My best friend of 21 years is about to have a baby. This week she got to see baby Clark’s sweet face for the first time via 4d ultrasound. You’ve GOT to read her latest post and see the pictures. I cannot wait to hold that little boy and kiss his chubby cheeks! Only a few more weeks!
My sister likes to throw parties. Particularly themed parties. Involving Karaoke.
One of her favorites is the Karaoke Costume Party. You might remember that at last year’s party, our group of 4 arrived as the Mccains and Palins.
This year, I shamelessly stole our costume idea from a friend, and it was a huge success! Meet Mario & Luigi:
Since several people asked me for this recipe, I thought I’d go ahead and post it.
I’m not sure where this recipe came from, but my mom and at least one of my aunts have been cooking it for years. I’ve tried several other versions of this from online, and none of them ever measure up!!
One thing I love about this recipe is that it’s so forgiving. If I do things in the wrong order, it doesnt matter. If I substitute something out because I don’t have it in my cabinet, it’s usually okay. Basically as long as you don’t leave out anything major, you can’t really screw it up. It reheats perfectly, and its easy to freeze. And you can double or triple it without a problem. Plus its DELICIOUS. And it has few enough ingredients that I don’t even have to write down the grocery list!! See why I like it so much??
Mom’s (and Aunt Beth’s) Chicken Enchilada Casserole
- 6 cups diced or shredded chicken, cooked and lightly seasoned. (I bake several boneless chicken breasts with olive oil, salt & pepper, then dice them up. Or, if I’m especially lazy, I just pick up a fully cooked rotisserie chicken from the store and shred it.)
- 16 oz. sour cream
- 2 cans cream of chicken soup
- 3/4 lb each cheddar cheese and Monterrey jack cheeses
- 1 can green chilies
- 1 pkg tortillas (I use whole-wheat)
- Mix sour cream, soup, and 2/3 of cheese together in a large bowl. Set aside 1 cup of the mixture.
- Add chicken to the mixture and stir well.
- Layer the bottom of a lightly greased casserole dish with tortillas. Add a layer of mixture. Add another layer of tortillas. (You can also put a little of the mixture inside a tortilla, wrap it up, and line several of these in the bottom of the dish, side by side. This is more enchilada-like, but takes longer and doesn’t change the taste at all.)
- Top with the 1 cup of chicken-less mixture you set aside earlier.
- Layer with chilies on top.
- Add the leftover 1/3 of cheese.
- (refrigerate overnight if you have time)
- Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes.
Very easy. Very good. A very common request for dinner around our house!
Tonight I decided to try my hand at homemade Tomato Basil Soup. It turned out to be really REALLY good, so I thought I’d post it in case anyone else wants to give it a try. We ate it with grilled cheeses and loved it. But then, I could probably live off of soup-and-sandwich combos. And meatloaf. (I’m aware that that’s weird, by the way.)
Anyway. here’s the recipe: (credit to Diane for hooking me up with it!)
- 3 tablespoons good olive oil
- 1½ cups chopped red onion (2 onions)
- 2 carrots, unpeeled and chopped
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
- 4 pounds vine-ripened tomatoes, coarsely chopped (5 large)
- 1½ teaspoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- ¼ cup packed chopped fresh basil leaves
- 3 cups good chicken stock, preferably homemade
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
- ¾ cup heavy cream
- Julienned fresh basil leaves for garnish
- Parmesan toasts, optional
Heat the olive oil heat in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-low heat. Add the onions and carrots and sauté for about 10 minutes, until very tender. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, sugar, tomato paste, basil, chicken stock, salt, and pepper and stir well. Bring the soup to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, uncovered, for 30 to 40 minutes, until the tomatoes are very tender.
Add the cream to the soup and process it through a food mill (or blender or mixer) into a bowl. Reheat the soup over low heat just until hot and serve with julienned basil leaves, and/or Parmesan toast
Serves 5-6
** I like my Tomato Basil Soup really smoothe and creamy, so I put it all in a food processor. If you like it a little more coarse, just chop it instead.
Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
We have a dog who thinks she’s a mountain goat. She climbs on anything and everything, always wanting to be on the highest spot. At the house in Bainbridge, there was nothing in the yard that she could jump on, so we thought she had given up on her mountain climbing. When we moved here, she didn’t really try any stunts in this yard either. Weird.
Until a couple of weeks ago. We walked outside one morning to find her asleep on the patio table. When I drove out of the driveway, she stood up to watch me go, and I realized that our goat was back.
I laughed because it looked like she was standing on the fence. (ignore the messy carport… Nate was working on a project). Then I thought “I hope she doesnt learn how to jump on the fence, or we might be in trouble.”
You see, when Nate built the fence, he built in a little table-top on the corner to give it more support. Usually Stupidcat sits there and waits for us to come home. I guess she’s giving Leia ideas, because this week, she switched from the table to here:
Welcome back, mountain goat.
Messing around with themes, appearance, and settings on the blog today, so it might change throughout the day. If you stop by and it looks weird, just ignore it. I’ll be finished soon!
(of course, if you’re reading this through facebook or an RSS feed, it doesn’t matter anyway!)
- Keeper of the Home is doing a giveaway for 2 of her books. One is a “best of” type e-book, the other is an e-book that has just been recently turned into a paper-back book. She’s giving away a hard copy. I really like her blog, so I have a feeling I’d really like her book as well. Keeper of the Home is a new blog I just started following after Emily turned me on to it. I would link to Emily, but SHE DOESNT BLOG so that’s impossible.
