Peppers

14/365



Sometimes I can't believe the beauty of this creation. Look at these peppers! They're so bright and colorful and appealing. It almost makes me not want to cook them and mute their crisp colors and flavors with onions and garlic and sausage. Almost.

Pizza Party

11/365



Dh left this afternoon for a week of working in Nevada. The kids and I had a little pizza party for dinner and watched a fun kids' video from the library.

We've had dh home for over a month now, between the vacation days he took over Christmas and New Years and the three weeks he worked in his basement office. It feels a little odd to have him back on the road, since we've gotten used to having him around all the time. But this is the job, and we'll get back into the swing of things.

Chicken and Smoked Sausage Jambalaya and Yellow Rice

I've adapted this recipe from one Emeril Lagasse has posted on foodnetwork.com. The original is titled Smoked Turkey Legs and Sausage Jambalaya. My version is lighter, milder, and has the rice served separately, to allow my low-carb dh to enjoy it, too.

Jambalaya

2 Tbsp olive oil
1.5 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1 inch pieces
1.5 lb smoked sausage, cut into half-inch slices (I use low-fat turkey sausage)
3 cups chopped yellow onions
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 bunch scallions, finely chopped, green and white parts separate
(2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely chopped-I omit)
8 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup tomato paste
1-1/2 tsp dried thyme, crumbled
1 bay leaf
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp dried oregano
(1/2 tsp cayenne pepper--I omit)
(1/2 tsp hot sauce--I omit)
5 cups chicken stock/broth
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes (I like Muir Glen the best)
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves

In a large stockpot or dutch oven with a thick bottom, cook chicken in oil, about 5 minutes. When cooked through, remove chicken with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add sausages and cook, stirring frequently, until browned, about 5-6 minutes. Add the onions, celery, bell pepper, scallion white parts, (jalepeno pepper, if using), and garlic and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are tender, 4 to 6 minutes. Add the cooked chicken, tomato paste, chicken stock, tomatoes, and all seasonings except the parsley and the green scallions and bring to a simmer. Cover, reduce heat to low, and cook for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally. Alternatively, the entire mixture can be placed in a crock pot on low at this point. Before serving, remove bay leaf and stir in chopped parsley leaves, and let stand for 10-15 minutes, covered. Serve over yellow rice. Sprinkle with green scallions, if desired.

Yellow Rice

3/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp ground cumin
dash cinnamon
4 cups water
1 Tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 long grain brown rice
sliced green scallions

I cook this in a rice cooker, simply adding everything to the cooker except the scallions. To cook on the stove, heat the spices over low heat in a medium saucepan until fragrant, stirring, about 30 seconds. Add the water, salt, and butter and bring to a boil. Add the rice and stir well. Cover and reduce heat to a bare simmer. Cook, covered, without stirring until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit covered, without stirring, for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork, add scallions, and serve.

Menu Plan Monday

For the last several weeks, three friends and I have been sharing meals Mon-Thurs. My day is Wednesday, and on that day I make dinner for all four families and deliver the meals to everyone else. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday I just sit back and eat bon-bons, while my friends bring me and my family their wonderful dinners. Between the four of us, we are pretty good cooks, and we are all enjoying sharing our meals.

For dinners, Mon-Thurs are the shared meals.

Mon-Chili, fritos; I'll add a salad and maybe heat up a couple cans of corn

Tues--Potato Soup; I'll make sandwiches and have salad, too.

Wed--Meatballs with Brown Sauce, egg noodles; this is my night, and I'm looking forward to this meal. It's always a hit around here. I usually make mini-meatballs, my kids' preference, so just a bit bigger than a standard marble or so. I make my brown sauce with mushrooms--it's delicious. I'll toss the egg noodles with a bit of butter and have green beans on the side.

Thurs--Baked spaghetti; I'll have garlic bread and salad, too.

