Jumbalaya

There are not too many meals that everyone likes. My boys have grown to be be kind of picky but each in their own unique way- this meal however, is a hit for both of them as well as the rest of the family.
Not fancy,
not real super healthy,
but yummy and good!
I learned how to make it while in New Orleans on a mission trip back in 2007. We stayed in the Holly Grove section of town and the native New Orleans cook, Miss Rose taught me how to cook this quick, thrifty, easy meal; especially for a large group of people.

1 box Zatarain's Jambalaya Mix
4 frozen chicken patties
1- 14 oz. package of beef sausage
cooked shrimp (optional)
Place chicken patties in the microwave for about 1 minute.
Slice them into thin slices, set aside.

Cut sausage into bite size pieces, set aside.
Boil water as directed on package, add meats and Jambalaya package.
Reduce heat and simmer.
Set timer for 25 minutes.
Get yourself a cute little helper to help pass the cook time.
Enjoy!

Yummy.

Easy and usually no leftovers :)

Valentine Breakfast Idea

Make your favorite pancake mix, I always use Bisquick!! Spoon into heart shapes.
Serve and enjoy!

Yummy and sweet for your loved ones!

Hope Unseen

Wanting to write something here but I just seem to type then delete.

Above is a picture of my second, but much better tasting, batch of dill pickles. 2 jars of bread and butter pickles now share the same shelf. Canning is interesting, exciting and takes an awefully big pot!

I've been internally frustrated lately, and by lately I mean most of my life; wrestling with hope and my lack of it, ot is it too much of it?

Growing up is hard to do and right now I waiver between not wanting to hope and wondering what hope really is.

Some days I don't wanna hope anymore because it seems like the hope I've had in the past has let me down; I can feel betrayed by hope, struggling to think I will ever hope for anything again. As a mother we hope for things for our children, for our husband, for our home and for our own lives; when those hopes turn out differently, when years and years of hope turning out differently, it can pile up in a girls heart and gets tiring. Frustrating. Hope draining.

My perspective has a bunch, ok everything to do with this and when I read in Romans (ch 8) this last week about "hope that is seen is not hope" (ch 8:24) the Holy Spirit touched my heart and turned my eyes from the hope I have placed in this world, in my children's lives, my husband's business, in things seen... to Christ's second coming.

The hope in His coming I eagerly await.

A day when all the wrongs will be made right, when "the creation itself will be set free from its slavery to corruption" (8:21).

It's a hard balance.

I want to hope for things seen, but I desire all the more to hope for things unseen.

Lord, when my mind goes astray may the Holy Spirit pull it back to You and the hope of the day when You return and all of creation will be made complete.

I wonder if anyone else has felt this hopeless yet equally hopeful?

Ok so that's all I got. Have a great Wednesday.

You Gotta Check Out This Blog

I was visiting Pioneer Woman today and decided to make this yummy recipe!
If you have not checked out Pioneer Woman than you are missing out! This lady lives on a working cattle ranch in Oklahoma!!
She has great gardening, cooking and other tips!

Anyway check her out!

Chicken Pot Pie

My chicken pot recipe:
Ingredients:
-chicken enough to feed your family, I use 1.5 pounds
-3 chicken bouillon cubes or bags
-salt and pepper
-large cream of chicken soup
-frozen veggies, I most often use carrots
-2 refrigerator pie crust, or your own recipe for pie crusts

24 hours before meal place chicken in the crock pot along with 3 chicken bouillon cubes and salt and pepper.

day of meal:
remove chicken from crock pot and shred in a large bowl, I just use 2 forks to tear the chicken apart
stir in cream of chicken and vegetables
add salt and pepper to taste

Next line pie pan with 1 of the crusts,
fill with chicken mixture,
top with second crust.

Using a sharp knife write anything you want for vent holes on your pie

Bake at whatever the pie crust says to bake it at, usually about 350

I cover mine with a napkin that I did my first redwork project on

I was still trying to figure out which color red was the "right" one. In this picture you can see the two different color threads I used, this difference isn't so easily seen in real life

The chicken pot pie was a huge hit and I'm sorry if you are an exact measurment person, I am hit or miss. I tend to follow directions in baking and not in cooking!

I hope you give the recipe a try and share one of your own.

Happy Cooking,

Michelle

Recipe Found

I found this recipe and plan to make it this weekend.
Let me know if you try it.
-Michelle

Cucs and My Kids

One of my hobbies is gardening.
Looking back over my life I can see that the outdoors and dirt under my nails has really always been something I've enjoyed. As a kid I remember digging in the dirt and smelling that smell of soft, damp soil; the feel of it under my tiny chewed up nails and the beauty of the sight of a nicely dug dirt hole has always made my insides warm and happy.

My success at gardening has not been as healthy as my love for the soil.

A young mother and wife making my home in New Hampshire proved fatal to my gardening skills; chances are if I planted it, it died. Even my inside house plants struggled to see the light, or watering, from another day.
Then,
I moved to Florida.
I went from... zone 4...to... zone 9!
I lived here in sunny, sub-tropical zone 9 for a good 2 years before I realized my brown thumb was turning green. When we bought our house I made a decision to chuck all the old, barely living house plants I'd carried with me all over the east coast; then a few weeks later I noticed those old house plants growing, and growing and growing, with no help at all. They just sat on the rich fertile ground and grew. The Florida sun and rain was what they needed.