- 22 Words is also doing a giveaway… for ESV Study Bibles- the nice leatherbound ones. He gives you 22 different and fun ways to enter, because that’s the kind of thing he does over there.
- Tim Challies is starting a new series this week on sex. He says that he is speaking “especially to young men, those who are teenagers or dating or engaged or newly married. However, I do hope that anyone can read and enjoy the series, even if the teen years are far behind you.” I usually benefit from most of the things Tim Challies posts about on his blog, so I have no doubt that this will be the same even though I dont fall into any of his target categories. You’d probably benefit, too! And if you don’t subscribe to Challies…. you should start today.
- And speaking of Challies, I am currently reading his first book, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, and it is really great. I’m only about halfway done, but I can already recommend it.
- A couple of days (years) old, but Dan Phillips of Pyromaniacs (re)posts about 25 things he’s learned…. and they’re worth passing along.
Homemade bread is supposed to look like this:
Needless to say, mine does not.
I am on my second batch. The first was fine except that it didn’t rise, which is kinda important. The second looks like it’s about the same. I googled “why won’t my bread rise” (genius, I know), and came up with several options to help with trouble-shooting. I also called up my friend, Emily, aka Mother Earth, and she is helping me fix the problem.
Since everything is turning out fine except for the whole rising issue, I’m starting to think I got a bad batch of yeast. Any other suggestions??
I have been saying for years that there are 2 things I am determined to learn before I move to some other remote country and live in a hut. (Okay so I won’t be living in a hut, but you get my point.) And since that time seems to be getting steadily closer as Nate works to finish up at RTS, I figure I’d better get a move on.
One of those things is gardening. And not just pansies and roses and monkey grass. I’m not too concerned about adding color to my flowerbeds on the mission field…I’m talking about veggies and fruits and herbs and whatnot…things that will feed my family and others, should we end up living in the middle of an extremely poor community. As of now, the only thing I can grow is weeds.
The other thing on this list is sewing. I figure it might be helpful to be able to make simple children’s playclothes, easy and comfortable wrap skirts for myself, and simple home decor items like duvet covers and curtains…. all things I will probably want/need in the future. I also think it would be great to be able to make inexpensive and really easy childrens clothes if we’re working with some sort of streetchild or orphan ministry in the future. I don’t want to be a professional or do anything fancy…I just want to be able to make things that people need, or things that my family could use but can’t afford.
I have been telling Nate for years that I was going to learn to sew as soon as I had time, but I don’t think he ever believed me. Now that I’ve got a little more time on my hands, I decided there’s no time like the present! A wonderful friend gave me an amazing sewing machine that she doesn’t use anymore, complete with a manual, sewing book, and accessories.
my new best friend
I decided that the best way to learn the basics of the machine was to get a sewing book for beginners. I spent a little time at Barnes & Noble sifting threw several options, and I finally walked away with this one:
S-E-W (Sew Everything Workshop) by Diana Rupp
The great thing about this book is that it covers all the bases for a beginner… It taught me all the parts of the sewing machine and how to use them, how to sew different kinds of seams, how to handle various fabrics, how to read a pattern, and more. I just sat down and started going through the book, page by page, and doing everything along with it. It was a great way to learn… kind of like having a tutor. The book also includes several beginner patterns (10 I think) for really cute accessories and clothing. She walks you through it step-by-step, so it’s not overwhelming. I would definitely recommend it to anyone else who doesnt know a thing about sewing but wants to learn!
The first thing I sewed (other than a bunch of random seams on fabric to practice a straight stitch) was a pillowcase for Jane Bradley. I don’t have a picture of it, unfortunately. Lacey had a pillowcase when we were growing up that she took everywhere. It is basically a faded, tattered rag at this point because it has had so much wear. I found some leftover fabric from Lacey’s old bedding, and I decided that it only made sense for Jane Bradley to have a pillowcase like her mama’s.
My next project was a basic pillow:
I didn’t attempt to do any sort of special opening (zipper, buttons, envelope, etc) bc I was still learning how to sew in a straight line! The next time around, I decided to try something a little more difficult:
I had some leftover fabric from the bedskirt in my guestroom, so I decided to use it to make a pillow to match. Since I already had a 16×28 pillow form, I figured it was a good size. This one was a challenge because I didn’t have a piece of fabric big enough….so I had to do a little bit of piecing, but you can’t even tell! I also decided to try an opening for this one.
Ta-Da!
In Progress: a wrap skirt from a pattern in the S-E-W book… I’m done with the construction, I just have to go back and finish up some seam backs so they don’t unravel and make it a little more polished. I had to use the only fabric I had enough of, which was some leftovers from the fabric I made JB’s pillowcase from. I’m not one to wear alot of purple and green plaid, but that’s okay bc it’s more for the practice anyway. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Next up: a skirt out of some super-cute fabric that my aunt Ame bought me at Bernina, a project for my anxiously awaited soon-to-arrive nephew, and an applique monagramming project. I can’t believe I’m actually figuring this out!
So this fall and winter, I’m going to really work on the sewing and try to become decent at it. Next spring, I’m going to plant a little mini-garden out back and see if I can keep anything alive long enough to come out of the ground! For now, though, I just enjoy being able to look at Nate and say “I told you I’d learn how to do this!” every time I pull out my machine (:
