Our Simple Menu

Posted on | November 23, 2011 | 5 Comments

A £45.04 turkey comes in a nice fancy and sturdy box. I’ve never felt more proud carrying a turkey than this morning. Seriously!!

The turkey is fresh. This is our first fresh turkey. Even the turkey we got from our local farmer in MO was frozen so this is a treat. There’s no smile, no birth certificate or a photograph, but, based on the box the turkey had a good life and will make six adults, one teen and seven children happy tomorrow!!

I cook like I craft. Now and then I get a feel for something complicated or just time consuming to prepare but for the most part I am a quick and simple kind of girl. So for this year’s Thanksgiving I will be serving (I linked to the recipes but I usually improvise as I go):

Turkey – of course
Mashed potatoes + gravy (I’d cook it after everything else is done and after turkey comes out I’ll stick this in the oven to heat)
Green bean casserole (prep in the a.m. and then stick in the oven 30 minutes before serving)
Glazed carrots (I make the glaze in the a.m. and then the carrots will take 5 minutes to boil)
Steamed corn on the cob/kernels (depends on what hubby brings back this evening)
Corn bread (maybe using this one but did love this one)
Stuffings, I just follow the recipe on the package and stuff it in my turkey
Gravy
Cranberry sauce (make later tonight)
Pumpkin pies (hubby’s recipe and he’ll make this from scratch tonight)

I don’t have a plan of attack but everything, I think, has been graphed in my head. We’ll see how it goes!

Have a great holiday!!!

My First Crepe

Posted on | April 9, 2011 | 8 Comments

It’s the first day of M’s Easter break and for once we’re not going anywhere. Tthere are still many places within an hour or so from us that we haven’t explored yet. We will drive to a few but other places we want to take the train. I even got a discount pass for that. We need to take advantage of the National Trust pass that we have and just know the area better.

To celebrate, I made a swanky brunch: Crepe. M had her first crepe when we went to France last time and although the dessert ones were good, her favorite were the meat crepes. She kind of ended up eating crepe for three or so days straight cause she loved it so much he he… While in France I got lucky and got to the birth place of Mauviel: Villedieu-les-Poêles. It was a total accident! While looking for the vet’s office I saw these GORGEOUS pots and pans. Copper. And thought: Hmmm, name sounds familiar! When we got back to the cottage I Googled and sure enough, they’re great pots and pans brand. So when we went back to get the dogs’ paperwork taken care of to take them back to the UK I got a couple and one’s a crepe pan. You want to know how much I paid? 23 Euros or less than $35 when the retail US price is over $150!

It’s been weeks since we got back from France and wanted to try making crepe earlier but just intimidated. But after trying it, it’s not bad. Just make sure the batter isn’t thick – should be thick milk shake consistency more less. For somebody who’s used to cooking pancakes the runny-ness was a bit troubling but the crepe turned out great.

I pretty much followed the recipe above but added a teaspoon of sugar and vanilla. The inside of the crepe were two over easy eggs (just placed side-by-side… if we didn’t have this in France I wouldn’t have thought of doing this!), slices of cheese, bits of onions, and fresh spinach. I placed the cheese, onions and spinach first with eggs on top so that the cheese would melt and the rest cook a tad bit. The result: YUM!! A bit of France was here this morning!

I made a card too yesterday based on this week’s Waltzingmouse’s sketch. I used some leftover paper from a Pebbles project and a flower piece that I bought while market shopping last week. There’s a little craft/art shop in Bury St Edmunds. Very nice one although the scrapbook/card items can’t be compared to the shops in the US.

Here’s M’s newest photo. So lucky to be able to spend many days with my two girls. I hope the US government settles their disputes and get a good budget going because I sure would like to take this little girl on the little adventures I promise her besides being able to pay our rent, utilities and groceries.

Before I go, here are some close-ups of the project and the crepe. Have a great weekend all!!

Some Favorite Things

Posted on | September 22, 2010 | 13 Comments

First most recent favorite thing: Potato and leek soup. I found it on AllRecipes and of course I had to tweak it just a bit:

2 good size garlic cloves chopped
2 shallots sliced
1 tsp white pepper

I also didn’t have any American bacon (pork belly and more fatty) so I used 250g (about half a pound) British bacon (from the back cut of pork which is less fatty) and I added a tbs of butter. But if you use American bacon I’d not use the extra butter.

In terms of cooking. I let the potato boil with the broth (I used cubes) as the original recipe directed but for the other portion I sauteed the bacon first for about 4-5 minutes (English bacon doesn’t get crispy), then I added the butter, garlic and shallots, and then gradually the leak until the leek was soft. I think this took 5-10 minutes. Then I dumped everything into the pot of potato and broth. Last was the cream and pepper. I let it mix for around 5 minutes.

Here’s a garlic tip. When chopping garlic use your knife to cut the rough edge off. Then put the flat side of your knife on the garlic and smash the knife (or push down hard if you’re the stronger than me) with your hand (careful not to cut yourself!). The wider the knife the better (I chop with a chef’s knife). After it’s smash just pull the rest of the skin off and use your knife to chop the already crushed garlic a bit more so that it’s finer (unless you love chunky garlic). Here’s a video that does more less of what I usually do. My friend in college taught me how to chop this way. Before this I had to painfully remove the skin first and then chop.

