Green is her color

The green shirt sure brings out the green in Ryen's eyes!

Curried Chicken Couscous

James loves to take pictures and a couple of days ago, he wanted to try to take a dinner picture.  Here is the result.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

In the spirit of the holiday, I made split pea soup and green dinner rolls.  MMMMMmmm.

Random Pictures

 I was uploading pictures from my camera today and found some random pictures that one of the boys must have taken. (Probably James.)

Birdies

Mia:  Pretty birds!

Mia:  This one is the baby bird.

Mia:  And this bird is laying an egg.

Ryen:  It's not laying an egg.  It's resting.

Mia:  No.  It's laying an egg.

Ryen:  No it's not.  It doesn't have a nest.  It's just thinking.

Mia:  Oh.

I have a gullible child

Last week it was vampires.  Today it went something like this.

James:  Dad, can you make things out of titanium?

Paul:  Titanium?

James:  Yeah, I want you to make me shoes that fire comes out of so I can fly.

Paul:  I'm not that talented.

James:  Brendan at school has some.  He has to say Rudolph to get them to work.  Then he can fly!

Paul:  Son, it's not possible.

James:  Yes it is!  

Paul:  Have you seen him fly?

James:  No.  It only works at night.

Dream Catchers

A couple of weeks ago, Sam insisted on having a dream catcher to catch all of his dreams.  Not wanting to go out and buy one, I improvised.  This is what I came up with.

Tonight, Sam's fell over and he asked me to fix it.  I told him he didn't really need it and he said, "I got an idea."  Here was his idea.

Tortilla Soup

Dinner tonight was tortilla soup.

Tortilla Soup

1 pkg Bear Creek Tortilla Soup mix

Cheese of your choice.

Follow instructions on package and top with cheese of your choice.

(I also added some additional freeze dried veggies from my food storage to the boiling water along with the mix)

Plum Pie

I still had several plums left from my last trip to Sam's Club that I needed to use before they went bad.  Here is the result.

Biscuits

Having had dental work today, I needed something soft for dinner.  I decided on biscuits since Sam loves those.  I found an excellent biscuit recipe on allrecipes.com.

Kentucky Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 dash salt

1 tbsp white sugar

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup buttermilk

1.  Preheat oven to 400 F.

2.  In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.  Cut in 1/2 cup butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  Mix in the buttermilk.  Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead 10-15 times (too much means dense biscuits!)

3.  Roll out to 1/2 inch thick.  Use biscuit cutter to make biscuits and put on ungreased baking sheet.

4.  Bake 15 minutes.  Serve hot.

Dentist

I have never been a big fan of the dentist.  Usually I take a Xanax to help me make it through an appointment.  So a couple of nights ago, knowing I was all out of Xanax, I dreamed about the dentist.  I dreamed that he was working on my fillings and found another cavity.  So this morning, I was in the chair, listening to my music while the dentist worked with his drill and I hear him say, "Oh, I found another little cavity."  It was quite tough not to burst out laughing while he had that drill in my mouth!

Breadsticks

We had spaghetti and homemade breadsticks for dinner tonight.  I used my french bread recipe for the breadsticks.  

French Bread

1 cup warm water

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

1.  Proof the yeast in the warm water with the sugar.

2.  In mixing bowl with dough hook, add flour and salt.  When yeast mixture is ready, add to the flour and mix for 5-8 minutes.

3.  Transfer dough to oiled bowl and allow to rise until double.

4.  Punch down dough, cut in half and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

5.  Roll the dough into 8X12 rectangles.  Roll up each half of dough tightly, beginning at the 12 inch side.  Place on a cookie sheet (I don't grease mine, but you can if you want to.  Or you may also use parchment paper.)

6.  Make deep diagonal slashes across loaves.  Cover and let rise 30-40 minutes or until double.

7.  Mix 1 egg with 1 tbsp water.  Brush over tops of loaves. (This makes a nice soft crust.)

8.  Bake in preheated 375F oven for 20-25 minutes.

For the breadsticks, don't use the egg wash.  Instead, bake until golden brown.  After you remove from oven, brush with a mixture of melted butter, garlic salt, basil and thyme.  

French Bread and Roast Beef Sandwiches

Sam has been wanting garlic bread for awhile, but I had told him not until we had some french bread.  So today, I came home from work and immediately started some french bread.

So Samuel got garlic bread for dinner and James and I used the leftover pot roast for some hot roast beef sandwiches.  I heated up the sliced roast beef in some beef broth with some fresh thyme.  Meanwhile, I caramelized some onions and shredded some pepperjack cheese.  I topped the sliced french bread with the beef, added some onions and topped with the cheese then put it under the broiler until the cheese was melted.  Mmmmmm.

Vampires

Josh is a boy in James' first grade class.

James:  *seriously* Mom, Josh can suck blood.

Me:  *not paying attention* Oh yeah? 

James:  Yeah he really does.

James:  He sucks it from here. *points at his neck*

Me:  *paying attention now and laughing* I think someone was telling you something that isn't true.

James:  *seriously still*  No, mom, he really can!  He only drinks the blood of kids this size. *points to the top of his head*

Me:  *Laughing really hard*  Okay, I'll ask his mom when I see her next.

James:  *seriously*  You can only ask him. She wouldn't know.

Me:  *Still laughing*  Okay James.