Whats for Dinner? Week of August 22, 2011

Here’s this weeks menu.  I hope it gives you some ideas as to what to serve for your evening meal.  For the meals marked “freezer Recipe”  I will make two of each and freeze one for later use.  This is really handy for those days when I’m low on time or just low on energy.

Monay – Meetballs (freezer recipe) and fried green toatoes

Tuesday – Buttermilk baked chicken w/sweet baby carros

Wednesday – Lasagna (freezer recipe) w/steamedbrccoli

Thursday – Chicken Cordon Bleu Bake (freezer recipe).

Friday - Mock Fillets

Saturday – Chicken Wraps

Sunday – French dip w/salad

School starts!

For quite some time the stores have had the school supplies and back to school clothes in stock.  We’ve counted out pencils, searched for just the right color of book cover and stocked up on notebook paper.  We’ve found the cutest outfit For Ali and the perfect pair of shoes to go with it, and lets not forget the coolest T-shirts out there for Steve and just the right skate board shoes for the season.  Now it is time to put all of that prep into action because school starts next week!  I don’t know about you, but I’m ready.  The kids are board and have gone to picking on each other as their favorite pass time (their second favorite is tattleing).  I love my kids and enjoy them a lot, but this constant picking can wear on even the calmest  of nerve.  My daughter is very excited to get back to school but my middle school son is less than thrilled.  We had a great summer but I look forward to he routine that school brings into our house.  I hope you too had a great summer and are looking ahead to a fine fall season.

What’s for Dinner? Week of August 15th

WOW!  Last week just flew by!  I’ve been working in the garden a lot and also doing a few alterations on dresses for some upcoming weddings.  I just didn’t have any time or creativity left to post last week.  I’ll try to do better by you this week.  Here is this weeks menu.  I’ve mixed in a few family favorites with a few new recipes.  Have a great week!  I’ll try to post some of the successes here once the family has tried them.

Monday – Ground Beef and Cabbage w/new red potatoes (new)

Tuesday – Pepperoni Pizzadillas w/salad (new)

Wednesday – Crab Alfredo w/ Steamed veggies

Thursday – Tropical Turkey & Spinach Salad (new) I’ll most likely make some mac and cheese for the kids just in case.

Friday – Monte Cristo Sandwiches w/coleslaw (new)

Saturday – Grilled BBQ Chicken Legs w/grilled veggies (so simple)

Sunday – Mexi-beef Casserole (freezer recipe)

WHAT’S FOR DINNER?

I was so glad to have a few weeks off from planning a menu.  Trying to come up with different, fun meals that pleases everyone is a difficult task. This week I pulled out my Rachael Ray cook books and looked through them for some help.  Some of the ingredients from her recipes are quite foreign to this midwestern girl.  I was raised on the basics of meat and potatoes.  For instance, what I’ve been calling a mini loaf of french bread actually has its own name!  It’s called a baguette.  Who knew?  Well, maybe you did, but it was new to me.  Anyway,  here is our menu plan for this week.

Monday – Mac-N-Cheddar with Broccoli (Rachael Ray – 365: No Repeats)

Tuesday – Gina’s Enchiladas

Wednesday – Buttermilk Baked Chicken and Steamed Veggies

Thursday – Sesame Chicken with Fried Rice

Friday – Beef Fajita Burgers (Rachael Ray – 365: No Repeats) and Grilled Veggies

Saturday – Scramablewiches (Rachael Ray – 365: No Repeats) and Anitpasto Toss

Sunday – Homemade pizza and tossed salad.

I’ll post some of the recipes as the week goes on.  If you see a menu item that you want the recipe for leave me a comment and I’ll be sure to post on it.  Have a great week!

There’s No Place Like Home.

Well we made it back from our trip to visit family in Colorado.  I really thought I’d have plenty of time to post a few blogs along the way but I was busy visiting with family every waking moment.  I’m not complaining at all.  Some of these relatives I only get to see once a year so I enjoy taking every available minute to visit with them. 

We didn’t do anything terribly exciting, mostly we just hung around mom’s house and visited, played games, cooked, ate and watched movies.  But we did take some time to visit a museum and the Denver Zoo.  Here’s a few random pictures from the zoo.  Our week in Colorado flew by and it was soon time to head home.  The route we chose to drive home took us right into Hot Springs SD.  This is a town in the Black Hills of SD where a hot spring runs through.  The water is literally in the 90 degrees year round!  Anyway, in Hot Springs is the mammoth Site.  In the late 1970′s excavators uncovered some old bones.  They stopped their worked until the bones could be identified and they turned out to be prehistoric mammoth bones.  Since then they have built a building over the site and every year they excavate more and more mammoth bones and give tours to the public. To date they figure the have found the remains of over 50 mammoths!  Quite amazing!  After viewing the site my son has aspirations of digging with their crew one day.  Here are a few random pictures we took at this site. 

The mountains of Colorado are breathtaking, and the company is amazing,  but there really is “no pace like home”.  It’s good to be back.

VACATION

I won’t be posting a menu for the next few weeks because I’ll be out-of-town on a bit of a vacation!  I’m quite excited about it!  It’s not like were going to Disney World or Hawaii or anything like that but it will be a fun trip none the less.

My mother lives 12 hours away in Colorado and once a year in the summer me and the kids (DH stays home to build roads) make the journey to see her.  She also comes here once or twice a year so we do get to see each other some but not as much as we’d like.  We don’t really have the money to fly there so we make due with the drive and just plan on staying at least a week.  

Keeping two kids occupied on a boring 12 hour drive can be a challenge but we’ve done it so much we’ve learned a few things to keep us occupied.  We play hangman, the ABC game, and a few other topical games and   listen to books on tape (the Hardy boys or Nancy Drew).