Oh, on the cream, hubby got double heavy cream and the recipe only requires heavy cream. I don’t know if this made a difference but goodness, the soup was DIVINE!!! Wish I took a photo of it. We were too hungry {::SMILES}.

Second most favorite thing: Baby Signing Time. Not only is this Jovie’s most favorite video series they are also teaching her how to communicate with us. While she’s getting there in speaking she’s still mostly babbling so signing has helped us quite a bit! Here’s a little sampling of the video:

If you have little ones I seriously recommend teaching them how to sign. It’s also suppose to increase their IQs too and speech. While M loves My Baby Can Talk for her first signing video (she went to Signing Time later on) Jovie doesn’t care of that much and prefers the Signing Time series. They’re both excellent though and I highly recommend them. M spoke early, at 14-mo, but she knew how to use 2-3 words in a sentence right away. Jovie, while just going bok bok (book) or mo mo (more) she can already sign using 1-2 signs at a time. On average kids don’t start putting words together until at least 18-mo. The only downside is that at 14/15-mo-old she’s already very demanding. She’d wake up asking milk, cereal AND ice cream. In the middle of the day she’ll sign bus which basically means she’d like to ride the bus that goes to Cambridge. She always tells me when there’s an airplane nearby and when she wants water or a bath. Jovie’s hand never stops talking that’s for sure!!

Third favorite thing: Just living here in the UK with the family. Life is wonderful and I’ve never been happier!!

Card info:

I made this card some months back for the Embellish call but never formally submitted it although I did email it to Ash. I dunno, after looking at it I didn’t feel like it was pub worthy. The theme was using buttons creatively and I don’t think my button usage was very creative. There’s nothing new there don’t ya think? So here it is. For the card I used Practicing Creativity’s stamps. The punch was Martha Stewart’s and the twine I got from Etsy, Annie42.

Card, in a Ditch, and Cincinnati Chili

Posted on | January 12, 2010 | 13 Comments

Anybody from Cincinnati? We LOVE Cincinnati chili and found a recipe that taste just like Skyline’s — or better. I didn’t change anything and it was just delicious!!! My favorite is the 4-way, with onions. YUMMY!! I am hungry already! A bad thing since it’s almost midnight here right now.

If you’ve never had this type of chili it’s not the typical. It’s a bit more runny and with more flavors. There are spices like cloves, cocoa, cumin, etc. Before I made this recipe (before Christmas) we always used the packets but now that we found this great and easy recipe bye-bye packets! Personally I like this chili better than the regular one. I really like the taste and if you like a lot of flavors I suggest you try this thing out. Our family loves to try regional favorites and this is one that has also became our family’s favorite dish.

Check out this beauty ((photo courtesy of bloodymaryland.org)) — I don’t use that much cheese:

Alrighty… I did make a card. Something simple, again. I wish I can have the time that I had a year ago. I looked at some of my work and they were more elaborate. I could afford to then, time was more with me. Now, time has gotten limited and I try to steal a bit here and there. The exchange is all worth it but ahhh, sometimes I do wish for more time — or motivation. Last weekend I had plenty of time but just no mojo.

I wanted to do something yesterday but couldn’t. Yesterday I was on time out. I ran the car into a ditch right in front of our mailbox (it wasn’t deep. It was no big deal if there were feet of snow). Hubby was not happy cause he had to tow me out in the freezing cold and it was dumb. If I wasn’t daydreaming, wondering if I got a package in the mail or not, I wouldn’t have driven too to the right. I still have a hubby but I think if I do it again (it was my second time — same spot too) he’d wonder why he’s with me ha ha ha…

Something neutral with a touch of color. I’ve this stamp set for a while but just got to using it today. I want to get more PTI background shtuff so that I can keep with my goal of making my own background patterns this year.

Laters!!

My First Homemade Bread

Posted on | January 10, 2010 | 11 Comments

First a card:

I used PTI stamps and the pattern paper is a little bit of leftover from one of my digital papers from Shabby Pickle Designs. The colors came from Dawn McVey. I could have made all sorts of cards/scrapbook pages all day today but I wasn’t motivated. Instead I just lounged around with the girls.

As for the bread… Check this baby out:

I am doing really good with my 2010 goal to make more food from scratch. The above wheat bread is really delicious. I got this one from AllRecipes and the 500+ people who gave this five stars were right!! M and hubby loves it. It is a tad bit sweeter than the store bread but I think you can easily adjust by removing the 2nd cup of sugar. I did follow one of the tip; I divided the dough up into two instead of three to make it more sandwich size. Another tip said to put the dough in the dryer to speed up the growth and so I did – it’s not like I have a lot of warm places options to let my dough sit and rise anyways. I didn’t have any laundry to dry and so I just turned it on for a few minutes before I placed the dough in there. Did it help? I dunno but it grew well. Lovely bread and next time I’m going to try adding sunflower and more wheat and reduce the regular flour.

I hope you had a great weekend. My spring class starts up tomorrow and I have a full class so I’ll be sporadic with the crafting as I get more papers to grade. So until next time!!!