Month: January 2010

For the past few months I’ve wanted to participate in Money Saving Mom‘s baking days, but they always snuck up on me and I wasn’t prepared. Not this time! I’m up for the February Freezer challenge hosted by MSM and FishMama. I’m spreading the cooking out over the weekend. Hopefully that will make it a little easier for me since I do have three kids running around and a couple articles to write. This morning I cleaned my kitchen to get it ready and finalized my list. Here’s the plan:

Main Dishes

• Chicken Oreganata
• Pineapple Lemon Chicken
• Salisbury Steak
• 1 lb. Turkey Taco Meat
• Marinated Chicken x 2 (1 Italian, 1 BBQ)
• Cooked, shredded chicken

Soups

• Chicken stock
• Split pea soup

Breakfasts

• Baked oatmeal
• French toast sticks
• Sausage, egg & cheese breakfast sandwiches

Dessert

• Apple handpies

Extras, if I get around to them

• Mashed potatoes
• Shredded Cheese
• Broccoli rice casserole
• Applesauce

So you may be wondering how I decided on what to make? Well, first I looked at what I had in the freezer (sausage, ground turkey, white bread, English muffins), remembered that it’s Cheap Chicken Friday at Stop & Shop — rotisserie chickens are 2 for $10 (so I can cheat and get the shredded chicken done faster as well as a head start for my chicken stock), looked at what’s on sale, then looked at my freezer cooking cookbooks.

I’m about to leave for the grocery store to pick up a few items that I need and then I will get to it! Wish me luck, and I’ll be blogging and tweeting about it as I go. I hope you’ll follow along and even join in!

As I’m typing up this entry, Monday night’s dinner is just about done. I just haven’t had a chance to get to it until now. Not too much going on this week, so I’m looking forward to some relaxing meals. Tonight’s BBQ ribs are an experiment. I’m not the greatest at cooking ribs; I think I’m just too much of a Yankee to get it right 😉 Nevertheless I researched the topic and hopefully did it right. We’ll find out in about 10-15 minutes! I’m also making sweet potato rolls, but I’m not too confident in them. I tried to cheat and use my bread machine to make the dough. They just don’t seem right, but I baked them anyway. Fingers crossed! Here’s the rest of my plan:

Sunday: Spaghetti and meatballs, salad
Monday: Honey chipotle BBQ ribs, mac & cheese, broccoli, sweet potato rolls
Tuesday: Turkey tacos, Mexican rice
Wednesday: Dinner out
Thursday: Baked breaded chicken, stuffing, carrots and green beans, salad
Friday: Fish sandwiches, oven fries, broccoli
Saturday: Pepperoni pizza, salad

Visit Organizing Junkie for more menu ideas.

… is that everything annoys you when you get home. Laura and I went for a quick overnight visit to see my parents. It was lovely going away with just one child. We had a great visit and it was very relaxing for me. Of course I came home to dirty dishes in the sink, paperwork all over the table, and toys all over the floor. Ah, welcome home! For what’s it’s worth, Drew did do the dishes and the boys (mostly) picked up the toys so I can’t really complain.

It’s like when you go anywhere on vacation. This summer we’ll probably spend some time down in Raleigh again and I just know that while we’re there I’ll be all ready to price out Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina quotes because it’s so nice to be away someplace different. But by the time the week is over, I am usually more than ready to go home.

Anyway… all this is to say that I have a tremendous amount of clutter to clean up tomorrow. As much as I will not feel like doing it, I will because it would be nice to start the week with a clean kitchen 🙂

Poor little Laura. Teething has been hard for her and it’s been going on for a couple months now. She has several teeth right below the surface of the gum — you can feel them right there — but they just won’t poke through. I wonder if this is indicative of a stubborn nature? Last night she had such trouble sleeping. She was kind of asleep, but moaning and crying at the same time. And today there were such dark circles under her eyes. If only there were some kind of safe sleep pills for babies to help them rest. Alas, there’s no such thing (aside from cuddling and rocking I guess). She seemed to perk up a bit around dinner and after she ate I was able to get her to bed pretty easily. Hopefully tonight will be a better night and those teeth will just come in already!

