What I've been cooking up........

 I'm not exactly sure where 6 months go.  Into daily life.  We've eaten, we've played and we've lived.  The kitchen has had moments of busyness and it has had moments where I've decided I just don't want to cook again! 

• I took Pizza Bombs out of the oven a little while ago.  Both boys seem to think they made an excellent snack.
• I made Baked Oatmeal Recipe from Nourished meals - and the family liked it. I should make it more often. I measured everything out the night before and put it in the oven before I got ready for church.
• I made  Homemade Castile Laundry Soap | Stacy Makes Cents  when I ran out of laundry detergent right before Christmas travel and had to get the laundry done. It smelled great (peppermint) and the clothes did get clean.
• I've made a few batches of Chocolate Chip Granola Bars | Weelicious because the Salad Chef loves granola, I use almond meal or buckwheat flour instead of whole wheat (because those don't have gluten.) I've subbed in some apple sauce for the oil - and cut back on the sugar by half. The applesauce did not produce a happy boy - too chewy - but he didn't miss it when I cut down the sugar.
• I made Homemade Bulk Italian Sausage from Foodie with Family for Valentine's Day using ground turkey, and though it wasn't a huge hit with Sous Chef, the Salad Chef liked it and there are 6 lbs of it in the freezer!
• I made this Horchata Rice Pudding Recipe : Brian Boitano : Recipes : Food Network because it is one of my family's favorite comfort desserts.
• I made four batches of The Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen: Healing Chicken Ginger Soup because we've had colds, strep throat, ear infections and stomach bugs.
• I made Chocolate Buckwheat Cake | David Lebovitz and it was amazing. It did get better with a rest period of a day (at least), the children sobbed when it was gone. Well they didn't actually sob, but Sous Chef was very upset.   My husband says that it's a company worthy cake.
•  I put Slow Cooker Mexican Pulled Pork Recipe | Simply Recipes in the crock pot and we had pulled pork tacos, or pork and rice bowls with all the taco fillings. Then I used the broth leftover from the meal to make a soup with pulled pork, green onions, mushrooms and nappa cabbage and garnished with cilantro.  It made my husband very happy.
• I made egg drop soup - similar to Steamy Kitchen's but really just dumped what I had in the pot! Chinese Egg Drop Soup | Steamy Kitchen Recipes

• For the Super Bowl I made Cheeseburger Pizza from King Arthur Flour and it was fabulous.  I used lean ground beef, lower fat cheese and olive oil mayo for the dressing. Everyone loved it.

• I made a Thanksgiving Turkey wrapped in bacon and lots and lots of pie.
•  We made a batch of instant fudge and put in maraschino cherries, and it flopped, we turned it into hot fudge and cherry sauce for ice cream.
•  I made both Hot Cocoa Mix and Instant Vanilla Chai Mix | Make Ahead Mondays for teacher gifts for the end of the year. I've made a batch of each again. I will never buy instant Chai mix again!
•  I took Jalepeno Popper Recipe — Imagine A Dip | Food Renegade to a Christmas Party - and brought back no leftovers!  I even ended up using Candied Jalapenos to make it since I didn't have any in the fridge.
• I made several batched of easiest baked mac-and-cheese | smitten kitchen and usually freeze on, uncooked in the freezer. I always make two.
• We did Hungarian Goulash again for Halloween
• The freezer is almost always stocked with Sausage Cheese Biscuits: King Arthur Flour
• The Purple Power Breakfast Smoothie has become a go to breakfast for those days when the Sous Chef has to eat and read the comics at the same time! 

That enough for now. Maybe I will be inspired to blog more......

In the Crockpot - Eggplant Curry - from the garden

 The garden is in full swing and daily we are gathering our vegetables.  We planted quite a bit of eggplant (12 plants I think, or 8 at least - I can't remember if they were 6 packs or 4 packs of plants!)  So we are getting lots of eggplant. I tried a braised eggplant recipe last week and it was fabulous (all adults liked it.)  Today we've got eggplant curry in the crock-pot as I've been hanging around the stove making tomato sauce to can, I wanted to try something a bit easier.  Most of the produce is local; tomatoes and eggplant from our garden, and the onions from the Food Initiative .  Those will be cooking along with turmeric, cumin, garam masala, garlic, ginger and a little water to get it all going. When there is room again in the crock pot I have some cooked garbanzo beans to add to it all. I suspect I'll cook up some long grained brown jasmine rice and we'll have sliced cucumber (from our garden) along with it all.  I have leftover steamed green beans again from the Food Initiative. The boys may end up with some Gluten Free Meatballs from the freezer with that tomato sauce I need to can over their rice, they've yet to really enjoy the eggplant in anything but eggplant marina.  I need to figure out if I can freeze it well.

The crock pot was pretty full and hard to stir, I hope as it cooks down a bit the vegetables will allow for a good stir!

We'll see how it tastes, and if it is worth making again!

