Is this thing on?  Hello?

Sorry, I’ve been slacking on the blogging … been busy trying to jump into the world of couponing … but I’ll save that for another post.

I’ve been meaning to do a February Round-up, but geez … I hardly remember what happened in February.  The basic gist was lots of snow, and lots of fun with friends.   Here’s some pictures to catch you up:

Although we spent most of February at home, we did get out and get to catch up with our Old Bible Study Gang.  Our families have grown!

Lastly, we got to catch up with other long time friends.  I won’t call them old, because no matter what the last name changes to, they’ll always be Young to me!

And now it’s March, which has roared in like a kitty cat chasing a butterfly. Lots of sunshine and warmth. If we’re lucky, the last of those snow piles will melt by Easter…

We had friends to dinner last week (note:  we’ve done more entertaining in February than we’ve done in the last six months, I think!) and I decided on a tex-mex themed menu.   Perhaps a risky choice, considering our guests are from the great state of Texas, but fortunately, everything turned out great.   Since it was so yummy (if I do say so myself), I thought I’d share my recipes with you.

The Menu:

• Chicken Enchiladas
• Spanish Rice
• Guacamole
• Salsa

Chicken Enchiladas

These are adapted from the Southern Living Cookbook, which we received as a wedding present 11+ years ago.  Apparently it’s no longer in print :(

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 (10 3/4 oz) can chicken broth
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 (8 oz)  carton sour cream (I used light)
• 2  (4 oz) cans chopped or diced green chilies
• 12 corn tortillas
• vegetable oil or butter for frying
• 1 cup cooked chicken, chopped or shredded  (I usually boil 2 frozen chicken breasts and chop it up)
• 2 cups (8 oz) shredded Monterey Jack cheese, divided (feel free to use other cheeses too)
• 3/4 cup chopped onion

Melt butter in a heavy saucepan over low heat; add flour, stirring til smooth.  Cook 1 minutes, stirring constantly.   Gradually add chicken broth and water.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened and bubbly.  Stir in sour cream and chopped peppers.   Pour up to  half of sauce into a lightly greased 12×8x2″ baking dish  (just enough to cover the bottom).  Set the rest aside for later.

Fry tortillas, one at a time, in a splash of oil or butter in a medium skillet – 5 seconds on each side, until tortillas are softened.  Drain on paper towels.

Set up the tortilla filling operation: I use 3 bowls, one with chicken, one with onion, and one with 3/4 cup cheese.  Fill tortillas – add 1 Tbsp each of chicken, cheese and onion.   Roll up tortillas and place, seam side down, in the prepared baking dish.  Pour remaining sour cream sauce over tortillas.

Bake, uncovered, at 425° for 20 minutes.  Sprinkle remaining 1 1/4 cup cheese on top  (I just sprinkle cheese generously across the top) and bake another 5 minutes, or until cheese melts.

Garnish with parsley and serve with Enchilada Relish*.

*The cookbook has a recipe for relish, but I much prefer to use a different salsa.

Restaurant Style Salsa

I discovered this recipe when my favorite blogger, Ree posted it on her Pioneer Woman site.  It is super delish and easy!  I do find that it runs pretty hot (good for hubby and I, not so much for the kids).  I’ve been omitting the jalapeno and using two regular cans of Rotel and find the spice is quite nice.

Spanish Rice

I’d never made Spanish rice before, but decided I needed something to round out my meal.  I found this recipe, “Spanish Rice II” on All Recipes and decided it would work well.  I made it as described and it was tasty.

Guacamole

We don’t really follow a recipe for guac anymore, but I’ll share what goes into ours.

Ingredients:

• 2 – 3 avocados
• a little chopped onion (~1/4 cup, preferably red/Spanish onion)
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
• kosher salt
• juice from half a lime
• fresh cilantro, chopped
• some grape tomatoes, cut up

I don’t do exact measurements.  We just scoop out a couple of avocados, and mash them – not to a pulp.  Then add the other ingredients and mix it up.  Simple, but tasty!

All in all, everything turned out great and it was a nice evening with friends.  My only regret is that I only took a picture of the table, and not the people it was set for!