I’m cleaning out my e-mail’s “in box” and the spam folder currently has 612 pieces of e-mail in there. And that’s just the stuff that gets filtered. I guess people actually buy into this stuff, but I don’t understand how. I mean, some of the stuff they’re selling I’m familiar with (a certain… ahem… male enhancement pill). Then there are weird-sounding chemical-esque things that are beyond me. What the heck is argireline anyway? There’s just so much time and energy wasted on this stuff that could be going toward better causes. Drives me bonkers.

For some reason, today feels like the longest day. I’m sure it has something to do with everyone being home 😉 I did a good bit of cleaning today, as well as cranking out an article or two. I’ve also tried to catch up on the comment moderation on my blog. I use the plugin Spam Karma and for the most part it works well, but every so often something sneaks through. I hate the ones that just contain URLs. I mean, just because I write about food, there’s not necessarily a reason for someone (or, more likely, a bot) to comment with http://www.weightlossnutrition.org.

Anyway. My good friend the UPS man delivered my new bedspread today! Our old comforter has seen better days. Plus, I never put the bed skirt on after we set our room up when the addition was complete. Bed skirts are such a pain, don’t you think? Well, with the bedspread it won’t even be an issue. Tomorrow I’ll wash our new fleece sheets and set the bed with all our new bedding. Yay! Now I just need to be able to get some actual sleep so I can enjoy it all.

Let’s see, what else is new? Well, this weekend I completed the first of the two yokes I need to crochet for Laura’s dress. Yay, right? Well, as I was starting the second one I noticed a little bit of the pattern I hadn’t noticed before; I needed to alternately SC into the back look and front loop every other row. I hadn’t done that. So now I get to do it over. This is why I started early, right? Right.

Since I have no crochet progress of my own to show you, I’ll share a photo my dad e-mailed me. This is a sweater my mom just completed for Laura. I’m going to help her with the hood this weekend, but isn’t it adorable? I can’t wait until Laura is big enough to wear it. Way to go, Mom!

What day is it today? Wednesday? I don’t even know. It’s been quite the week. Jake lost a tooth (his third one) and Noah was diagnosed with (get ready for it…) Lyme Disease. Yes, in the middle of winter! Last week his knee swelled up and it hurt him to straighten out his leg so we took him to the pediatrician. She found nothing wrong with the joint based on her examination, but suggested we run bloodwork for Lyme Disease since he had a tick bite early in December. (Of course on the one nice, warm day that month.) That was last Wednesday. Over the weekend there was no change. It didn’t get more or less swollen. It didn’t bruise. I was starting to think that maybe it really was LD. Monday morning we got the call confirming it. Crazy!

At any rate, we now have a three-week course of antibiotics and already we’re seeing a difference in his knee, so that’s good. The antibiotic is just amoxicillin, nothing too strong. When I had LD they put me on doxycycline, but you can’t put children on that. I was concerned what they’d give him because some drugs for the most basic things have weird effects. I mean, some of theAccutane side effects (for acne) are nosebleeds and conjunctivits.) But he’s never had a reaction to amoxycillin, and so far so good.

I’m totally exhausted today because I had a Rough (with a capital “R”) night with Laura. I have no idea what was going on with her, but her already bad sleep was even worse. Finally around 2:30 I took her downstairs and she fell asleep. I put her in her crib at 3 and she slept until nearly 6 a.m.! Unheard of! Sleep has been a struggle with all of our kids in this last half of their first year, but Laura seems especially challenging. Drew tells me that I just don’t remember how bad the other two were, LOL! 😉

Finally, as promised, I have updated my recipe blog! I made this the other night and it was deee-licious!

Rosemary & Garlic Roast Pork

I haven’t gotten very far at all crocheting the dress. The next couple of days are going to be busy (I have a lot of writing to do and I have to get a couple cavities filled — boo!), but I’m going to try to squirrel out a few moments here and there. It keeps staring at me, begging me to pick up my hook! I’ll give in eventually…