Menu Planning - Week of April 16th, 2012

 

	DINNER
Monday	Family Meal Roasted Whole Chicken Broccoli Quiona and Mushroom Pilaf Salad
Tuesday	Crock Pot Night (Meetings) Black Bean Soup (crock pot) Brown Rice Toppings (green onions, greek yogurt)
Wednesday	Picnic in the Car (between two activities!) Rice Wraps (veggies, spicy peanut sauce, leftover chicken)
Thursday	Creative Leftovers Tacos with chicken, black beans, rice Salad
Friday	Boys Night In Mac and Cheese (from a box!) Mixed Vegetables Fruit Smoothies Oatmeal Cookies
Saturday	Pizza and a Movie Pizza with whole grain crust Veggie sticks Fruit Tart (we should have a few strawberries ready by then)
Sunday	Breakfast for dinner Frittata with Swiss Chard (from the garden) Biscuits (GF with Pamela’s mix) Fruit Salad
Other Things	Other Things to Make this Week Lentil, Kale and Brown Rice lunch bowls Cookies Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread

Spring Cleaning and Spring Crafting

Though Sous Chef will tell you it isn’t technically spring I’ve started the spring cleaning (or organizing) and thus been inspired to do a little spring crafting as well.  Actually, today (Monday) the crafting for St. Patrick’s Day took over.  I was sidetracked with Subway Word Art – a new trend all over crafting blogs and Etsy.  First I was distracted by this print (Playroom Rules Sign by barnowlprimitives) of Playroom rules, and had to go create my own rules.  Then I found St. Patrick’s Day Word Art and it led to more looking and then eventually a list of word art I wanted to look at and then the desire to create my own.  I think subway prints are the new wooden bunny (the one where you change out his ears every month for a new theme.)

• ·         eighteen25: subway art
• ·         Subway Art | Oopsey Daisy
• ·         Random Issues: Motherhood Printable Subway Art
• ·         Subway Art — Printable Decor
• ·         The Branches: Bible Verse Subway Art Printable

I printed out a Saint Patrick’s Day verses from Eighteen25, found an old frame.  I placed it in the frame and then I had to figure out what to add to our rather ‘rustic’ rainbows we made a few years ago.  There are only two rainbows with clouds for the kitchen fixture and there are four places to hang things.  

Like the four strands of hearts I hung at Valentine’s Day.  Oh see the pretty glass ball – I MADE IT – well with the help of a glass blower – but it was my breath that blew it up!  And at the bottom of that picture – I made that head too – though I don’t think I can take credit for the blond hair – that comes from his Daddy’s side!

Then while searching for the shamrock’s I was reminded of a raindrop mobile I’d seen (Rainy Mobile).  The idea of crafting mobiles then ran away with itself, and I found 3-D clouds, hot air-balloons, raindrops, and umbrellas.  I could roll the clouds and rainbows for St. Patrick’s Day into clouds and raindrops and umbrellas into April Showers and then the clouds and some hot air balloons into June and then there are kites and birds and the sun and the moon……..  Things could hang from the ceiling everywhere before I am done (the boys’ rooms, above the big soaking tub….)  And there is always the play room/bonus room where there are 6 pieces of fishing line hanging. Right now I think there are a few birds and a sun and a moon, but we’ve put up angels, bats, leaves, snowflakes….oh the creative possibilities.

Eventually I settled on some shamrock’s that were layered with rainbow word paper (DIY: Hanging Paper Four Leaf Clovers)  But then again I got distracted and found Shamrock Straw Toppers that just had to get cut out. I cut strips to set aside for Sous Chef and Salad Chef to make shamrocks and then I made one a shamrock for myself.  If I was organized and had finished putting the office and crafting spaces back together since we re-carpeted the upstairs (A YEAR AGO) this project would have been so much easier!  I am sure I could have put my hands on my paper cutter much faster if I knew where I put it.

Before I was all done I’ve raided the Halloween Bin for a small black cauldron to put some golden coins (leftover from a holiday shopping at Trader Joes and some of it was tucked into red envelopes for Chinese New Year.)  I wove a glittered wire gold ribbon through the cake stand I won for in the local paper’s holiday cooking contest (that still had its red and green plaid Christmas ribbon on it.)  I have learned that though glittered things are beautiful and shiny and they catch the light, glitter gets everywhere!!!!!  There was a glittered wrapping paper fiasco – and I’m still finding glitter everywhere, not to mention tape does not stick well to glitter!

WAIT!!!!! Wasn’t I going to take the week and spring clean?  ….Husband is going to away for a few days and his mother is coming in 6 days and I was going to spring clean the house so I could enjoy company and live in a clean house for 2.5 minutes!!!!!!  Now where is my list? I can’t find it – oh I remember someone used the back of my spring cleaning/to do list to write his spelling words and it’s in the recycling bin…..which my husband took to the transfer station yesterday….well I can create a new list… but I’ve already scrubbed the kitchen floor and I won’t get the same satisfaction of crossing that off my original list.  And I really could stand to organized a bit in the kitchen so that my crafting could be appreciated and not ignored in the other clutter.

So now at 2PM on Monday I need to sit down and re-write my list, but not before I put on 2 gallons of tomato sauce to simmer till dinner time (we’ve used up all the summer sauce and some of those 2 gallons will go into the freezer) and put Salad Chef down for a nap.  Oh heck …. Maybe I’ll just take a nap with him……