This year I planted cucumbers for the first time. I planted from seed and before I knew it 10 plants were ready for the ground. I cleared a small garden not far from the house and put about half there and the other half I put in the ground under a farm table that sits in my front courtyard.

Long story short, the plants in the garden died and the plants in the courtyard survived! And boy have they survived.

Cucs are interesting. If you've never grown them before they come out of nowhere. One day I'll check and have 3-4 little ones and by the next day I count 10, oh wait 11, no there are 12.

It actually made me think of my kids, how much like cucumbers they are.

For instance:

I leave the room with 2 of them sitting on the sofa, when I return 15 minutes later there are 8 of them!

-or-

When I water them in the morning they are just little cucs sitting at my kitchen counter, I turn my back to grab the OJ and all of a sudden they are near full grown!

So far I have gotten 6 good healthy cucumbers and 4 yucky ones. I've eaten plain cucs in vinegar and made the Greek dish Tzatziki. This weekend with what looks like another 3-4 cucs ready for the picking I hope/plan/pray/maybe will try my hand at pickling some of these here cucs??

Wish me luck on that one.

So that is my gardening story for today. I think it would be neat to one day trade my cucs for eggs or fresh homegrown beef or chicken, until then I'll stick with growing tons of a vegetable that, besides Steve and I, no other person in the house, resident or not, likes to eat!!

Peace, love and veggies!

-Michelle

Green Chili

When we were first married I was an Air Force wife.
Most of our time was spent in Altus, OK.
While living there we had the opportunity to meet some really neat people who have stayed with us over the years. Some I still talk t, others have stayed part of our family through pictures and recipes.

The Goodpeed's were one of the first families we became friends with. They were from Wyoming and Tracy's mother would come to visit and cook! She was, and I'm sure still is, an incredible cook; and she loved to do it! She shared this easy, yummy recipe with me all those years ago.

I made green chili not too long ago and the kids all loved it! I think I fed 6 that night? Anyway I'm making it again and I thought I'd share the recipe with you.

Green Chili

1 lb. cubed pork- 1/2" to 1" cubes
1 can diced green chili
3 04 4 diced potatoes
garlic salt and pepper to taste
chicken broth - about 48 oz.
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
veg. or canola oil

Cover pork cubes in flour and brown in enough oil to cover the bottom of a 10" skillet or dutch oven. Turn to med low and add green chili, potatoes, broth and seasonings. Simmer about 40 minutes.
Before serving, take off stove and thicken with flour and water. (make paste of 3/4 c. flour and 1/2 c. cold water) Add to soup, return to stove and cook 10 more minutes.

Serve with flour tortillas.

Happy Easter 2009!

I have fallen in love with this book:
Yesterday Christie and Kinsey came over to bake Easter cupcakes. Christie and I have been talking about baking cupcakes for months so it was nice to finally connect.
Step one below: get "eggs" cut out, cupcakes baked, frosting colored...

It was fun to mix up Easter colors...

Kinsey was the bonus baker. She wasn't in the original baking plan but I am glad she made it! Plus she rocked as the cupcake filler, perfect rounded cupcakes very time.

Next we frosted the "eggs", dipped them in decorating sugar and of course texted and called people the whole time. If you don't spend much time with teenagers I'll let you in on a well known fact: they always keep their phones close-by. It use to bother me but now I see it as an extension of what we're doing and who's there!

Christie adding grass around our eggs- we ended up eliminating this feature, it took too long and none of us were good at it!

Here is Christie's batch that she hopped off to make a special delivery with.

While she was gone Kinsey and I got to thinking...while some may think that the two of us thinking is scary, after all we consist of a cheerleader an ex-cheerleader, THINK AGAIN... we are pure genius together,

pure genius I tell you.

We had a grand idea to make a special cupcake for our friends Emme and Jerm. Since they are huge, huge, Hawaii fans we, or I should say Kinsey, made a personalized palm tree cupcake. The detail that went int this would make any cupcake connoisseur drool.

See the genius...

Here's a wide shot of the finished products...

Some close ups...

Hello Cupcake! is perhaps the best birthday present I have ever bought myself don't believe me? Check out:

Vaughan's 15th

Christmas 2008

Justin's 13th

to see more of my handiwork from this book.

-Michelle <><

Love it!

I'll never peel potatoes the same way again.

What Have They Eaten Today?

I totally snagged this from my friend Heather's blog right down to the rice bowl picture. We've really never done anything like this as family or even on my own.
Funny I've wanted to but just haven't gotten around to it; yet I have gotten around to baking cakes and making time consuming dinners. Read below the post I once gain totally copied from Spencer's blog and seriously consider doing this, we can not sit back and enjoy our luxuries of a breakfast, lunch and dinner while mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, infants, homeless, jobless, working poor, our fellow humans go hungry and starve.

What can you do? What can I do?
Start by taking the challenge below.

