Love

Makes my heart smile :)

A lot of livin'

Wow.  What a busy week it has been.  We have tried out some fantastic new recipes but I failed to take picture of many before diving in...I should eat more often, maybe I wouldn't have such a vivacious appetite at dinner if I did.  Who am I kidding? I always have a vivacious appetite. My mom can vouch for that and she made sure to tell a table full of my college guy friends that very thing.  They still haven't stopped saying, "Give it to Bud, she'll eat it!" and it has been far too many years for me to care to count...

I digress.

I have been hard at work learning to sew:


Red thread wasn't such a good idea when I realized how hard it was to guide the material through!

Learning to decorate:

 Don't judge; first night of a basic decorating class! I am pretty darn proud of my handy work!

Chasing around an ever-moving 9 month old that is resembling a toddler more and more every day...where did the time go??

Getting said 9-mo-old "unstuck" (after taking an obligatory picture of course!)

And cooking!

Butternut Squash Rissoto...Eli was not as patient as I would have hoped while I stirred!
 (This recipe was exact out of Cooking Light)

Simple dishes are best and this one is just that...

Spinach, Bacon, and Mushroom Quiche...you had me at Bacon...

My mouth is watering...

What you need:
1 frozen pie shell (I used a Pillsbury 9" deep dish)
5 pieces of bacon (I used apple-smoked)
1 Medium onion chopped
2 cups of packed fresh spinach
1 C chopped fresh mushrooms
1-2 T bread crumbs
3 slices or 1 C cheese (used what we had which was 2 slices of muenster and 1 of colby)
6 oz of 1/3 fat cream cheese (room temperature)
3/4 C milk (we used skim!)
3 shakes Worcestershire sauce (I can never spell that right...or say it right for that matter)
5-8 shakes of hot sauce depending on your tolerance and brand.
4 eggs
S&P to taste

Ok, so, bacon..how I love thee.  Cook this in a skillet until nice and crisp. Remove the bacon but save about 2 T of the grease.  Throw in your onions.  (mmmmm-mmmmm)
Cook those for about 2 minutes and then add in your mushrooms. Cook about 2 more minutes or until onions are pretty much transparent, loaded with bacon flavor and smelling delish.  Add in your spinach and stir that around until nice and wilted, about 2 more minutes. 

Vege is complete.  Add back in your bacon, crumbling as you do, and stir that around. 

Now is when I remember to get the pots out of the oven and preheat it...375 degrees will do it.

Get out your pie crust and spread your bread crumbs around.  Now, layer in your vege and bacon...try not to eat all the bacon...maybe just one piece :)

If you read through the entire recipe before starting, do this next step while your veggies are cooking. If you don't, well, they can hang out in the pie shell while you do it:

In a stand mixer, beat the cream cheese for about 30 seconds and then add the eggs 1 at a time. Beat in the milk, W-word, and hot sauce.  Add s&p now (about 1/4-1/2t P and 1/2-1t S).  Beat this on Medium high for about 5 minutes until it looks light yellow and frothy. 

Back to your pie shell: Put in half of your cheese or two slices on top of the veggies and then pour your egg mixture over that. Gently shake the pan to let the fluid soak in to all those amazing layers.

Bake for about 30-35  minutes and then add the rest of your cheese on top and put the quiche on the bottom rack of your oven for about 10 more minutes. 

YUMMY. 

Enjoy, and have a wonderful weekend with fantastic Superbowl munchies :)

Life of a 9 month old

Today, Eli is 9 months old and he is living this day to the fullest. After refusing to nap he played with a birth friend, Zadak, and has been busy exploring every nook and cranny of his home.

He was thrilled to pull everything out of this cabinet and give it an obligatory taste. It sure is amazing how different he is from the tiny baby I stared at in the hospital.

Pass the chop!

What a day. Eli has what I expect to be his first of many colds over his lifetime and though smiling through the sneezes and snotty nose (he actually started laughing after a double sneeze!) he is a bit more cuddly than normal. He was happiest today while unfolding the clothes I was trying to fold. Or maybe he thought he was helping? He kept taking items over to our dog as if to say, "hey, aren't these socks cool?"

So in an effort to simplify life and have some fun with the little booger (pun intended) dinner as a shared affair and oh so yummy!

Smokey BBQ chops

We had one big chop so I sprinkled it with cayenne pepper, dried thyme, and garlic salt on both sides and sat it on a rack in a pan lined with foil for easy cleanup.

Make some tasty sauce. Combine equal parts packed brown sugar and ketchup then (I did about a quarter cup of each) then throw in about 3 shakes of low sodium soy and worcestershire sauce. Here is my favorite part, liquid smoke. This stuff is awesome! A little drop makes it taste like you grilled out. Just be careful, when spilled on a diaper bag you will smell like a mobile BBQ joint and face being hungry at all times. Don't ask how I know. The memory is too painful.

