Funnel Cakes are Hazardous

So I really wanted funnel cakes today. I asked Mike, "doesnt that sound GOOD!" his reply was, "I dunno, I've only had it like once"..and I thought, " ONLY ONCE! It cant be that hard to make." So I looked up a recipe online and did it...only when I wrote down the recipe...I forgot one ingredient....flour. So I get it all mixed (minus the flour) and think, hum...this is a little thin. It looks like crepe batter. interesting.

I load up the funnel and get ready to dump it in the hot oil. And here is where I'm guessing a number of things went wrong. The batter was so thin I couldnt stop it from all pouring into the pan. And the moment it hit the SUPER hot oil it bubbled A LOT and boiled over. We have a gas stove...so the moment the oil hit that open flame....well...yeah kitchen fire. Not a huge deal though it went out pretty quick...but thats why if you look at the picture of the funnel cake cooking, you can see a huge mess underneath the pan...yeah thats funnel cake overflow.

Any time I working with oil I always make the boys stand back because it pops. And boy am I ever glad I had them at a safe distance. To them...it was just cool fireworks. And mikey comented everytime I made a funnel cake afterword, "Is this one make a fire?!?!" He thought it was awesome. I had to explain that mommy made a mistake.

Anyway we got the batter thickened up and the oil at just the right temperature...and they turned out SSOO good. Mike discovered that if you put syrup on them, they taste just like a waffel. I'll stick with the good 'ole powder sugar. this is the boys eating their funnel cake. They kept asking for more. Lemme tell ya, they're good!

Remember When?

So I wanted to decorate our room with pictures of me and mike...but I couldnt find many that I really liked. Then I was looking through my scrapbook and I found our first "fishing trip." I had to scan it right then and hang it up. I think that was the first time I actually held a fish like that...maybe not the first time. But usually I had a dad/brother/cousin, that would take the fish off the hook for me. Hubbys have a way of getting you to do things that you normally wouldnt do. So here's to you Mike. And to 4 1/2 years of stickin together. I love you SSSOO much and cant say it enough.

Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup

OK so this has to be one of the BEST soups I've made. And it was really easy. Well ok so I guess all soups are easy. But this was pretty good. I wanted to do something thick, but its hard to make chicken noodle soup thick unless you add potatoes...but I didnt want potato chunks....er go....potato pearls. I didnt feel like chopping anything so I used whole baby carrots, and onion powder instead of chopping onions. Then garlic salt, instead of chopping garlic.

HEARTY CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

1/2 bag boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 1/2c. baby carrots
1+ c. potato pearls
2c. uncooked egg noodles
1 bag frozen tortilini
generous handful salt
1 chicken bullion cube
1 chicken ramen packet (just packet, no noodles!!!)
2-3 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp celery seed
2-3 tsp onion powder
2T. mustard (divided)
1 bag frozen brocoli
Milk

Fill your pot 1/2 way with water and start to boil. Cut up chicken brests into chunks and dump in water. Add baby carrots, 1/2c. potato pearls & let simmer for about 5-8min. Add noodles, both tortilini and egg noodles add salt. Then add last half of potato pearls, bullion, ramen packet, garlic salt, pepper, 1/2 mustard, celery seed, and onion powder. When noodles are almost done, add frozen brocoli and last 1/2 of mustard. Simmer for 5-8min depening on the texture of brocoli you want. When you pour out soup add milk to each bowl for a creamy taste and to help cool it off. Then before putting leftovers in fridge add milk to keep the soup creamy.

I am a child of God

Simple is Best

So I've learned to obvously NEVER listen to my cravings. Do you know what I wanted for dinner? Chocolate milk & fluffy scrambeled eggs with cheddar and peperoni. Dont get me wrong...the first few bites were glorius. But now...I dont want the peperoni. I dont even want eggs. I probably could have eaten a little more if they would have just been plane. But I still would have had leftovers cause I made about 7 eggs :S. yeah yeah. I know why the crap would anyone make 7 eggs for themself for dinner. We'll I'm regreting it now cause I've got a large bowl of scrambeled eggs on my hands that I CANT finish. I'm not going to just throw it out. Anyone know any good ways to use up leftover scrambeled eggs?

