Archive for July, 2011
-
Menu Plan
What are we having for dinner this week?
Sunday- leftover pork from last week
Monday- grilled pizza for JT’s birthday!
Tuesday- burgers
Wednesday- mexican crockpot
Thursday- beef kabobs
Friday- Greek spaghetti
Saturday- dinner with friends
-
Menu Plan
What are we having for dinner this week?
Monday- Greek spaghetti
Tuesday- pork roast
Wednesday- Italian wedding soup
Thursday- chicken and stuffing casserole
Friday- Polish sausage skillet
Saturday- We’re going to a birthday party! No cooking for me!
-
Chris’ Yummiest French Toast
Chris makes THE BEST French Toast I have ever had. Seriously. Hands down. And it turns out he has a secret ingredient. Are you ready? Coffee Mate. Yes, as in the creamer. I know it may sound funny, but you have to try it to believe it. It is so good!
1 loaf cinnamon raisin bread
6 eggs
3 TBS Vanilla or Vanilla Caramel Coffee Mate
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamonHeat electric fry pan to 350. Mix eggs with creamer, vanilla and cinnamon. Dip each slice of bread in the egg mixture to coat and then place in fry pan coated with PAM. Cook until lightly brown then flip and cook until the other side is brown. Serve warm with butter, syrup, peanut butter or powdered sugar to suit your tastes! Leftovers refrigerate and reheat well- if you have any!
yum!
-
Menu Plan
What are we having for dinner this week?
Sunday- BBQ and swimming with my brother’s family
Monday- Fried Rice
Tuesday- Burritos
Wednesday- Chicken and Rice Soup
Thursday- Amish Yumazuti
Friday- Daddy and the kids are on their own- mama’s going to a birthday party
Saturday- dinner and Harry Potter with friends!
-
A Shirt for Kate
I needed a new shirt for Kate- I had something specific in mind and I searched everywhere. OK, I only made it to Kohls, Target and Babies R Us, but that was it, I was done looking. At BRU I found a shirt on the clearance rack that I decided I could make work- it was super cute and would just need a little tweaking. It already had several types of fonts and stitching, so I hoped my additions would look like they were supposed to be there.
I found this shirt
Then I opened up a word document and played with some fonts until I found one that coordinated well with what the shirt already had going on. I printed it and cut it out and then placed it on the shirt to check the size and the spacing- I ended up reprinting it several times to get it just right. Then I taped it to the inside of the shirt, held it up to the light and traced the letters. Once I had the outline for my stitches I used two colors of embroidery floss to sew the word and symbol on the shirt and added a few other details to pull the color through the whole shirt. I am so happy with how it came out!
That’s right! Soon Kate will be a big sister too! We are thrilled to be expecting baby #3 in late Feb or early March. Hooray! And I think this explains my lack of posts lately… back to back vacations, pregnancy exhaustion, and extra work hours. Whew!
So, back to the shirt. Here are a few close ups…
The shirt already had embroidery- all I added in this shot is the word “Big” and the “&” sign. Everything else was there.
On this side I added the little green heart and the purple knots.
The next challenge was getting both kids to smile for a picture while both shirts were visible and readable. This proved to be completely beyond our abilities.
Oh well. Maybe next time! If we couldn’t get two kids to smile, how will we ever manage to get three kids to cooperate for a picture???
Thanks for reading my blog. It’s fun to share this news with you!
-
Parmesan Crusted Tilapia
We had the yummiest and easiest dinner tonight. Thanks Rachel Ray (and thank you Chris for cooking)!
4 tilapia fillets- about 1 pound total
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 tsp paprika
1 TBS parsleyPreheat the oven to 400°. In a shallow dish, combine the cheese with the paprika and parsley and season with salt and pepper. Drizzle the fish with olive oil and dredge in the cheese mixture. Place on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake until the fish is opaque in the thickest part, 10 to 12 minutes. Serve the fish with the lemon wedges.
We roasted some asparagus at the same time the tilapia was baking- we just sprinkled it with olive oil and garlic seasoning- yum!