Tags: rec, what's cookin

This week’s You Capture theme is “Shapes“.  Here’s a few examples from around the house this week:

Tags: kid play, life, you capture

We have one of those fridge farm magnetic sets.  When the kid puts the two pieces of the animal into the set and it sings a little song.   Or if they just push a button it plays a little ditty.  Cute, but annoying.  Especially when the toddler likes to press the button over and over and over.   Even worse, he insists on setting the volume on high, which is ridiculously loud.

We had friends over to dinner recently and my fellow mom shared a great tip that I will share with you.  To decrease the noise output for this (and other) toys – simply put a piece of plastic packing tape over the speaker output.

I did this (when my munchkin wasn’t looking) and it totally takes down the volume to a bearable level.  Even better, my kiddo hasn’t even figured out what happened.

So now, I no longer flip out when he sets it to the loudest volume (why do kids ALWAYS do that?) and he is none the wiser.

This tip definitely works for me.  Find other tips at We Are That Family.

Tags: kid play, tips, WFMW

Over the blizzard break, I had some time on my hands, so I decided to make the latest recipe for my bread making club.  The “formula” was for Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread and was surprisingly easy and delish.   One of the nice things about the recipe is that it doesn’t call for a bunch of unusual or hard-to-find ingredients – I had everything I needed, already in my house, except for the buttermilk, which I faked.  Here’s the recipe:

Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread

from Peter Reinhart’s “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”
makes two 1 1/2 lb loaves

3 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
4 tsp granulated sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp instant yeast (I used 2.5 tsp active dry yeast)
1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 large egg, slightly beaten
2 Tbsp shortening, melted or at room temp
1/2 cup buttermilk or whole milk, at room temp
3/4 cup water, at room temp
1 1/2 cups raisins, rinsed and drained (I patted them dry with a paper towel to remove excess moisture)
1 cup chopped walnuts (I skipped these)

Cinnamon Swirl Mixture (optional)
Sift or mix together:
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 Tbsp ground cinnamon

Steps

Note:  I didn’t have any buttermilk or whole milk, so I faked my buttermilk using the vinegar method.  If you buy buttermilk and are wondering what to do with the rest, freeze it in 1 cup increments – you can use it in pancakes and other recipes.

1. Stir dry ingredients together: flour, sugar, salt, yeast and cinnamon in bowl of electric mixer.  Add egg, shortening, buttermilk, and water.  Stir together (or mix on low) until the ingredients come together and form a ball.  Adjust with flour or water as necessary if dough is too sticky or dry.
2. Knead the bread – use the dough hook on the mixer (~6 to 8 min), or knead by hand (~10 min) on a floured surface.  Dough should be soft and pliable, tacky, but not sticky.  I found I had to add more flour — I had measured my flour by weight (16oz), but my other ingredient by dry measure, so that may have been my problem.   Sprinkle in the raisins and walnuts in the final 2 minutes.   I followed Reinhart’s advice and took my dough out of the mixer and kneaded by hand to get the raisins properly distributed.  Dough should pass the window pane test – mine did, but I think I’m getting more and more liberal with the definition of “passing”.   Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer dough, rolling it to coat it with oil.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap.
3. Let dough rest at room temperature for ~2 hours, or until dough doubles in size.
4. Divide dough into two equal pieces (I used my handy dandy food scale) and form them into loaves.
   Note – if you are doing the cinnamon swirl mixture, sprinkle it onto your bread before you roll it up. (I forgot!)
   Reinhart’s technique for making sandwiches loaves is hard to explain — I’ll do my best.  Basically, flatten the dough into an even-sided rectangle, ~5″ wide by 6 to 8″ long.  Roll the dough up on the SHORT side, pinching the crease as you rotate to strengthen surface tension.  The loaf will get longer as your work, closer to 8 to 9″.  Pinch the final seam closed and place in pan, seam side down.  I always have a hard time with shaping, so I looked online, and found this helpful example – not quite the same, but gives an idea of how it works.Place each loaf into a lightly oiled 8.5″ x 4.5″ pan, mist tops with spray oil and over loosely with plastic wrap.
5. Proof loaves at room temp for 60 to 90 minutes, or until dough crests above lips of pan and is nearly doubled in size.  For once, this only took about an hour for me (usually it seems I have to proof everything longer).
6. Preheat oven to 350 with oven rack on middle shelf.  Place loaves on a sheet pan making sure they don’t touch (I didn’t use a pan, I just put them on the rack).
7. Bake loaves for 20 minutes. Rotate pans 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20 to 30 minutes.  Finished breads should register 190F in the center and be golden brown on top and lightly golden on the sides and bottom.
8. Immediately remove bread from their pans and cool on a rack for at least 1 hour, before slicing or serving.