Releasing Wildlife

This is the cutest wildlife I've found in my house. Ok so none of the other wildlife was cute...unless your a cat person, which I'm not. And...I cant release the cat into the wild. Reguardless, I'm alwasy finding creatures in my house and as I was sweeping up some glass, I found this little dude. Only I swept him up with the glass, and later found his wiggeling tail. ick. poor thing. anyhow. The things I mention in the video that I find, we'll non of them were little. The snail...come to think of it was actually a slug. Was almost the size of my hand. Minus one knuckle joint on my middle finger and you got about how long it was. blech. And it wouldnt let go of the floor. Our backdoor really shouldnt be considered a back door. It's a sliding glass door, and it hardly closes, it doesnt stay on its tracks, and the metal holding the glass is always comming unscrewed so the glass isnt even very stable. At any rate...its rather anoying. In the summer I have to sweep up junebugs every day because they fly in through the cracks in the door at night and then die inbetween the curtain and the door. But this was the first time I found a gecko inside. Usually they hang out on the windows when it gets dark to eat little bugs that flock around the light. I hope this little guy makes it!

Brain-Dead-Butterfingers

I made bread last night. Which means I also had to get out the broom, put the cat in the garage, get out the first aid kit, the mop, and my flip flops. What? yeah thats right, the first aid kit.


I have...had, a beautiful glass jar for flour. And let me tell ya, this think is HUGE. It holds roughly 2-2 1/2 galons. Which is nice cause I'm not constantly having to fill it up. I've had it since our 3rd or 4th month in TX. It looked so pretty up on my shelf. But last night I decided to make bread. And the flour was down to the last 3 or 4 cups. The jar was light because it was almost empty, so I hoisted it down to the floor, so I could refil it from our 5gallon plastic bucket in our pantry. As the dough was rising for my bread I refilled the jar from our bucket. I didnt want any little kid fingers getting into the jar, so I grabed the lid off the counter.

Right as I got the lid over the jar, it fell out of my hand. Seriously, I thought I had a good grip on the blasted thing...guess not. It fell slightly askew on the jar, and broke into a few large pieces. Ugh. So now I dont have a lid. Oh well. Maybe the flour didnt get any glass in it and it could still be salvagable. So I swept up around the jar and get my bread in the oven. I had just swept so I took my flip flops back off and on the way to put the bread in the oven...I step on a rather large piece of glass that I'd missed. Right in the heal of my right foot. Oh yeah, that was a bleeder. I now know why they take blood from baby's feet. It bleeds like crazy.

Ugh...really. So now I'm dripping blood all over my kitchen floor, and I dont want to run to the bathroom cause tile is easyer to clean then carpet. But my stinkin foot wouldnt stop bleeding. Luckily I found a stack of napkins and used that to quell the bleeding a little. I get the oven closed so the bread will cook, and then go get the stinkin first aid kit.

We have Paula's cat here until her and keith get married, and luckily she was in bed for the night. Meaning in her cage. But with all the glass on the floor, I quickly decided to put her food, water, and potty out in the garage, & let her roam free until I knew for sure I had it all cleaned up. Because I obvously missed some of it the first time.

So I get the glass out of my foot, and clean it up and get a bandaid on it. Boy did it hurt for a little while. It almost felt like I still had a piece of glass in it. But I go back in the kitchen, clean up the puddles of blood on the floor, and sweep again. I looked at the big jar of flour and though. "Hum...maybe it's still salvageable." again. The jar didnt looked harmed, and the lid broke into larger pieces, I think all of it landed on the floor. But, I didnt really want to mess with it, cause by the time I got my mess cleaned up, the bread was done. So I left the flour on the floor till this morning.



I had some fresh bread...so I decided on toast and hot chocolate. (the picture is actually french toast, but meah who cares). I slice myself some bread, and put my milk in the microwave so I can make hot chocolate. I stick the bread on the broiler, no we dont have a toaster, and when it's done I butter it. I get my milk out of the microwave and mix the perfect amount of Nesquick in it. I wanted to eat in my comfy bed, so I grab a plate for my toast.

Low and behold, the plate...is glass. I thought I had a good grip on that one too...NOPE. And guess what it hits on the way down. My glass jar that had "survived" my butterfingers the night before. It was like a frisby. It shot straight out of my hands onto the glass jar I left in the floor the night before. The plate totally shattered into a million pieces, and now the jar had a huge chip/crak in the side of it. If I thought the flour was salvagable before, it wasnt now. Now there was definatly plate chips in it. or even parts of the jar.

odly enough. I would have thought I would be screaming. Nope. All I could do was stare. "Are you kidding me?" I thought. I stare at it again, look at my bread and chocolate milk. Look at the broom. Look at the chocolate milk. I decided to leave it. I was still hungry, and all the kids were asleep. So I go to grab another plate.

erm...all of our plates in the cabnet were breakable. Maybe I better just stick with carrying the bread. OH nope, there was 1 plastic plate on top of all the ceramic ones. Beautymus. I come in my room. and enjoy 2 pieces of toast, and hot chocolate. (yeah I had to call my dad and tell him what a clutz I'd been over the last 12 hours) but the mess stayed put, and I ate my food in peace.