Fri--(Dh getting home--YAY!!!) Beef stirfry (beef, green beans, onions, garlic, red pepper), sesame noodles

Sat--Probably meatballs again. I'm planning on making a lot on Wednesday. I'm thinking about having the meatballs with brown sauce and egg noodles on Saturday, and making Sweet and Sour Meatballs for my family on Wednesday. Dh can't have the S&S because of his diabetes constraints, but he loves my meatballs and brown sauce.

Sun--Main meal--(assigned) potluck after church. I'm bringing homemade potato salad and whole wheat pumpkin muffins with cream cheese frosting.

Breakfasts are all quick and simple, by necessity. Today we were out of 2% milk, so we had toast with peanut butter and bananas. Usually we'll have cold cereal.

Lunches this week will include the bigs on Thursday and Friday--they're out of school for Fall Recess.
Mon--ham and cheese on whole wheat buns (bakery markdown), baby carrots, applesauce
Tues--mac & cheese, baby carrots, apples
Wed--ramen noodles, baby carrots, bananas
Thurs--hot dogs, w.w. buns, corn, baby carrots
Fri--mac & cheese, bananas, baby carrots
Sat--at a Bible conference, lunch is provided
Sun--(evening) peanuts, popcorn, veggies with dip, apples

God loves me and wants me to be happy

I found a forgotten package of Milan Double Chocolate cookies in the back of the pantry. Only a month past its sell by date, and not a hint of staleness. And undiscovered by the ants that got into our Oreos last week (hint: if your Oreo crumbs start walking around on the plate, you might want to do some further investigation.)

Why had I not yet discovered...

Why had I not yet discovered the magic that is oven-roasted drumsticks with barbeque sauce?

My children are all eating their dinner. Not a single one of them have informed me that they don't like anything.

This is gonna be on the menu twice a week, from now on!!!

Food is fun!

Menu Plan Monday--March 31

Today is the first time I'm posting my menu plan. This week's plan is pretty simple, especially since I'm going out of town this Friday, and dh will be doing kitchen (and kid) duty while I'm traveling.

Monday:

Beef and bean burritos with salsa and sour cream, green salad

Tuesday:

In honor of April Fool's Day, we're reversing the meals today!

Breakfast--meatballs and brown sauce over pasta, green beans

Lunch--as usual

Dinner--waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, scrambled eggs, sausage

Wednesday:

Chicken and mushrooms in stirfry with rice

Thursday:

Spaghetti with meat sauce, green salad, garlic bread

Friday:

Pizza at Chuck E. Cheese

Saturday:

Lasagna, green salad, garlic bread

Sunday:

Pizza, green salad

Monday:

Lasagna (leftovers), green salad

If you want to join in with your own menu or get some ideas from other ladies participating, head over to Laura's blog at I'm An Organizing Junkie.

Meal planning

I'm the resident cook in our home, not because I'm particularly gifted in making meals or enjoy cooking as a hobby, but simply because I'm the one at home.

When dh has time, he really enjoys perfecting his specialties, bread and pizza--both whole wheat. He's also quite handy with a grill, and makes teriyaki chicken and burgers and dogs all summer long.

I, on the other hand, am much more utilitarian in my approach: I'm mom to six children and wife to a diabetic husband, all of whom need to eat healthy, appealing, economical food every day. I don't have time or energy at this point to make complicated, fancy meals, but am focusing on cooking things that everyone in our family will actually eat, that I can prep with a minimum of time and fuss.


Right now I'm trying to organize four weeks worth of meals along with a corresponding grocery shopping list, so I can simplify the process of getting food on the table. I'll likely vary the side dishes, but since dh and the kids tend to prefer the same meals on a consistent basis I'm hoping this will give me a much-needed break in the kitchen.

I'm finalizing this week's menu, and will be posting it tomorrow. At this point I'm not planning meals for breakfasts and lunches, since the kids tend to rotate through about five meals over a two week period. It's going to be interesting to see how the plan matches reality, once I get it all figured out.

Fajitas and the Sovereignty of God

Tonight our family went out for a celebratory dinner, having completed a transaction that ended an unfortunate association. We went to The Mayan, a restaurant with "Mayan" cliff divers acting out hyperbolic dramas and randomly diving, jumping, and falling into the safely chlorinated pool below their rocky stage. The kids love it, and dh and I have taken them there for birthdays and when family visits.

Tonight was the first time we've been since the place was renovated and the menu revamped. They no longer serve fajitas, but have a dish called something like Fajita Adventure, which I guess is supposed to be a classier take on fajitas. Instead of the classic flavors and sides, it had poblano peppers and onions, a black bean and corn salsa, a side of some kind of rice pilaf, and a dab of sour cream and picante sauce. No lettuce or cheese, no guacamole, and the steak didn't have the classic fajita seasonings.

I tried not be negative, but dh could tell that I wasn't really enjoying it. And then he said something that really struck me. He said that he didn't want me ordering fajitas anymore when we went out, because they always fell short of the fajitas at El Rodeo and I was always disappointed.

El Rodeo was a little Mexican restaurant in our hometown. Their food was sensational, and I have so many good memories of meals eaten there with friends and family. Some pivotal moments in my life happened in that place, full of the smells of good food and the sound of happy conversations and the cook in the kitchen, singing along with the Mexican radio station.

Some unfortunate business decisions led to the restaurant closing, and ever since then I've been on a fruitless search for a fajita that can bring me back to El Rodeo.

What I realized tonight, though, was that even when I do find that perfect fajita once again, it still won't bring back the place that I loved, with its corner booth and carnival music. That place is gone forever. The last time I visited my hometown, the former restaurant was being used as a Pilates studio. I wondered as I drove past if the diligent people excercising there ever caught a hint of freshly made tortilla chips and salsa.

I miss my home. And what's funny is, if I were home right now I'd still be missing parts of that home that no longer exist. Restaurants shut down. People move away. Relationships change, sometimes radically. Churches close their doors.

My children have already learned the lament of missing our old house, missing Grandpa and Grandma, missing their aunts and uncles. And as I tell them, so, too, I remind myself: where we live now is a good place, we'll see the people we love again, and God is on His throne.

None of these things came as a suprise to Him.

I need a good fajita recipe. By the time summer rolls around, I intend to have a killer version of my very own.

Looking ahead

Today's grocery shopping trip resulted in a bit of an impulse buy, a fistful of hope in the midst of winter. Aren't those colors beautiful?

We have been planning on putting in a garden this year. The previous owners had a garden in the side yard, and with our houseful of veggie-lovers, a garden is a necessity. We've had to forgo planting a garden for the last several years that we were living in a rental, and last year my pregnancy kept me low-energy, so we didn't have one even though we now own again.

Our house in Oregon came with several raised beds, and included mature raspberry canes, current bushes, and a rhubarb patch. We really enjoyed having our very own tomatoes and carrots, peppers and carrots.

This year I'm planning on checking out the book Square Foot Gardening and following the author's plan for compactly using our garden space. I'm by no means an expert, and this will be my first year gardening in Utah, so I want as much advice as I can get. I wonder if there's a county extension service in Salt Lake County? Hmmmm....

Today's purchases included two varieties each of beans and peas, carrots, cucumbers, pumpkins, summer squash (yellow and zucchini), radishes, green onion, a lettuce sampler, cherry and slicing tomatoes. This will be my first time starting my own tomatoes, and I'm excited to try it.

Mostly, though, I'm excited to remember that Spring is on its way, and that by gardening, I get to participate in the new life of the season.

A Flop for Dinner

Today is the first day that we got through all the courses in our new homeschooling curriculum. We began yesterday, but I got suddenly sick in the afternoon and we had to put off doing the first math lesson. We did two lessons in math today, to make up for it. I'm wanting to stay as close to on-track as possible, since our goal is to finish first grade with it and move the three bigs into second grade in the fall.

Homeschooling three kids and caring for an infant, a toddler, and a preschooler, plus keeping up on the house and trying to provide such basics as clean clothes and meals for everyone...right now, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. This new curriculum is a vast improvement over what we were doing before, in that it's not completely teacher (mom) intensive, but it still requires a large time investment on my part. I'm trying to figure out how to fit everything in, still, and so far meals and laundry are suffering. Dh had leftover (homemade, at least) pizza last night, and the kids had cold cereal and toast. They were thrilled, but I can't do that every night.

So, tonight I made a not-so-great casserole with chicken, whole wheat pasta, and broccoli. The kids' weren't too enthused, and honestly I can't blame them. I'm still learning how to make the casseroles dh likes with the whole wheat pasta we're now using, and tonight's pasta was gummy and not very appealing.

Oh, well. Tomorrow we're having one of the lasagnas I made last week, so that's two nights of a good meal that I don't even have to prepare.

Sanity in the freezer

I managed to get all four lasagnas done yesterday, despite the cranky little guy's interruptions. Given the size of these pans, that's eight meals ready to go--a real sanity saver.

I've never done an entire once-a-month cooking session; the process just doesn't work well for me. What does work is making up several meals' worth of the same thing at a time. This goes particularly well when I plan around sales; last fall when boneless skinless chicken thighs went on sale, I put 60 lbs of marinated meat into the freezer. It was great to pull out a bag to defrost and grill with minimal fuss, and since we were given a rotisary for Christmas we've been roasting chicken almost weekly.

The lasagna ingredients weren't on sale this week, but it was a special request from dh.

Lasagna for the freezer, as I made it yesterday:

2 lbs ground beef

7-8 small onions (4 large)

2 green peppers

1 lb mushrooms

2 Tbsp olive oil

5 28 oz. diced organic tomatoes

2 jars organic prepared pasta sauce

4.5 boxes whole wheat lasagna noodles

3 lb carton lowfat cottage cheese

5 eggs

1 cup parmesan cheese

1 5 lb bag shredded mozzerella cheese

4 cans sliced black olives

1 cup Italian seasoning

1. Brown the ground beef in the oil. Finely chop the onions and green peppers in food processor, and add to the browned beef. Dice the mushrooms, and add. Cook thoroughly. Puree tomatoes in food processor and add to pot. Stir in prepared sauce and Italian seasoning and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 1 hour, stirring frequently.

2. Beat eggs and add cottage cheese, parmesan, and approximately half the shredded mozzerella and mix well.

3.Layer sauce, pasta, and cheese mixture in four aluminum pans. When the cheese mixture is gone, use mozzerella for last layer. Top with sliced olives. Cover with foil and freeze.

4. Defrost for 24 hours before cooking. 350* for 45 minutes, covered, and then anothr 15-20 minutes uncovered.

Post-holiday find

Finished the grocery shopping today, and picked up a little Valentine's gift pack of Starbucks goodies at 50% off regular price. Since their prices are normally grossly inflated, I figure the $7.50 I spent on a mug, five tea bags, a cocoa packet, some ground coffee, and a little storage box was just about right.

I'm not a diehard Starbucks patron. My favorite coffee place is probably Coffee People, a Portland area store that makes great coffee and includes a chocolate covered esspresso bean with every order, a nice touch.

I do love Starbucks' version of chai, though, probably better than anywhere else I've tried. When fall rolls around, the sweet, almost pumpkin-pie scent of chai is what signals that it's once again my favorite time of year. And through this long, grey, snowed-in year, chai tea has been a real comfort.

Of course, I can't afford Starbuck's exhorbitant prices more than once or twice a month, at most. And since my days are usually spent at home, I've had to come up with my own version of chai, to get me through the long house-bound days. On a dark February day, I can drink an entire teapot myself.

