. Certainly you can make your own, which is what we do when this bottle runs out, then we fill'er back up and shake some more!

• This act of shaking or sprinkling the cinnamon/sugar mixture onto your freshly "painted" tortillas will need some good hand-eye coordination.....and for some folks, they must also use their tongue to get things "just right".

• Here's one of the few times in life where I encourage the kids to "be liberal". Shake a lot on! Go crazy with it. But after this edition of cooking camp is over, it's back to the conservative side of life. :)

• Then it's time to break out the cutters. Remember 3 kids and 3 cutters. Oh, if parenting and cooking camp and life in general could be this easy all the time.

• Once again, you will notice that the tongue must be utilized right alongside with the hand-eye coordination stunt. He cracks me up with this habit.

• Cousin C...I included this photo just for you. Look at the excitement and joy one little wheel of (very durable) plastic has created for broken leg boy!!

• Oh, the cutting could go on for what seems like forever....in fact, it did. They were all so thrilled to use those darn things. Seriously, flour tortillas are cheap entertainment if you ask me. I may start buying those mexican jewels in bulk! At any rate, they kept cutting tortilla after tortilla until our table looked like this everywhere.

• Throw those bad boys on a cookie sheet and place them in the oven for just a few minute and let the magic happen!! YUM-O. Crispy Cinnamon Chips! Which are a great snack alone....but so yummy with the fruit salsa.

• Now it's time to make the Apple Berry Salsa. All I have to report is that's it is a crying shame we only had one food chopper. And it's even cracked on one side so we have to hold it steady with one hand and slam away with the other!!

• Great for POUNDING out the frustrations of life. Which might be a good indication of how it received it's crack. A little character mark, so to speak. :)

• For some lovers of life, there is yet to be enough frustrations and stress in this horrid world for them to feel the need to attack a plastic contraption with the deadly force of a single hand. Therefore, they have to have help knocking it out, and a holder had to be called in to assist. However, that face captures the fierceness of a champion.

• And then the helping smile shows brightly once again. After we put the metal blades away. My head can only stand so much chopping and banging. And in an instant, I was ever so glad we only had 1 food chopper to our name. Because, can you imagine, 3 kids, 3 choppers?

• And eventually, once you have chopped a few pieces of every fruit you can rummage around and find in the fridge....you wind up with this beauty. And it is ever. so. tasty!! Y'all I just can't tell you how divine this fruit salsa is.....wonder in a bowl.

• Cooking Camp was a success again. You know some say, "the family that prays together, stays together."

And we firmly believe in that too.

However, I'd also like to add in the fact that "the family that chops together, and who manages to not cut the fingers off from anyone, well, they have a high rate of staying together too."

Now, I'm serious. You go right on over to our Recipe Blog....a summer afternoon can't get any sweeter until you taste a little of this.