Then like the responsible person I am. I blog. Yeah you guessed it. the mess is still in my kitchen. Well, would you want to touch anything after being as brain dead & butterfingery as I have been?

Kick in the pants

Ok ok, so it was a kick in the side. The INSIDE to be precise. I've felt the so called "flutters" already and a few nudges here and there, but today I got my first real THUMP. Oh yeah it's my kid alright, already desperate for my attention. I'm just past the 15 weeks mark. Somedays I forget that I'm pregnant. Yeah so I gag on EVERYTHING, but that's just become a part of life. Hence; sometimes I forget. Mostly it's just a little fact tucked away in my brain. I'll get a little mushy now and then when mike mentions something about holding a newborn, or I see pictures of my boys that little. But for the most part I'm still stuck with the daily grind of...me. I've finnaly gotten my kitchen in order, and Laundry is next. We are getting rid of anything we can do without. Better to lessen the work load instead of trying to keep up with everything that accumulates.

Oh side note. I think we've decided mike is going to try to get into school the semester after the baby comes. Hurray more things for us to do. we've got quite the list. lol.

Powdered Cheese

Yes. I'm talking about powdered cheese, like the kind you get in your mac & cheese boxes. It is so great for soups, cheese sauces, pasta. TONS OF STUFF. So I have looked ALL over to find powdered cheese. Most places that I do find it, it's WAY to expensive. I'm talking like $7 for 1/2 a cup. But I found...you can make it yourself! Yeah doy! you can make your own dried almost everything else. Why not powdered cheese! The process is pretty easy, it just takes some time, and a food dehydrator. Which I have thanks to Michelle (love ya!).

I'm totally stoked about it cause now I can put cheese in my foodstorage too. My father-in-law, makes his own cheese, and I'm planing on telling him about this too. If he's up for giving away some of his cheese, I'll put it to good use! But this is how you do it......

Making Powdered cheese
STEP ONE
Slice hard cheeses into thin pieces. The thinner the slices, the faster the cheese will dehydrate. Try to make each cheese slice the same thickness so that all of the pieces dehydrate at the same speed.

STEP TWO
Place single layers of cheese slices in a food dehydrator. Leave room between the pieces of cheese so that none of the pieces are touching each other. If you want to dehydrate soft cheese, such as cottage cheese or ricotta, line the food dehydrator with a piece of wax paper or plastic wrap. Spread a thin layer of the soft cheese on top of the wax paper or plastic wrap.

STEP THREE
Dry the cheese in the food dehydrator, turning the cheese over every few hours. When you turn the cheese, blot up any grease with a paper towel. Dry the cheese in the dehydrator until it is fully dry. When the cheese is dry it will have a hard texture and a darkened color. Make sure the cheese is completely dry in all spots before taking it out of the dehydrator.

STEP FOUR
Set the dehydrated cheese slices on a plate and allow them to cool to room temperature.

STEP FIVE
Place the dehydrated cheese pieces in a food processor and process into a fine powder.

STEP SIX
Store the powdered cheese in an airtight and watertight package, away from light.


Easy Cheesy!

Blackberry Sauce (edit)

This is a little less than 1/2 of what the recipe yeilded. And it's so good on EVERYTHING. chicken, crepes(I have a pretty good recipe for those too), waffels, fish, ice cream....you name it. The only thing, is that after it cools, it's not much of a sauce anymore. so we've taken to mixing it with butter, cream cheese, milk, or water. Whichever works best with what you're cooking.


I only had this one little wire strainer that would work for getting the seeds out, it took a while.


This is the recipe cooking down. looks like seedy sludge. In the end it was well worth it.

Blackberry Sauce.

2/3 c. butter, melted
1 1/2 tbsp. cornstarch
1 1/4 c. sugar
Dash of salt
1/4 c. orange juice
2 c. fresh or frozen blackberries

Combine butter and cornstarch in saucepan. Add sugar, salt, orange juice and blackberries. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until thick. Be sure to remove stems and strain for seeds before servings. Makes 3 cups.

For......

HYRUM