-
Jam Making Day!
My sister in law and her mother have a tradition of getting together to make freezer jam every year. They have kindly allowed me to join in the festivities- much to the joy of my husband who loves homemade jam! We gathered up all of our jars and several flats of strawberries, blueberries and peaches and went to it yesterday. About three hours later we had dozens of jars of jam for each of our freezers and the kitchen was returned to a non sticky state (that’s actually an improvement over its usual condition with 4 toddlers frequently dining here!).
We tried the Ball instant set pectin this year and we also tried a few batches of Xylitol/Splenda jam. We loved that you didn’t have to cook the pectin- just stir for three minutes! The strawberry and strawberry blueberry jams turned out great, and the no sugar jam tastes great and set up well too. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like the peach or peach blueberry jam set up very well this year. Syrup anyone? I hear great things about Pamona pectin- maybe next year we’ll try to find some ahead of time and see if we get better results.
The other nice thing about jam day (aside from 22 jars of jam!) is it inspired me to clean out the chest freezer. I spent an hour this morning cleaning, defrosting (It brought back childhood memories of my dad with an ice pick and a blow dryer de-icing our freezer! I used a screwdriver and the shop vac to clean out all the ice.), reorganizing and then taking inventory of it’s contents. I discovered I don’t have any pork chops, but I do have 15 pounds of ground beef out there! I guess I’ll cross off the pork chops for this week and I’ll be putting more beef recipes on the menu plan in the coming weeks. I decided to write down everything in the freezer on a white board and I’m going to see if I can be diligent about changing the quantities when I use items and replace them. It will be so nice to know exactly what I have on hand.
So that was my day yesterday and today. I’m still catching up on life after being gone for 3 weeks out of 4, but I did fold 7 loads of laundry the other day, so we’re getting close!
-
Menu Plan July 10-16
What are we having for dinner this week?
edited on 7-11-
Well this week’s plan has already changed a ton! Based on some of the things I found when I cleaned out the freezer and the fact I’m working 3 days this week I’ve changed almost every meal! Here’s an updated meal plan as of today…
Sunday- appetizers out of the freezer
Monday- parmesan tilapia with asparagus
Tuesday- taco salad
Wednesday- pesto/alfredo pasta from the freezer
Thursday- salmon burgers
Friday- spaghetti and meatballs
Saturday- pork loin
Sunday- fish (I’m going shopping tonight and I’ll pick up whatever looks good)
Monday- cheesy beef stroganoff
Tuesday- Amish Yumazuti (from the freezer)
Wednesday- spaghetti and meatballs
Thursday- freezer find! (I’m trying to clean out our freezer so I’ll pull something out!)
Friday- small group?
Saturday- pork chops
I’m still catching up from having been gone last week- the last load of laundry from camping is in the washer, I’m mostly done cleaning the kitchen, and I finally sorted all of the pictures (priorities people!). I seem to have a million projects half done around here. Once I get a better handle on the house I have a few blog posts rolling around in my head that I’d like to get written.
Laundry Load Counter
Search my blog
Archive
- January 2013 (1)
- November 2012 (1)
- October 2012 (1)
- July 2012 (2)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (8)
- April 2012 (7)
- March 2012 (2)
- February 2012 (6)
- January 2012 (12)
- December 2011 (18)
- November 2011 (12)
- October 2011 (14)
- September 2011 (6)
- August 2011 (8)
- July 2011 (8)
- June 2011 (12)
- May 2011 (19)
- April 2011 (16)
- March 2011 (10)
- February 2011 (10)
- January 2011 (3)
- December 2010 (2)
- November 2010 (2)
- October 2010 (5)
- September 2010 (6)
- July 2010 (4)
- June 2010 (2)
- May 2010 (8)
Popular Topics
Blogroll
- (In)Courage
- Benschoter Family Photos
- Jill Savage
- Money Saving Mom
- My Frugal Adventures
- South Fellowship Church
- The Farmer's Wife Tells All
- the Frugal Girls
- the Journey
- Tricia Lott Williford