On Wednesday March 11, 2009 Compassion International will be spreading the word through radio, TV, and blogs about the Global Food Crisis that is happening right now all over the world. This will be your chance to make a difference and join the fight against the global food crisis.
A friend of mine, Brock Gill, has a great challenge for all of us called The Rice Challenge. Here’s a little bit from his challenge…
on wednesday, i want you to take a cup of rice and live on that for a day. call it a fast if you want. i will put it this way, if you can live on a cup of rice for the day then you will have a glimpse of what it is like to walk in their shoes. you will gain some serious perspective. you will realize how blessed you actually are.
the money that you would have spent on food for the day can now be donated to feed people around the world. click here to donate. take the challenge and put your money where your mouth is. this is the rice challenge.
So… Please join Brock, myself and countless others in the fight against the Global Food Crisis…
Here’s a few stats just in case you need a little convincing.
One person in seven goes to bed hungry every day.
One-third of the world’s population is undernourished.
There are 25,000 starvation-related deaths each day.
Each night more than 300 million children go to bed hungry.
Every day, over 12,000 children (one every 7 seconds) die from hunger-related causes.
Approximately 146 million or 27 percent of children under age 5 in developing countries are underweight.
Nearly 17 percent of babies in developing countries are born with a low birth weight compared with only
7 percent of babies in industrialized countries.
More than 4.4 million children die from malnutrition each year.
Worldwide, 161 million preschool children suffer chronic malnutrition.
Sources: www.one.org, www.bread.org, www.unicef.org, www.who.int, www.unep.org

I'd love it if you'd leave a comment below if you take this challenge, or what you DO to help feed or support the hungry

-Michelle

I found a new something to eat!

So I can only stir fry veggies while on a "comes from seed" meal plan for 4.5 days before I've had enough.

So I made this:
slice of whole grain bread
slice up an avocado and a tomato and place on bread
drizzle with olive oil and Weber brand roasted garlic and herb seasoning
toast
Enjoy!

Magic Cookie Obsession

I am in the middle of making my third,

count it, 1, 2, 3,

batch of Magic Cookie Bars in like a week! Actually it will be a week tomorrow- YIKES!

I had forgotten how yummy these were.

Sooo, I thought it being the Sweet Month, I'd share the recipe.

You can go here and get a 13x9 inch pan recipe with measurements, or you can just do what I do:

Gather supplies:

• 5 Tbsp butter
• Graham cracker crumbs, I like to make my own, put a package of graham crackers in a large plastic bag and roll out with a rolling pin until crumbs
• Chocolate chips
• Coconut
• Nuts, I use pecans, but you can use whatever you have around
• Small can sweetened condensed milk
• 8 x 8 pan

Melt butter in microwave
Add enough graham crackers so the mixture is somewhat firm
Spread into bottom of pan, pressing it down tightly

Pour condensed milk over the top of graham cracker base, enough to cover. I don't think it really matters how much you use.

Sprinkle with chopped nuts, coconut and chips
Again, I don't think it really matters what order or how much, I tend to go heavier on the chocolate chips *smile*

Variations: add peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips

I prefer the straight up way and also you MUST, MUST have some when they are gooey and hot out of the oven.

I figure since I'm training for this 5k, chuckling at myself, but, since I am running this thing I'm trying to over-kill the sweets so they make me sick and I give them up altogether? OK, just give me a week I'll be over my sweet kick ;-)

More on the 5k thing when I have a week under my belt,
until them- Happy Eats!!
-Michelle

Good Eats

Ok, so if you love Bisquick and haven't tried their Ultimate Chicken Fingers.
I suggest you do so.
Yummy!

Our Crazy Unique Schedule

I've decided to feed my family lunch later in the afternoon.
I leave for work at 12:30 or 12:45.
I've begun to put dinner/lunch in the oven around that time.
Then my boys #1. don't have to cook and #2. they can enjoy a delicious home cooked, or the like, meal before heading out to all their activities, which by-the-way all happen around the dinner time hours, 5-7 or 8pm.
Yet another reason why I love homeschooling. This crazy schedule of ours works for our lives. Another reason why I am sad thinking of Vaughan going to public high school next year; I'll miss having him around. :-(
Oh, well life goes on around me, I might as well enjoy it!

So I'll be running, I've got rice on the stove!
~Michelle

Eating at Our House

It's not enough that I don't really like to cook, but now I have to write about it! What's wrong with me?!!

I do like to bake which is what promted this post.
Barb introduced me to this fake it, don't make it recipe site on PureSimple.com

Here's what I made today:

Banana Nut Bread ~ yum

The ingredients are simple and the taste great!

We ate 1 1/5 loaves already today. 4 boys will do that to food.

1 yellow cake mix

1 box Jell-O Banana Cream instant pudding and pie mix

2 ripe bananas, mashed

4 eggs

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup chopped pecan (optional)

Mix all ingredients together.

Pour into 2 large loaf pans or 4 small ones.

Since we only have 3 small loaf pans I made 3 loaves and 4 muffins.

Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes

Ta-da!!

The finished product!

Eat plain, with butter or cream cheese!

~Michelle