Even though I don’t consider myself a huge fan of raisin bread, it was quite delicious!  Since I forgot to add the cinnamon swirl, I did a trick Reinhart suggests:  when the bread comes out of the oven, brush the top with butter and then roll them in cinnamon sugar (I just sprinkled some on top).  We sliced it and had cinnamon toast – yum!

Tags: bread, what's cookin

This week’s “You Capture” theme is Kisses.  I wasn’t on the ball and didn’t get any good kissing pictures, so I decided to break protocol and look back over the years and see what kissing pictures I have taken in the past.   You won’t be impressed with my artistic eye, but hopefully the cuteness of my kids will help you see past that.

To see more kissyface, check out You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry.

Tags: kisses, life, you capture

I hope you had a nice day – we did.  Ours was a low-key kind of day.  We don’t make a big “to do” about Valentine’s – my big thing was having a V-Eve party the night before.  We are trying hard to crunch our budget and reduce spending, so neither of us spent much on Valentine’s stuff, and that was a good thing.

The morning started, with me coming downstairs and discovering a puddle on the floor.  The ceiling was leaking :(.  We’ve been having water issues with the big snow storms — our house has an addition and in one place where the old meets the new, we seem to be getting in water.   Mike has climbed on the roof (in the snow storm!) to try and fix it, but apparently it just moved the water to a different place.  Blech.

I took the kids to church while he climbed back on the roof in search of a better solution.  We came home from church to discover the plows had been through again and *really * plowed our street well.  I was so excited to see all the bare pavement!!!  It actually wasn’t a plow truck but a bulldozer, who scooped huge amounts of snow and deposited them in our yard.

I felt much love from the kids, and also from Mike who gave me a nice card and chocolate hearts from Trader Joes.

It was a lovely relaxing day, filled with warmth and love.

Tags: family, holidays, valentine's

We hosted a pre-Valentine’s dinner party for some friends on Saturday eve.  It was 4 couples + 9 kids (all six and under) – I wasn’t sure how crazy it would be, but we had a wonderful eve!

The theme was fondue — cheese and chocolate  (not at the same time, of course), rounded out with soup and sandwiches and an assortment of yummy munchies brought by all.  I set up a craft station for the kid to make Valentines, which was a big hit.  I did not expect the kids to allow us grown-ups much time for adult conversation, but surprisingly, the kids had blast on their own, and we were left to talk in peace for quiet a while!

It was a lovely evening – in addition to scrumptious food, we played our own version of the Newlywed Game.   Couples took turns drawing questions out of a bowl and everyone tried to guess their spouse’s answer.   It resulted in much laughter.   If you are curious, or planning your own date night party, you are welcome to borrow the list of questions I came up with.

Thanks friends, for such a fun evening!

Tags: Friends, holidays, valentine's

Here were are, still trying to manage from the weekend storm and they are calling for more tomorrow.   Even worse, they keep UPGRADING the estimates – once upon it a time it was 4 to 6″, now they are forecasting 10 to 20″!!!

Our street is plowed – at least one lane’s worth, but many others are nearly impassible.  Mike dug our minivan out over the weekend, but I didn’t try and get out until dinnertime tonight, when I dashed out to the store to restock the milk and a few other essentials.   When I came back to the house, I couldn’t back the minivan back in the driveway because the cleared area was so narrow.

Not looking forward to more snow!  Praying for the heat to stay on and for sanity to be maintained.   Here’s a few more pictures from Sunday.

Tags: snow, winter

Well, around 5pm, the snow stopped.  I think they called for it to last til late evening (maybe?).

Anywho. shortly after my post about how we were all hunky dory, the power went out.   Dang it.   We were out of power for about 2 hours and it just came back on.   Thank you, Jesus!  We would have been alright, but I definitely wasn’t looking forward to doing it “prairie style” (ala Laura and her Little House).

Since I’m updating, here’s a couple of snow video clips I took.   Enjoy them:

Off to put the kids to bed and watch “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”.

“Bless your beautiful hide…. wherever you may be..”

ps -if you didn’t follow the link I included my last post, you simply must check this out.  It pretty much sums up how the media and the better part of our region reacts to a snowy forecast:

Tags: life, snow, winter