My Chai

Brew three bags of Tazo Chai tea in a full eight cup teapot. Pour into teacup or mug, about 3/4 of the cup's worth. Add two packets of Splenda and top off the mug with 2% milk. When you've been house-bound for three days or longer, use half and half. If it's been five days or more, break out the cream.

Enjoy. Best drunk while the kids are happily occupied elsewhere in the house, but is good even in the midst of chaos.

Buying in bulk

A couple weeks ago marked a momentous occasion in the life of my young, large family: the first time we purchased a five gallon bucket of food. Oatmeal, to be precise.

Growing up in a large family as I did, with a mom who is frugal by necessity, our kitchen and storage area were filled with buckets of all manner of dry goods: rice, pastas, cereals, wheat berries (to grind into flour), and the inevitable beans. When Y2K and the accompanying stockpiling began, my parents' basement family room had an entire wall of buckets. It was a sight to see!

When dh and I first married, cooking what I considered a normal-sized meal would yield us at least three meals: one for that night, and two for the freezer. In the years since I have adjusted that expectation as our children came along and started eating real amounts of food. This last year in particular, the three oldest have begun eating about as much as myself and their daddy. And they are still quite young--I can only imagine the sheer volume of food we will need when we have six teenagers in the house!

So a couple of weeks ago, when there was a special food storage sale at a local grocery store, I bought our first seriously large bulk food item: a five gallon bucket of rolled oats. Ever since my brother visited from NYC and made a truly memorable pot of oatmeal the kids have loved the stuff. They always request it made "like Uncle Josh made it," and scrape the bottom of the pot clean. Over the year since his visit my memory of exactly how he made the oatmeal has grown a bit hazy, so my apologies to my brother if it's not quite right:

Uncle Josh's Oatmeal

10 cups water
1 cup raisins
1-2 apples, peeled, cored, and finely chopped
5 cups rolled oats
1/2-3/4 cup sugar
generous shake of cinnamon

Bring the water, raisins, and apples to a boil. Add the remaining ingredients, bring to a simmer and reduce heat, stirring frequently. Simmer for about 5-8 minutes, until most of the water has been absorbed. Remove from heat and let sit for a few minutes. Serve with milk or half-and-half if you're feeling particularly decadent.

Turning eight

Turning eight required some flexibility on her part, but the substantial pile of gifts eased 8yo dd's pain in having to delay our traditional outing to Chuck E. Cheese. Dh's sick day extended into the evening and tonight we're expecting a snow storm, so it looks like we'll be spending Valentine's Day evening spending hundreds of tokens in the blinking, blaring kiddie arcade.

Because I was planning on us having pizza out, dd and I had to run out for some last minute birthday dinner supplies. She requested hamburgers, tater tots, and sweet pickles, and picked out a chocolate heart-shaped cake and Neopolitan and Root Beer Float ice creams. I pretended to be healthy by serving dinner with lots of veggie sticks and dip.

We watched Magic in the Water during dinner and after presents, and my poor Bug cried when the monster died. Much rejoicing when it was resurrected, though, and even more rejoicing over the Hello, Kitty diary from her auntie.

All in all, a very good birthday for the girl.

Birthday breakfast

Today's birthday girl requested waffles for breakfast, a treat usually reserved for Saturday mornings when dh mans the waffle iron while I fend off the ravenous crowd. With today being a normal weekday (despite dh needing to take a sick day and sleeping on the couch), I had planned on our usual cold or hot cereal. But who could turn down this girl for anything, especially on the morning she turned eight?

Whole Wheat Waffles

4 cups whole wheat flour

2 Tbsp baking powder

1.5 tsp salt

3 cups milk

4 eggs, beaten

1.5 sticks butter, melted (12 Tbsp)

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix wet ingredients. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the liquids, stirring together quickly until mixed well. Bake in waffle iron, taking care not to overcook.

Tip: Kitchen scissors are great for cutting up waffles for short people.