Anyways, mix these together and reserve about half of it to dip your finished chop in. Baste the top of your chops with some of the sauce then place it on the center rack for 6min. Flip it over, slather on the rest of your basting sauce and let that side cook for about 6 more minutes.

Oh, so good I barely remembered to take a picture!

Success

Success means a lot of things to a lot of different people.  Heck, success meant a lot of different things to this girl over the years.  Each day has its own successes and failures and over the different phases of my life these have varied greatly.  What I'm getting at (I've been told I'm long-winded) is that I had no idea how simple a success could be and how happy I could be about little things in life.

Take for instance my life 4 years ago:

Success meant having a phone conversation with my deployed husband (this was my Christmas card from him!) that didn't end in frustration due to crazy lag in the connection and nothing to talk about when you hadn't talked in a week.  It meant getting through a 12 hour shift without having to call your boss because a ship was deviating from course too much or had sustained some damage from seas you told them not to go into.  (we always told them, they just didn't always listen...that's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

But today, success is something completely different.  It's having a clean kitchen counter.  A toilet that doesn't have a ring of yucky stuff in it (what is with the water here?!).  It's getting a 30 minute workout AND shower in before Eli wakes up from his nap.

Today's success? Well, we went and had lunch with some great people and Eli fell asleep on the way home (despite me singing up-beat songs to him encouraging him to stay awake).  I successfully pulled my sleeping baby out of his carseat, carried him upstairs and deposited one sleeping baby in his crib with not so much as a peep out of him.  Ahhh, the bliss of silence :)

Success in the kitchen hasn't changed much for me over the years.  So, what is a successful dinner? Well, today it is one that is no fuss and makes you remember not only your Moma but your Nanny; Chicken noodle soup!

Bring a pot of water to a good boil.
Add about a cup of egg noodles to the pot and let them boil for 5-7 minutes.  If you aren't too concerned about salt, add some salt to the water before you cook them to season the noodles a bit. I think they taste fine without it though!
After they are to your liking (careful not to burn your tongue while you test the noodles, you'll need those taste buds later!) drain the water and then return the noodles to the pan. 
Add a can of Cream of Chicken soup and if you want it creamier (who doesn't??) add about a half a can of milk. 
Place this back over low heat and stir in a handfull of frozen peas (mmmmm, tasty little bursts of flavor!) a pinch of black pepper and as much crushed red paper flakes as you like...I was a two shake girl today.

Let this warm through and then dig in! This made about 2 servings (big bowls!)


So, if the kitchen is a disaster, the laundry doesn't get done or I am unable to do anything else today, I will still consider this day a success because I have a sleeping child and a bowl full of memories.

Snow!

This winter has been  A LOT different than last winter for many reasons:

• We are in a house and not a teeny-tiny apartment
• We have a little boy that is into EVERYTHING
• Our dog gets walked even less
• I can eat whatever I want (caveat is that I shouldn't eat whatever I want!)
• We aren't digging ourselves out of 6 inches of snow every few days, in fact, we have seen a little more than a dusting!

With the rain turning to snow yesterday afternoon, we were excited! The possibility that just maybe we wouldn't see the grass sticking up through it (at least it is still green as opposed to the burnt and crisp grass I grew up with in Texas!) put a buzz in me and I have been so happy! We watched it snow out the front door and after Eli did his best to "clean" the door with his mouth (must he put EVERYTHING in it??) we started cooking up some yummy stay-warm treats.  
For Eli:
Potato-Broccoli and cheese whip
1 baking potato peeled and cubed
about a handful and a half of broccoli florets
1/2 cup cheese or in my case, 1 mozzarella string cheese

Simply boil the potatoes 5-7 minutes and then add in the broccoli for another 5-7 min.  If you stick a fork in the potato and it falls apart as you are pulling it up, they are done! Drain the veggies and depending on your babies likings you can simply mash with a potato masher and then add the cheese (the heat will melt it) or since my little guy still isn't too sure about broccoli, I put it in my new, most fabulous, how did I ever do it without it food processor (I LOVE this if you can't tell!) and processed until it was a nice "whip."

He loved it :)

I can't say the same about his snow suit...

In the other room!

Eli is one of the happiest kids you will meet.  As my grandma said, "he'll laugh for just about anything!" We have found though, that the key to wiping that smile off his face is to wipe your nose.  Seriously!

Anytime someone blows their nose in his presence, you can forget about laughter, that bottom lip is coming out! Poor little guy thinks something awful is going on behind that tissue and he doesn't want to stick around to find out what! The key to peace in the household? Blow your nose in the next room over :)

Who wants to make him frown??

Nope, not this lady. I spent the better part of my afternoon not cleaning the kitchen, putting away Christmas decorations or doing anything else on my list. This little guy was ready to go and we had a ball playing in the living room floor and laughing until neither of us could breathe.  That's my kind of living. :)