I’ve  given up on packing lunches to eat.  I still pack some munchies but the fact is it is a nice break to pull off the road and stop for a few minutes to have a bite to eat.  Everyone can stretch their legs and go potty too.  We just try to make the drive fun and this year we got a new car with a DVD player built right in!  Now the only argument left will be which movie they will watch.

The long drive is so worth it.  It’s so good to see my mom and my step dad.  I love them and miss the a lot.

Look out mom and  Doug here we come!

 

Southwest Skillet

Last week I had on my menu list “Southwest Skillet”.  It was a new recipe from the Taste of Home’s Ground Beef Cookbook that I was trying out on my family.  They really liked it so now I’m here to share the recipe I used.

What you’ll need:

1 lb ground beef

3/4 C chopped onion

1 can (16 oz) kidney beans, rinsed and drained  (or use your home canned)

1 can (14 1/2 oz) diced tomatoes with juice. (or use your home canned)

1/2 C uncooked instant rice

1/2 C water

3 TBS chopped green pepper

1 1/2 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp salt

1 C corn chips

3/4 C shredded cheddar cheese

Brown the ground beef and onion in skillet, drain off grease. Add beans, tomatoes, rice, water, green pepper, and seasonings and mix well.  Bring to a boil.

   Reduce heat and cook covered for 20 minutes.  Remove from heat sprinkle with corn chips and cheese.  Cover and let stand for a few minutes for cheese to melt. Makes 4 servings.

My Mulberry Jam

We are lucky enough to be able to lease property each summer to keep our lake cabin (trailer) on.  We spend almost every weekend there enjoying the beach, the water and all of our wonderful friends and neighbors there.  In the back yard of the lot which we rent is a huge mulberry tree.  Every other year this tree produces a massive and beautiful crop of mulberries.  Last weekend my daughter and I spent some quality time picking the mulberries and this week we processed them into a very yummy jam. Here is the process we used.   

I find jam turns out best if made in small batches.  So we used 4 cups of berries, 4 ½ cups of sugar and one package of Sure jell. 

Be sure to prep the berries.  Mulberries come of the tree with a little bit of a stem still intact.  We sat down with a scissors and simply trimmed off the little “tails”.  Then put the berries in a heavy bottom sauce pan and mush them up (a hand potato masher works great).  I added ½ cup of sugar to liquefy the berry juice a little.  Once the berries are mashed follow directions on your pectin.  I used Sure jell so I added the pectin to the existing mixture and brought it to a rolling boil then added the other 4 more cups of sugar.

  

Now bring to a rolling boil again and keep boiling for 1 minute.

Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.  Remove jars and place on heat resistant serface.

Let them cool and store or better yet enjoy now!

Lord, help me to trust you when I don’t understand.

The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.  Deuteronomy 29:29

Junker car

My 18 yr old son has 2 vehicles.  One is a pick up that is currently torn apart because he has a plan of fixing it up and painting it really fancy.  The other one is a real “junker” just an old Honda that he bought cheap for the low gas mileage.  Yesterday his  “junker” decided it didn’t have another trip in it.  It died on his way to work and he needed to call for a ride the rest of the way.  His pickup is in pieces and undriveable until he has some time and money to put it back together.  So he asked if we’d cosign a loan for him to get a different vehicle.  Since he moved out as soon as he turned 18 and his taking care of himself, he really doesn’t have room for another payment, (he’s still paying on the pickup he already has, the one that’s not driveable) so we refused.  He looked defeated. We could so easily have said yes and made his problems go away.  We could have said “don’t worry son, here’s the money, go get what you need”  And don’t kid yourself, I WANTED TO!  It’s just so hard to watch your kids struggle.  But what will they learn if you fix their problems for them?  Will they ever be able to manage their own finances if we’re always “kicking” in? Ever so reluctantly, he agreed that the best course of action was to get his current pick up put back together (maybe not fancy) so that he can at least have some wheels.  Then once he gets his tools paid off (he’s a mechanic and has gotten in deep to the Snap-on tool guy) or his current pick up paid off then he can look into something else.  I know he doesn’t understand why we don’t fix this for him.  I know he thinks we’re being mean and thinks we’re trying to punish him for something.  But someday he will see that this was the best decision.

Don’t we sometimes feel this way when God doesn’t answer our requests with a resounding “YES”.  Do we feel that he is punishing us for something? That He is being “mean”? God tells us ”no” or “not yet” because there is something greater going on that we can’t see.  In the same way, when we tell our children “no” or “not yet”, there is a greater reason than they can understand right now.

LORD, help me to trust you more and to understand that when you tell me “no” or “not yet” it is because there is a bigger better plan in action.

The Weekly Menu

Well I survived the last weeks busy VBS schedule in fine shape.  I just sat down and planned this next weeks menu.  This should be a fairly normal week for us. I do have alot of canning I want to get started on so most of the meals are fairly simpls. The only activity I’ve got going is a Bible study gathering on Thursday night so that’s night menu is the easiest.  There are a few more new recipes I’m trying along with a few we just haven’t had for a while.

Monday – Southwest Skillet (New)

Tuesday – Biscuits & gravy with corn (New – requested by my 13 yr old son)

Wednesday – Chicken Wraps (using leftover chicken from last week that I froze for later use)

Thursday  – Veg All casserole (an easy one my mom used to make)

Friday - Pizza Pockets and salads

Saturday – Hobo meals (an old favorite from my day camp days)

Sunday - Grilled burgers and hot dogs. (standard summer food!)

I’ll post recipes for some as time goes on.  If there is one you are particularly interested leave me a comment to let me know and I’ll be sure to list it.  Have a great week.